It's time for your direct reports to participate in a Best-Self Review® cycle! This guide walks you through logistics and responsibilities associated with being the manager of a review cycle participant.
Your responsibilities as the manager of a review cycle participant include:
- Receiving manager-specific email notifications
- Managing peer nominations and reviewing peer reviews
- Reviewing upward reviews
- Writing a manager review
- Completing the review summary, holding a final meeting, and sharing/finalizing review results
- Downloading/printing your direct report's review results (optional)
🎥 Are you more of a visual learner? Check out our video on how to complete a Best-Self Review® cycle as a manager.
Manager-specific email notifications
Below is a list of email notifications that you may receive as the manager of a review cycle participant. For a more extensive list of emails that are sent out during a Best-Self Review® cycle, check out our "Email notifications for a review cycle" Help Center article.
- Review cycle kickoff
- Reporter submitted their self review
- Manager review reminder - 7 day
- Manager review reminder - 3 day
- Manager review reminder - Past due
- Manager review - nudge from review admin or direct report
- Release results - nudge from direct report
- Release results - nudge from Review Admin
- Reminder to schedule final meeting with direct reports
- Reminder to schedule final meeting with direct reports - last day
- Review cycle has been deleted
Manage peer nominations and review peer reviews
As a manager, the first interaction you may have with your direct reports who are participating in a cycle is during the peer nomination window. This is only relevant if peer reviews are included in the review cycle.
Either participant-initiated or peer-initiated peer reviews can be included in a review cycle. In participant-initiated peer reviews (the default peer review type), either the review cycle participant themselves, their manager (you), a review admin, or a cycle collaborator can nominate peers for the participant. The manager (you), a review admin, or a cycle collaborator can approve, decline, or remove peer nominations for a participant. In peer-initiated peer reviews, peers volunteer to write peer reviews of participants; there is no nomination or approval process.
Once the peer nomination process is complete and peer reviews are submitted, you are responsible for reviewing submitted peer reviews.
Check out these resources ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Manage peer nominations for a review cycle participant
Help Center article 💡: Review submitted peer reviews of my team
Help Center article 💡: Peer reviews: participant initiated vs peer initiated (linked above)
Review upward reviews
If you are the manager of a participant who is also a manager and upward reviews are included in a review cycle, you are responsible for reviewing the upward reviews that your direct report's direct reports submit about them.
Check out this resource ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Review submitted upward reviews of my team
Complete a manager review
If manager reviews are included in a review cycle, you are responsible for writing a manager review for each of your direct reports that are participants in the cycle. If self reviews are also included in the review cycle, you will be asked the same or similar questions in your manager review that your direct report was asked on their self review. Asking both participant and manager the same questions helps reduce bias and create a fairer performance review environment.
Once the review cycle begins, you are able to begin drafting your review(s) of your direct report(s). Please note that you cannot submit your manager review until your direct report submits their self review, or the self review deadline has passed. Once your direct report submits their self review, you can use their submitted self review, as well as other resources that appear on the right-hand side of your manager review page to help guide you as you fill out your manager review.
After you submit your manager review, it will be visible to review admins, cycle collaborators, a participant's review viewers (previously called "additional managers), and anyone in the participant's hierarchy*. It will not be visible to your direct report until you share results with them at the end of the cycle.
Included in manager reviews is the Private Manager Assessment (PMA) section. In this section, managers answer future-focused questions about their direct reports. By default, PMA answers are only visible to a review cycle participant's you (the the author of the manager review), review administrators, and cycle collaborators. However, review admins and account admins have the ability to manage visibility settings to allow for more transparency to a participant's hierarchy or the participant themselves.
*This is only the case if hierarchy visibility is enabled for the review cycle
Check out these resources ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Write or edit a review in a review cycle
Help Center article 💡: Manage visibility options for private manager assessments (linked above)
Blog post 🗒: Giving Critical Employee Feedback Is Not As Scary As It Seems
Note
After you submit your manager review, you can edit it up until you share review results with your direct report. The exception is that if calibration sessions are included in the review cycle, you will not have the ability to edit the Private Manager Assessment section of your manager review once a calibration session begins.
Complete the review summary, hold a final meeting, and share and finalize review results
Once the self and manager reviews have been completed and the 'Start sharing on' milestone has passed, the review summary will open up. The summary is a condensed version of all reviews that were written about a review cycle participant. Writing a comprehensive summary is especially important if review settings dictate that verbatim feedback isn't shared directly with review cycle participants, as you need to ensure that your direct report is aware of the feedback they received.
You can edit the review summary up until review results are finalized.
Once you complete the review summary, you will schedule a final meeting with your direct report to discuss review results, share review results with them, hold the meeting, make any desired edits to the summary, then finalize review results. Review admins and cycle collaborators also have the ability to share and finalize review results.
Check out this resource ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Complete, share, & finalize summaries
Download or print my direct report's review results
If you would like to view and analyze review data for specific participants, you can download or print the results from within their specific review page. It is best to wait until after the results have been shared and finalized to print, in case summary information is changed before finalizing.
Check out this resource ⬇️
Help Center article 💡: Download my team's review results
Related resources 📖
- Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm a review participant
- Help Center article 💡: What to expect: I'm a review admin
- Video 🎥: The Awesome Responsibility Of Leadership with Simon Sinek