Viewing your summaries

Who can use this: Employees only. Your org admin must enable the employee portal before summaries can be shared with you.

A summary is your manager's synthesized write-up of a defined period — a quarter, a half, or a custom review window. It pulls together observations they recorded throughout the period, your objectives and how you tracked against them, and any 360 feedback peers contributed, then organizes it into a single document with strengths, growth areas, and recommended next steps.

This article explains how summaries reach you, what is in each section, how to acknowledge a summary, and what to do if something does not look right.

How summaries reach you

A summary appears in your account when your manager shares it with you. Before that happens:

1. Your manager drafts the summary, pulling content from observations, objectives, and 360 feedback.
2. The draft may go to your org admin for review. Some organizations require admin approval (the review queue) before any summary can be shared; others let managers share directly.
3. Once approved (if required) and your manager clicks Share, the summary lands in your account.

You will see it in two places:

• The Summaries card on your dashboard, with an Unacknowledged chip.
• The Summaries page in the left navigation rail, sorted by share date.

You will also receive a notification — in-app, email, and Slack/Teams if you have those integrations connected.

What you will not see

You only see summaries that have been explicitly shared with you. The following are not visible to you:

• Drafts your manager is still working on. Until they share, the document does not appear in your account.
• Summaries awaiting org admin approval. If your org uses the review queue, the summary stays with the admin until they approve and your manager shares.
• The raw observations that fed into the summary. You see the synthesized result, not every individual note your manager recorded throughout the period.
• Team summaries or skip-level summaries. These are aggregate documents owned by your manager or your skip-level manager and are not shared down to individuals.

The summary is the canonical record of what your manager wants you to know about a period. If something is not in there, it has not been formally communicated to you through Performance Blocks.

Anatomy of a summary

Every summary has a consistent structure, even though the exact content varies based on what your manager wrote.

Header

At the top of the page you will see:

• The summary title (often a period label like "H1 2026 Review" or "Q2 2026").
• The review period — the start and end dates the summary covers.
• The author — your manager's name and avatar.
• The status — Unacknowledged, Acknowledged, or Clarification requested.
• The shared date — when your manager (or org admin) released it to you.

Strengths

The first content section. This is what your manager believes you are doing well. Each strength typically includes:

• A short headline.
• A few sentences of detail.
• Optionally, an attribute (competency tag) showing which area the strength relates to (for example "Communication", "Delivery", "Leadership").

Strengths are positive, specific, and behavioral. They are designed to tell you what to keep doing, not just to make you feel good.

Growth areas

The second content section. These are areas where your manager sees opportunity to develop or improve. Each growth area typically includes:

• A short headline.
• A description of the pattern your manager has observed.
• A recommended action — concrete suggestions for what to focus on next.
• Optionally, an attribute tag.

Growth areas are not a list of failures. They are a forward-looking development plan. A well-written growth area should leave you with a clear answer to "what should I do differently?"

Objectives

If your manager included objectives in the summary, this section lists each objective from the period with:

• The objective title.
• Whether it was achieved, partially achieved, missed, or exceeded.
• Your manager's commentary on the result.

This section is auto-populated from the objectives you tracked in Tracking your objectives. Your manager may add or edit commentary but the underlying status comes from the objective record.

360 feedback (if included)

If your organization ran a 360 feedback cycle covering the same period, your manager may include themes from that feedback in the summary. Typically this is presented as:

• Aggregated themes, not direct quotes from peers.
• A balance of what peers said you do well and where they see room to grow.

Whether peer feedback appears verbatim or only as themes depends on how your org has configured 360 cycles. See Giving 360 feedback for the giver's perspective on how this data is collected.

Recommended actions

Some summaries include a final Recommended actions section that consolidates the next steps from the strengths and growth areas into a short, actionable list. Treat this as your primary takeaway — the things your manager wants you to focus on going forward.

Manager note (optional)

A free-form section your manager can use for context that does not fit the structured sections — congratulations on a milestone, a heads-up about an upcoming change, or a personal note.

Acknowledging a summary

Acknowledgement is your way of confirming you have read the summary. It does not mean you agree with every word — it means you have seen it.

To acknowledge:

1. Open the summary.
2. Scroll to the bottom (the Acknowledge button is enabled only after you have scrolled through the full document, to make sure you have at least seen each section).
3. Click Acknowledge.
4. Optionally add a short note ("Thanks — looking forward to digging into the growth areas.").

Once acknowledged:

• The status chip changes to Acknowledged.
• The acknowledgement timestamp is recorded.
• Your manager is notified.
• The summary stays in your Summaries list permanently.

You cannot un-acknowledge. If you acknowledged in error, send your manager a message in your conversation thread and they can record a clarification on their end.

Requesting clarifications

If something in the summary is unclear, missing context, or factually inaccurate, you can request a clarification. This is a structured way to flag concerns without rewriting the document yourself.

To request a clarification:

1. Open the summary.
2. Click Request clarification at the bottom.
3. In the form that appears, choose what kind of clarification you are requesting:
   • Add context — you agree with the substance but want more detail.
   • Correct factual error — something is described inaccurately (wrong date, wrong project, wrong role).
   • Disagree with assessment — you have a different read on a strength or growth area.
   • Other — anything that does not fit the above.
4. Write a short explanation. Be specific — point to the exact section or sentence.
5. Click Submit.

The summary status changes to Clarification requested. Your manager is notified and is expected to respond — either by editing the summary, by replying in a conversation, or by leaving the summary as-is with a written response. The clarification you submitted is attached to the summary record so there is a written history of what was raised.

You can request clarifications on a summary you have already acknowledged.

Your right to request edits

Your manager owns the summary document, but you have the right to:

• Request a correction for anything that is factually wrong.
• Add a written response to any growth area or assessment you disagree with. Your response is attached to the summary and visible alongside the original content.
• Escalate to your org admin if you have raised a clarification and your manager has not responded within a reasonable time, or if you believe the summary contains content that should not be in a performance record.

Performance Blocks does not let you directly edit the body of a summary your manager wrote — that would compromise the integrity of the document. But your written response is preserved, and the audit trail of clarifications and resolutions is part of the official record.

Re-reading older summaries

The Summaries page lists every summary that has ever been shared with you, newest first. You can:

• Filter by review period (year, quarter).
• Filter by status (Unacknowledged, Acknowledged, Clarification requested).
• Search the body text.

We strongly recommend re-reading prior summaries before each new review period. Patterns across summaries — strengths that recur, growth areas that have shifted, objectives that have evolved — are some of the most useful inputs for your own development planning.

You can also export any summary to PDF from the page header. Exports include the full body, your acknowledgement timestamp, and any clarifications you raised.

What happens if your manager changes

If you are reassigned to a new manager, your summary history stays with you. Your new manager can see prior summaries as part of getting up to speed. The original author is still recorded on each summary.

Your new manager will write future summaries; they do not retroactively edit prior ones.

What happens to summaries when you leave the org

When your account is deactivated, summaries are retained according to your org's data retention policy (set by your org admin). During that period, your former manager and org admin retain access. After the retention period ends, summaries are deleted.

If you want a personal copy of your summaries, export each one to PDF before your last day. Once your account is deactivated, you no longer have access to download.

Notifications

By default, you are notified when:

• A new summary is shared with you (immediate, in-app + email).
• A clarification you raised has been responded to (immediate, in-app + email).

You can adjust these in Profile → Notifications → Summaries. We recommend leaving the immediate channel on for new summaries — they are infrequent enough that they warrant immediate attention.

Tips for reading a summary well

• Read it twice. First pass: get the overall shape. Second pass: read each section carefully, especially the recommended actions.
• Sit with it before responding. A strong summary often surfaces patterns you have not articulated yourself. Give yourself a day or two before deciding what you agree or disagree with.
• Match it against your own narrative. If your manager calls out a strength you did not realize you were demonstrating, lean into it. If they describe a pattern you do not recognize, that is a signal to start a conversation.
• Use clarifications, not silence. If something feels off, raise it through the clarification flow rather than letting it linger. The structured channel keeps the discussion productive.
• Carry actions forward into your objectives. Growth areas often translate into concrete development objectives for the next period. See Tracking your objectives.

Where to go next

• Tracking your objectives — turn growth areas into measurable goals.
• Conversations with your manager — talk through anything from the summary in a written, async thread.
• Giving 360 feedback — the giver's view of the peer feedback that may feed into a summary.