For leaders
For the people you lead, your team, and you.
Manage individual performance with manager tools: goals, check-ins, 1:1s, write-ups and Workload for the people you lead, and help with the messages you write. Organize team ideas and work with idea boards, for gathering the team’s ideas, and projects, for getting the work done. Get feedback on your leadership with the Leadership 360, where your team tells you what it is like to work for you.
The manager tools are $7 a month for one manager billed annually, or $10 billed monthly, and the people you lead never need an account. The Leadership 360 is $99 for one leader, bought once per review.
Manager tools
A fair write-up for each person you lead.
The manager tools are for anyone who leads people, whether you manage a team or lead a project. Set goals, check in each quarter, plan your 1:1s and write the end-of-year assessment. Repeating 1:1s, check-ins and your other key dates show on one calendar, which you can follow in Outlook or another calendar app. The tools are built to help you write down your own judgment, in three ways.
You write first, then read what colleagues said.
The assessment page always runs in the same order: your answers, then colleague input, then the draft. That way the write-up is your own view, which colleagues can confirm or contradict, not a summary of theirs.
It asks what you owe them.
Both the quarterly and the annual questions include “What did you say you would do for them that you have not done?” Your answer appears in the write-up under What you owe them, so it records both sides, not just a verdict.
You set the rating, and say why.
The performance band is the rating you give for a period: below expectations, meeting expectations or exceeding expectations. You choose it yourself, and the write-up fails its checks until you have written why. The AI never picks it.
1:1s the person can add to.
Set 1:1s to repeat, and email the person a calendar invitation with the times and your name and nothing written about them. If you turn it on, they can add topics for your 1:1s through a personal link, with no account. You read their topics on the 1:1 page, with their name on them, and cannot change them.
Growth and stay conversations.
Record a growth conversation, about where someone wants to grow, and a stay conversation, about what keeps them. Each keeps what the person said, in their words. Neither is ever rated, and neither is read when an assessment is drafted. If you ask, AI adapts the conversation’s guide to the person.
How full their weeks are.
Workload shows how full the coming weeks are for the people you lead and for everyone on your projects. Note each person’s hours a week, and each week is marked Room under 70% of their hours planned, Full up to 100%, or Over above it. You can plan someone’s hours on one of your projects, or on work tracked in another tool.
Your numbers in Power BI.
Connect Microsoft Power BI to a read-only feed of what you see of your projects, goals and Workload, under a key only you hold. The feed carries names but never an email address, a comment or a survey answer.
Notices in a channel of your own.
Your projects and idea boards can post their updates to a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel you connect. A channel of your own can also be told how many check-ins are due, and that your group’s survey results are ready or a commitment’s check is due, with no figure and no name. A survey cycle can have a channel too, told that the survey is open or closing and nothing about who answered.
What each connection sends, and who turns it on, is listed under Connections.
Drafts
Help with the messages you write.
Start from an idea, your own draft or a message you need to answer. Choose an email, a text or a chat message, and set the tone with five sliders: warmth, formality, directness, length and energy. Drafts writes it in your voice, for you to edit.
Facets never sends it. You copy the message, or open it in your own email or messages app, and press Send yourself. On the website nothing is kept: leave the page and the drafts are gone.
- Where a fact is missing, such as a date, a place or a name, it leaves a blank in square brackets rather than guessing.
- Any number, date or time that is not in what you gave it is listed for you to check.
- If the message touches on something like pay, health, discipline or a restructure, a note suggests checking with HR before you send. It never stops you.
- Check the tone of something you wrote: it shows how your words read and quotes up to three phrases that may land badly, with the reason, without rewriting them.
- Shorter, warmer, more direct, simpler words, grammar only, or another version: each quick change is one press.
- Starters such as Thank someone or Say no give you a shape to fill in, and cost nothing.
What it is sent.
Your words and settings, and the message you are answering. For one of your people, their first name goes too, and their latest 1:1 and check-in notes only while you have that switch on. Each draft and tone check uses AI credits. A draft is shown to you alone: nobody else in the workspace sees it, owners and admins included.
Buying for every manager at once? The Organization plan is these same tools with one bill, priced per manager.
Through the year
How it works, step by step.
Add someone
A name is enough to start. Role, strengths, what they need from you and what you are watching can come later. Note their hours a week and email address, and Workload shows how full their coming weeks are.Set goals
Goals for the year, each with a measure and a target. AI can suggest wording that turns any goal into something you can actually observe, and you use it only if you pick it.Check in each quarter
Progress on each goal, a performance band, and what changed. You are never asked to check in on a quarter that has not finished.Prepare the conversation
AI drafts a guide for the talk, suited to the band you gave, and 1:1 agendas that fit the time you have. It can also suggest follow-up actions from your notes, which are added only if you keep them. The person can add their own topics through a personal link, and growth and stay conversations have guides of their own.Ask colleagues, if it helps
Up to ten people answer three written questions. There is no rating scale, because an average of two people’s ratings is too unreliable to report.Write the assessment
Quarterly or end-of-year: 4 or 7 guided questions, then an AI draft, your edits, your band and your reason. Export it to hand to the person it is about.
AI drafts
Every draft is checked before you see it.
The AI can draft a write-up for you. Every draft is checked against these rules, not only given them as instructions. A draft may not:
- Quote a colleague. Any run of six or more words taken from someone’s answer is caught and named at the top of the draft.
- Put a view in someone else’s mouth. Phrases like “the team felt” are flagged. Your own observations are fine.
- Use discipline language. An assessment records; it does not start a formal process.
- Include a number that is not in your records.
One colleague’s reply is used as one person’s view, never as a pattern. The draft and your own panel both say so.
AI credits
Every AI tool that comes with the manager tools draws on one allowance of AI credits for each manager, counted over a rolling 30 days. That includes Drafts and the write-up drafts above, and the AI tools on idea boards and projects below. Each tool shows what it costs beside its button. When your credits run out, guides, agendas, suggestions and assessment drafts come from a standard template instead, and Drafts and the project and idea board tools wait until credits free up. An owner or admin can turn AI off for the whole workspace.
Idea boards
Ask the team for ideas, and answer every one.
Ask your team one question, like “what should we stop doing?” or “what got in your way this quarter?”, and collect their ideas. Then give each idea a status (New, Considering, Planned, In progress, Done or Not now), usually with a sentence saying why. Everyone on the board sees your answer.
Whoever posted the idea gets an email when you answer. People who voted for it hear in a daily email they can switch off. If an idea waits 7 days without an answer, your dashboard tells you.
You choose how names are shown, before anyone posts.
Pick one of four settings: names hidden from teammates but seen by you; hidden from everyone, you included; shown to everyone; or each person chooses, post by post (the default). The setting cannot change once the board opens. Votes and reactions are only ever counts, so nobody sees who voted, you included. When names are hidden from you too, you can see who joined but never who wrote what, not even in the export.
Nothing on a board is part of anyone’s performance record. An idea cannot become a goal or a line in a check-in; if you want to use one there, you copy the words across yourself.
No accounts needed.
Invite people by email, one at a time, as a pasted list, or copied from a roster. Each person gets a personal link. Or share an open link or QR code wherever the team already talks: people who join that way type their own name, and you see it marked as self-reported. A board holds up to 50 people.
Theme suggestions, if you switch them on.
When you set up a board, you can switch on theme suggestions, and the team is told before anyone posts. You can then ask AI to group the ideas everyone can see into themes. It is sent what the ideas say and never who wrote them. Only you see the themes, and a suggestion moves nothing on the board. Each request uses AI credits.
Or use it as a whiteboard.
Switch on the canvas and the team arranges ideas together with sticky notes, text, shapes, connectors and frames. Start from a retro, an impact-against-effort grid, a SWOT, a brainstorm, a mind map or a blank canvas. Every sticky note is also an idea on the board’s list, with the same status, votes and answer. The list stays available for phones and keyboards.
Everyone sees notes appear as they are placed. Who is on the canvas, and where their cursor is, shows only on a board that shows every name. Before their first note, teammates are told: “This board also has a canvas. Where you put a sticky note is something everyone on the board can see; when you put it there is not shown. On a small board, how you arrange things may still say who you are.”
Projects
Turn ideas into work, and keep track of it.
A project is a task tracker for you and your team. Each task has an owner, start and due dates, a status (To do, In progress, Blocked or Done, which each project can rename) and a priority from None to Urgent. Tasks can have subtasks, a checklist and comments that mention people by name.
Anyone on the project can add a task. You can edit any task; teammates can edit their own and the ones assigned to them.
Five views, plus one for each teammate.
See tasks as a list, a board, a calendar, a timeline or charts. The timeline draws arrows between tasks that are waiting on each other. Each teammate also gets Mine, which opens on their own work. Any filter can be saved as a view.
The rest of what a tracker needs.
Group tasks into sections for phases or workstreams, and add milestones. A task can repeat, and it can wait for another. Add custom fields and labels, and make a template from a project you have set up, which never keeps anybody’s name. Import tasks from ClickUp, Trello, Asana, Jira, Monday, Notion, Linear or Microsoft Project, or from any spreadsheet or JSON file. Export a project as a CSV file or for Microsoft Project, and each teammate gets a calendar feed.
You can also send a project’s tasks to a Microsoft Planner plan through your own Microsoft 365 work account. After that, completing a task on either side completes it on the other. Planner gets only what everyone on the project already sees of each task.
A schedule, and each person’s load on this project.
On the Schedule page, Facets proposes a start and due date for each open task that is not already under way or pinned to its dates. It uses how long each task takes, what it waits for and the project’s milestones, and changes nothing until you apply it. Each project also shows the hours of estimated open work each person has on it, by the week it is due. Teammates see their own row and the team’s total, never anyone else’s. The Workload page adds up each person’s hours across projects.
Progress updates, by email or in Slack and Teams.
Write how the project is going, and send it by email or a read-only link to people outside it, who never need an account. You can also connect a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel of your own, and choose what is posted there: each update as it is written, a daily list of tasks done, due and overdue and who owns them, or both. A channel never carries a comment, a vote or a figure about one person.
Emails that say what is due.
Everyone joins with a personal link and never needs an account. People get an email when they are given a task or mentioned. Each night, a teammate’s digest lists what is due today, overdue or newly theirs, and they can switch it off. Yours lists what is overdue, what is blocked, and what is due this week with nobody on it.
Make a task from an idea.
On any idea, Make a task copies it into a project and keeps a link between the two. The team is told where a task came from only if the board showed every name, since otherwise it could reveal who wrote the idea. For the same reason, on other boards you are warned before assigning the task to the person who posted the idea. When the task is done, your dashboard suggests marking the idea Done, but that answer is yours to give.
AI drafts, which you review first.
You can plan a new project with AI. Describe the goal, answer a few questions or skip them, and review a draft of its sections, tasks and milestones. Nothing exists until you press Create project. In a project you run, AI can also draft a plan, break a task into subtasks and steps, draft an update, or estimate task lengths for the schedule. Nothing is added to the project, and no update goes out, until you apply or save it. Each request uses AI credits, and the team is told what AI is sent before anyone writes anything.
What the team is told first.
Before anyone writes anything, the project’s first screen says: Everyone on this project sees names — the manager who runs it, and every teammate on it. It is a record of work, not of feedback about anyone. Nothing here is copied into any assessment, and nothing here is anonymous. A task cannot become a goal, a line in a check-in or evidence in an assessment. An owner or admin of your workspace can open a project to read it; that is logged and shown to you.
The Leadership 360
What your team says about working for you.
Invite the people who report to you, and peers if you want them. They answer 14 questions about how you lead, across 7 areas, plus 2 overall questions and 4 written ones. They answer through a link and never sign in. You can invite between 3 and 25 people. Each person’s link goes by email or, where your organization has connected its Slack or Microsoft Teams, as a direct message there.
You guess what they will say.
You answer the same 14 questions twice: once as you see yourself, and once as you expect your team to answer. The most useful gap is often between what you expected to hear and what you actually heard.
Nothing is quoted.
Written answers are turned into themes, in new words. In a small group a direct quote can reveal who wrote it, so any six-word run from someone’s answer is caught before the brief reaches you.
Too few answers, no report.
If fewer than 3 people answer, you get no scores, no themes and no written answers: nothing. Question-by-question detail needs 5. A point only one person raised is folded into a wider theme, or dropped.
The brief
What you get back.
The brief names two strengths, and up to two things to work on, each with something concrete to try. Each behavior is shown three ways: how you rated yourself, how you expected your team would rate you, and how they did, with the margin of error drawn around their average. You see the overall questions, with your team’s average beside your own answer, and the main themes from the comments. Notes from published research on each behavior are about leaders in general rather than about you. The brief also gives you a plan of about an hour for taking the results back to your team, and a note on how much weight the results can bear, including how many people answered.
Your team’s average on a behavior is shown only where at least 3 of them observed it. The overall questions, and the average for each question under its behavior, are shown only where at least 5 people answered, as raters are told before they start. No one person’s ratings are ever shown.
About behavior, not character
Words that describe personality are rejected. There is no ranking and no score against other leaders.
Every number checked
Every number in the brief is checked against the scores, as in the manager drafts. If the AI fails the checks twice, Facets writes the same sections without AI, and the brief is marked with which way it was written.
Follow-up questions
After someone writes a comment, the AI may ask them one or two short questions, such as for an example or what came of it. It sees only that person’s own answers: nothing from other raters, your self-ratings, your notes or the confidential box. It may not ask them to name a colleague. They can skip it, and you can switch it off.
A facilitator can hold it back
If you name a facilitator, they read the brief first, with anything flagged and the confidential box, and decide whether it is released to you. Their page suggests an agenda of about an hour for a session with you before you take it back to your team. Without a facilitator, it is released automatically once its checks pass and nothing is flagged; if something is flagged, it is held and you are asked to add a facilitator. Every access is logged. Afterwards you can record commitments and run it again later to see how they went.
A brief always waits for a facilitator when fewer than five people respond, and you are told so as you set the review up; the directory of certified practitioners lists coaches and facilitators who hold the Facets certification.
Compared with your last review
When you start a review after one that was released, the form offers to link the two. Your new brief then shows each behavior this time beside last time, and marks a change only when it is larger than chance would explain with that many people answering. The people you ask also look back at the behaviors you were working on, as they were around your last review, so a shift in how they judge is not read as a shift in you. What you committed to last time is shown beside it.
Asking them again, once
Between 60 and 90 days after your brief, you can ask the people who answered two to four questions on the behaviors you chose to work on: one short page, open for 7 days. You set the day; you see combined answers only, from three people, and whether each behavior moved, said only where the change is larger than chance. Only a review whose raters were told at the start can ask, and never one sent as an open link.
Taking it back to your team, in about an hour
The brief includes a plan for one meeting with the people who answered, in these steps. The minutes are a guide, not a rule.
- 5 minThank the people who answeredSay how many people answered, that you have read the brief, and that you will not try to work out who said what.
- 10 minShare what you heardName what you heard you should keep doing, and the one thing you are going to work on.
- 20 minAsk what it would look likeAsk what they would notice if you got better at it, and for examples of what good looks like; write the answers down.
- 15 minAgree one commitmentWrite the commitment as an if-then plan, with how they would notice, and record it on your brief's page.
- 10 minSet the check-inPut a date eight to twelve weeks out to ask whether they have noticed a difference, before the next review.
You can run it from the product: each step on a screen the room can see, with its minutes on a clock, the commitment recorded as you agree it, and the day to ask them again booked before everyone leaves, where the review allows it. The screen shows how many people answered and what you choose to say, never a score or anything the people who answered wrote.
Raters’ identities are protected, but not guaranteed.
$99 for one leader, bought once per review. Included in the Practitioner plan. Priced separately from the manager tools.
Kept separate
What you write and what they tell you stay separate.
- What you write about your people (goals, check-ins, assessments) is kept apart from what people say in feedback (the team survey and the Leadership 360).
- Facets does not add survey feedback to performance records. The one route is a person’s own choice: after a Leadership 360, the person it is about can send a summary to someone they choose. What arrives is a copy, and it does not open up the review behind it or who answered.
- Nothing is linked for you. If you want a shared summary on someone’s record, you attach it yourself, and from then on it is used when drafting that person’s assessment.
- Idea boards and projects belong to neither. They hold the team’s ideas and work, and nothing on them is part of a performance record.
Good to know