360 Impact review cycle cadence:

Instead of running everyone’s reviews synchronously twice a year, your Impact reviews will be launched automatically on your 6-month anniversary, and your one-year anniversary, setting you up for two review cycles per year, in accordance with your start date. We encourage all temmates to add a recurring “every 6 months” calendar reminder to their calendar and their manager’s calendar to track when their Impact reviews will be! If this date falls on a weekend, it will start the following Monday.

In these review cycles, you will be asked to give and receive the following reviews:

• Self-review: reflect on your own contribution to your team and how you’ve made an impact.
• Peer review: select 2–3 stakeholders who you’ve collaborated with on projects to give feedback on the impact you’ve made and how you’ve lived our values while collaborating.
• Upwards review: review your manager, how they’ve supported your development, and what they can do to support you more effectively.
• Your manager reviewing you: your manager will reflect on your contribution to your team and how you’ve made an impact and lived our values.

Timing:

Each review cycle will last three weeks from start to finish. This means that reviews will be happening in real-time, at different points for all of us during each calendar year. As our company standard, our review cycles run on UTC. The review cycle completes at midnight UTC on the day that your review is slated to end. For instance, if your review is set to end on April 2nd, the review cycle will close for submission at midnight on April 2nd, so you have that full day to complete your reviews.

We expect that all teammates will carve out time to put thought into writing out their reviews, and writing the reviews of their peers. We encourage all reviewers to designate around 30 minutes per review on their calendars as a calendar block called: “Writing peer reviews - do not book.” We encourage all teammates during this time to respect those review calendar blocks.

Feedback is important, and we should be intentional about setting aside time to give it and give it well. In doing so, we can work together to elevate each other’s successes, share blind spots, and take the time to articulate feedback thoughtfully.

As the last step in this cycle, managers will write their own review for their direct report, have time to review their direct report’s feedback, and will release the feedback packets through Lattice once reviewed. If your direct reports peers haven’t given feedback and your window to submit feedback as a manager has closed, simply Slack #impact-reviews and a member of People Ops will be able to reopen your feedback submission window.

A note on the “10%” questions:

You may have noticed the question “Tell me what I can do 10% more of or better” in some of the reviews. The 10% metric centers around the idea that small, incremental changes are less daunting and seem more attainable, but actually often result in a larger impact. People resist change for a variety of reasons.

Stepping back from the bigger picture of your work and seeing where you can make slight changes can help empower you and will create gradual change at a pace that feels manageable.

A note on the Values-based questions:

You may have noticed questions around which values you embody the most, and which values you can work on to embody more of. These questions were created to embed more of our values-driven culture into our Impact reviews. This is meant to be a nod to the fact that our values are living, breathing things - and all teammates should actively work on inserting these values in how we show up for eachother each day.

If you find yourself stuck in choosing one value over another, you can simply select the value that most aligns with the area you chose for this teammate (whether it is something they excel at, or need to work on), and elaborate about other values in the comment box. Similarly to the 10% question above, we focus on selecting one value here as to not overwhelm the ‘feedback receiver’ with a laundry list of things to change before their next review cycle begins. Making tiny, incremental changes in the way we work can have a large impact over time!

Continuous feedback:

We’ve shifted how we think about feedback as a company and moved into the mindset of giving continuous feedback. What does this mean? We value feedback being shared in real-time, whether right after a meeting or in the moment. Feedback is a gift, and flexing it requires building up your feedback muscles.

There are three different types of feedback: giving, receiving, and seeking feedback. In-between flexing your feedback muscle by giving it and learning how to pause when you receive it, you should also practice actively seeking out feedback from your peers. This can be as simple as sending a Slack message to ask how your presentation in a meeting went, or as thorough as setting aside time with an agenda of the situation to cover where you’d like feedback.

All managers and their direct reports should include an element of feedback in their weekly or bi-weekly 1:1’s. These should be a safe space to give, receive and seek both positive and constructive feedback! As a best practice, People Ops recommends keeping your 1:1’s with your managers/direct reports on a consistent cadence. The more you practice feedback and lead with radical candor, the easier it becomes to create an open, authentic, and transparent work environment.

To help get you started, we have created Sourcegraph Fundamentals class called Feedback 101 to help you unpack, understand, and practice giving, receiving, and seeking feedback. Check it out here:

Selecting a peer reviewer

Teammates: All teammates will select 2–3 reviewers for their peer review cycle. We encourage you to choose different reviewers for each cycle to get a well-balanced representation of your peers. If you’d like to increase your number of reviewers, reach out to #impact-reviews on Slack with your reviewer name and who you’d like to add to your roster.

When you choose these 2–3 reviewers, you should consider:

• Which peers can speak directly to my growth opportunities? Have I had a difficult conversation with someone and would like to include them as a reviewer to obtain constructive feedback?
• Who have I collaborated with recently who has had a direct line of vision into my work? Have we worked together recently on a project? You are encouraged to choose reviewers who have insight into your recent work, rather than people you simply talk to often at Sourcegraph.
• Include one reviewer whose review you’re scared to read! This is a best practice and will broaden your perspective and build self-awareness.
• All peer reviewers should have been at Sourcegraph for at least two months before you ask them to review you.

Pro tip: For more information on how to select peer reviewers, see How to choose your peer reviewers! If you are chosen to be a peer reviewer but are not necessarily sure you have the bandwidth to contribute to their review, see Opting out of being a peer reviewer.

Managers will have the ability to edit the reviewers after teammates submit their initial choices, with the total number of reviewers being capped at 3 teammates. If you would like to add more reviewers than our current cap of 3, please reach out to the #impact-reviews Slack channel and our Lattice Admins can override this limit.

As a best practice, all teammates are encouraged to share their reviewer’s names with their managers beforehand to align on their choices and rationale for choosing them.

Managers: People managers will only need to select 1–2 peer reviewers for this upcoming cycle. The bulk of your time should be spent giving feedback to your direct report(s) and actively thinking through ways to help them grow.

Each review should take an average of 30–45 minutes to complete, and all teammates are encouraged to carve out time when they are tagged to review their peers to give thoughtful feedback. All reviewers and reviewers must complete each cycle in two weeks. Please plan and prioritize a working block on your calendar to write them in the time frame given to you.

As a note: For any managers who have inherited a new direct report and are not listed as their current manager, please reach out to our #impact-reviews Slack channel for help!

Submitting feedback as a manager

Managers: You will be able to review all peer feedback given to each of your direct reports during the review cycle before writing your manager review and summary remarks. Once all of your reviews are submitted, you will be prompted to share the completed review packets with your direct report and we encourage you to set up a time to discuss the packet during your next 1:1. When you share your packet with your direct report they will be able to see all peer feedback names associated with their feedback, as well as your own manager feedback. Direct reports are unable to see any reviews their own managers might get. The idea is, you can see feedback downwards, but not upwards, to protect psychological safety.

Teammates: After the two-week review cycle period ends, the review cycle will automatically close. Upon completion, you will receive a summary of your reviews from your manager and peers.

Note on completing the cycles in the given windows: We encourage you to make every effort to complete reviews that are assigned to you during these two weeks, as extending individual cycles can be an arduous administrative process, and we’d like each teammate to receive their feedback sooner than later.

Informal Impact review cycles

You may find that the timeline for your review may have just recently passed, or that your next review is too far in the future, leaving you without helpful feedback that you could easily apply to make small changes to the way you work. Consider the option of including an informal Impact review as a pulse check for learning: how you are showing up in your working relationships, where you are driving impact for your team, and obtaining more self-awareness of your working style.

In the event that you’d like to conduct an informal Impact review, use this resource to learn about holding an informal cycle for yourself and use this resource as a template to document your reviews.

There are three components to feedback: giving it to others, receiving it yourself, and seeking it out. Keep in mind that feedback is a muscle, and works best when you regularly strengthen it by giving and receiving it often. The concept you will be using in this informal review process is around “seeking feedback” which will help you inform your own working style, positive trends, and areas for improvement.

We recommend that you as the reviewee set time with your manager to discuss feedback between both parties. If you would like to conduct reviews with stakeholders (either in the event that you are seeking promotion, would like additional information on how you show up in your peer relationships, or are simply curious), it is recommended that you book time with at least 2–3 peers as 30-45 minute calendar invites.

In all instances, we recommend documenting these items in this Informal Impact reviews template or your 1:1 GoogleDoc which you share with your manager:

• The questions you went over during your informal reviews
• A summary of the answers you have received to those questions
• Any reflections you may have based on the conversations

After you have documented your informal Impact review, this process will be complete. After you complete your informal review, a best practice is to share with any reviewers that you’d like to keep the door open for feedback and empower them to share feedback in the moment and often. The point of each review cycle is not to open the floodgates for feedback that you haven’t received yet, but more importantly to synthesize trends that you’ve already had conversations about and are aware of.

You can also use the Informal Impact reviews template to reference in promotion conversations, as a document you can share with any new managers or skip-level managers, you may have, sharing feedback with peers who can help you track your progress over time, or simply to keep in your own files for reference.

_Note: your informal Impact review template has all of the questions mentioned in our regular Impact reviews—the only difference is where the information will be documented, and the fact that you will be driving these feedback conversations yourself. These are meant to supplement a transitional period where teammates’ review dates may have passed during the time frame where we switched over to a new cadence.

Writing your reviews using the SBI framework

We encourage all reviewers to use the SBI framework for giving feedback while filling out their reviews. SBI is a framework developed by the Center For Creative Leadership and is used all around the world. It works because it forces people to speak about feedback in a specific, actionable way. By using SBI, you can counteract some of the stress-inducing responses activated by the limbic system or your threat zone. Feedback helps us continuously grow and it’s important to live that value by being specific and actionable in your feedback. The more specific you are in your responses, the more likely the feedback will be received and land in a helpful way for your teammate. Clear is kind!

Situation: the where and when (shaping the context of the feedback)

Behavior: the observable action (what you observed directly, not your interpretation)

Impact: the so-what (effect on emotion and work)

In the spirit of openness and transparency, all feedback you give to others during their review cycles (and vice versa) will have names attached to them. To honor our value of being an open company, we’d like all feedback to be a dialogue between two teammates rather than a one-way conversation.

For more information on how to use SBI and giving great feedback, check out this resource!