Leader Rounds FAQ
Setup
Do I have to configure anything before leaders can start rounding?
No. The three starter templates (Staff Rounding, New Hire 30-60-90, Senior Leader Rounding) install themselves the first time anyone opens the app, and the default cadence is 30 days. A leader with direct reports can capture their first round immediately.
How do I customize the rounding questions?
Starter templates stay pristine — you can’t edit them directly. On the Templates tab, click Duplicate on a starter, then edit the copy: reorder or remove questions, add new ones, and set the template’s own cadence. Question types are scale (1–5), yes/no, choice, free text, recognition pick, and issue capture.
How do I give different groups a different template or a different cadence?
Use Rounding Programs (in the sidebar next to Templates). A program is a rule: an audience — job title, department, location — optionally narrowed to specific leaders, plus the template to use and the cadence to measure against. Programs are ordered, and the first one that matches a leader-and-person pair wins. Anyone no program covers falls back to the default rounding cadence in Settings. The list shows how many people each program’s audience actually matches, so a filter that matches nobody is visible before anyone wonders why rounds aren’t happening.
A template has its own “Cadence (days)” field — when does that apply?
Only when a Rounding Program assigns that template without setting a cadence of its own. Picking a template on the capture form never changes anyone’s cadence — otherwise a leader could clear their own due list by choosing a different conversation. With no programs configured at all, every pair uses the tenant default.
What are pillars, and do I have to set them up?
Pillars are your organization’s strategy headings — “People & Culture”, “Safety”, “Customer Experience”. They are optional, but they are what groups the Themes sections, the ledger’s chips, and the rows of the Stoplight Board. On the Pillars tab an empty list offers an industry preset (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, hospitality, call center) as a starting point you then rename. Map your template questions to pillars, and issues raised from those questions inherit the pillar automatically; anything unmapped shows as Unaligned. A pillar nothing references can be deleted; one that is referenced archives instead, so old boards and issues keep resolving.
Permissions and access
Who counts as a leader in this app?
Anyone with direct reports in the org chart, plus anyone with a manager role or above. The rounding obligation covers direct reports only; a leader may also round on anyone deeper in their reporting line (skip-level), and doing so never adds to anyone’s overdue count.
Who can see a round’s private notes?
The leader who wrote them and that leader’s own management chain. By default every administrator of your company can read them too — that is a setting (Settings → Who Can Do What → “Business administrators can read private notes”), and turning it off leaves the notes with the leader and the leaders above them. The person rounded on never sees them either way, and the AI assistant cannot read them for anyone.
Can the person rounded on update the issues they raised?
No. They can see their issues, the owner, the status, and the written reason if something is closed without a fix — but only the leader who held the round, that leader’s management chain, or an admin can change a status. This keeps the ledger the leader’s record of follow-through.
Who can see the Themes tab?
Leaders see themes for their own reporting line; admins see the whole tenant. In the numeric breakdown, every group with answers renders whatever its size — those rounds are attributed, and the tab only aggregates conversations the viewer can already read one by one. The AI theme list below it is different: those themes are a tenant-wide aggregate, so the anonymity floor applies and a theme is listed only once it was drawn from at least the minimum group size. The floor also governs the monthly team digest, single-team newsletter blocks, and Stoplight Board rows.
Who can see a Stoplight Board?
A published board is visible to the leader it covers, everyone in that leader’s org — the huddle audience it was made for — every leader above them, and app admins. Drafts are visible only to whoever is composing them, plus admins. Composing is limited to leaders, over their own org; a tenant-wide board is app-admin only. Who may publish is a setting (Settings → Who Can Do What → “Who can publish a stoplight board”) — any leader, for boards they composed, unless an admin narrows it.
Day-to-day
What makes a round count toward coverage?
It must be completed and substantive — at least one question actually answered. A round saved with every answer blank shows in history but does not count toward the leader’s coverage number. That rule is deliberate: it keeps box-checking from reading as engagement.
What should a leader do when someone is due but unavailable?
Use Skip on the due list and give the reason (for example, “on approved leave until March”). The reason is required. A skipped round is a recorded decision, so the director sees a deliberate skip instead of an unexplained gap.
Can an issue start out overdue?
No. When an issue is captured during a round, its due date is set to today or later — a past date is moved up to today, and if no date is given it defaults to two weeks out. Red status is earned by real slippage, never by form input.
Why does a recognition posted from a round say “awaiting approval”?
The one-click recognition goes through the same gates as any other recognition: content moderation, anti-gaming checks, and your tenant’s approval routing. If your Recognition program requires manager approval or the content is held for review, the post waits there. Each recognition answer can be posted once — the button then shows “Recognition posted.”
What does the “Same-day cluster” flag on Team Rollup mean?
It means most of that leader’s rounds in the window — five or more, with at least 80% stamped on a single calendar day in your organization’s timezone — were logged in one sitting. It’s a conversation prompt for the director, not an accusation: twelve rounds logged in four minutes usually weren’t twelve conversations.
When do leaders get reminded about due rounds?
Every Monday morning, each leader whose direct reports are past cadence gets one in-app digest naming who’s due. It fires at most once per leader per week. Admins can turn reminders off in Settings; individuals can mute the Leader Rounds category in their own notification preferences. A leader who wants a break can pause their own reminders from My Rounding and resume them later.
My cadence is long and my team is large — do I really have to round on everyone this month?
No, and the app says so. My Rounding shows a monthly target: for each of your people it works out how much of their cadence falls inside this month, adds those up, and rounds up. On a 120-day cadence with 40 direct reports that is about 10, not 40 — and it shows an “up next” list of who to see, longest-unrounded first. If you want to see someone out of turn, pin them and they move to the front of the month’s list. Pacing only changes what you are shown: whether a person is overdue is still worked out from the rounds actually logged, and coverage uses the same maths, so the two numbers can never disagree.
I’m going on leave — can someone else cover my rounding?
Yes. On Delegations, hand your rounding to someone above you in the reporting line for a set window. It is a transfer, not a copy: while the window is open your people move onto your delegate’s due list and their coverage number, and you stop being shown as due or named in the Monday digest. Only the obligation moves — your delegate could already see and round on these people, so nobody gains access they didn’t have. Recency carries across, so someone you rounded on ten days ago isn’t immediately due for your delegate. You can hold one delegation at a time, so there is never a question of whose month it is. Ending one closes its window rather than erasing it, and past coverage still reads correctly; a delegation that hasn’t started yet can be deleted outright.
What is the Stoplight Board for?
It is the board a leader takes into a huddle or a monthly review: one row per pillar for a chosen leader and month, each row red, yellow or green with a short summary and next steps. The lights and the issue counts are derived from that month’s ledger — there is no status dropdown anywhere, so nobody can paint a row green. The words are the leader’s; AI can draft them from the period’s issues, and the leader edits before saving. Publishing freezes everything as it stood and gives you a PDF for the slide deck. A published board also shows what each row’s light was on the previous board, so a row going red is visible rather than buried.
How does a director see rounds their own managers did?
Open Rounds Log (under My Rounding). It lists every round you are allowed to see, not just the ones you led, with filters for leader and time window, the issue count per round, and a marker for whether the round was substantive. My Rounding answers “who do I owe a round?”; the log answers “what actually happened across my line?”, which is what makes a coverage number auditable.
What are AI themes, and can I overrule one?
On the Themes tab, an admin can run an extraction: one pass that clusters the written answers from the last 90 days into labelled themes, each with how many people it came from and a suggested pillar. Any admin can refile a theme under a different pillar, and that decision sticks — later extraction runs never move it. The numbers above the AI list are separate: those are the scale and yes/no answers, counted directly.
When something looks wrong
“Why can’t I see my manager’s notes from our round?”
That’s by design. A round has two layers: the shared one (the answers and any issues raised, which you can always see) and the leader’s private notes, which are never shown to the person the round is about. If you can see the round but no notes, nothing is missing.
“The issue I raised was closed without being fixed — why?”
Sometimes the honest answer is no, and the app requires that honesty to be visible: closing an issue without a fix requires a written reason, which appears under your issue on Rounds About Me. The item shows red on the leader’s ledger — it is not quietly hidden.
“Why is my team missing from the Themes page?”
Nobody on the team has answered a scale or yes/no question within the selected window — themes are built only from those answer types, so a team whose rounds carried free-text answers alone has nothing to aggregate yet. Widen the window filter or check that the team’s rounds used templates with scale/yes-no questions.
“Someone is missing from a leader’s due list — where are they?”
Four common causes: the person doesn’t report to that leader in the org chart (the due list covers direct reports only), the person’s account is deactivated (deactivated people never appear), they were rounded on within the cadence window and are simply listed as current rather than due, or a Rounding Program has put them on a longer cadence than you expected — the due list shows which program decided.
“Why does a pillar row on the Stoplight Board show a light but no numbers?”
Because fewer people than the anonymity floor are behind that row’s issues. The light still shows — it is an aggregate — but the green/yellow/red counts are hidden, on the web page and in the published PDF, so a two-person pillar can’t be read backwards to the individuals. Lowering the floor in Settings shows the counts; raising it hides more of them.
“An AI theme I saw last week is gone — where did it go?”
Two likely reasons. Raising the minimum group size in Settings hides every theme drawn from fewer people than the new floor, immediately and everywhere. Otherwise, a fresh extraction run has re-clustered the last 90 days of answers and the underlying answers have aged out of that window. A pillar you filed by hand is never moved by a later run.
“Why did my manager get notified about an issue on my ledger?”
Because it was still open and red past the escalation window — by default, seven days after its due date. That notifies your manager and re-nudges the issue’s owner, and repeats weekly while the issue stays red. Closing an issue as won’t-fix, with the written reason, is a decision rather than a delay, and never escalates. Admins control both the switch and the number of days in Settings.
Licensing and limits
What are the configurable ranges and limits?
- Default rounding cadence: 1–365 days (default 30); Rounding Program and per-template cadences use the same range
- Red-issue escalation: 1–90 days past due before the first escalation (default 7), then weekly while the issue stays red
- Anonymity floor: 2–25 people (default 3) — applies to the monthly team digest, single-team newsletter blocks, the AI theme list, and Stoplight Board pillar rows
- Scale answers: 1–5
- Issue descriptions: up to 2,000 characters
- Team Rollup window: 7–365 days (page filters at 30/60/90); Rounds Log uses the same windows and also allows all time
- AI theme extraction: the last 90 days of written answers per run
- Weekly reminder: at most one per leader per week, in-app
- Upward delegation: one active delegation per leader at a time
- The AI assistant: 5 tools, all read-only
Licensing is per operator — the leaders who round — with admin opt-in per tenant; people being rounded on don’t consume seats.