Leader Rounds App Overview
Leader Rounds is structured leader rounding on staff: a leader has a short, recurring conversation with each direct report — what’s working, who deserves recognition, what’s broken, what do you need — and every issue raised becomes a tracked stoplight item the person who raised it can see. Coverage rolls up the reporting line so a director knows which leaders are rounding and what’s stuck.
Find it at Apps → Leader Rounds (or /apps/leader-rounds); on a phone it opens as a mobile capture surface at /m/leader-rounds.
Key Concepts (How It Works)
A round is one recorded conversation: a leader, a subject (the person rounded on), a date, typed answers to a template’s questions, and optional private notes. Rounds are records of conversations that already happened — you can’t schedule a future round, and a round dated in the future is rejected. A round can also be skipped with a required reason (for example, the person is on leave), so an untaken round is a recorded decision rather than a gap.
The two visibility tiers are the app’s most important rule. The shared tier — the answers and the issues raised — is visible to the subject: they see the rounds about them, the items they raised, current status, and the written reason whenever something is closed without a fix. The private tier — the leader’s private notes — is visible only to the leader, the leader’s own management chain, and app admins. It is never shown to the subject, and it is never available to the AI assistant.
The stoplight is derived, never hand-set. An issue raised in a round lives on the platform’s corrective-action register with an owner and a due date. Its color is computed: green when resolved, red when it’s past due or was closed without a fix, yellow otherwise. Closing an issue as won’t-fix requires a written reason, because that reason is shown to the person who raised it. Every status change also lands an audit note on the issue’s timeline, in the same transaction as the change.
Cadence is an obligation, not a calendar event. The app never creates meetings or calendar entries. Instead it answers one question per direct report: have you rounded on this person in the last N days? The default cadence is a tenant setting (30 days out of the box); a template can carry its own cadence, and templates without one (like Senior Leader Rounding) create no obligation. The due list computes itself from the org chart, so transfers and new hires are picked up automatically and deactivated people never appear.
Obligation covers direct reports; reach covers the subtree. A leader is anyone with direct reports. Their due list and coverage number count direct reports only — but they may manually round on anyone deeper in their reporting subtree (skip-level rounding), and doing so never inflates anyone’s overdue count.
Templates are copy-and-edit. Three starters install automatically — Staff Rounding, New Hire 30-60-90, and Senior Leader Rounding. Starters stay pristine: to customize, duplicate one and edit the copy (question types: scale 1–5, yes/no, choice, free text, recognition pick, issue capture).
Substantive rounds are what count. A completed round with every answer blank does not count toward coverage — that, plus subject visibility and same-day-cluster flagging, is how the app resists box-checking.
The anonymity floor protects small groups. The Themes tab aggregates scale and yes/no answers by team, location, or job title — but a group’s number renders only when at least the configured minimum number of distinct people answered (3 by default). Suppressed groups are counted and reported as hidden, never shown.
Who Can Do What
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Everyone | See the rounds about them and the issues they raised (“Rounds About Me”), with status and won’t-fix reasons |
| Leaders (anyone with direct reports, or managers) | Capture and skip rounds on their subtree, manage the issue ledger for rounds they lead, see Team Rollup and Themes for their reporting line |
| Admins / Leader Rounds app admins | Everything above across the whole tenant, plus Templates and Settings |
Being the subject of a round grants read access only — a subject can never change the status of an issue they raised, even if they are themselves a leader.
Main Surfaces
- My Rounding — your due list (who’s past cadence, who’s never been rounded) and recent rounds, with Round Now and Skip actions.
- New Round — the capture form. Pick the person and template, answer as you talk, log issues with owners and due dates. You can also paraphrase the conversation into the AI assist bar and review the filled form. A “who deserves recognition” answer can be posted to Recognitions in one click afterward — the recognition goes through the normal moderation and approval gates.
- Issue Ledger — every issue from rounds you can see, filterable by stoplight color, paginated, with inline status updates.
- Team Rollup — coverage %, open reds, aging, and same-day-cluster flags per leader, with search, window filters (30/60/90 days), and CSV export.
- Themes — aggregated answers by team, location, or job title, behind the anonymity floor.
- Rounds About Me — the subject tier: your rounds, your raised issues, and links back to the conversation each came from.
- Templates / Settings — admin surfaces for the template library, cadence, weekly reminders, the anonymity floor, and the AI assistant toggle.
Notifications & Automation
- Issue updates: when an issue you raised changes status, you get an in-app notification (deduplicated — one per status change), including the written reason on a won’t-fix.
- Weekly due reminders: every Monday, each leader whose direct reports are past cadence gets one in-app digest naming who’s due. Admins can turn this off in Settings; individuals can mute the Leader Rounds category in their notification preferences.
- Home dashboard widget: leaders see rounds due and open reds on their dashboard (desktop and mobile), linking to exactly the lists counted.
The AI Assistant
The Leader Rounds assistant in Ask AI is read-only and answers four kinds of questions: your due list, coverage rolled up your reporting line, stoplight ledger queries, and your own rounds. It only ever reports what you can already see in the app, and private notes are not available to it at all. To capture a round, skip someone, or update an issue, it will point you into the app. Admins can disable the assistant in Settings.
Settings
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Default rounding cadence | 30 days | Days between rounds per direct report; drives every due list. Per-template cadences override it. |
| Weekly due reminders | On | The Monday digest to leaders with due rounds |
| Theme anonymity floor | 3 people | Minimum distinct respondents before a group’s theme number renders |
| Leader Rounds AI assistant | On | The read-only Ask AI assistant |
Settings also carries Load/Remove Sample Data, which seeds a full demo state (rounds, every stoplight color, a same-day cluster) and removes it exactly.
Scope
Leader Rounds is staff rounding only: leaders rounding on their people. Patient rounding, EHR/census integration, and HCAHPS are deliberately out of scope. Historical import and offline capture are deferred by design.