Everyone invited to a workspace has a growth record, so this applies to you whether or not you also manage people or administer the workspace.
Most of what follows happens outside a review. The review itself is a few concentrated days in the middle.
Start with what you're assessed against
My Growth → What is expected shows your level's column of the framework, or the personal expectations your manager wrote for you instead. It's there from day one, not produced at review time. See The framework for how it's built and why the wording freezes.
If that page says you have no track or no manager yet, it names who fixes it. Your manager sets your track and level, because they're the one who'll assess against it.
If the expectations don't match your actual role, don't chase it now. Say so in a note on that dimension when you next write an assessment — your manager reads it at alignment, which is where it can be argued.
Between reviews: log evidence as it happens
This is the habit that pays for everything else. When something happens you'd want remembered — you shipped it, you unblocked someone, it went badly and you learned something — log it from My Growth → Evidence. Two sentences, tagged to a dimension if it maps to one. The date is fixed to when you logged it, which is the point.
An assessment written from a log reads differently from one reconstructed the night before. It's also where you'll find the specifics when a rating needs backing up.
Your manager logs entries about you too, and the shared ones appear in your log with their name and date on them.
Either of you can hold an entry back as a draft until it's ready — "don't share it yet" — on the same terms in both directions. Citing one as evidence in an assessment shares it for good. See Evidence.
Between reviews: work the plan
Your manager starts your plan: a few focus areas, each with something you're doing and something your manager committed to doing. It isn't tied to a review, so it keeps running until your manager starts the next one. It's the part meant for an ordinary week and an ordinary one-on-one.
Your manager adds check-ins as things move, usually in your one-on-ones, so the plan shows where each focus area actually stands. There's nothing for you to fill in: read it, and talk it through with your manager. If a focus area looks wrong to you, tell them so they can note it in a check-in.
The plan is your manager's to write and keep up to date, because the commitment inside each focus area is theirs. See Plan.
A review opens
You'll get an email saying so. It names the level you're being assessed against and nothing else, because nothing else has been written yet. Your assessment is waiting on My Growth.
You write it without seeing your manager's, and they write theirs without seeing yours. Neither side unlocks until both have submitted, and there's no override for anyone. If you could read theirs first, yours would become a reaction to it.
What to expect in the form:
- One dimension at a time, with the expectation text for your level beside the rating, so you're not holding it in your head.
- Five ratings — Developing, Consistent, Strength, Next level, Not observed. Leaving one unrated is a real state, not something assumed for you.
- Anything off the middle of the scale — Developing, Strength, Next level — needs at least one piece of evidence before you can submit. Cite something from your log or write it fresh. This is where the logging pays off.
- It autosaves. Submit is the only deliberate action, and it's final.
See Assessments for the full scale and the evidence rules.
Alignment: the reveal, then the conversation
Once you've both submitted, Alignment opens: both sides side by side, plus an agenda built from where you differ, what either of you flagged, and what nobody rated. Read it before the meeting. It exists so the conversation spends its time on the parts that need it.
Afterwards your manager records an outcome for the review as a whole — exceeds, meets, partially meets, or does not yet meet expectations — with a short summary of what was discussed. That outcome is a separate judgment, not a calculation from your individual ratings. See Alignment.
The review closes, and the plan continues
Agreeing the next focus areas is part of the same conversation, not a second meeting. Recording the outcome closes the review, which freezes the assessments and alignment as read-only. Your manager creates the next plan from what you agreed.
What your manager sees, and exporting your record
You see your record as your manager does. Your manager sees what you see, and nothing beyond it. Anything added to their view of you is added to yours — never the other way around. The only thing either of you holds back is your own unshared draft, and that's symmetric. See My Growth and Roles & perspectives.
Your record is yours to take. My Growth → Reviews exports all of it — every closed review, your whole evidence log — as a single Markdown file, whenever you want it.