Keep reviews short and focused. The less you ask people to do, the higher the quality of their responses. A strong review flow helps people reflect on three things:Documentation Index
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- What impact did they have?
- Where can they improve?
- What should they focus on next?
Self review
Simple 3-question flow
- What went well: Describe the impact or outcomes from the review period you believe had the greatest impact on your team and at the company. We recommend focusing on 2–4 areas of impact.
- Challenges you navigated: Think of a specific project, decision, or moment this cycle that didn’t go the way you hoped. What happened, how did you navigate it, and what did you take away?
- Shape what’s next: What are 2–3 outcomes you want to drive in the next 6 months? For each, note what you’ll need to strengthen or learn to get there, and what support would help.
- Lends itself to a conversational format. Windy can follow up on each question if not enough detail is provided.
- Separates what you achieved, what you learned, and what’s next.
- Starts with the positive.
- Short and to the point.
4-question flow
- What went well: Describe the impact or outcomes from the review period you believe had the greatest impact on your team and at the company. We recommend focusing on 2–4 areas of impact.
- Challenges you navigated: Think of a specific project, decision, or moment this cycle that didn’t go the way you hoped. What happened, how did you navigate it, and what did you take away?
- Shape what’s next: What are 2–3 outcomes you want to drive in the next 6 months? For each, note what you’ll need to strengthen or learn to get there, and what support would help.
- Values you brought to life: Which of the company’s values showed up most clearly in your work this cycle? Share specific examples, and call out any values you’d like to lean into more going forward.
- Captures four dimensions of a review: impact, learning, future direction, and how you work.
- Mirrors the manager review’s values question, creating a shared frame for the review conversation.
- Strong fit for companies with explicit, defined values—especially those that treat values as performance criteria.
- Still conversational and focused. The fourth question adds a genuinely different dimension rather than more of the same.
Manager review
Standard flow
- Key accomplishments: Describe 2–3 of this person’s most significant outcomes and impact over the review period. Ground your response in specific examples and measurable results where possible.
- Areas for development: Where are the clearest opportunities for this person to strengthen their impact? Focus on 2–3 actionable areas, and ground each in a specific example or moment where growth in that area would have made a difference.
- Values alignment: How well does this person demonstrate the company’s core values in their work and interactions? Provide specific examples of values in action or areas where alignment could be stronger.
Rating questions
Simple option- Overall performance: Rate this person’s overall performance during the review period, considering the expectations for their role and level.
- What got done: Rate the significance, quality, and impact of the outcomes this person delivered during the review period.
- How it got done: Rate how effectively this person worked to achieve those outcomes, including their judgment, ownership, collaboration, communication, and consistency.
- Mirrors the self review by focusing on accomplishments and areas for improvement.
- Includes a section on company values, if important to the company.
- Separates the “what” from the “how.”
- Can be simplified to one overall performance rating if the company is not ready for separate “what” and “how” ratings.
Choosing your questions
Most companies should start with the simple 3-question self review and the standard manager review. Culture-specific questions work best as a small customization, not as an add-on that makes the review longer. For example:- A startup might replace “values alignment” with “ownership.”
- An engineering-heavy company might replace a generic accomplishments question with “technical impact.”
- A people-first company might keep values alignment but make collaboration more explicit.
- A creative company might add one question about experimentation or original thinking.
Culture-specific example flows
These are optional variations for companies that want reviews to reflect a specific culture or operating style. The recommendation is still to keep the form short. For most companies, choose one culture-specific question to add or swap into the default flow rather than adding a full new section.Startup / ownership culture
Best for companies that value autonomy, urgency, resourcefulness, and people taking responsibility beyond their formal role. Self review sample questions- Ownership: Where did you take ownership beyond your defined responsibilities? Describe a specific example where you created clarity, solved a problem, or drove something forward without waiting for direction.
- Impact: What work had the greatest impact on the business, product, customers, or team? Focus on 2–3 outcomes that mattered most.
- Learning and adaptation: Where did you move quickly, learn something important, or change course based on new information?
- Ownership: How effectively did this person take responsibility for outcomes, especially in ambiguous or fast-moving situations?
- Execution: Where did this person create momentum, unblock work, or help the team move faster?
- Growth opportunity: What would help this person operate with more ownership, urgency, or independence over the next 6 months?
- Rewards people who act like owners, not just task-completers.
- Helps managers evaluate autonomy, speed, and follow-through.
- Useful for startups where scope changes quickly and people need to operate without perfect direction.
People-first / collaboration culture
Best for companies that care deeply about trust, respect, communication, inclusion, and how people treat teammates and customers. Self review sample questions- Collaboration: How did you help others be more successful this review period? Include examples of supporting teammates, sharing context, improving communication, or strengthening trust.
- Values in action: Where did you demonstrate the company’s values in how you worked with others?
- Growth area: What is one way you could improve how you collaborate, communicate, or support the people around you?
- Collaboration: How effectively does this person work with teammates, stakeholders, and cross-functional partners?
- Trust and communication: Where does this person build trust, communicate clearly, or make work easier for others?
- Growth opportunity: What could this person do to improve their relationships, communication, or impact on team culture?
- Makes the “how” of work explicit.
- Helps prevent reviews from only rewarding individual output.
- Useful for companies where trust, communication, and team health are central to performance.
Excellence / high-bar engineering culture
Best for technical organizations that value rigor, quality, judgment, systems thinking, and raising the bar. Self review sample questions- Technical impact: What technical work had the greatest impact this review period? Describe the systems, decisions, improvements, or tradeoffs that mattered most.
- Judgment: What was the most important technical or product tradeoff you made? Explain the options you considered, the decision you made, and what you learned.
- Raising the bar: Where did you improve quality, reliability, scalability, speed, or technical standards for the team?
- Technical contribution: What were this person’s most important technical contributions? Focus on impact, quality, and durability of the work.
- Judgment and rigor: How effectively did this person reason through tradeoffs, handle ambiguity, and make high-quality decisions?
- Growth opportunity: What is the highest-leverage technical, execution, or judgment-related area for this person to strengthen?
- Focuses on quality of thinking, not just volume of output.
- Helps distinguish strong execution from true technical leverage.
- Works well for engineering-heavy cultures with a high bar for judgment and craft.
Creativity / innovation culture
Best for companies that value original thinking, experimentation, customer insight, design quality, and new ideas. Self review sample questions- Creative impact: What idea, project, experiment, or solution are you most proud of from this review period? Explain why it mattered.
- Experimentation: Where did you try something new, take a smart risk, or learn from an experiment?
- Improving the work: What would help you produce more creative, original, or high-quality work in the next 6 months?
- Creative contribution: Where did this person bring strong ideas, fresh thinking, or a better approach to the work?
- Experimentation and learning: How effectively did this person test ideas, learn from feedback, and improve their work?
- Growth opportunity: What would help this person increase the quality, originality, or impact of their creative contributions?
- Encourages thoughtful risk-taking without rewarding chaos.
- Makes learning and experimentation part of performance.
- Useful for product, design, marketing, strategy, and innovation-heavy teams.