What is a Team Mirror? And what is a raised signal?

What is in a Team Mirror?

Five things, each aggregate, none about a nameable person:

• The values map. What the team actually cares about, laid against the mission the lead declared. Where they meet is energy waiting to be used; where they miss is the conversation worth having.
• The strengths picture. What this particular group is built to do well, drawn from what members said somewhere safe.
• The energy read. Where the team's attention and appetite are going, as a pattern.
• Friction themes. What is grinding, named as a property of the work: the release process, the handoff, the meeting that decides nothing.
• Alignment opportunities. Places where someone's actual passion fits an actual goal. The feed points both ways: the lead sees goals no one's energy is behind, and each member sees where in the org their energy could land.

The Mirror comes from what members said to Teal, their private companion, filtered through Glass Wall rules: the subject rule, contribution preview first, pull rights, aggregate only.

Why does everyone see the same Mirror?

Because a picture of the team that only the boss can see would poison the input that makes the picture worth having. The symmetric render does two jobs at once. It is the privacy proof: a member never has to trust a description of the manager view, because the manager view is their view. And it makes the Mirror a shared object the team can talk about in the open, rather than a report about the team that arrives from above. Same glass, whole team, no back room.

What is the "what changed" delta?

From the second cycle on, the Mirror opens with the difference from last time: which frictions eased, which opportunities got staffed, where energy moved. This is the part built for the category's ugliest number: in Qualtrics' employee-experience research, 92 percent of employees said it is important that their company listens to feedback, and just 7 percent said their company acts on feedback really well (Qualtrics, 2021 Employee Experience Trends). Channels that eat signal stop receiving it. The delta makes acting visible to the entire team in the same artifact at the same moment, so giving signal stays rational.

What is a raised signal?

The Mirror is passive: pattern accumulating under hard rules. A raised signal is deliberate. A member, working with their companion, turns something that has been sitting in their chest into a specific ask, endorses the exact wording, and sends it upward. They choose the shape: their name on it, no name attached, or neither, letting the thing fold into the team's pattern in the Mirror instead. Choosing no name carries no conditions, no minimum number of people and no waiting for anyone else, and a nameless signal still reaches the lead. Nothing about a raised signal is automatic. No draft, no vent, and no half-formed version ever leaves the member's space.

Why does venting stay private?

Because a feeling routed before it becomes an ask arrives as a complaint. This is the articulation rule, and it exists because every current channel breaks on exactly this point. Telling HR routes the vent to someone with power over you as a vague complaint. Skip-levels invert it in transit. Venting to teammates corrodes the team sideways. Holding it alone corrodes you. So the companion's first job is never transmission. It is articulation: helping the member find out what the ask even is. A different project, a changed ritual, a conversation someone needs to have. Sometimes articulation ends with no ask at all, and the vent stays where it is, held. Venting is not feedback yet; when it becomes an ask, and only then, it can travel.

Why does the why travel with the what?

Because intent inverts as it climbs. "I want to do great work here and this is in the way" reaches a busy lead as "this person is unhappy," and the sender gets read as difficult when they are the one who cares most. This is the intent-frame rule: a raised signal never travels raw. The ask goes up with its why attached, both endorsed word for word by the member. And the receiving end is coached too: the lead's own companion frames the incoming signal before the lead reads it, so it lands as what it is, a contribution signal from someone reaching for more. Both ends of the channel get coaching. That is what makes it a channel instead of a chute.

Where does a raised signal go?

To the lead, and not to the whole team. That is the one place the two artifacts differ, and it is worth being exact about, because the Mirror's promise is that everyone sees the identical copy. A raised signal is not a hole in that promise. A back room is somewhere a lead can look without you. A raised signal is a door only you can open, and you decide what is written on it. If what you want is for the thing to become the team's pattern rather than a message to one person, that is the third option, and it lands in the Mirror where everyone reads it together.

What are these artifacts not?

• The Mirror is not a scoreboard. No per-person metrics, no rankings, no scores on people. It shows pattern, never a person.
• The Mirror does not replace a small team talking. Three seats is the minimum, and most teams do best at five to fifteen. Past a handful of people a lead stops being able to hold the whole picture in their head, and that is the gap the Mirror fills.
• A raised signal is not an anonymous complaint box. Everything that travels was articulated into an ask and endorsed word for word by its sender. The box that collects raw grievances is the thing this design replaces.
• A raised signal is not an HR ticket. It goes to the lead, framed to land, inside the team. Teams is not a compliance system and does not replace whatever formal channels the law requires your company to have.
• Neither artifact is proven at scale yet. Teams launched in August 2026 and has no track record yet. The mechanics on this page are how the product is built; whether they change how teams feel is the bet a pilot exists to test.

Questions people ask

Does the lead know who contributed what to the Mirror?

No. The Mirror is aggregate only, what it carries is a property of the work rather than of a person, and no surface in the product shows who contributed what. Each member can see their own contributions in their preview; nobody else can.

What are a member's options when they want something to change?

Four, and the default is the last one. Send it to the lead with your name on it. Send it to the lead with no name attached. Let it fold into the team's pattern in the Mirror, where everyone reads it together. Or leave it where it is, private, which is what happens unless you act. Whichever of the first three you pick, what travels is the endorsed ask plus its why, and the lead's side is framed to receive it well.

What does the lead actually receive from a raised signal?

The ask, in the member's endorsed words, with the why attached, prefaced by framing from the lead's own companion so it lands as reaching for more rather than as a complaint. If the member left their name off, the lead reads the ask and its why and never learns who wrote it.

How often does a Team Mirror render?

The pilot produces the first Mirror about a week after the team's conversations finish. After that, Mirrors render on a recurring cycle, and each one opens with what changed since the previous one.

Can I send a raised signal without my name on it?

Yes, and nothing is attached to that choice: no minimum number of people, no waiting for a colleague to raise the same thing. Your lead reads the ask and its why, and no name. We will not tell you that nobody could ever guess who wrote it, because on a small team that is not a promise anyone can keep. What the product guarantees is the part it controls: it attached no name.

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Teams renders a Team Mirror for teams of three and up: one picture, everyone sees it, and asks that land as what they are. See how it works. Related: what a Glass Wall is and how the whole loop runs.