I ended up finding a much simpler way of doing this OOTB.
User the “Get List of Identities” and configure it to use Find Identities By Managers and point at $.trigger.launchedBy.id.
Then in the form you present them you can pass $.getListOfIdentities.identities[?(@.attributes.cloudLifecycleState == “active”)] to the select field of direct reports.
What I was getting hung up on before what that when they selected someone it seemed to pass me the name or emp ID in the workflow, I just misunderstood the purpose of “Array Value”, Setting it this way got me exactly what I wanted!
With it configured this way the dropdown only contains helpful information to the manager and still passes the Identity ID downstream.
