One picture that turns a room full of opinions about talent into a map everyone agrees on. A 9 box grid plots every person on your team against two questions: how well are they performing right now, and how much bigger a role could they grow into.
It's built for the moment a leadership team has to talk about talent as a whole system instead of one performance review at a time, who's ready for more, who's at risk of leaving and taking a chunk of institutional knowledge with them, and who's in the wrong seat entirely.
- Define performance before you define potential. Base it on results against goals over the most recent review cycle, not on gut feel or how much you personally like working with someone.
- Define potential separately, and be strict about it. Potential means the ability to take on meaningfully bigger scope, not just being good at the current job. Learning speed and judgment under ambiguity are better signals than tenure.
- Have each manager plot their own people first, privately. A first pass done alone, before group discussion, keeps one loud voice in the room from anchoring everyone else's placements.
- Calibrate together and defend every placement out loud. This meeting is where the value lives. If a manager can't explain why someone is in a box, that's the signal to move them.
- Turn every box into an action, not a label. A stretch assignment, a retention conversation, or a performance plan, a placement with no follow-up is just an opinion with extra steps.
A working example with a common set of nine placements. Replace the box names and definitions to match how your org actually talks about talent.
This grid is a discussion tool, not a permanent record, most teams don't keep names anywhere beyond the room.
- Run it as a live conversation, not a survey people fill out alone and email back.
- Revisit it twice a year, placements move as people grow and projects change.
- Keep the names in the room. This is a leadership discussion tool, not something forwarded around.
- Don't let one manager's placement stand unchallenged, that's the bias the exercise exists to catch.
- Don't use the grid to justify a decision you already made before the meeting.
- Don't treat a low box as permanent, it's a snapshot, not a verdict on someone's future.
The download includes a second tab, "Why & How to Use," with the same guidance above plus the use cases, so you don't have to come back to this page while you're running the calibration meeting.