The 9-box grid: A practical guide for talent management

When it comes to succession planning, gut instinct isn’t a viable strategy. HR teams are balancing fairness, consistency and future planning — often while grappling with incomplete data sets and conflicting feedback. 

A massive 50% of today’s HR leaders are facing budget cuts*, and with shrinking budgets comes an increased pressure to make smarter talent decisions quickly. That’s why structured, evidence-based tools like the 9-box grid have endured for decades, and remain a simple, powerful option for assessing performance and potential. Stay with us as we walk through exactly how the 9-box grid can help you see your talent landscape clearly, share best practice tips for successful calibration sessions, and provide some examples of real-world use cases for insights derived from the 9-box grid.
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*Leapsome’s 2024 Workforce Trends Report 
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What is the 9-box grid?

The nine box grid — sometimes known as a performance-potential matrix or the talent matrix — is a succession planning tool that enables HR professionals and other managers to assess employees on two key metrics: current performance and future growth potential.

Launched by McKinsey in the 1970s, the 9 box grid has been used across many industries for over fifty years, offering a clear and simple visualization of current employee competencies alongside growth potential. Today, it’s widely incorporated into talent reviews and strategic assessment of the leadership pipeline, empowering HR to make informed decisions around hiring and progression that take each team members’ particular strengths into consideration. 
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How the 9-box grid works

The magic of the 9-box grid model lies in how much value it delivers, from such a simple premise. It might vary slightly from business to business, but done right, the process usually looks like this: 
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Step 1 – Define your performance scale

The first step is to make sure you’re aligned on what “performance” actually means in your organization, and in this context. Are you measuring results, behaviors, impact, or all three? Maria Mehlke, Leapsome’s Senior People Enablement Manager says, “Not all teams have clear KPIs, like sales where you can say this is a high performer because they’ve over-achieved their objectives. That’s why we define performance based on speed of work, solution orientation and the quality of work.”

If you’re struggling to pinpoint your organization’s definition, use data from recent performance reviews or appraisals to see what kind of metrics are surfaced — this should help inform a take on “performance” that actually works for your business. 
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Step 2 – Define your potential scale

“Potential” is often trickier to define — working out this scale requires you to think beyond the current output of your employees. Instead, this metric reflects your employee’s ability to grow into an increasingly complex or strategic role, and their potential to move into leadership. When you’re assessing an employee against this axis, remember to use objective indicators like learning agility, feedback responsiveness and leadership behaviors. If you’re struggling to place a particular team member, Leapsome’s competency framework feature is a great add-on for this process. 
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Step 3 – Plot your team members

Once you’re aligned on the criteria for performance and potential, it’s time to map your team members onto the 9 box talent grid. To maximize objectivity and fairness, this is usually done through calibration sessions with other managers or HR professionals. You’ll also want to bring in quantitative people analytics, to ensure your placement of each team member is backed up by data. This is where a performance review software like Leapsome Reviews can be a game-changer, offering you the ability to track and analyze performance through intuitive dashboards and heatmaps — and empowering you to carry out truly data-driven succession planning. 
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Step 4 – Interpret each box

Each block in the nine box grid template is configured to feed into talent management strategies and development plans; insights derived from the performance vs. potential matrix should help to steer conversations about the career paths of your team members. Here are a few of the combinations you might encounter, plus a real-world example to bring each result to life: 

• High Performance / High Potential: These are future leaders; and you might choose to invest in stretch projects or leadership tracks to help them progress.
  
  Example: High performer in Engineering → Consider the Staff IC or Team Lead track. Fast-track for cross-functional initiatives or Head of role.

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• High Performance / Medium Potential: These are experts in their craft; be sure to reward them and and offer opportunities for growth to boost retention.
  
  Example: A top-performing Sales rep → Think about suggesting a move into a mentoring or SME role. Expand into process ownership or cross-functional projects.

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• Low Performance / Low Potential: These team members are struggling, and might benefit from a role shift, or a detailed development plan.
  
  Example: A consistently underperforming individual contributor (IC) → If there are no signs of growth, start a clear PIP process with goals documented against a timeline, and offer ongoing support. 

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How to facilitate a talent review using the 9-box grid

When leveraged properly, a 9-box grid becomes a dynamic decision-making tool, enabling your leaders to align on talent performance and potential. This equips your organization to take consistent, fair and strategic action — based on both qualitative insights and quantitative data. Here’s how to get the most out of an 9 box grid talent review:
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Create a preparation checklist for running a calibration session

Preparation is key. Before you even send a diary invite for the calibration session, make sure you:

• Gather all the different performance review data. Use a combination of the most recent and relevant review cycles — and make the most of insights from review cycle analytics — to inform your discussions. 
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• Define the two evaluation criteria. Carve out a clear definition for “performance” and “potential”, in terms of what they mean for your organization, to avoid any inconsistencies between ratings. 
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• Invite every relevant stakeholder. Don’t just include managers and HR leaders; remember to involve any other leaders who can provide valuable first-hand insight on the team members being reviews too.

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Step-by-step guide for the session

Putting a clear structure in place should help to keep the session on track. You can do this by: 

• Presenting the purpose. That means making sure everyone attending is aligned on why the review is happening: the goal isn’t to label or rank your employees, but to fairly assess their skills to inform succession planning. 
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• Bringing clear evidence to each evaluation. Make sure all performance review data is presented clearly and objectively, and combine it with data from feedback tools and project outcomes. Try and keep the conversation focussed on specific examples, rather than hearsay or general impressions. 
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• Discuss your placements, and align with stakeholders. Compare notes each time you come to a conclusion, challenge any assumptions that feel unfounded, and try to calibrate across teams to maximize fairness.
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Having the right employee management software in place to begin with can make all the difference here. A holistic people enablement tool like Leapsome HRIS not only provides access to valuable feedback trends and analytics through our Reviews module, making unbiased and informed placement that much easier, but the calibration session itself can also be organized and managed easily through Leapsome Meetings. 
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Avoid these common mistakes 

While the 9-box grid can be a brilliant tool when used correctly, there are, of course, a number of pitfalls that can reduce its effectiveness, accuracy, and the value of the insights it generates. Let’s take a look at some of the most common mistakes to avoid: 

1. Not using it as a tool for relative assessment.
   The nine box grid is meant to rank team members against peers in similar roles — not to result in absolute labels. When you’re grouping employees into relevant thirds across both axes, avoid ranking them within those thirds, that order is irrelevant for deciding next steps.
   
   
2. Persistent subjectivity bias.
   HR professionals should be vigilant in discussions around the “potential” axis, which  are particularly vulnerable to bias. Managers often unconsciously favor employees who mirror their skillset, or fit stereotypical leadership styles — hindering equity and misrepresenting their actual capabilities.
   
   
3. Oversimplifying performance and potential.Trying to boil complex, multifaceted human capabilities down to fit nine labels along two simple axes means you inevitably run the risk of overlooking nuance. The necessarily reductive nature of this process is part of what makes it so impactful, but it’s worth keeping the wider context of the team member and their competencies in mind.
   
   
4. Neglecting low-performers.
   Employees placed in low performance and potential boxes often end up overlooked, yet the chances are they’d still benefit from structured support — be that in the form of mentoring, performance improvement plans, specific training or role realignment.
   
   
5. Limiting employees to their box.
   Whatever they score, the placement of your team members shouldn't be a permanent label, only a marker of their current performance and potential. An effective approach to succession planning involves regularly revisiting those placements, and linking them to concrete development actions to avoid pigeonholing your employees.
   
   
6. Failing to follow up with development plans or career pathing. Without follow-up action, a nine-box grid is just a ranking exercise. Using the insights garnered from this process to flesh out a clear plan for growth — whether through skill-building, stretch assignments or defined career pathing — helps team members feel supported and boosts employee satisfaction.
   
   
7. Pulling HR and managers away from jam-packed schedules.
   Something as simple as timing can have a big impact on the productivity and success of your calibration sessions. As Maria Hehlke pointed out in a recent webinar, “noone will be on board if you do your performance reviews during end-of-year closing, or when the big summer holidays are. Find times in your calendar or throughout the year when you actually have time for it.”

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9-box grid template

Now you know how the 9 box grid works, and the best way to use it for a talent review — you need a reliable template. Leapsome’s 9-box grid has been carefully configured by HR leaders to help drive productive conversations around talent mapping and leadership pipeline planning.
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📚Transform your succession planning process

From 9-box grids to competency frameworks — browse our template library and find helpful resources to kickstart your succession planning process. 

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Role-specific use cases for the 9-box talent grid

So how do placements on the 9-box grid translate into actionable next steps, for both the organization and the employee in question? We’ve put together a table compiling some key examples of employee placements across a range of departments, and the real-world actions that might result from them. 

Department: Engineering

• Placement: High Performance / Low Potential
• Use case / outcome: Recognised as a technical specialist; focus on retaining through recognition, and providing the opportunity to deepen expertise in core systems.
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Department: Marketing

• Placement: Medium Performance / Medium Potential
• Use case / outcome: Given a targeted upskilling plan which incorporates data analytics, to enable better ROI tracking for campaigns.
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Department: HR

• Placement: Low Performance / Medium Potential
• Use case / outcome: Role realignment needed — alongside a structured performance improvement plan to address gaps in knowledge and process efficiency.
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Department: Finance

• Placement: Medium Performance / High Potential
• Use case / outcome: Placed on an accelerated career path to Finance Manager role, and assigned cross-department projects for exposure.
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Department: IT

• Placement: High Performance / Medium Potential
• Use case / outcome: Trusted to run point on a business-critical service migration — no increase in managerial responsibilities but an increase in technical ownership.
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Department: Legal

• Placement: Medium Performance / Low Potential
• Use case / outcome: Retained in their current specialist role with a more clearly defined scope — provided with access to tools which can boost efficiency, and given process guidelines refresh to improve consistency of output.
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Make the 9-box grid work for you, with Leapsome

More than a static performance review tool, the 9-box grid can be the dynamic lens through which you view your existing talent with clarity and intention. But the impact of the nine box grid increases exponentially when it’s paired with people enablement tools that actually do your team members justice. 

Leapsome offers a powerful, comprehensive range of modules that can streamline the adoption of the 9-box grid. Leapsome Reviews facilitates performance reviews, providing accurate and unbiased review analytics to feed into placements, while our Competencies enable clear visualization of skills and career pathways, and Leapsome Learning is a brilliant resource for team members with upskilling or role realignment in their next steps. 

Equipped with this tech, HR leaders and managers alike are empowered to make fairer, faster and more strategic people decisions when they employ the 9-box grid — from employee development plans to the leadership pipeline.
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Supercharge your succession planning 🚀

See Leapsome in action and discover how our platform could transform your succession planning process, from performance tracking to custom competency frameworks. 

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FAQs about the 9-box grid

How do you use the 9-box grid in talent management? 

The 9-box grid is a talent management tool used to assess employees, usually based on performance and potential. It’s commonly used by HR professionals and managers during succession planning and development. In a 9-box grid, employees are placed in one of nine boxes on a matrix, marking how they score for performance and potential, with options spanning low to high. This visual framework often forms part of a wider assessment, which can help inform strategic decisions on promotions, training, and recruitment.  
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What is the 9-box grid performance vs potential?

Performance and potential are the two key dimensions features on a standard 9-box grid. This grid, which is used as a talent management tool for succession planning and employee assessment, consists of a 3x3 matrix, with three performance scores along one axis, and three potential scores along the other. Each employee is placed into one of the nine boxes available, helping HR professionals and managers to sort and identify high performers with leadership potential, solid individual contributors, and those who need further support in their development.