HR professionals are often faced with the challenge of identifying which team members have the potential to grow into leadership roles. In some cases, this may be a simple task. But in others, it takes a skilled HR pro to identify people with unexplored potential.
This is where the 9-box model or 9-box grid comes into play. This strategic tool gives HR teams a structured and visual approach to evaluate employee performance and potential. This article will explore the 9-box model’s benefits and challenges and how to use it effectively in succession planning and performance management.
What is the 9-box model or 9-box grid?
HR leaders use the 9-box model or 9-box grid for analyzing, displaying, and comparing team members’ work performance and potential. This user-friendly performance map helps HR and managers identify leaders and strategically prepare them for future roles.
Leaders use these grids to place the right person in the right role at the right time. The original 9-box grid helps categorize team members by overall performance and potential. The 9-box talent grid dives deeper by showing specific characteristics such as growth potential and leadership skills.
The grid includes an X and Y axis, with the X-axis representing performance and the Y-axis showing potential. Leadership teams use these grids to evaluate the overall performance and potential of each team member, rather than focusing on different types of skills. This approach provides a comprehensive view of what each team member contributes, based on past performance reviews and pre-established criteria.
What is the 9-box model used for?
Most HR teams use the 9-box model for talent management and succession planning. The 9-box model classifies team members into high, moderate, and low performers based on factors like meeting or exceeding responsibilities, natural leadership abilities, training and development needs, and meeting performance goals.
HR professionals can leverage these insights to:
- Identify and nurture high-potential talent
- Determine knowledge or skill gaps within the team
- Provide specific training opportunities to improve the team’s performance
HR teams can also use this information during succession planning to:
- Recommend people for senior, management, leadership, or specialized roles
- Identify the need to hire externally when no internal candidates meet the expectations for those roles
What 9 boxes make up the 9-box grid?
The 9-box grid organizes team members into nine groups classified within three segments. HR managers can assess their people based on two key variables using this system—how they perform today and how well they’ll perform in the future. The 9 boxes include:
- Low performer–high potential
- Moderate performer–high potential
- High performer–high potential
- Low performer–moderate potential
- Moderate performer–moderate potential
- High performer–moderate potential
- Low performer–low potential
- Moderate performer-low potential
- High performer–low potential
The benefits of using the 9-box model
The 9-box model helps HR professionals prepare for inevitable changes. It offers a cost-effective, simple method to:
Pinpoint internal leaders
Hiring and training new team members takes time and can incur significant costs, especially when recruiting for senior leadership roles. Deloitte reports that organizations lose over $400 million annually due to external hiring expenses.
HR teams can cut recruitment costs by promoting current team members—and the 9-box model can help them identify internal leaders who fit open roles.
HR groups team members into segments within the 9-box grid. Leaders may identify future leaders among low–high performers with high potential.
However, they also recognize potential in other categories, like moderate performers with moderate potential, who may require training and nurturing to advance their careers.
Reevaluate talent placement
The 9-box grid helps HR assess team members’ current and future performance against specific talent metrics and KPIs. To place team members accurately, ask questions like:
- Has this person expressed a desire to advance within the organization?
- Are they better suited for another role?
- Are they ready for a higher position?
- Is someone a poor fit for their current function or department?
HR teams can use the answers to identify each person’s strengths and weaknesses and reassess their talent placement.
Managers can then reassign the team member to a role that better aligns with their strengths.
Improve succession planning
Succession planning involves identifying and training current team members for future leadership roles. HR and managers see greater success in succession planning when they use a structured framework or roadmap to prepare their people for future leadership roles.
Most HR professionals say that the most important factors they consider during succession planning are the role’s impact on organizational success, business performance, and organizational culture.
<<Download a free succession planning template.>>
Ignite dialogue
The 9-box grid initiates open discussions between HR, managers, and team members. HR may ask questions such as:
- Who consistently demonstrates high performance?
- Which team members could take on leadership roles in the future?
- Where do we see the most growth potential?
- What specific skills or behaviors drive strong performance?
- How do team members’ strengths align with our strategic goals?
HR can clarify each team member’s performance, work style, future goals, productivity, engagement level, skill gaps, and training needs and accurately assign each person to the right spot in the grid.
Identify performance issues and talent gaps
Leaders can use the 9-box model to detect talent gaps, identifying areas where the organization lacks critical skills or future leaders. They can also identify performance issues earlier and determine which team members need additional support, training, or resources to maximize their potential.
Addressing performance issues and talent gaps allows organizations to build a stronger, more capable workforce aligned with long-term goals.
What are the challenges in using the 9-box grid?
Using personal judgment to place team members in the grid can lead to biases and inconsistencies.
The grid’s limited structure often forces leaders to choose one box to rank an entire team member, even when they have a range of talents. This limitation may prevent organizations from fully understanding the diverse contributions of each team member and reduce the effectiveness of their talent management strategies.
HR teams also risk pigeonholing people with the 9-box grid, creating a fixed mindset that limits career paths and development opportunities. When managers label people as low-potential, they may restrict access to training, mentoring, or challenging assignments, which hinders their growth. The 9-box model also has a history of lowering team members’ morale and causing prejudice. For example, a 2022 study shows that it negatively affects people from historically marginalized backgrounds due to bias.
How to create and use the 9-box model
You can create a 9-box grid in these easy steps:
1. Define criteria for performance and potential
HR and managers can prevent unconscious bias by defining the benchmarks or criteria for assessing whether a team member has low, average, or high performance or potential. This involves using performance metrics and KPIs to measure team members’ performance and potential.
You can measure performance across four key metrics:
- Effectiveness: Measure the impact of the person’s work
- Quality: Determine the consistency and accuracy of their work
- Efficiency: Track how quickly they complete tasks relative to the quality of work
- Quantity: Count the number of tasks they complete within a specific time frame
When assessing potential, initiate dialogues with team members and managers to gather a comprehensive evaluation. You can also track potential using KPIs like leadership affinity, adaptability, emotional quotient, learning agility, and other metrics unique to your organization.
2. Divide the axes into three sections
After you draw out the performance and potential axes, divide each axis into three sections—low, medium, and high—resulting in 9 boxes.
Next, segment performance into low performance, medium performance, and high performance. This may look something like:
- Low performance: The team member is not meeting job requirements and performance targets
- Medium performance: The team member partially meets job requirements and performance targets
- High performance: The team member has met or exceeded job requirements and performance targets
Then, segment potential into low, medium, and high. These levels might be something like:
- Low potential: The team member puts in effort but lacks motivation to advance into a leadership role or is not expected to grow further
- Medium potential: The team member has the potential to grow beyond their current role with adequate training and development
- High potential: The team member shows a natural affinity for leading people or projects and has the motivation to match
3. Create and label the grid
Complete the 9-box grid by labeling each box. Here’s an example of how you can label the grid:
- Underperformer: Low performance, low potential
- Effective: Moderate performance, low potential
- Trusted professional: High performance, low potential
- Dilemma: Low performance, moderate potential
- Core team member: Moderate performance, moderate potential
- High-impact performer: High performance, moderate potential
- Enigma: Low performance, high potential
- Growth team member: Moderate performance, high potential
- Future leader: High performance, high potential
4. Evaluate employees’ performance and potential
Rather than analyzing every team member, HR leaders can focus on a specific tier or division within the organization. Evaluate each person’s performance and potential through different methods, such as performance reviews, discussions with managers, and feedback from team leads. Include input from managers, team leads, and team members to get a complete assessment.
Less than 20 percent of people feel inspired by their performance reviews because they often perceive the evaluations as unrepresentative of their actual effort. Misjudgment can lead to disengagement at work, so ensure you take extra care during this process to provide accurate and fair assessments.
<<Download these performance management templates.>>
5. Plot team members on the 9-box grid
Decide where each team member fits on the 9-box grid. During this process, it’s important to collaborate with managers and any other key stakeholders. You can hold multiple discussions to ensure alignment on where each team member is placed. You can also allow team members to communicate if they feel they were placed on the grid incorrectly to encourage transparency and fairness.
How to implement the 9-box model successfully
Use these 9-box matrix best practices to achieve the most accurate results.
Prepare your team
HR leaders can facilitate a pre-meeting to introduce the 9-box grid and instruct managers how to use it. Managers can use this opportunity to openly discuss, collaborate, and familiarize themselves with the new system. Providing tangible examples of behavior typical to each box in the grid helps managers rate team members accurately.
Take action
The 9-box model is a stepping stone for team member progress and growth. After analyzing, identifying top performers, or selecting high-potential individuals, it’s time to take action. This can include high-potential team members starting job-specific learning and development, while others can train to take on leadership roles.
Put it into context
HR leaders can use the 9-box model with other assessment methods, such as 360 reviews, to enhance the talent management process.
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Incorporate frequent performance reviews
The best way to grow great leaders is through consistent performance reviews, which allow team members to receive and give pertinent feedback. Performance reviews provide essential information for creating 9-box models while giving team members constructive ways to elevate their performance.
<<Try these free performance review management templates.>>
Use the 9-box model to improve company culture
The 9-box model gives leadership a snapshot of a team member’s performance and potential, allowing them to assess talent and determine where to allocate resources. However, the 9-box grid’s value isn’t in categorizing team members into specific boxes—it lies in the process and the meaningful discussions that arise from it.
HR leaders can use the 9-box grid as a starting point for assessing a team member’s potential or future within the company. Focus on using it to facilitate discussions about the broader context of each team member’s contributions.
This approach ensures that the 9-box model supports a more thoughtful and nuanced assessment of talent—ultimately benefiting your people and your organization.
