9-Box Calibration

Lane Shackleton

This is a calibration method I’ve come to love. It can be done by a group of leaders to simplify and streamline an often painful process of calibrating teams.

The idea is to start with a key question like:

We’re rebuilding the company today, who would you hire back first?

You start by grouping team members evenly into 3 boxes (think "top", "middle", "bottom"). Then, you go one level deeper and split each of those boxes into 3 more boxes to arrive at 9 boxes. Note: Some teams choose different "axes" for the boxes ー e.g. primary boxes representing performance, and then the secondary boxes representing potential.

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