Why the 9-Box Is Bad for Morale

A rating people can feel but never see

Most 9-box exercises happen behind closed doors. People are plotted, discussed and filed — and then nobody tells them the outcome. But the outcome leaks anyway: through who gets the stretch project, who is invited to the leadership programme, who gets the interesting work.

So employees end up experiencing a judgement they were never shown and cannot question. That is the worst possible combination: consequential, invisible and unappealable.

The label sticks

Potential ratings are unusually sticky. Once someone is placed in a lower box, the opportunities that would let them prove otherwise tend to go to people already in the higher ones. The rating shapes the evidence that would be needed to change the rating.

From the employee’s side this feels exactly like what it is — a ceiling that was set for them in a meeting they weren’t in. Disengagement follows, and it usually shows up first in your best mid-grid performers, who are the most likely to have options elsewhere.

Eight boxes of “not you”

The design of the grid is the problem. It is built to isolate a small group of stars, which means it is also built to categorise everyone else as something less. Labels like “solid citizen” or “core player” are meant kindly and land as a verdict.

Meanwhile the people doing the actual work of the organisation — the reliable, deep-expertise middle — get no development narrative at all, because the grid has no vocabulary for growth that isn’t promotion.

What to do instead

• Assess capability, not potential. Capability against a defined competency framework is specific, evidenced and — crucially — shareable with the person being assessed.
• Make the result visible. If an employee can see their own capability profile and the gap to the role they want, the assessment becomes a map instead of a verdict.
• Give everyone a next step. Every person has a gap worth closing, not just the top-right box. That is what turns an annual rating exercise into ongoing development.
• Separate the conversations. Succession shortlisting and individual development planning are different meetings with different audiences. Collapsing them into one grid is what makes the grid feel like a sorting hat.

Where to go next

• The 9-box grid is broken for succession planning — the structural problem with the model.
• The 9-box grid explained — what it is, and where it still has a narrow use.
• Succession planning without the 9-box grid — the alternative, in full.