Free tool · for HR managers & team leads
9-Box Talent Grid Starter
The 9-box grid shows your team's talent and succession risk on one page. This free starter lets you plot a single team by hand: decide each person's box from how they perform and how much potential they have, and type their name into it. Download it, fill it in, and see the shape of your team take form.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- A single-team 9-box grid — performance across (Below / Meets / Exceeds), potential up (Low / Growth / High), nine zone-coloured boxes from Talent Risk to Star.
- Manual placement: you decide each person's box and type their name in, so the model is obvious from the first try.
- Comes pre-loaded with a small fictional team so you can see it working, then overwrite it with your own.
- Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice — no macros, no signup, nothing saved anywhere but your own file.
Own it, don't rent it
Want the grid to fill itself in?
This free starter places people by hand. The full 9-Box Talent Grid does it for you — score two axes and each person is auto-placed in the right box, with a live calibration grid, box-by-box counts and named lists, a suggested focus for every box, a scoring guide, and a review log, in one owned 7-tab spreadsheet (Excel, Google Sheets, or LibreOffice) plus four guides.
A one-time purchase you keep and reuse across every talent review — the structured grid between a blank spreadsheet and a rented per-seat platform.
A talent-review and planning template, not HR, legal, or professional advice, and not an assessment of any real person. A box is a starting point for a conversation, not a verdict. The example team is fictional and illustrative. The 9-box is a generic talent model, not affiliated with any consultancy. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.