Most organizations spend their development budget on a small group of leaders. Performance is driven by everyone else. Our programs bring structured feedback, strengths-based development and a real growth plan to individual contributors — without taking them away from the job.
Participants and their direct manager each complete the assessment. The feedback report shows employees how their self-perception compares with their manager’s view — usually the first genuinely structured feedback they’ve received. AI-powered insights turn the report into action, and they leave with a growth plan tied to their daily work.
A multi-rater assessment for front-line and emerging leaders, benchmarked against top-performing contributors. Participants identify focused development goals and build an individual plan supported by Pulse Check surveys.
For high performers and emerging leaders who warrant the deeper investment.
Development dies where feedback is vague. This experience teaches both sides of the exchange — how to give feedback someone can act on, and how to ask for it in a way that gets an honest answer.
For cultures where feedback is rare, vague, or annual.
▸Definition
Employee development programs are the structured process of helping individual contributors build capability in their current role and prepare for the next one. Unlike performance review, it starts from behavioral feedback rather than ratings, and ends with a plan the employee writes and owns.
A 2.5-hour, self-paced development experience every individual contributor can complete in the flow of work.
Multi-rater assessment and facilitated development for high performers and emerging leaders.
The skill that decides whether any of the development above actually takes hold.
ASSESSMENTS IN THE RESEARCH BASE
YEARS OF RESEARCH BEHIND THE PROGRAM
HOURS TO COMPLETE, SELF-PACED
DAYS AWAY FROM THE JOB
The research that identifies what separates extraordinary leaders also identifies what separates extraordinary performers — a distinct set of differentiating competencies for front-line and mid-level contributors, benchmarked against the 75th and 90th percentile of their peers, not against managers. Development aimed at the right behaviors, for the right population.
Based on Zenger Folkman’s research database of 2M+ assessments, and 20+ years of study of individual contributor effectiveness.
Everyone, or a targeted population? Extraordinary You is built for scale; The Extraordinary Performer is built for depth. Most organizations run both, at different tiers.
Self-assessment plus manager feedback at minimum; full multi-rater data where the investment justifies it. Either way, development starts from evidence rather than an opinion in a review.
Participants choose development goals where their competence, their passions and the organization's needs intersect — the same strengths-based method behind our leadership work.
The plan attaches to work already on their calendar. That's what makes it survive contact with a busy quarter.
The Pulse Check progress survey lets participants assess movement against their own development goals — the checkpoint that keeps a plan alive through the months when most development quietly stops.
Repeat the assessment to prove capability actually grew — and to give your next budget conversation something to stand on.
An employee development program is a structured process — assessment, feedback, a written plan and sustainment — that builds an individual contributor’s capability in their current role and prepares them for the next one. It differs from performance review in what it produces: a review produces a rating, a development program produces a plan the employee owns and acts on.
A performance review looks backward and assigns a judgment; development looks forward and assigns a behavior to build. The two are often confused because both involve a manager and a form. Our programs take the manager’s perspective as input — comparing it against how the employee sees themselves — and spend the rest of the time on what to do about the gap.
No. Extraordinary You is 2.5 self-paced hours of on-demand e-learning with no workshop, travel or scheduled session. The Extraordinary Performer does involve facilitated time — a one-day workshop, two 2.5-hour live online sessions, or two 90-minute coaching sessions — which is the trade-off for the richer multi-rater data behind it.
Individual contributors, team leads, first-time managers and emerging leaders — the population most organizations don’t develop until after a promotion. Organizations use them to build capability earlier in the employee lifecycle rather than waiting for someone to enter a leadership program.
Yes. The Extraordinary Performer offers facilitator certification, an intensive process that equips skilled internal facilitators to deliver standard or customized versions of the workshop in your organization. Extraordinary You needs no facilitator at all — it’s self-directed by design, which is what makes it deployable to thousands of people at once.
It’s the bottom of it. Organizations that only develop people after promotion are choosing leaders from a pool that has never been developed. Building capability at the contributor level widens that pool and gives you behavioral data on people years before you have to decide who’s ready.
Tell us how many people you need to reach and what’s getting in the way. We’ll show you which program fits the population — and which one doesn’t.
