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Introduction

Leadership development is driven by experience; in other words, leaders learn not just through training and developmental relationships but through job and leadership experiences. In training-and-development circles and among human-resources staff, the catchphrase “70-20-10” is a general guideline for combining challenging assignments (70%), developmental relationships (20%), and coursework & training (10%). This guideline suggests that a combination of those learning opportunities, at about that ratio, is optimal for preparing managers for leadership roles. The 70-20-10 ratio should not be taken as a one-size-fits-all solution to developing leaders. However, the pattern that 70-20-10 suggests is clear: On-the-job experiences are a significant driver of leadership development, particularly experiences that challenge leaders to lead in novel and diverse environments.

Beyond 70-20-10

Research by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has identified two other categories of developmental experiences important for leaders: hardships and personal life experiences. Hardships are not included in the 70-20-10 guideline because these are not experiences that organizations intentionally give individuals for development; personal life experiences are not included because they are outside of an organization’s control.

Experience Explorer gives leaders a powerful and efficient tool for discovering what they have learned about effective leadership and what they still need to learn. When leaders explore and talk about their past experiences, they can better plan future learning experiences.

Leaders and managers at all organizational levels and in all types of organizations are typically responsible for developing themselves and others. Whether they work in human resources, serve as training-and-development consultants, or lead a business unit, managers and leaders can use Experience Explorer in a number of situations.

Leading an Experience Explorer session does not require high-level facilitation skills. The 99 cards in the package are divided into 52 blue Experience cards, 42 orange Lesson cards, and 5 white Instruction cards. The Instruction cards can be used when this facilitator’s guide is unavailable or is not needed.

Did You Know?

In the first study from which the 70-20-10 guideline originated, 189 of 191 participating executives were men! To learn about women’s experiences and lessons, CCL conducted a follow-on study of 76 executive women and found a development ratio of 55-40-5. The issue of why women report less development through challenging assignments and greater development due to developmental relationships continues to raise questions: Are women given far fewer opportunities to meet business challenges?

Experience Explorer is based on 40 years of international research that CCL has conducted in several countries from various regions of the world. The tool’s Experience and Lesson cards are derived from a comprehensive inventory of essential experiences and lessons as described to researchers by successful leaders. People of all ages and of different countries and various walks of life have found that the experiences and lessons described in the cards capture much of the know-how they have built up during their careers.

However, Experience Explorer is much more than a personal inventory of experiences and lessons. It emphasizes the specific findings at the core of CCL’s Lessons of Experience research. Those studies show that there are fifteen types of experiences and three dimensions of lessons common to leading in organizations. Experience Explorer represents those experiences and dimensions with symbols that are illustrated in Table 1 and that appear on the Experience Explorer cards (Figures 1 and 2).

In addition to those symbols, each Experience card is marked with a colored dot in the lower-right corner (Figure 1). The dots map to the guideline of 70-20-10. Turn to the Options and Applications section for ideas about using the dots or three dimensions of lessons during an Experience Explorer session.

Table 1. Fifteen core leadership experiences and their Experience Explorer symbols

	EXPERIENCE	DESCRIPTION
	Bosses & Superiors	You interacted with a leader one or more levels above you, and you remember that leader as a positive or as a negative role model, coach, teacher, or catalyst who accelerated your development.
	Career Setback	You experienced an unforeseen and unwanted block to your career progression, caused by another person or event—for example, being fired, demoted, passed over for promotion, or placed in a job that did not match your skills, aptitude, or knowledge.
	Coursework & Training	You chose, or your organization sponsored you, to attend a development-and-training class that advanced your learning, growth, or career progress.
	Crisis	You experienced an unexpected, shocking event that you could not fully control and that caused feelings of confusion or loss. Typically, the disorder that follows a crisis brings unfavorable publicity to an organization, threatens the reputation and survival of top leaders and the organization, or injures individual, organizational, and even national interests. Examples include a product recall, an investigation into ethics violations, a personal scandal, a natural disaster, or a health epidemic.
	Cultural Crossing	You had regular, direct contact with coworkers whose values, motivations, language, life routines, and social customs are different from yours. Your organization may have relocated you to another region or country with different political, economic, and legal systems from your home area.
	Difficult People	You worked with a boss, subordinates, or peers who provoked tension, resentment, and disputes due to differing working styles, preferences, and opinions. The resulting situations—which you or they may not always have handled skillfully—could have involved feelings of ineptness, confrontation, excessive competition, jealousy, or betrayal.
	Ethical Dilemma	You observed fraudulent, illegal, or immoral behavior by a senior leader that was endured by a lower-level manager or directed toward you.
	Feedback & Coaching	You have had job-related, formal or informal conversations concerning specific situations or personal abilities or traits, or you received advice about leading or managing. The feedback and coaching may or may not have been part of a formal performance-appraisal or 360-degree-feedback process or mentoring program.
	Horizontal Move	You transitioned or were rotated into another function, business unit, organization, or industry sector where the work and work culture were different from what you were used to. The move did not involve a promotion and was initiated either by yourself or by your organization.
	Increase in Job Scope	You experienced a significant increase in budget, in the number of people you managed, in access to resources, and in complexity of tasks. These changes typically involved a promotion, an increase in job scope, and an expansion of management responsibilities and visibility.
	Mistake	You experienced an error of judgment by a manager or by coworkers that resulted in a team’s or the organization’s failure to meet its goals. Such mistakes can be technical, professional, ethical, or strategic—for example, a product malfunction, a poor hiring decision, a loss of credibility or face, or a collapsed venture.
	New Initiative	You built something by leveraging an opportunity to develop or launch a new product or service, to adopt new technologies, to craft a new policy or process, to set up a plant or unit, to enter a new market, to embark on a new line of business, or to create a new business.
	Personal Experience	You have emotion-laden memories of times in your life when you formed values, sorted out your approach to challenges, or set out on a different direction. Such experiences influence a person’s principles, attitudes, and behaviors. Examples include incidents in early life, youth leadership roles, family situations, early job experiences, spiritual encounters, personal traumas, and mid-life transitions.