A talent review process is the structured exercise through which organizations assess the strength of their leadership bench, identify high-potential employees, and make deliberate succession decisions. Without a formal talent review process, succession planning is guesswork — organizations discover leadership gaps only when vacancies occur, rather than building the pipeline before it is needed.

What a Talent Review Process Accomplishes

• Talent inventory — a clear map of who is performing at what level across the organization
• Flight risk identification — which high-value employees are at risk of leaving and why
• Succession map — which roles have bench strength and which have dangerous single-points of failure
• Development commitments — specific actions to accelerate the highest-potential people

Preparation: The Most Important Phase of the Talent Review Process

Three weeks before the talent review, send managers a pre-work package:

• Performance data for each direct report from the last 12 months
• A 9-box grid template for initial placement
• A calibration question set: “What is the highest level this person can reach? What would accelerate or constrain that?”
• Retention risk assessment: likelihood of departure in the next 12 months and impact if they left

Running the Talent Review Session

A talent review session should run no more than two hours, covering 20–25 people maximum. For each person reviewed:

• The manager presents their 9-box placement with rationale
• Other participants who worked with the individual share observations
• The group reaches a consensus placement, with disagreements documented
• The group agrees on one to two development actions for high-potential employees

Common Calibration Traps in the Talent Review Process

Halo effect: Rating potential based on current performance rather than trajectory and capacity.

Affinity bias: Rating employees who remind the reviewer of themselves more favorably. Requiring evidence for each potential rating reduces this systematically.

Position bias: Assuming people in visible roles have more potential. Facilitators should proactively surface employees from less visible roles — this is where hidden talent usually sits.

From Talent Review Process to Action

Within one week of the talent review, send each manager a summary of development commitments made for their people. Track completion in the next cycle. High-potential employees who received commitments that were never acted on are significantly more likely to leave within 12 months. For the 9-box grid used in talent reviews, see The 9-Box Grid: How to Use the Performance-Potential Matrix for Succession Planning.

Best Practices in Talent Review Process Design

According to SHRM’s succession planning research, organizations that run structured talent review processes at least annually are significantly better prepared for leadership transitions than those that approach succession reactively. The research specifically points to calibration as a differentiator — talent reviews where managers complete pre-work independently before a structured group discussion produce more accurate talent assessments than those where assessments are generated in real-time during the session.

The most effective talent review processes also explicitly separate potential assessment from performance assessment. An employee’s performance in their current role — while relevant context — is not the same as their potential to grow into a more senior or different role. Talent review processes that conflate the two systematically underidentify high-potential employees who are early in their careers or in roles where current performance is constrained by factors outside their controll.