FAQs
The quick answer is, “none.” This tool is the preparation for your development. All you need is some ideas for work challenges that you think might help you to learn and develop. The tool will help you to explore these ideas and make better decisions about which experiences will give you what you need.
Actually, we expect that most users will probably be working in organizations that have a development plan that is part of a talent or performance management system. Using this tool is a way to come up with a more powerful development plan that you can use in any other system. The important thing for any development plan is identifying the right experience. Most development plan tools don’t really help much with that. But that is all that we really do in this tool-help you to understand a possible development experience so you can focus your effort and not waste your time.
This tool is focused on the development of leadership talent. We believe that leadership talent can be found in many jobs and at any level in an organization. While the Experience Insights tool can be used with leadership talent at any level, some of the content is best suited for individuals that are currently on, or seek to be on, a path to leading from a formal position of leadership:
- Individuals in supervisory, managerial or leadership roles
- Individuals who aspire to be in a supervisory, managerial or leadership role
- Individuals who are committed to making a bigger contribution to their organization or achieving greater career success
If you have an enterprise license, you can use the tool to explore experiences for yourself or others that you may be developing or mentoring.
If you have any other form of license, you can only use the tool to explore work experiences for yourself. If you use the tool, you are agreeing to the terms of a licensing agreement that authorizes personal use only.
If you are a coach and want to coach others using the tool, you can contact us regarding such use.
You can evaluate as many experiences as you need in keeping with the terms of the licensing agreement. Usage is tracked according to your usage of the experience engine. Each time you send a text description to the experience engine for analysis it is considered a request. Requests are only made when you first enter a text description, or if you change it and need to send a new request to the experience engine for analysis. So, when editing an experience, requests are only triggered when you change your description.
If you use the tool extensively, you may be informed that you need to ask for extended access in order to continue using the tool. The support team will review your account usage and approve extended access in mosts cases within 24 hours.
Yes! the “Experience Model” is simply another name for the “FrameBreaking Model.” We have pushed the FrameBreaking terminology to the background for this tool because we want you to be able to get started right away using this site without feeling that you need to know what FrameBreaking is all about.
The FrameBreaking process includes a more comprehensive application of the Experience Model including in-depth tools for profiling past experiences, identifying development needs and creating a development plan. Individuals use these tools while participating in a workshop.
The Experience Model is described in detail in the book, “FrameBreaking Leadership Development” available for purchase on Amazon. Additional detail is also available at http://framebreaking.com
The experience engine is most accurate when you use clear descriptive words to describe the actions you will be taking and the most important information about the situation. For example, if you were to describe an experience as, “Leading a team of marketing professionals to create a new product strategy,” the themes returned would be: “Leading a team” and “Developing plans.”
If, however, the reason you’re describing this experience is that you think it might be developmental to lead a team in a different functional area, you need to be more specific in your description. If you wrote, “Leading a team of professionals in a different function to create a new product strategy,” you would return the following themes: “Leading a team; Developing plans, and Managing an unfamiliar area.” As a result of the changed wording, you would receive additional guidance related to managing in an unfamiliar area.
There is value in naming things. Recognizing that your development experience contains certain developmental themes or certain key behaviors can help you to spot learning potential that you might otherwise miss. In addition, if themes are identified for your experience it means that the experience you are considering is known to involve certain developmental dynamics. It can be useful to have the general theme in mind as you think about what you might learn from the specific experience you are considering.
In order to provide relevant insights, your experience needs to be described in terms that the Better Development Plans system understands. This is the language of themes. By relating your description to themes, we are able to focus the insights in your report (see the FAQ item, “How are the Insights personalized for my experience?”).
Each theme summarizes a cluster of certain actions and situations. For example, if you think about what it means to be “Managing projects,” certain clusters of work and challenges tend to come to mind right away. You may think about needing to coordinate the activities of others, managing a flow of tasks, tracking deadlines, planning, etc. We have used these differing clusters to cross-reference each of the 23 themes in our library with each of the components of Intensity (Time pressure, Holistic responsibility, Risk, Impact, Visibility and Stretch) and Stretch (Relationships, Expertise, Adaptability, Context, and How-to skills).
This structure enables us to identify highly personalized learning and risk based on a combination of two things: 1)the theme associated with your experience; and 2)your evaluation of the learning drivers. This means that if you describe a situation that is tagged by the experience engine with the “Developing plans” theme and indicate that it will involve more Time pressure than you’ve faced in the past, you'll get different results than someone who describes a similar situation but rates the learning drivers as lower on "Time pressure" but higher on "Context."
The Fit score is calculated based on your responses to three survey items that evaluate the extent to which the experience involves work that is Significant, Developmental, and Engaging. The percentage is weighted to reflect the idea that all three of the ratings need to be high for an experience to be considered a good fit. If any single item is low, the overall score is lower than would be the case from a straight arithmetic calculation.
The rating stars in the Saved Experiences table are there to help you keep track of experiences that hold promise for your development. As you think about different development opportunities, rate them. Then, consider talking through your five-star experiences with your manager or a trusted advisor.