As a manager, the higher up the ladder you climb, the less likely you are to receive useful feedback on your leadership behavior. After all, plain, unadorned feedback given spontaneously in a particular situation is what we truly appreciate. What we desire to hear is not flattery or denouncements from people pursuing their own agenda, but deeply sincere, genuinely human opinions that are addressed to us personally and directly. This is precisely the type of feedback that puts us in a reflective frame of mind, and ultimately helps us to progress. A development center offers you the opportunity to engage in a productive dialog with two trained assessors, in a safe, neutral environment away from your workplace. Together we will shed light on your abilities, identify your inhibiting tendencies, explore your potential and come up with some highly promising perspectives.

The following circumstances might motivate you to engage in development center, either for yourself or for an employee:

• You are forced, all of a sudden, to revise your priorities due to an event in your personal life, such as losing your job, your company going bust, a relationship breakdown or a life-threatening illness.
• You’ve been building your career for decades, but these days you find it more and more difficult to see the purpose in your work.
• You are facing midlife and you find yourself wondering how to make the best use of the years remaining to you, as both an individual and as a professional.
• Following a merger and acquisition you are faced with having to choose between different jobs. Which role will create the most added value, both for the company and for you personally?
• You need to reconfigure your management team following a restructuring. The situation calls for a focus on new or different abilities. Who is best suited to which role?
• You suspect that one of your managers is harboring untapped potential, and you want to help them progress in their career and grow as an individual.

Depending on your needs and current situation, development center can consist of one two-hour session, or it can unfold as a comprehensive process. Many of our clients opt for either half-day or full-day development center. In this process, we make use of the following building blocks:

• A graphic or visual depiction of your life to date: the goal of this exercise is to place your life and work in a holistic perspective, and illustrate the highs and lows from your professional and private life. This analysis, which we often ask the candidate to do as a preparatory exercise, sparks off an important evaluation process which is then taken into greater depth during the development center.
• The core of the process consists of two semi-structured interviews in which we identify important development pathways, explore the candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and potential as a leader and in the social and personal context, and investigate some possible initial perspectives.
• We supplement this with elements such as a personality questionnaire to identify important personal behavioral traits, a questionnaire to determine the candidate’s personal core values, a simulated bottom-up feedback interview and, if required, a case study and cognitive ability tests.

The diagram below illustrates the five phases you will go through during the development process:

• First, we clarify the scope of the commission and the framework parameters in an initial interview. You determine who you want to have involved in your position analysis. Some clients prefer this to be a purely private process, without participation from anyone else from their work or private spheres. Others appreciate having a superior or spouse take part in the process, as this can enable a more comprehensive overall picture.
• During the design phase we determine the elements that will be used in the and we set the schedule.
• The development center takes place in the Trans-In offices, over a half day or a full day. During the session you will be supported by two experienced assessors / executive coaches.
• We draw up a comprehensive report which identifies not only your strengths, weaknesses and potential, but also gives you valuable pointers for your personal development. We then arrange another session to discuss the report with you. We can discuss the results with you alone or with your superior and HR partner present, as you prefer.
• After three to six months we hold a follow-up interview to formulate the next concrete implementation steps, so that you are assured of a long-term benefit from the process.