70-20-10 Model: Structure Your Team's Development Effort
The 70-20-10 model helps managers and employees move beyond over-reliance on formal training by deliberately allocating development effort across on-the-job…
Topic: People Management
Why It Matters
So many development plans look the same. A course or two, perhaps a certification, a half-day workshop, and a box ticked. The problem is not that formal training is useless. It is that most people learn the skills that matter most by doing the work, not by being trained to do it.
When development conversations are anchored almost exclusively on courses and qualifications, managers and employees both miss the larger part of what drives growth.
The 70-20-10 model offers a reframe. Rather than treating training as the primary lever for development, it distributes effort across three sources: on-the-job experience, learning through others, and formal instruction.
The practical effect is that it shifts the conversation from "what should you attend?" to "what should you be doing, and who should you be learning from?"
It is most useful in organisations where development conversations have become formulaic, where learning budgets are tight, or where managers want to support someone's growth without waiting for a scheduled programme to become available.
Before reading further, consider three questions.
Are your current development conversations mostly about courses and qualifications, with limited attention to what people are actually doing day to day?
Do the people in your team feel their growth depends mainly on what the organisation offers formally, rather than what they can build through the work itself?
When someone asks you how to grow in their role, do you find yourself defaulting to training recommendations without first asking whether the role could be stretched?
Origin and Underlying Logic
The 70-20-10 model emerged from research conducted by Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s. Their research asked successful executives to reflect on what had shaped their development.
The responses clustered consistently: roughly 70 percent of meaningful learning came from experience and on-the-job challenges, 20 percent from relationships with others such as managers, mentors, and colleagues, and 10 percent from formal education and training.
The model's underlying logic is straightforward. Learning that occurs in the context of real work is retained more effectively and applied more readily than learning acquired in the abstract.
The 70-20-10 framework operationalises this by giving managers and employees a practical ratio to guide how development effort is distributed. It does not prescribe what specific activities should happen in each category; it provides a proportional structure for thinking about where development comes from.
The model sits within a broader tradition of experiential learning theory, closely associated with thinkers such as David Kolb, who argued that adults learn best through cycles of experience, reflection, and application.
It is also closely related to the practices of stretch assignments, action learning, and developmental coaching. Related frameworks include situational leadership and growth mindset theory, both of which address how individuals absorb and apply experience.
Structure and Application
The 70-20-10 model divides development activity into three categories. Each has a distinct purpose and a different kind of managerial attention required to make it work.
The 70 percent category covers experiential learning. This includes stretch assignments, new projects, increased responsibility, problem-solving in unfamiliar territory, and leading initiatives outside someone's current comfort zone. The key principle is that the challenge itself is the vehicle for learning.
If a role sits entirely within someone's existing capability, the developmental return is low regardless of how much formal training surrounds it.
The 20 percent category covers social and collaborative learning. This includes coaching from a line manager, mentoring from a more experienced colleague, honest feedback conversations, peer learning groups, job shadowing, and observation of others in practice.
The quality of this learning depends heavily on the quality of the relationship and the willingness of both parties to engage directly. A coaching conversation that stays on the surface produces little; one that addresses what is actually difficult produces a great deal.
The 10 percent category covers formal education. This includes training programmes, courses, online learning, certifications, and structured workshops. This is the category that most organisations over-invest in relative to its developmental impact.
Formal learning works best when it reinforces or contextualises something the learner is already experiencing in the other two categories, rather than standing alone as the primary development vehicle.
The 70-20-10 model is most commonly applied in individual development planning, career conversations, and team-level learning strategies.
It works at the individual, team, or organisational level, though the specific activities in each category will vary significantly depending on the context and the individual's current development stage.
The model does not require a formal scoring process. It is most often used as a conversational framework: a way of structuring a development discussion so that all three sources of learning are considered, rather than defaulting to the most visible one.
The tool typically takes the form of a simple three-column or three-section development plan template, one section for each category.
As a starting point, before your next development conversation, take five minutes to map where the other person's current development effort is actually concentrated. Not where it should be, but where it currently sits.
In most cases, the balance is heavily skewed toward the 10 percent category. That single observation is often enough to reopen the conversation in a more useful direction.
What it will surface immediately is the question of which specific challenges and relationships should be doing more of the developmental work, and that is exactly where the premium content begins.
FAQ
Q: What is the 70-20-10 model?
A: The 70-20-10 model is a framework for structuring employee development activity across three sources of learning. It proposes that roughly 70 percent of meaningful learning comes from on-the-job experience, 20 percent from interaction with others such as managers, mentors, and peers, and 10 percent from formal training or education. It is used primarily in development planning and career conversations to ensure all three sources are considered, rather than defaulting to formal training alone.
Q: Is the 70-20-10 model based on research?
A: The model originated from research conducted at the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s, where executives were asked to identify what had most shaped their professional development. The 70-20-10 ratio reflects consistent patterns in those responses. However, the figures are best understood as directional guidelines rather than precise empirical targets. The model's value lies in the proportional logic it provides, not in hitting exact percentages.
Q: How does the 70-20-10 model differ from traditional training approaches?
A: Traditional development approaches tend to treat formal training as the primary investment in growth. The 70-20-10 model challenges this by repositioning formal learning as a supporting element rather than the main event. It places the majority of developmental weight on what people do at work and who they learn from, rather than what they are taught in a classroom or online module.
Q: How do I know if the 70-20-10 model is right for my situation?
A: The model tends to be most useful when development conversations in your team have become overly dependent on formal training, when learning budgets are limited, or when a team member has plateaued in their current role despite completing available courses. If your team's development plans already incorporate meaningful stretch, regular coaching, and targeted formal learning, you may already be applying the principles, even if not by name.
Q: Does the 70-20-10 model work for all types of roles and industries?
A: The model is widely applicable across industries and role types, but the specific mix of activities in each category will vary. In highly regulated environments, formal learning may need a higher weighting due to compliance requirements. In fast-moving operational roles, experiential learning is often the dominant mode by default. The model is best treated as a starting framework that managers adapt to their context, rather than a fixed formula applied uniformly.