Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

How to Predict Leadership Potential in Individual Contributors

Organizations often promote their strongest individual contributors into management, assuming technical excellence will translate into leadership capability. That assumption can create avoidable problems. Expertise matters, but leading people requires a broader combination of judgment, influence, self-awareness, communication, and the ability to improve results through others.

Predicting Which Individual Contributors Have the Potential for Leadership requires a disciplined view of evidence. The goal is not to identify the most visible employee or the person who speaks most confidently. It is to forecast who is likely to adopt leadership behaviors, apply them consistently, and produce valuable business outcomes when given the right development opportunities.

A useful approach combines observable performance data, structured development experiences, manager observations, and the employee’s own intentions. Predictive Evaluation can help organizations connect these signals to leadership readiness rather than relying on impressions or past achievements alone.

Signals That Point Beyond Technical Excellence

High-performing contributors often demonstrate the foundations of leadership before they receive a formal title. They take responsibility for problems that extend beyond their job description, help colleagues succeed, communicate clearly across functions, and make sound decisions when information is incomplete.

Another important signal is the ability to create clarity. Emerging leaders can translate a complex objective into practical next steps, resolve competing priorities, and maintain momentum without constant direction. They also show curiosity about the needs of customers, peers, and the wider organization.

These behaviors should be tracked over time rather than judged from a single successful project. A person may deliver excellent individual work while struggling with collaboration, feedback, or shared accountability. Leadership potential becomes more credible when positive behaviors appear across different situations and relationships.

Define Leadership Potential Precisely

Before assessing talent, an organization should describe what leadership means in its environment. A frontline supervisor, project leader, technical fellow, and executive sponsor may need different capabilities. A generic competency model can hide these distinctions and produce weak predictions.

Useful dimensions may include coaching, decision quality, stakeholder influence, conflict navigation, adaptability, learning agility, and ethical judgment. Each dimension needs behavioral examples. “Communicates effectively” is difficult to assess, while “adjusts a recommendation after hearing credible dissent” gives observers something concrete to recognize.

The definition should also distinguish potential from readiness. Someone may have the capacity to lead but need more experience with delegation, performance conversations, or strategic thinking. This distinction supports targeted development instead of premature promotion or an unfair label that an employee is “not leadership material.”

Use Evidence Instead Of Reputation

A prediction improves when it draws from multiple sources. Work samples, peer feedback, project outcomes, manager observations, self-assessments, and participation in learning activities can reveal patterns that annual ratings miss. Evidence should focus on behavior and results, with attention to the context in which each result occurred.

Organizations can strengthen this process by monitoring real-time learning metrics that show whether people are applying new skills after training. For example, a contributor who practices structured coaching in team meetings and receives stronger collaboration ratings may be demonstrating movement toward leadership capability.

Past performance still has value, but it should not dominate the forecast. A high sales number, technical certification, or successful delivery may indicate discipline and expertise without showing whether the person can build trust, develop others, or make decisions through uncertainty.

Compare Predictive Indicators

The strongest model separates signals that describe current performance from indicators that forecast future leadership behavior. The comparison below illustrates how organizations can use both types of information without confusing them.

Evidence area	What it reveals now	What may predict future leadership
Individual results	Reliability and technical competence	Ownership of broader outcomes
Peer feedback	Collaboration experience	Ability to influence without authority
Learning application	Skill adoption after training	Willingness to change behavior
Project assignments	Exposure to complexity	Judgment, prioritization, and resilience
Self-reported goals	Career interest	Motivation to accept leadership responsibilities
Manager observation	Day-to-day conduct	Consistency across changing conditions

Intention deserves careful treatment. An employee who does not want people management may still become an excellent project or thought leader. Conversely, strong ambition does not prove that someone will support others effectively. The intention evaluation model offers a way to examine whether learners plan to use new capabilities and what may influence that decision.

Prediction should therefore combine desire, capability, opportunity, and demonstrated action. When these elements align, the organization has a more credible basis for leadership development investment.

Test Potential Through Real Work

The best assessment environment is often a meaningful assignment rather than a simulated interview. Give contributors opportunities to lead a cross-functional project, facilitate a problem-solving session, mentor a colleague, coordinate a process improvement, or represent the team with stakeholders.

These assignments should include clear outcomes and defined observation points. Review how the person sets direction, handles disagreement, shares credit, responds to setbacks, and adjusts when a plan fails. The assignment should be developmental, with feedback provided during the work rather than only at the end.

Short learning bursts can prepare employees for these experiences. A focused practice on delegation, feedback, or stakeholder mapping becomes more valuable when immediately connected to a live responsibility. This creates a cycle in which learning, application, observation, and refinement reinforce one another.

Build Fair Development Pathways

Leadership prediction can reproduce bias when access to high-visibility projects depends on personal networks or manager preference. Organizations should make developmental opportunities transparent and ensure that employees from different backgrounds can demonstrate their capability in varied settings.

Assessment panels, structured rubrics, calibrated evidence reviews, and multiple observers can reduce the effect of charisma and familiarity. Leaders should also examine whether a contributor’s lower visibility reflects limited access, remote work, cultural communication differences, or an unsupportive environment rather than limited potential.

Dave Basarab’s professional journey reflects the value of connecting learning measurement with practical organizational decisions. That perspective is useful when building a system that treats leadership development as a business process instead of a collection of courses.

Practical Steps For Better Forecasts

Define leadership behaviors for each role and level before selecting candidates.
Combine performance data, observations, employee intentions, and evidence of learning application.
Give promising contributors structured assignments that reveal influence, judgment, and adaptability.
Review predictions regularly and compare them with actual behavior and business outcomes.
Provide development support to high-potential employees without treating a forecast as a permanent label.

A reliable leadership pipeline begins with better questions about evidence, context, and behavior. Organizations that measure adoption and impact can identify emerging leaders earlier, invest in the capabilities that matter, and avoid promoting people solely because they excelled in a different role.

Dave Basarab Consulting can help design an enterprise learning strategy, create targeted development experiences, and apply Predictive Evaluation to connect leadership growth with measurable results. Build a clearer forecast of your next generation of leaders and turn individual capability into sustained organizational performance.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.