PTD Exam cheat sheet

The domain contains seven sub-capabilities: Communication; Emotional Intelligence and Decision Making; Collaboration and Leadership; Cultural Awareness and Inclusion; Project Management; Compliance and Ethical Behavior; Lifelong Learning.

Goleman's four emotional intelligence domains: self-awareness (recognizing one's own emotions), self-management (regulating them), social awareness (empathy, organizational awareness), relationship management (influence, coaching, conflict). Self-awareness is the foundation for the other three.

RACI decision rule: every task has exactly one Accountable; Responsible performs the work; Consulted gives two-way input before the decision; Informed receives one-way updates after it. Two Accountables on one task signal an unresolved authority gap.

SBI feedback format: Situation (when and where), Behavior (observable action, no inference), Impact (effect on work or people). Separating observed behavior from attributed intent is the mechanism that keeps feedback non-defensive.

Tuckman sequence: forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning. Conflict peaks in storming; a team that skips norming keeps roles unclear and pushes disagreement underground.

Triple constraint: scope, schedule and cost are interdependent, so a change to any one forces a change in at least one of the others; quality and risk sit at the center of the triangle.

Hofstede's six cultural dimensions: power distance, individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, long-term orientation, indulgence-restraint. They describe national tendency distributions, not individual people.

Ethical decision rule: when a request conflicts with confidentiality, informed consent, intellectual property or a conflict-of-interest standard, disclose the conflict in writing and decline or escalate rather than proceed.

70-20-10: roughly 70 percent of learning comes from challenging work assignments, 20 percent from relationships (coaching, mentoring, feedback) and 10 percent from formal courses - a portfolio check, not a precise measurement.

ADDIE phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation. The sequence is iterative in practice - evaluation data feeds back into analysis - despite the linear name.

Bloom's revised taxonomy, low to high: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create. Write each objective at the level the job task actually demands rather than at the highest level available.

Gagné's nine events: gain attention; inform objectives; stimulate recall of prior learning; present content; provide guidance; elicit performance; give feedback; assess performance; enhance retention and transfer.

Merrill's First Principles: instruction is promoted when it is problem-centered and includes activation of prior experience, demonstration, application with feedback, and integration into real work.

Kirkpatrick levels: 1 Reaction (satisfaction, relevance), 2 Learning (knowledge, skill, confidence, commitment), 3 Behavior (on-the-job application), 4 Results (business outcomes). Level 3 requires follow-up after learners return to work.

Phillips ROI: Level 5 = (net program benefits ÷ program costs) × 100, where net benefits = monetary benefits − program costs. Benefit-cost ratio = total benefits ÷ total costs.

Cognitive load theory: intrinsic load is the inherent difficulty of the content relative to prior knowledge; extraneous load comes from poor design; germane load is effort spent building schemas. Reduce extraneous load first.

Mayer's multimedia principles: coherence (drop decorative content), signaling (cue key elements), redundancy (narration plus graphics beats narration plus graphics plus identical on-screen text), contiguity (place words near the related graphic).

Mager objective components: performance (what the learner will do), conditions (tools, environment and cues allowed), criterion (standard for acceptable performance). Each objective carries one measurable action verb.

Kotter's eight steps: create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form vision and strategy, communicate it, remove barriers, generate short-term wins, consolidate gains, anchor changes in culture. Sequence matters; short-term wins are needed before large-scale consolidation.

ADKAR: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Change succeeds only when each individual moves through the elements in that order, so a gap identifies where the intervention should focus.

Lewin's model: unfreeze (create readiness by reducing restraining forces), change (move to the new state), refreeze (reinforce so the behavior survives without active support). Force-field analysis weighs driving against restraining forces.

Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model has six factors checked in order - environment (information, resources, incentives), then individual (knowledge, capacity, motives). Most performance gaps trace to the environment, so diagnosis starts there.

Balanced scorecard perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. Learning and growth is the enabler: capability gains drive process performance, then customer outcomes, then financial results.

Nine-box grid: performance on one axis, potential on the other, three bands each. High performance paired with low potential often signals a retention risk that promotion-focused succession plans overlook.

ROI formula: ROI% = (net benefits ÷ program cost) × 100. A 100 percent return means benefits equal twice the cost, which is the same as a 2:1 benefit-cost ratio.

Appreciative inquiry 4-D cycle: Discover (best of what is), Dream (what could be), Design (what should be), Destiny (sustain it). It contrasts with problem-based action research, which diagnoses, plans, acts and evaluates.

Analytics levels: descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why it happened), predictive (what will happen), prescriptive (what to do). Most talent development reporting stops at descriptive indicators.