Rediscovering the Heart of People Development
Four human traps that get in the way of helping others grow
by Dr. Sam Crowe
People development. We see it on our list of leadership musts. And so, we do it. We schedule development conversations, identify goals, and check in on progress. We've even retired the dinosaur question: “Where do you want to be in five years?”
We're leadership gold.
Right? Well…maybe not quite.
Somewhere along the way, we've confused the activities of people development with its purpose: helping people discover and pursue their potential while building their capacity to contribute meaningfully. And developing people is also an act of stewardship. We're entrusted with the growth of people whose judgment, creativity, and contributions make organizational success possible.
Development Is More Than Performance or Promotion
Performance conversations assess how well someone is meeting current expectations. Development asks broader questions: What matters to this person? What capabilities could they strengthen? What possibilities might they explore? Who are they becoming?
The two are connected but not interchangeable. When we view development mainly through current performance or promotion readiness, we overlook other forms of growth.
Someone excelling in their role still has room to grow. Someone who doesn't want a promotion may want deeper expertise or greater influence. And someone unsure of what they want may need help discovering what's possible.
Development also builds the judgment, skills, and ways of thinking people need to contribute as their work and the world evolve. And it's how organizations develop a leadership pipeline that fuels organizational agility.
But here's the paradox: We genuinely want people to grow, yet our own human tendencies — avoiding discomfort, relying on what we know, making assumptions, and enjoying the satisfaction of checking a box — can undermine that growth.
Leadership gold means noticing these tendencies and choosing differently.
Four common traps get in the way.
Development invites discomfort.
Leaders may fear requests they can't fulfill: a promotion, raise, or opportunity that doesn't exist. Employees may fear difficult feedback or the gap between where they are and where they hope to be.
So, we avoid, soften, or redirect. But avoidance doesn't eliminate aspirations or concerns. It leaves them unexplored.
Are you helping someone understand what's possible, or quietly limiting the conversation to what feels possible to you?
The shift: Explore aspirations without promising outcomes you can't deliver.
Suppose an employee wants to become a director, but no position is available. Rather than avoiding or ending the conversation, explore the aspiration.
They may discover that succeeding at the next level isn't about doing more of the same. It may mean shifting from executing work to shaping direction, solving individual problems to anticipating broader consequences, or relying on personal effort to enabling results through others.
Try this: Explore four questions together.
Aspiration: What draws you to this role or opportunity?
Success: What capabilities and ways of thinking distinguish someone who excels at that level?
Readiness: Where are you already demonstrating those capabilities, and what might you need to do differently?
Opportunity: What could you begin doing or experiencing now to build them?
Be transparent: readiness and opportunity aren't the same. Sometimes the opportunity lies elsewhere. The goal isn't to talk people out of their aspirations, but to help them make meaningful progress.
You may not know it, but you've been cursed. The curse of knowledge.
Once we know something, it's hard to remember what it was like not to know it. So we tell someone to “think more strategically” or “take greater ownership,” assuming the meaning is clear. It usually isn't.
We've named a broad capability without revealing the observable behaviors and buildable skills that make it real. Employees may never have seen that capability in action. They may also lack visibility into the organizational context, decisions, and expectations that shape what good looks like.
Think about the last time you told someone to be more strategic, communicate better, or demonstrate greater leadership presence.
Could that person walk away knowing exactly what to do differently? Or did you give them a label to live up to without showing them how?
The shift: Make the invisible visible.
“Think strategically” might mean connecting decisions to business priorities, weighing trade-offs, and anticipating downstream consequences.
“Take ownership” might mean proposing solutions before escalating problems, engaging stakeholders early, and surfacing risks.
Turn abstraction into a tangible picture.
Try this: Choose one capability and ask:
What would we see or hear someone doing if they demonstrated this well? What skills make that possible? Where could they practice those behaviors?
Invite employees to initiate this clarity, too: “When you say I need stronger strategic thinking, what are two or three things you'd expect me to do differently?”
We often begin by asking people where they want to go. But what if they don't know the where? Or the why?
We may assume ambition means moving up, excellent technical contributors want to manage people, or someone who seems content isn't interested in growth.
These assumptions become stories that shape how we see and support people. As my colleague Dr. Dave Kasch explores in Create a New Story of Performance for Your People, we need fewer stories and more curiosity.
What someone asks for isn't always the same as what they hope it will give them.
A promotion might represent recognition, autonomy, financial security, challenge, or greater contribution. Two people seeking the same role may want entirely different things.
Here's where our assumptions can get expensive: When we mistake someone's destination for their motivation, we may spend time preparing them for an opportunity that won't give them what they actually want.
What if we shifted the question from “What’s next for you?” to “What do you want more of in your work, and what drives that desire?”
Understanding those motivations doesn't make the original aspiration less legitimate. It opens possibilities beyond a single path.
The shift: Explore what matters before deciding what growth should look like.
Try this: The 100-Penny Career Drivers Exercise.
Imagine distributing 100 pennies across different things we might value at work — drivers like power, recognition, autonomy, achievement, challenge, purpose, connection, creativity, security, and compensation.
Where would you place the most pennies, and why?
Then explore:
Meaning: What does this priority represent for you?
Possibility: If you had more of it, what would that make possible?
Sufficiency: What would “enough” look like?
Opportunity: What experiences or changes might help you move toward it?
This isn't a definitive assessment. It's a conversation starter for uncovering motivations and what successful “development” means to the other person. Perhaps someone seeking a promotion is really hoping for greater autonomy. But even autonomy means different things to different people: decision-making authority to one person, flexibility to another. We can't guide well unless the compass reflects what truly matters to the person.
4. Rethink Development: Small Moments, Evolving Possibilities
When we imagine development as a formal conversation, a 12-month goal, or a plan that requires significant time and preparation, it's easy to postpone or reduce to another box we check.
We need to rethink and reimagine. Development can happen in micro-moments woven into work we're already doing. Five minutes preparing for a conversation. A question that helps someone see a challenge differently. A 15-minute coffee to explore what's changing and what might be possible.
And the goal doesn't have to be a fixed destination. Someone may know they want greater influence, autonomy, or meaningful contribution without knowing exactly what role or experience will get them there. As they experiment and learn, both the path and their understanding of what they want may evolve.
The shift: Think of development as an adaptive practice of discovery, experimentation, and reflection.
Try this: Discover → Experiment → Reflect → Adjust.
Discover: What matters to this person right now? What do they want to experience, strengthen, or create?
Experiment: What's one small, right-fit opportunity to move toward that?
Reflect: What happened? What did they learn about their capabilities, interests, or aspirations?
Adjust: Given what they know now, what's the next meaningful step?
Suppose an employee wants to influence senior leaders more effectively.
You invite them to present a recommendation at an upcoming leadership meeting. You spend ten minutes together preparing around business priorities and likely questions, then another ten minutes reflecting on what worked, what felt challenging, and what they learned.
That's development.
And perhaps the experience reveals an unexpected strength, a new interest, or a different direction worth exploring.
Formal development conversations still matter. They help us step back, see the bigger picture, and reconnect with what matters. But they're a tool, not the goal.
The Way Forward
Meaningful development is a shared responsibility, but not necessarily an equal one.
Employees can explore their interests, seek feedback, experiment, and take ownership of their growth. Leaders, with greater access to organizational context, expectations, and opportunities, have a responsibility to make that landscape visible and create room to learn.
Neither person needs to arrive with all the answers. Some of the most valuable development conversations help us discover answers we didn't have when we began.
So, consider this: What assumption are you making about someone's development (or your own) that deserves more curiosity?
You don't need to wait for the next formal meeting to begin.
One meaningful question. One small experiment. One thoughtful follow-up.
Then do it again.
Because development isn't an event on the calendar. It's something we build into the way we work.
People can't reach their full potential in systems that limit it. SZH Consulting helps organizations rethink the structures, leadership practices, and ways of working that turn individual potential into collective performance.
Ready to rethink what's possible for your people and organization? Reach out to SZH Consulting to start the conversation.
