I’ve Watched Over 150 Careers Grow. Here’s What I Got Wrong About Developing Talent

Early in my career, I thought being a supportive manager meant staying highly involved in daily operations and talent development. I was always available to step in as soon as someone got stuck. I personally supported motivation in the office and watched performance improve, which reassured me that this hands-on approach was working.

What took me longer to understand was that good performance and growth were not the same thing. It is easy for someone to perform well when a manager consistently works with them to avoid mistakes. But growth is about helping them take ownership of their decisions and solve problems independently.

Sometimes, what looks like support can create dependency.

Over nearly a decade of building companies, I’ve watched more than 150 people develop their careers. Some became leaders or stronger specialists. Others discovered that the career path they had chosen wasn’t actually right for them. All of this is growth.

These experiences continued to evolve my definition of talent development. Now I know the goal isn’t just to improve today’s performance, but to help people grow their capability for tomorrow’s performance. Ultimately, the goal is to empower them to continue without you.

Approval can look a lot like motivation

Some employees I’ve managed worked incredibly hard for my approval. They wanted to hear that they had done a good job, and that encouragement noticeably affected their motivation. I felt as if I was succeeding as a manager.

The problem, however, is that the leader has become part of the employee’s motivation system.

That can produce strong short-term performance, but it requires enormous personal energy from the leader. More importantly, the employee builds the strongest connection with the leader’s approval. Eventually, the work itself, the responsibility that comes with it, and the person’s own career ambitions need to become stronger motivators than hearing “well done” from the founder.

The same applies to every skill. For example, helping someone with problem-solving may solve today’s problem faster. It doesn’t necessarily prepare them for tomorrow’s problems.

The real challenge starts when you stop managing everyone

As Prodigi grew to more than 50 employees, I could no longer be closely involved in each person’s development.

The vision had to change from “How do I develop this employee?” to “How do we build a company that develops people even when I am not involved directly?”

If I develop five people myself, I can influence five careers, but if I develop a manager who knows how to grow people, that manager can develop an entire team.

That changed where we invested our energy. Building a growth-oriented company requires growth-minded managers who genuinely want to develop other people. That meant another lesson: the best specialist isn’t necessarily the right person to become a manager.

In the past, I have promoted an excellent specialist into management and learned an expensive lesson. You can lose a great specialist without gaining a great manager. Management is a different profession entirely. Being excellent at paid advertising, finance, or design doesn’t automatically mean someone will be good at developing people, much less giving difficult feedback, delegating, or being accountable for a team’s results.

Companies therefore need more than one definition of growth. A great specialist should be able to earn more, influence bigger decisions, and take greater responsibility without being forced into management.

Career growth doesn’t always mean moving upward

I have a different idea of what career growth means. When I talk about 150+ careers growing, I’m not talking about 150 promotions. Traditional views of development include promotion and greater responsibility. Sometimes it means having difficult feedback conversations. But it can also mean helping someone recognize that the career they chose doesn’t match their strengths.

A better question than “How do we move this person to the next level?” is “Where could this person become excellent?”, especially when people choose careers because an industry is fashionable or associated with high salaries. Someone can spend years trying to become better at work that doesn’t fit their strongest potential. Often, development and career growth include helping them understand that opportunities exist elsewhere.

Helping someone move closer to the right work can be far more valuable than helping them climb another step in the wrong direction.

Real growth is often inconvenient for the company

When a great employee is ready to advance to something bigger, it is exciting for the person, but it can cause inconvenience for the company. The obvious solution is to find a strong replacement and shift responsibilities; however, this takes time. The employee may also perform worse at first while learning the new role. A system that was working well suddenly needs to change.

Originally, I would keep good people in positions longer than I should have because it was easier for the company. That’s the uncomfortable tension in talent development. Companies say they want people to grow, but real growth often creates short-term discomfort. One of my favorite examples is an employee who joined Prodigi as a junior accountant. Over seven years, she continued taking on greater responsibilities and developing far beyond the position we originally hired her for. Today, she is a top manager in one of our retail businesses. Her first job with us didn’t have to define the limits of her career.

Sometimes the next opportunity for a talented person doesn’t exist yet. Leadership can mean recognizing where someone’s abilities could take them and being willing to create that opportunity, even when doing so makes the current system less convenient. Because if people’s careers can grow only when their growth fits neatly into your organizational chart, eventually your best people may have to grow somewhere else.

What I look for now

Today, seeing potential in someone raises three questions:

• What could this person realistically become excellent at?
• What opportunity would stretch them beyond what they can already do?
• Can they eventually succeed without depending on their current manager or me?

I no longer think the best measure of talent development is how many people were promoted, or even how well they perform today. The better measure is what has become possible for them that wasn’t possible before. As you are looking at an employee’s advancement, ask yourself:

• Can they solve harder problems?
• Take greater responsibility?
• Become exceptional without becoming a manager?
• Develop other people?

Developing people builds a stronger capability inside the company, and that capability determines how far the company can ultimately grow. How much growth can your company handle if your people can’t grow with it?