Managers’ Role in Career Development: What Matters Most

Managers’ Role in Career Development Matters
Leaders make or break employee growth.  Effective career development has little to do with competency models, learning frameworks, or succession planning charts. It happens from the daily behavior of managers. While organizations often invest heavily in career development training programs, research consistently shows that people’s direct managers have the most influence on whether employees thrive or disengage. Managers who know how to lead, manage, and coach are better at creating career growth opportunities for their teams.

Managers’ Role in Career Development: Managers Are the Primary Career Translators

Good managers function as career guides that help employees understand which skills matter, how performance is evaluated, and what development actually looks like in practice. Without this proactive support, organizational culture assessment feedback tells us that career development feels abstract, political, and arbitrary to most employees.

Employee engagement research has long shown that three career development questions have the highest correlation to engaging and retaining top talent:

1. I see professional growth and career development opportunities for myself in this organization.
2. This job is in alignment with my career goals.
3. I find my job interesting and challenging.

Employees want managers who care about and support their growth and development. That requires a career development mindset combined with honest and consistent career conversations.

Coaching, Not Managing, Drives Growth
Career development accelerates when managers move beyond task supervision and into performance and growth conversations. Effective managers:

• Ask thoughtful questions.
• Give direct feedback.
• Challenge employees to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

Research by London and Smither demonstrates that coaching-oriented managers improve employee learning agility and adaptability, both of which are essential in non-linear career paths. Importantly, coaching is not a quarterly ritual. It is embedded in everyday work — after meetings, following setbacks, and during moments of success.

Exposure and Opportunity Matter More Than Training
While customized training programs play a role in career growth, managers control something far more powerful: the ability to provide meaningful opportunities that accelerate learning and career trajectories such as:

• Stretch assignments.
• Cross-functional projects.
• Visibility with senior leaders.

That is why career development is a leadership accountability issue. When managers hoard talent or avoid difficult backfills, they quietly sabotage both individual growth and enterprise capability. Management development studies on internal mobility consistently show that organizations with strong managerial sponsorship outperform peers on retention and bench strength.

Career Growth Requires Enough Psychological Safety
Career growth requires some risk for both the employee and their manager — trying new roles, developing new skills, and learning from mistakes. To develop employees, leaders must ensure that it is worthwhile to take those risks. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological team safety makes this clear: people grow faster in environments where mistakes are treated as learning, not liability.

Managers who normalize experimentation, debrief failures constructively, and reward learning behaviors create conditions where development matters.

Managers Need Development Too
Sadly, people manager assessment data confirms that most managers are not taught how to develop others. Often promoted to manager for technical competence, not people leadership, few know how to be effective career stewards. Organizations that are serious about career development need to define and invest in manager capabilities required — coaching skills, career conversations, and talent decision-making.

The Bottom Line
Effective career development is a company-wide managerial discipline that must be woven into the fabric of how work gets done. Managers should feel responsible for their team’s career clarity, growth, and advancement. Are your managers equipped and held accountable for truly developing top talent?

To learn more about a managers’ role in career development, download Why Organizations and Managers Must Reassess Career Development

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.