Your development is not your manager’s responsibility

Dear employees: you own your career development. Your manager should support and coach your development, not drive it. You don’t get to play the victim because your manager isn’t telling you exactly where you should take your own career. And if you want to own it but you don’t know what you want out of your career, ask your manager to help you figure that out.

Dear managers: stop feeling guilty if you have a direct report who refuses to own their own development. The measure of a manager is not their people’s devotion to professional development. Make sure they know (and I mean really know) that you want to support them, and let it go. It’s not your job to force them to grow.