Most good people do not leave because the work is hard.
They leave because, over time, they stop feeling seen.
They stop feeling stretched.
And eventually, they stop believing they are growing.
The challenge is that these beliefs slowly creep into the lives of individuals teams and organisations and so are difficult to spot.
You’ll see that though high performers often keep delivering long after they’ve mentally checked out. They still hit targets. They still stay responsive. They still continue to say “yes” in meetings. So from the outside, everything looks fine.
But internally, something has shifted.
Their work has become transactional, their relationships have become operational and their development has quietly disappeared from the conversation.
This is particularly true in organisations operating at pace.
When pressure rises, leaders understandably prioritise delivery, deadlines, hiring plans, restructures, customer demands, transformation programmes and operational execution. Growth conversations become occasional instead of intentional.
Ironically, this is the moment people need developmental leadership the most.
Because high pace without growth eventually feels like survival and survival is not a compelling long-term employee experience.
The organisations that retain exceptional people are rarely the organisations with the lowest pressure. They are usually the organisations where people still feel they are becoming more capable because of the pressure.
That is a very different thing.
Retention Is Often a Development Problem
Many retention strategies focus on symptoms:
And whilst these things matter they are rarely enough on their own.
People can tolerate long hours, ambiguity, complexity and challenge when they feel:
But what people struggle with is stagnation, especially capable people.
The best people want to feel momentum in themselves. They want evidence they are learning, evolving, expanding their thinking and growing their capability. Without that, work starts to feel psychologically flat, even when externally very successful.
This is why developmental leadership matters so much in modern organisations. As complexity increases, leaders cannot simply manage performance. They have to create environments where people continue to grow inside the work itself.
The good news is that this does not always require large programmes, expensive interventions or endless process.
Often, it starts with a better conversation.
The 20-Minute Monthly Growth Check
One of the simplest habits we encourage leaders to build for themselves and their teams is a monthly growth check or as @Dr Alan Watkins would call it ‘a meeting with yourself’.
It takes no more than 20 minutes per person.
It’s not a performance review, or a wellbeing tick-box or a status update.
It’s a genuine developmental conversation.
The purpose is simple: To help people feel seen, stretched and supported before disengagement quietly sets in.
Its designed so that its structure is intentionally lightweight so it can scale across teams without becoming another administrative burden and something that can be jotted down in a notebook.
The Five Questions
Here are the five questions you need to ask yourself or your team in the monthly growth check session.
1. What has energised you most this month?
This question reveals more than motivation. It helps leaders understand where someone feels alive, engaged and connected to meaningful contribution.
Because energy is data.
So when people consistently lose energy in their work, performance issues often follow later.
2. What has frustrated or drained you?
Most blockers are tolerated silently for too long.
People often adapt around friction rather than raise it. Over time, that friction compounds into exhaustion, resentment or disengagement.
The goal here is not to remove all challenge. Challenge is necessary for growth.
The goal is to identify unnecessary friction that is slowing capability, confidence or momentum.
3. Where do you feel you are growing right now?
This is one of the most important questions a leader can ask, themselves or the people they are supporting. If someone struggles to answer it consistently, that should concern us.
Growth is deeply tied to retention. People need to feel movement in themselves.
Especially ambitious people.
4. What capability do you want to strengthen next?
This shifts the conversation from performance management to future development.
It also changes the leader’s role. Instead of simply evaluating people, leaders start helping people evolve. Which creates a very different relationship dynamic.
5. What support would make the biggest difference right now?
Often the answer is surprisingly practical and are somewhat aligned to their values:
Small changes can unlock disproportionate gains in engagement and effectiveness.
Agree One Stretch. Remove One Blocker.
The conversation should end with two simple commitments:
That’s it.
No complicated framework.
No six-page form.
Just a consistent developmental rhythm.
Because leadership is often less about dramatic interventions and more about the quality of repeated conversations over time.
Why We See This Working
Many managers unintentionally only speak to people when:
Subsequently conversations around development disappears into the background.
But when leaders create regular space for developmental conversations, several things happen simultaneously:
People feel:
Managers also become better at spotting burnout, stagnation and disengagement early, before they become retention issues.
Importantly, this approach also scales cultural.
Because when senior leaders model developmental conversations consistently, line managers start doing the same. Over time, growth becomes embedded in the operating rhythm of the organisation rather than isolated to HR initiatives.0
Which matters more and more as modern leadership increasingly requires more than operational competence alone.
As organisations become more complex, leaders must help people expand their ability to handle ambiguity, challenge, change and growth. Development is no longer a “nice to have.” It is part of organisational adaptability itself.
A Final Thought
People do not expect work to be easy and really talented people actually want challenge.
What they need is evidence that the challenge is helping them become better.
Better thinkers, better leaders, better collaborators and more capable humans.
When people stop experiencing growth, they start questioning whether staying still is costing them too much.
And by the time they resign, the disengagement often started months earlier and probably couldve been prevented.
Sometimes the difference between retaining someone exceptional and losing them is not a promotion or a pay rise.
Sometimes it is simply a leader making time available each month and asking better questions.
We’re curious:
As mentioned in this article to truly develop you need to be stretched and developed by yourself and by those around you which high quality conversation and questions to make you reflect and develop.
What are the best questions you’ve seen leaders ask to help people feel genuinely supported and developed at work?