Why being valued at work is not the same as being supported to grow.Imagine a development conversation that goes very well. At least, according to the person on the other side of the desk. Your manager appreciates your commitment. The team depends on you. You have kept a difficult project moving, stepped into gaps and taken on responsibilities that were never quite yours to begin with. There is no question about your contribution.
Then you raise your next step. “Let’s get through this busy period first. We really need you where you are.” You understand. Of course you understand. You know the deadlines, the staffing gaps and the consequences of leaving things unfinished, so you agree to revisit the conversation later.
You leave with another expression of appreciation and the same calendar full of other people’s priorities. Apparently, your development also needs to wait until the company has a quiet week. A promising date, if anyone can locate it.
This is an illustrative scene, not a particular client’s story. But it captures a distinction that matters: being valued in your current role is not the same as being supported to grow beyond it.
When praise and progress part ways
There is nothing suspicious about being appreciated. Good work deserves recognition, and most of us would rather work in an organisation where people notice our contribution than in one where they do not. The problem begins when recognition becomes a substitute for development.
“You are doing a great job.” “We really value what you bring.” “The team relies on you.” All of those things may be completely true. But they still describe your value to the organisation today. They do not necessarily tell you what the organisation is prepared to make possible next.
That is where I would listen more carefully.
Development does not always mean an immediate promotion. Sometimes there genuinely is no suitable role available. Budgets change, organisations restructure, businesses go through difficult periods and timing matters. A realistic career conversation has to allow for all of that.
But development should still leave some evidence behind. There might be clearer criteria for the next level, a meaningful assignment, access to a new decision-making arena, a sponsor who is prepared to advocate for you, a change in mandate or a date when a concrete decision will be reviewed.
Praise is about the contribution you already make. Development becomes visible in what happens because of it.
What, exactly, are you being valued for?
After almost 30 years in the sporting-goods and apparel industry, including 23 years at adidas, I have become interested in a very practical question: what does a role actually allow a capable person to do?
My background includes strategy, programmes and the digitalisation of product creation. Those responsibilities taught me to pay attention not only to capability, but also to stakeholders, resources, mandate and decision-making. A capable person and a workable role are not the same thing.
Consider the colleague who repeatedly rescues cross-functional projects. She may be excellent at navigating ambiguity, making difficult trade-offs and getting people with competing interests to move towards a decision. Those are substantial capabilities. Yet what the organisation remembers may eventually become much simpler: she always steps in when things get difficult.
That reputation is not negative. Quite the opposite. It can make someone highly trusted and highly valued. But organisations, like people, use shorthand. Once someone has become known as the reliable operator, the great supporter or the person who can always fix things, that story can remain surprisingly stable even while her capability and ambition continue to grow.
Performance creates evidence. It does not automatically update the story others hold about your future potential.
There is also a more practical issue. Necessary work and developmental work are not always the same thing. Research by Linda Babcock and colleagues found that women were more likely than men to volunteer for, be asked to undertake and accept tasks with low promotability. The important point is not that these tasks are unimportant. Organisations need them. The question is whether repeatedly doing necessary work also creates the experience, visibility and sponsorship required for the next step.
Responsibility can grow in a similar way while authority stays surprisingly still. When taking on more becomes the default, you may become accountable for getting something delivered without being able to set priorities, secure resources or resolve conflicting demands. You make up the difference with relationships, persuasion, experience and, very often, extra effort. The result arrives, while the gap in the role remains.
The career cost is therefore not always one missed promotion. It can be less time for strategic work, limited exposure to decision-makers, weaker bargaining power or a reputation that keeps bringing you more of what you have already proved you can do.
Your manager may understand your value perfectly well and still make no practical provision for your development.
So the useful question is not simply whether people appreciate you. It is what their appreciation makes possible for you.
Turn appreciation into a development conversation
This is also where your own agency matters. An organisation cannot respond to an ambition it does not know about, and “I’m open to opportunities” leaves considerable room for interpretation. Your idea of the right next step may be very different from your manager’s.
Being more specific does not mean marching into the next development conversation with a list of demands and a laminated five-year plan. Careers rarely behave quite that politely. It means making enough of your intention visible that a real conversation can take place.
If you are being given an assignment as a development opportunity, ask what it is intended to develop. Which capability is this meant to demonstrate? Who will assess it? What would “ready” actually mean? What would become possible if you demonstrate it? When will you review the next step?
If you want a particular area of responsibility, say so. “I would like to take responsibility for this area, and I would like us to discuss what a credible route towards that could look like” gives the conversation much more direction than “I’d like to develop further.”
And where additional responsibility is part of the conversation, it is reasonable to discuss what comes with it: what you can decide, what support is available, what shifts in your existing workload and who resolves conflicts that sit outside your authority.
These are not magic words. A clear question does not manufacture an opportunity that does not exist, and a well-prepared conversation does not guarantee a yes. What specificity does is make the real decision easier to see.
A vague development conversation can end with everyone agreeing that you are valuable and ambitious. A concrete one creates something that can actually be answered: yes, no, not yet, or here is a credible alternative.
A development conversation should leave a little more behind than a pleasant feeling.
What happens next matters
The response to a clear request gives you information about the arrangement, not a final verdict on your worth.
A manager may genuinely be unable to offer a promotion now and still be able to create movement. She might secure a strategic assignment, introduce you to a relevant sponsor, clarify the criteria for the next level, redistribute part of your workload or agree a review point with a real date attached to it. A genuine constraint accompanied by a concrete alternative is very different from another reassuring conversation that changes nothing.
This is one reason I would be cautious about turning every stalled career discussion into a lesson about confidence or communication. Sometimes a clearer conversation helps enormously. But clarity alone cannot create budget, mandate, sponsorship or a role.
Both sides of the relationship matter. You can make your ambition clearer, ask better questions and build relationships beyond one manager. The organisation still has to decide what it is willing and able to support.
If every conversation ends in praise and postponement, the problem may no longer be how you are asking.
That does not automatically mean you should leave. Career decisions have financial, professional and personal consequences. Sometimes the right response is to build broader support. Sometimes it is to test whether another role inside the organisation offers more room. Sometimes it is simply to stop treating repeated vagueness as if it were a development plan.
The absence of movement is information too.
You do not need to become less reliable, less generous or less committed to doing good work. Work depends on reciprocity, care and people occasionally doing more than their job description requires. I would be rather concerned about a leadership philosophy that required us all to become less helpful in the name of career strategy.
But there is a difference between a contribution you choose to make and an arrangement that keeps expanding while your own future remains vague.
Being needed can feel reassuring. It tells you that your work matters and that people trust you. Just make sure that being needed is not the only future the organisation can imagine for you.
Appreciation can be completely genuine. So can organisational constraints. And sometimes the next role really is not available yet. But development should leave evidence: a clearer criterion, a new opportunity, someone prepared to back you, a change in responsibility or authority, a decision point. Something that makes the future less vague than it was before the conversation.
You can appreciate being needed and still ask for more than another reason to stay exactly where you are.
Ready to make your next step more concrete?
If you are valued in your current role but no longer sure whether it still has room for where you want to go next, CREATE is my 1:1 career coaching programme for turning that ambiguity into a clearer direction and a credible next move. Explore CREATE →
Source
Babcock, L., Recalde, M. P., Vesterlund, L., & Weingart, L. (2017). Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability. American Economic Review, 107(3), 714–747. View source
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