Work, Up Close: What People Actually Need to Grow at Work

Work, Up Close. Real perspectives on the experience of work. A Dear Team series.

Issue 02

We speak to Lynn Graja, ICF-trained coach, on the conditions that allow people to genuinely develop at work and what it takes to build them.

Most leaders genuinely want their people to grow. They say it in interviews, write it into values, budget for training. And then somewhere between the intention and the reality, it doesn't quite land.

The research is consistent: growth is one of the strongest drivers of whether people feel engaged at work. But it’s also one of the least examined. Most organisations invest in development without ever stopping to ask what growth actually means to the people experiencing it.

Lynn Graja is an ICF-trained coach (the International Coaching Federation sets the global standard for professional coaching practice) who works with people at exactly that level of honesty. In this issue of Work, Up Close, we asked her what growth at work actually requires, and what changes when organisations start taking that question seriously.

Dear Team (DT): What role does personal and professional growth play in how people experience their work?

Lynn Graja (LG): Growth is one of those things that changes how work feels. When people are learning, stretching, and getting better at something that matters to them, work shifts from “just getting through the day” to something with momentum and meaning. It’s not always about promotions - often it’s simply progress: stronger skills, more confidence, clearer direction, better relationships, or feeling like you’re not stuck.

Growth is one of the most consistent predictors of engagement we have, and the connection runs deeper than job satisfaction. It changes how people feel about themselves. What’s more, a recent US survey by TalentLMS showed that 80% of executives agree that employees’ growth mindset directly contributes to revenue growth.

So for me, growth isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s one of the clearest levers we have for energy, resilience, and whether people experience work as hopeful or heavy.  When people experience growth at work, they don’t just like their jobs more, they feel better about their lives overall.

DT: Why do some workplaces support learning and development more effectively than others?

LG: Honestly? The difference is usually less about budget and more about design and leadership habits. The workplaces that do this well tend to have three things going for them:

The first is managers who actually have the space and capability to develop their people. There's a lot of research on how much managers matter here, but what often gets missed is that loading managers up with more training programmes doesn't automatically help. What makes the real difference is whether the role itself is manageable enough for them to actually show up as a developer of people, not just a task-completer.

The second is learning that's connected to real work and real career pathways. The data on this is pretty clear: when people have a sense of where they're heading, they engage with learning at a completely different level. A lot of my coaching work starts with helping someone get clear on what they actually want, because without that clarity, even the best learning opportunities tend to slide down the to-do list.

The third is a culture where learning feels safe and normal. Everything ties back to culture, ultimately. If mistakes get punished, feedback is rare, and workload is relentless, "learning and development" becomes a box-ticking exercise. But when leaders are visibly curious themselves and make space to try things imperfectly, learning stops being something that happens in a training room and starts being part of how work actually gets done.

DT: In your coaching work, what helps people become more open to growth and change?

LG: The biggest unlock, in my experience, is the combination of psychological safety and agency; people open up to growth when they don’t feel judged, and when they feel like they have choices. That’s why I’m very intentional about creating a space that feels supportive, non-judgmental, and real, and blending self-discovery with a goal-oriented approach so the insight actually turns into progress.

From a coaching standpoint, openness to growth tends to increase when people can answer three questions: What do I actually want? (not what I should want), What’s getting in the way? (patterns, assumptions, fear, skills gaps, environment), and What’s one small experiment I’m willing to try? (safe, practical, measurable).

In an organisational context, it helps when coaching is seen as a normal, valued way of working, not a remedial thing. The organisations where I've seen the most sustained shift are the ones where curiosity is modelled from the top, and where reflection and honest conversation become part of the everyday, not a separate programme.

DT: How can leaders create environments where people feel supported to develop?

LG: I think leaders sometimes overcomplicate this. You don’t need a fancy programme to start. You need consistent behaviour, and a few of them make the biggest difference.

The first is just making development part of normal conversation. Not a formal annual review, not a separate initiative - regular check-ins where growth is on the agenda alongside the day-to-day work. That's how development stops being something the organisation does once a year and starts becoming a habit.

The second is coaching for confidence, not just task completion. There's a meaningful difference between helping someone get something done and helping someone grow their belief that they can. The compounding effect of the latter is significant, and it's something I work on a lot with my clients.

The third is creating space to actually practice, not just consume content. So often it's "here's the tool, good luck." The leaders who do this well build in time to try things, reflect, get feedback, and experiment somewhere relatively safe. That's where the learning actually sticks.

And underpinning all of it is protecting the basics. Workload, clarity, resources. Development simply doesn't land when people are drowning. If the job itself is unmanageable, no amount of good intention from a leader will move the needle. Getting that right turns out to be a far more powerful lever than most organisations realise.

DT: What advice would you give organisations that want to invest more meaningfully in their people?

LG: If I had to sum it up: invest in the everyday conditions that make growth possible, not just the shiny stuff.

Practically, that starts with managers, but not just by developing them in isolation. The system around them has to support what you're asking them to do. If managers are buried in administrative work and unclear on their own priorities, asking them to also be great developers of people is setting them up to fail. Clearing that path turns out to be a more powerful lever than most organisations expect.

From there, tie learning to something real. Career direction, actual work challenges, goals the person genuinely cares about. When people can see how their development connects to where they want to go, their engagement with it shifts completely. The research is consistent on this, and it's also consistent with what I see in practice.

The third thing I'd say is to treat learning as a retention strategy, because that's what it is. Organisations often think about development as a cost, when the evidence points the other way: people stay longer where they feel they're growing. That reframe alone can change how seriously it gets resourced.

And finally, I see coaching as a crucial tool supporting major organisational priorities. But the key here is to not stop at a coaching programme, and focus on building a coaching culture. A programme is finite in nature and often forgotten about when done in isolation. A culture is what is lived at work everyday. The conversations with leaders, the space they create, the way they respond when someone struggles. That's the deeper investment, and in my view, the smartest one. People can tell when development is a tick-box. The organisations that do it well create real momentum through honest conversations, practical support, and leaders who visibly role-model learning themselves.

The Takeaway

One of the things Lynn keeps coming back to is clarity. Not as a nice-to-have, but as the prerequisite for everything else. When people know what they want and feel comfortable saying it, growth becomes something they're actively part of shaping rather than something that happens to them.

That changes what the leader's job actually is. Less facilitator of a development plan, more the person who creates the conditions for an honest conversation to happen in the first place. And those conditions are more straightforward than most organisations make them: regular check-ins where growth is genuinely on the agenda, enough workload breathing room for development to actually land, and the willingness to coach for confidence rather than just task completion.

What Lynn describes is not a programme. It is a habit - the discipline of asking the question, taking the answer seriously, and building even a rough plan around it. When leaders do that consistently, something shifts. People engage with their development differently. They tend to stay longer, contribute more meaningfully, and become the kind of people who make a real difference to how the business performs.

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Work, Up Close is a series from Dear Team featuring conversations with diverse voices across our community. Through these interviews, we explore different perspectives on employee experience - from belonging and leadership to wellbeing and beyond - and what workplaces can learn from them.

Interested in being part of the series? We'd love to hear from you - hello@dearteam.co.nz