Ask anyone about the career conversations they’ve sat through and you’ll usually hear two stories: what they wanted, and what they got.

What they want rarely varies. They want to feel seen and valued. They want room to be honest and the sense that someone is stretching them. Most of all, they want to walk out with a plan. Nobody asks for a completed form.

What they get is often something else. When we put the question to a group of leaders, they described conversations that felt one-sided and decided in advance, more post-mortem than plan. One said the bad ones sound like a list of requests that leaves you feeling you’ve never done enough. Another described a one-to-five scoring sheet. Tiffany Gaskell, CEO of Performance Consultants, remembers being handed an A4 sheet early in her banking career. It was already filled in, with a line at the bottom to sign that she’d seen it.

That gap costs organizations people. Gallup’s engagement research finds that only around a third of employees strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development. And as Tiffany puts it, people leave their managers.

Why career conversations go wrong

Most people leaders are technically strong and care about their teams. What many have never been shown is how to open a conversation about someone’s future when they can’t promise an outcome. So they keep it narrow, point at the process and book the next cycle. The team member leaves no clearer than they arrived, and quietly starts looking elsewhere.

Four traps come up again and again.

The form does the talking

When there’s a form to complete, it can crowd out the real conversation. Some managers worry about where an open conversation might go, so they hold on to the process as a safety net. Tiffany’s view is that the form should be the output of the conversation. It can’t stand in for one.

Nobody blocks out the time

A senior leader who has rolled out GROW coaching to managers told us the biggest obstacle is often the calendar. Leaders underestimate how long it takes to develop someone, and the diary ends up running them.

GROW gets treated as a straight line

Real conversations loop back, and working one through properly can take days. Leaders who march through Goal, Reality, Options and Will in one sitting usually have a worse conversation than those who follow the person in front of them.

We fill the silence

One leader shared a memory aid worth taping to the edge of your screen: WAIT, short for “Why am I talking?” The pause is where the other person does their thinking.

The same career conversation, run two ways

It’s easier to see the difference than to describe it. In a live demo during our Difficult Conversations fireside chat series, Tiffany ran the same career conversation twice with Rosalind,  playing a team member called Harper. Neither version was scripted.

The scenario: Harper has been in the same role for three years. Nine months ago she applied for a step up, didn’t get it and was told there would be a next time. Since then she has done the job well, and waited.

Version one: the way it usually goes

Tiffany came in rushed, with another meeting at the bottom of the hour. She listed Harper’s wins, explained that the promotion was down to budget timing and told her to keep doing what she was doing. She added a development point about delegating and checked Harper was happy with an “exceeds expectations” rating. Every question was closed. When Harper tried to bring up a recent project, it got brushed aside.

Rosalind’s reaction was immediate. It felt, she said, as though she didn’t really exist. Tiffany was candid about her side too. She’d been thinking about her next meeting, she’d ticked the boxes and she hadn’t wanted to hear anything that would slow the agenda down.

Version two: the way it could go

This time Tiffany opened by asking what Harper wanted from the conversation, and Harper set the goal herself. Tiffany named the reality plainly: a promotion wasn’t possible right now, and that was no reflection on Harper. Then she asked what Harper was thinking as she heard that. From there they explored how Harper could grow into the role before it became official.

Harper came up with two things to work on. She wanted more exposure to the financials, starting with being copied on the weekly financial report. She also wanted leadership training, since the role involves leading people. Formal training wasn’t on offer, so Tiffany suggested another route and checked how it landed: a colleague who leads well could mentor her, stretching Harper while she waited. Harper said she’d love that.

The close was simple. Tiffany asked what Harper was taking away and what she’d do next. Harper left with two focus areas, agreed follow-ups on both sides and a plan to write up the meeting herself. Rosalind said she felt invigorated. She had enough ownership that she wanted to run out of the room and start writing it all down.

What changed between the two conversations

The audience watching the demo put it better than any summary could. One said Harper felt heard even though she still didn’t get the promotion. Another said the manager became a facilitator of the path Harper wanted for herself. Someone else pointed to the open questions that let Harper say what she actually thought.

“The same circumstances but a completely different outcome.” – Tiffany Gaskell, CEO, Performance Consultants

What stands out is how little had to change. Harper still had no vacancy. The second conversation didn’t need one, or a budget, or sign-off from HR.

What changed was who owned the goal. Once Harper set it, everything after belonged to her. One question did a lot of the work too: “What else?” The option nobody says out loud is usually the fourth or fifth, and the only way to reach it is to keep asking.

Tiffany often describes a coaching leadership style as linking arms and walking down a path side by side. That’s what the second version looked like. When Harper raised something, they explored it together instead of moving on to the next agenda item.

Why this is a culture issue

The first version was deliberately modelled on a dependent culture, where people wait to be told what to do. On the Performance Curve, that’s the second-lowest stage. Most organizations sit there by default, simply because nobody has taught their leaders to work differently.

So when career conversations go badly across a whole organization, look first at whether anyone has shown leaders how to have them.

How to use GROW in your next career conversation

The four moves from the second conversation work in any career conversation, whether or not a promotion is on offer.

1. Goal: hand over the wheel. Ask straight away what they want from the conversation
2. Reality: name the constraint plainly. Separate what’s fixed from what can still move, without closing down possibility
3. Options: keep asking “What else?” until you reach stretch work, exposure, mentoring and new experience
4. Will: finish with a next step that’s specific, time-bound and theirs

Use these as a guide you can loop around in. A good career conversation often doubles back, and it may take more than one meeting to reach Will.

Download the one-page guide

We’ve turned these four moves into a one-page leader’s guide, How to have better Career Conversations with GROW. It includes questions to ask, a reminder to hold the pause and a short breakthrough check to run through afterwards.

Download the career conversations guide