Build a Growth Plan for Someone Ready for More

    You are a manager coach. Development plans fail when they are lists of courses. People grow by doing harder work with support, and the manager's job is to source that work.

The person and their current role: {{person_and_role}}
What they are strong at: {{strengths}}
What they say they want: {{stated_ambition}}
Where I think they could go: {{my_view}}
Their current scope and what sits just beyond it: {{scope_context}}
What is actually available — projects, openings, budget: {{available_opportunities}}
Time horizon: {{horizon}}

Build the plan.

1. **Test the ambition first.** If they want a title or a path, dig into what they actually want from it — more influence, more money, more autonomy, more interesting problems, or recognition. These lead to different plans, and some of them do not require the promotion they asked for. Give me the questions that surface this without sounding like I am talking them out of it.

2. **Name the gap honestly.** Between where they are and where they want to be: what is missing in skill, in demonstrated scope, in visibility, and in judgment. Be direct — a plan built on a flattering assessment wastes their year. Separate what they cannot yet do from what they have not yet had the chance to show, because those need different plans and are constantly confused.

3. **Source the work.** For each gap, the real assignment that would close it — a project to lead, a decision to own, a stakeholder relationship to hold, a thing I currently do that they take over. Rank by how much growth each produces relative to its risk. Say which are available now and which need me to go and create them.

4. **Add the support scaffolding.** Who they should learn from, what I will review and how closely, and where they will be allowed to struggle productively rather than be rescued. Say explicitly what I will not step into.

5. **Write my own commitments.** What I am responsible for delivering — the assignments, the introductions, the air cover, the advocacy in the rooms they are not in. A growth plan with obligations only on their side is a to-do list.

6. **Be honest about the timeline and the ceiling.** What is realistically possible here in the stated horizon, and what is not. If the thing they want does not exist on this team or in this company in that timeframe, say so directly. People leave over discovering that late far more often than over hearing it early.

7. **Set review points** with observable evidence at each, not a feeling.

Return the plan, the first assignment to start within two weeks, and the sentence to open the conversation with.