How to Respond When a Manager Says I Do Not Need to Develop

You probably have at least one of them. Twenty years in, arms folded, treating every development conversation like a personal insult. "I've been doing this job since before you were in management," the posture says. "What could you possibly teach me?"

The calendar invites get declined. The conversations get deflected.

It's like watching someone proudly polish their typewriter in a room full of computers.

They're not merely resistant to growth, they're fortified against it. Each year of experience has become another brick in the wall between them and development. Their expertise in how things "used to be done" has become both their shield against change and their excuse to avoid discussing it.

If years of experience were enough, every veteran employee would be leading innovation.

While they're perfecting their typewriter skills and dodging development meetings, the world has moved to smartphones. Their experience, once valuable, is becoming as relevant as a steam engine repair certification.

They don't see themselves as falling behind. They see themselves as maintaining standards, holding the line, keeping things "proper." Each avoided development conversation is, in their minds, a badge of honour — proof they don't need what others do.

Here's how to break through both the experience barrier and the avoidance shield:

Use their expertise as a bridge rather than fighting it. "How has this industry changed since you started?" "What solutions work differently now than when you began?" "What problems do you solve differently today?"

You're not challenging their expertise or their busy schedule. You're inviting them to examine change they've already witnessed and mastered.

Then shift to current reality: "What changes are you noticing now?" "How are newer team members approaching these challenges?" "What client requests are different from five years ago?"

Help them see that development is an evolution of their experience, not a threat to it.

Then bridge to future value: "How could your experience help us work through these changes?" "What wisdom could you bring to these new approaches?" "How could your knowledge make these new solutions even better?"

Their experience isn't the problem. Their reluctance to apply it to new challenges is. Their busy schedule isn't the issue. Their avoidance of growth is.

They're not being asked to abandon their knowledge, they're being invited to evolve it. They're not being asked to deny their experience, they're being invited to expand it.

Right now, they're like a library full of valuable books, written in a language fewer people speak each year, with a librarian too proud to discuss translation and too busy reorganising shelves to consider adaptation.

Your job isn't to clear out the library or force them to attend development meetings. It's to help translate those insights into a language the future can understand, to make growth feel like an extension of their experience rather than a rejection of it.

The conversation is about making their experience relevant again, before they become another cautionary tale of someone so busy defending their past and avoiding their future that they missed their present entirely.

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[About the Author: Jimmy Burroughes transforms overwhelmed managers into strategic leaders. Through his Amplify Leadership program, he helps leaders reclaim their time and maximize their impact.]

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.