Development support

Development support measures the intensity of support your manager provides while you learn a topic you only partly master: hand you the topic and let you learn through experience, or provide explanations, guidance and feedback, then gradually widen your latitude. Research on learning shows what this dosage changes: on a new topic, guidance that lightens the mental load helps build the foundations, and that same guidance loses its value, and can even get in the way, once the topic is mastered [1]. Among trade apprentices, the advantage of worked examples disappeared and then reversed with experience [2]. The axis does not measure your manager's teaching ability; it measures how much support they put in place at the start.

The axis is particularly visible in a new role, skill development, a new responsibility or learning a tool or method. It is also felt over time: the support that suits the start of learning becomes a hindrance once the topic is mastered [1][2], and a manager towards the high end who does not reduce guidance as you progress creates a gap that did not exist at the outset. What is at stake is therefore not only the level of support but how it evolves: widening latitude as you progress is part of what the high pole of the axis describes. Scientific scope: the cited studies examine workplace behaviours, conditions or outcomes. They do not directly validate this preference scale or an individual PIMPmyBOSS compatibility score.

The score describes a situated preference or a perceived behaviour. It is neither a personality diagnosis, a norm nor a verdict on professional quality.