Question 1

What is a stretch assignment, and should you take one?

Accepted Answer

A piece of work deliberately **beyond your current demonstrated capability**, given as a development opportunity — and the evidence that it is how people actually develop is stronger than the evidence for most formal training.

**The underlying model.** The frequently cited **70-20-10** framing holds that development comes largely from challenging experience, partly from relationships and feedback, and only a small proportion from formal training. The specific proportions are not well evidenced and are best treated as a rough heuristic — but **the direction is well supported**: people develop by doing difficult things with support, not by attending courses.

**What makes an assignment genuinely developmental:** unfamiliar responsibilities; a higher stake than usual; working across boundaries with people you do not normally deal with; ambiguity, with no established method; and **visibility**, so the work is seen by people who make decisions about you.

**Why they matter for progression.** Promotion decisions rest on **evidence of having operated at the next level**, and you cannot produce that evidence without having been given the chance. This creates a circularity that stretch assignments break.

**The equity problem, which is well documented.** Research on work allocation has repeatedly found that **high-visibility, career-advancing work is distributed unevenly**, while **non-promotable tasks** — organising, note-taking, committee administration, pastoral support — fall disproportionately on women and on under-represented groups. Because these tasks are valued in the moment and not at promotion, the effect compounds over a career.

Worse, people who decline such tasks are judged more harshly for declining than others are, which makes refusal costly.

**What to consider before accepting:**

**Is there support?** A stretch without sponsorship, resources or access is a set-up rather than an opportunity.

**What happens if it goes badly?** Development requires permission to fail, and if failure would be career-limiting it is not a development assignment.

**Is it visible**, or invisible work labelled as development?

**What are you giving up**, since capacity is finite.

**Is it additional or instead of?** Stretch work added to a full workload is not an opportunity.

**How to ask for one:** identify the level you want to demonstrate, propose specific work, and name the support you need.

Question 2

What is a skills gap analysis?

Accepted Answer

A structured comparison between the skills an organisation or individual has and the skills they need, producing a prioritised list of what to develop or acquire. The process: Define the skills

Question 3

What is continuing professional development, and does it matter?

Accepted Answer

Ongoing learning to maintain and develop professional competence — and in regulated professions it is mandatory, with a defined requirement that must be evidenced. Where it is compulsory. Many

Question 4

What happens at an assessment centre?

Accepted Answer

An assessment centre is a structured selection event, usually half a day to two days, where candidates complete several different exercises while being observed by trained assessors. It is common for

Question 5

How do you onboard a new starter well?

Accepted Answer

By treating the first weeks as a deliberate process rather than an administrative one — because early experience predicts how long someone stays and how quickly they become effective, and most

Question 6

What do you do when you are passed over for promotion?

Accepted Answer

Find out why, specifically, before deciding anything — because the response to "you were close and here is the gap" is completely different from the response to a decision that was never about you.

Question 7

How do you delegate without losing control?

Accepted Answer

By being explicit about which kind of delegation this is — because most delegation failures are not about capability, they are about two people holding different assumptions about how much authority

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