A Question for the Community: What Drives Your Professional Growth?

Hello all,

This week, I'm posing a question. 
Why do you engage in professional development activities? What drives you to make the effort?
Doing your job better? Hope for career advancement? Love of learning? Fear of being left out? Supervisory requirement? All of these, none of these, something else entirely? 

I ask because I recently read this marketing blog for a workshop from the Academic Impressions company:

"There’s a belief quietly circulating among higher ed leaders that goes something like this: If I can’t offer my people a promotion, there’s not much point in having a development conversation.

It’s understandable. Institutional budgets are tighter. Headcount is flat or shrinking. Traditional advancement pathways that used to give these conversations a clear destination have narrowed or disappeared entirely. If growth means moving up—and moving up isn’t an option—why raise expectations you can’t meet?

Here’s the problem: That logic conflates two things that are genuinely different. Advancement is a change in position. Growth, on the other hand, is a change in capacity, contribution, and engagement. You can have one without the other, and your team members are already living proof of that—whether or not you’re having the conversation with them about it.

Our research finds that 88% of employees are motivated to pursue professional development simply to be better at their current jobs. Not to get promoted. Not to leave for somewhere else. To do their work better and feel more capable doing it. That motivation is already there—the question is whether you’re meeting it or letting it go unaddressed until it turns into something else."

This made me quite curious. Because, as you know, WIT is working to improve the retention of a diverse SUNY workforce. 

So is professional development an even more significant factor than I realized? Or is this just what a professional development company wants us to believe? 
Is it a significant factor in keeping you at SUNY? I'd love to hear from folks on this topic.

All the best,
Holly