"Personal development" is a hoop through which employees in most large organisations have to jump. You do not have to be a starry-eyed academic to find it patronising.
The only satisfying explanation is its possible origins in the 1960s or 1970s "human potential movement".
I suspect the real origins, however, might lie in the understandable desire of human resource departments to feel important and morally superior in "life skills".
Martin Parkinson
London NW5