Purpose: The paper investigates personal and environmental factors providing for the efficiency of line managers' activity and contributing to their professional and career advancement. The paper studies the prognostic value of the assessment of personal and environmental factors providing for the efficiency of line managers' activity according to Blumberg and Pringle's methodology in order to select their lines of training and development. Design/methodology/approach: The methodological approach is based on Blumberg and Pringle's organizational-psychological model. A conceptual framework was developed from psychological test data and expert interviews with 307 line managers (of two large enterprises), 65 top managers and 100 entrepreneurs (heads of SMEs) from the Northwest of Russia. Findings: The research allowed the isolation of those personal qualities of line managers that separate them from top managers. Sets of personal and environmental factors providing for line managers' labor efficiency and contributing to their professional and career advancement were determined. Research limitations/implications: Employees at Russian state industrial enterprises were the subject of this research. The specifics of respondent sampling restrict the possibility of extrapolating the findings and generalizations made in this paper onto middle and lower managers from organizations with other ownership patterns, areas of activity and ethnic cultures. Practical implications: The research findings can be used by HRD specialists in industrial enterprises for the creation of development programs for line managers. Am assessment of personal and environmental factors based on Blumberg and Pringle's model can be used as a criterion for selecting areas of development for line managers, as it is aligned towards the realization of personal and professional potential. Based on the assessment results, variants of training can be offered to employees in the professional sphere, or in the sphere of management or personal development. Originality/value: For the first time, in this work the differences in personality traits of line managers and top managers of Russian industrial enterprises have been determined, sets of personal and professional factors characterizing line managers' attitudes to development prospects have been described (these sets have been conventionally named "specialists" and "careerists"), and the possibility of using Blumberg and Pringle's model to predict line managers' potential areas of training and development has been demonstrated. (Contains 5 figures and 10 tables.)