"For CEOs and their senior management teams, programs designed for “high potential” leaders in their organization are seen as a crucial component to help alleviate the management shortage that many companies across all industries may soon face." That's the opening from a news release from RHR International's Institute of Executive Development. Here are some key findings.

"80% of respondents have high potential development programs

A third of those programs have been in place less than two years

15% of respondents are in the process of designing programs"

If I read this right, only 5 percent of the companies surveyed aren't setting up a program for developing high potential leaders. Most of those programs are new. How much money and time and HR and management talent is all of this taking?

 suspect that a lot of these programs are a colossal waste of money and energy and concentration. We don't need a separate, special, designed by high-priced consultants, ten-years-in-the-making program to develop high potential leaders. If we've got a solid leadership development program, the high potential folks are pretty easy to spot.

And high potential leaders aren't the only leaders we need to develop. We need to be selecting people wisely for their first leadership positions. We need to be helping leaders at all levels grow and develop.

Go to GE's corporate web site. You'll find 41 leaders listed there under the heading "Executive Leaders." That’s probably less than the number of supervisors in the average GE plant. High potential leadership points toward a limited number of spots for a limited number of people.

But in every company, every day, first line supervisors and middle managers show up for work and make the company go. They're the ones in touch with the people who crank out the products, answer the calls and touch the customers. They need support, too.

I'm all for identifying high potential leaders and helping them develop. That's a good thing. But it shouldn't happen at the expense of leaders across the company at all levels. If your high potential program is funded at the expense of supervisory skills training for front line supervisors, you're making a bad choice.

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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

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