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The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter

Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.

Find out more about Wally's coaching services.

A news release with headline "Top U.S. Executives See Rapidly Shrinking Talent Pool" caught my eye last week. Most of the findings that the release reported were old news.

CEOs think succession planning is a major challenge. I suspect that number went up after Citi fired their CEO and then wondered what to do next. The importance of "recruiting and selecting talented employees" wasn't new.

But the working of another key finding stopped me. "Providing leaders with the skills they need to be successful" it said. And it got me to wondering. Why do we only talk about training and skills when it comes to leadership development?

Leadership development is about experiences, not just skills. You can "learn" a skill or skill cluster in a classroom, from a book, or online, but it's not yours until you master it by putting it to work. That's increasingly true as you climb the org chart, when the skills you need to develop are often communications and relationship skills.

Permanent and temporary development assignments are important, too. The leadership development programs of the last century or so have been much like the old Ford assembly line. The challenge was to find the right developing leader for the job.

In the future we may reverse the emphasis. We may choose to find the right job for the developing leader. That will be more likely to happen for what I call Strivers, the leaders who have the desire and, perhaps, the ability to ascend to top organizational levels.

Leadership development is also about building relationships, not just skills. Sure the content is important at noted training centers, whether it's GE's Crotonville or the FBI National Academy for police executives. But the relationships that participants develop may be even more important.

Not only that, those training programs are the carriers of culture and values. It's where leaders on their way up learn what their organizations expect of them. In the best programs, senior leaders model and discuss those values.

Too many surveys and too many organizations treat leadership development as if it can be done well with the old Army technical training model. But even the Army has known for generations that they way you develop leaders is to let them lead and the way to develop them better is to enrich the process with diverse assignments and feedback.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

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.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.