Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog

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.

Leaders at all Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis by Ram Charan is the first book by a major leadership guru to discuss the development of leaders as an apprenticeship process. That's a good reason to read it, but there are many more.

You will get the most out of this book if you keep in mind that Ram Charan works with the top executives of large companies. That's who he writes for, too, so if you're in a smaller company, plan to adapt what you read here to your situation.

Keep in mind that Charan has been involved in leadership development for a very long time, well before it was the fashionable topic it is today. He is the co-author of the best book on the subject for large companies, The Leadership Pipeline. He brings deep knowledge and experience to the subject.

The core of the book revolves around the insight that leadership is an apprentice trade. You learn about 20 percent of it from courses and books. You learn 80 percent on the job, by taking action, getting feedback, and learning. You learn most through a series of developmental experiences, some which are planned and some which are not.

I know that this works because I've been applying it in my writing and consulting practice for years. Charan writes about it in this book with an almost single-minded focus on what are called "high potential" leaders, the ones who wind up in the C-suite, but you can use the principles for leadership development for leaders in any company or for yourself or a protégé.

The premise is very simple, though Charan is the first big-name consultant to write about it in book form. People learn about leadership in classes and from books. But they learn leadership by leading. If you structure your leadership development program so that it makes use of this natural process and accelerates it, you will do a better job.

Here are the things that are likely to need to change in most companies to make an apprenticeship model work. They come directly from chapter 2. I present them with my comments.

Identify leadership talent early and correctly. This is absolutely necessary. Charan talks about identifying high potential individuals who are already in management positions. I would go a step farther back and put emphasis on improving the selection process of anyone we put in charge of a group at any level.

Plan the apprenticeship for fast growth. This is critical. It may mean that in some cases you will be seeking out the right job for a developing leader instead of looking for the right leader for a job you already have.

Your plan should include developmental assignments, both temporary and permanent. It should incorporate lots of feedback to accelerate development. That's why the boss's role must include something new.

Boss as mentor. Charan recommends making the development of other leaders part of every leader's job. That's a good idea. But it doesn't go far enough.

In real life you will have excellent leaders who are not good at mentoring, don't like it, and consequently don't do it well. That's why you need to evaluate bosses on their leadership development work and tie preferment and pay to those evaluations. But you must also make use of the leaders in your company that love to mentor and do it well, so that the developing leader stuck with a non-mentoring boss still has growth options.

Beyond that, Charan expects your company to do what all the companies who are great at leadership development do. They identify high potential leaders early and pay them special attention. They constantly and religiously review their leaders with a view toward development. They see developmental experiences as opportunities to develop both skills and relationships. And they see training as a carrier of culture.

Beyond the big picture, there are many other good things in this book. One is the concept of Concentric Learning. This holds that leaders expand their capabilities through deliberate practice of core skills in increasingly complex situations. That concept will work no matter what your leadership development challenge.

There is an excellent and insightful chapter on how to recognize leadership potential. It includes ways to evaluate basic leadership skills, cultural fit, and broad business acumen. As with other sections of the book, there are simple lists of questions you can ask to aid your analysis.

There are also excellent chapters on customizing leaders' growth paths and the important role of bosses as well as a chapter on how to manage a system like this in a large company. The book concludes with material on picking the next CEO and advice on adopting the apprenticeship model of leadership development. An appendix on "Building Blocks of the Apprenticeship Model" gives advice for both individuals and companies.

As usual, Ram Charan has written a book for the senior executives of large companies and those who aspire to those positions. As usual, there's lots of value for you in this book, whether you are one of those people or not. If you're concerned with leadership development for yourself, for a protégé or for your company, you should read this book.

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.