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Josh Bersin just published a list of leadership development best practices. Here's the lead for his piece.

"Leadership development continues to be one of the fastest-growing areas of corporate training. Spanning programs from management training to executive development and cultivating high potentials, leadership development consumes almost 25 percent of all corporate training dollars. Today’s emphasis on building the leadership pipeline makes this investment more important than ever. After two years of research, we have found six best practices common to highly successful leadership development initiatives."

You should read the whole article. Here are Bersin's six best practices, along with my comments.

Bersin's Best Practice: Strong executive engagement.

Wally's Comment: If you want a solid leadership development program, it must be a top management priority. And it must involve more than training. Top management needs to be involved in the review process and selecting developmental assignments.

Bersin's Best Practice: Tailored leadership competencies

Wally's Comment: This is easiest to do if you involve your top and headed-for-the-top managers in the teaching and review processes. If this is an academic exercise or farmed out to consultants or the HR trainers it's far less likely to deal with the real issues for the organization.

Bersin's Best Practice: Alignment with business strategy

Wally's Comment: Yes and no. You want to develop leaders who can and will support the strategic direction and key initiatives. Too often, though, companies try to determine what kind of leader will be needed in the future, instead of developing leaders who can deal with any future.

Bersin's Best Practice: Target all levels of leadership

Wally's Comment: Absolutely, but this one gets more verbal agreement than agreement in practice. Far too many companies spend far too much of their budget on those "high potential" leaders. Far too few have a program that selects leaders effectively for their first leadership job and then provides basic training, development and support for first-line leaders.

Bersin's Best Practice: Apply a comprehensive and ongoing approach.

Wally's Comment: Of course. But God is in the details. Most companies put too much faith in classroom training, especially at off-site programs, and not enough energy into on-the-job, support, development and feedback. That's where most of the learning happens.

Bersin's Best Practice: Integrate with talent management

Wally's Comment: Again, I agree with the principle. But make sure that all your managers know that you expect them to develop their people. Hold them accountable. Evaluate them on it. Make it count for bonuses.

Leadership development is the way we shape companies for the future. If long term competitive advantage and profitability are your goals, leadership development is the way you achieve them.

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.