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By Matt Norman, President, Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central U.S. As a professional trainer, I am all too familiar with a common pattern that creates an obstacle to learning and change: Companies train employees on new skills or behaviors. Employees intellectually grasp the new concepts presented during training. They make initial efforts to incorporate the new ideas into their work, but the new practices seem awkward. It takes extra effort to use them. Eventually, they fall back into their old, comfortable habits.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT By Jeff Orlando and Karen Eber, Senior Managers, Leadership Development, Deloitte Services LP

Corporate/academic partnerships may be a big part of the solution to the skills gap. The key to success lies in understanding the challenges, choosing the right partners, and measuring effectiveness.

By Damian McKinney Early in Walmart’s history, most store managers began their careers working at the register or another entry-level position. Through a gradual process of working their way up the corporate ladder, these employees were promoted to store manager in seven to 11 years. This process served the company and its employees well, providing a secure predictable career path and producing knowledgeable, loyal people at the middle-management level.

By Michael Leimbach, Ph.D., Vice President, Global Research and Development, Wilson Learning Worldwide Managing and leading in today’s organizations is growing more difficult. More products are coming to market faster, partnerships among companies in different industries are increasing, global expansion has created huge multinational companies, and trends toward matrix management and cross-functional teams are accelerating.

By Dianne M. Durkin “The true essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. You can’t just blow an uncertain trumpet.” —Theodore Hesburgh There are many myths about leadership that often prevent people from developing their leadership skills. They think if they were not born a leader with some magic leadership dust in their DNA, they cannot become one in the future.

By David Clutterbuck Talent managementsystems are built upon the assumption that talent can be identified with relative ease and accuracy. This assumption is questionable for a number of reasons. First, in practice, talent is often emergent. It sometimes takes time to become obvious to the talent holder and to observers. Someone may need to be placed in a stretching situation, which stimulates them to exercise a talent, before they recognize it as such.

By Scott MacFarlane, MSM

BEST PRACTICES BB&T Corporation: Leadership Development Program (LDP) Twice a year, a class of Leadership Development Program (LDP) associates relocates to BB&T University for nine months to participate in the four phases of the program. Associates choose one of two concentrations to specialize in: business banking or specialized corporate functions. Program framework and highlights include:

As part of Brandon Hall’s Analyst Insight program, it received a recent member question concerning leadership development. The member wanted to know the benefits or disadvantages of creating a GE-style leadership program that takes recent MBA graduates and rotates them through the organization for a year or more with a focus on learning an organization’s culture and succession planning. The idea sounds great—but what works for GE may very well be a disaster for a smaller, less global organization.