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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.

Training magazine taps 2012 Training Top 125 winners and Top 10 Hall of Famers to provide their learning and development best practices in each issue. Here, we look at strategies for communication/customer service, employee retention, and sales training. COMMUNICATION/CUSTOMER SERVICE By Jon Kaplan, Director, Training Center of Excellence, Discover Financial Services

By Margery Weinstein Like many companies, your organization likely is expanding to international markets with overseas employees or affiliated workers who need training. Before you worry about developing learning plans and content for each market from scratch, consider what three 2012 Training Top 125 winners do to make their training materials ready for overseas learners. With the right plan and enough flexibility and cultural understanding, your core training messages can cross oceans and continents. Consistent Lessons, Culturally Relevant Delivery

By Marshall Goldsmith and Laurence Lyons My mission is to help successful leaders achieve positive, long-term, measurable change in behavior: for themselves, their people, and their teams. When the steps in the coaching process described below are followed, leaders almost always see positive behavioral change—not as judged by themselves, but as judged by preselected, key stakeholders. This process has been used around the world with great success—by both external coaches and internal coaches. Steps in the Leadership Coaching Process

By Lorri Freifeld Companies such as FedEx, The Hartford, and Union Pacific offer some of their leaders the opportunity to climb Mt. Everest. But the trek does not require parkas, ice axes, or karabiners. Nor will participants feel the least bit cold. They must, however, make life-and-death decisions about who gets how much oxygen, correctly calculate the weather when the weather station is knocked out, and determine what to do when one of the team begins to experience hypothermia.