Discovering leadership: designing your success

An introductory leadership textbook that guides students through the concept of leadership by design, a theory that involves planning each step of their leadership development, focusing on practical skills and valuable attributes that will maximize their leadership success now and into the future.
Organized around five major design challenges, each challenge is explored in a stand-alone module. Students begin the leadership journey with themselves, understanding their own strengths, styles, and skills. The text moves on to relationships, exploring how leadership is a process that involves values, decision-making, motivation, and power. A module on others’ success unpacks the most effective practices of leadership and management, this is followed by a module on leading culture, teams, and community, before concluding with a section on how leaders can create lasting, positive change.
The book covers foundational leadership topics with a strong emphasis on skill building and helping develop CORE competencies: confidence, optimism, resiliency, and engagement. Students are encouraged to develop these skills through experiential learning, with multiple features in each chapter such as reflective and scenario-based exercises, and case studies of internationally recognized companies like Amazon and Proctor & Gamble, along with interviews with Fortune 500 Company CEOs.