Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Success - Softcover

“One of the best leadership texts I have ever read. If students immerse themselves in the activities and discussions contained within, they will put this book down with an understanding of how to motivate others to know, be, and do more.” (Joshua H. Truitt)

“Discovering Leadership: Designing Your Leadership Success represents an excellent first conversation and illustration of the catalyst intersection between design thinking and more traditional business management and leadership conversations. Students will benefit from the holistic five dimensional view of leadership, and faculty will be challenged to think beyond traditional boundaries of organizational management and effectiveness.”  (DeNisha McCollum)

“A comprehensive leadership development text based on principles of design thinking.” (Kerry Priest)

“This book will help us better prepare out students for the internships and post-graduation placements we hope for.” (Linette P. Fox)

“The text is a phenomenal guide for using a design thinking process toward developing effective leaders that are desperately needed by our world.” (Don Mulvaney)

“Provides an opportunity for students to learn about themselves as leaders and how they can use their leadership skills to effectively lead others within an organization.” (Heather A. Vilhauer)

“This is a text that lays a foundation from which the students can build their leadership knowledge and begin their personal leadership journey.” (Patricia Mitchell)

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.

 

There are online resources for instructors and students, which include: Test bank, PowerPoint slides, an instructor manual, teaching tips, answers to in-text questions, multimedia resources, quiz questions, and flashcards.

Suitable reading for first and second year undergraduates on Leadership, Introduction to Leadership, and Leading Organizations courses