Discovering Leadership
Designing Your Success
- Anthony Middlebrooks - University of Florida, FL, USA
- Scott J. Allen - John Carroll University, USA
- Mindy S. McNutt - Wright State University, USA
- James L. Morrison - University of Delaware, USA
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
Supplements
edge.sagepub.com/middlebrooks
Instructor Teaching Site (Password Protected)
SAGE edge for Instructors, supports your teaching by making it easy to integrate quality content and create a rich learning environment for students.
- Test banks provide a diverse range of pre-written options as well as the opportunity to edit any question and/or insert your own personalized questions to effectively assess students’ progress and understanding.
- Editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides offer complete flexibility for creating a multimedia presentation for your course.
- Multimedia Resources that include meaningful web links to facilitate further exploration of topics covered in the reading.
- Instructor Manual containing lecture notes, teaching tips, answers to text questions, and additional activities.
Student Study Site (Open Access)
SAGE edge for Students provides a personalized approach to help students accomplish their coursework goals in an easy-to-use learning environment.
- Mobile-friendly eFlashcards strengthen understanding of key terms and concepts.
- Mobile-friendly practice quizzes allow for independent assessment by students of their mastery of course material.
- Chapter summaries with learning objectives reinforce the most important material.
- Multimedia Resources that include meaningful web links to facilitate further exploration of topics covered in the reading.
“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.”
“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.”
“A comprehensive leadership development text based on principles of design thinking.”
“This book will help us better prepare out students for the internships and post-graduation placements we hope for.”
“The text is a phenomenal guide for using a design thinking process toward developing effective leaders that are desperately needed by our world.”
“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.”
“This is a text that lays a foundation from which the students can build their leadership knowledge and begin their personal leadership journey.”
A useful addition to the leadership practice. Some practical features with reflective questions to help improve leadership styles and make students and managers think about their leadership.
Though I attempted to have this text adopted, another was chosen due to "best-fit":
Theoharis, G., & Scanlan, M. (2015). Leadership for increasingly diverse schools. Routledge.
Nevertheless, I look forward to potentially adopting this text in the very near future!
Undergraduate course with 23 students. I liked the level of information and the focus on self-development of leadership skills