Chapter Summaries

  • Leadership is the process of influencing others toward a common vision. Leadership matters for individuals, teams, organizations, communities, and the world. Effective leaders consciously design their leadership and strive to be as mindful as possible.
  • The framework of this textbook emphasizes your purposeful design of your leadership and consistently working to build your CORE—confidence, optimism, resilience, and engagement.
  • Design is the process of originating and developing a plan. Designers are problem solvers, and a complete design process will include understanding, imagining, and implementing.
  • The design process is enhanced by specific ways of thinking—design thinking—including user-centered, explorative, divergent, multidisciplinary, iterative, and integrative dispositions. Developing design thinking habits makes you a more effective problem solver and will result in a better design, in this case, that design is you and your leadership.
  • Leaders who develop deep, foundational capabilities are able to excel when faced with new challenges. Confidence, optimism, resilience, and engagement (CORE) provide individuals with the capacity to lead now and into the future. The elements of CORE influence the development of each other, and there are very concrete activities that will build your CORE.
  • Keep the goals of this text and your own personal goals in mind as you move forward and experience your own “aha” moments.