Foundations of Leadership Development
For instructors
A foundations course built around self-leadership, with a chapter structure that maps onto a semester, a quarter, or a short term. Here is how to plan the course, an editable syllabus to start from, a way to bring one of us into your classroom, and how to get the teaching materials from the publisher.
Instructor materials
The teaching materials come from Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave hosts the instructor resources so they stay available and current over the life of the book. After a short faculty verification, instructors can request lecture slides, figure slides, and teaching notes. The test bank and solutions are provided to instructors who have adopted the book.
This companion site does not host those files. It points you to them and adds the open resources below, so there is one stable home for the gated materials and no risk of an out-of-date copy floating around.
The book is out. Request lecturer material through Springer Nature's form atsn.pub/lecturer-material, and use the Palgrave book page for the full description, the table of contents, and exam or desk copies.
Plan your course
Six ways to map the book onto a course
Each chapter opens with five to eight learning objectives and carries the same recurring features (key terms, a running case study, Try-it prompts, reflection and discussion questions, and a hands-on activity), so weekly prep stays predictable however you slice the book. Pick the map closest to your term and adapt from there.
A fifteen-week semester
The default. One chapter a week in book order, with a final week for development-plan presentations. This is the schedule in the sample syllabus below.
| Week | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundations and the Self-Leadership Stance; take the inventory | Ch 1 |
| 2 | Self-awareness and emotional intelligence | Ch 2 |
| 3 | Multidimensional wellness | Ch 3 |
| 4 | Integrity and discipline | Ch 4 |
| 5 | Discovering your motivation | Ch 5 |
| 6 | Resilience and adaptability | Ch 6 |
| 7 | Becoming a self-starter | Ch 7 |
| 8 | Time, priorities, and goals | Ch 8 |
| 9 | Personal vision and mission | Ch 9 |
| 10 | Communication | Ch 10 |
| 11 | Building relationships | Ch 11 |
| 12 | Resolving conflict | Ch 12 |
| 13 | Global self-leadership | Ch 13 |
| 14 | Building your self-leadership development plan; retake the inventory | Ch 14 |
| 15 | Development-plan presentations and course wrap | Conclusion |
- Students take the inventory in Week 1 and again in Week 14. The page keeps the baseline in their browser and shows what changed.
- Many instructors fold in a midterm reflection around Week 8, or spread the presentations across Weeks 14 and 15.
An eight-week accelerated or summer term
Two chapters most weeks, with the last week kept for presentations. The pairs are chosen so that each week has one inward chapter and one applied one where the book allows it.
| Week | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Stance and self-awareness; take the inventory | Ch 1 and 2 |
| 2 | Wellness; integrity and discipline | Ch 3 and 4 |
| 3 | Motivation; resilience and adaptability | Ch 5 and 6 |
| 4 | Becoming a self-starter; time, priorities, and goals | Ch 7 and 8 |
| 5 | Personal vision and mission; communication | Ch 9 and 10 |
| 6 | Building relationships; resolving conflict | Ch 11 and 12 |
| 7 | Global self-leadership; the development plan; retake the inventory | Ch 13 and 14 |
| 8 | Development-plan presentations, accountability partnerships, and course wrap | Conclusion |
- Chapters run six to eight thousand words, so two a week is a real reading load. Assign one chapter's activity each week, and treat the other chapter's Try-it prompts as in-class work.
- Run the one-week self-leadership experiment from Chapter 1 during Week 2 and the development plan as the final paper.
A ten-week quarter
Single chapters where the work is heaviest (the Stance, conflict, culture, and the plan) and pairs elsewhere.
| Week | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Stance; take the inventory | Ch 1 |
| 2 | Self-awareness; wellness | Ch 2 and 3 |
| 3 | Integrity and discipline; motivation | Ch 4 and 5 |
| 4 | Resilience and adaptability; becoming a self-starter | Ch 6 and 7 |
| 5 | Time, priorities, and goals; personal vision and mission | Ch 8 and 9 |
| 6 | Communication; building relationships | Ch 10 and 11 |
| 7 | Resolving conflict | Ch 12 |
| 8 | Global self-leadership | Ch 13 |
| 9 | Building your self-leadership development plan; retake the inventory | Ch 14 |
| 10 | Development-plan presentations and course wrap | Conclusion |
- Week 7 carries one chapter to leave room for a midterm or for the conflict role-play in the Chapter 12 activities.
- If the quarter has a reading week, put it after Week 5; the second half turns outward and reads differently from the first.
A first-year seminar or experience course
Eight sessions for a one-credit seminar, chosen for the first semester on campus: the Stance, the habits that keep a student well and on time, and the relationships that carry them through. The whole book is more than a seminar needs; this is the half that pays off first.
| Session | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Self-Leadership Stance; take the inventory | Ch 1 |
| 2 | Wellness: the check-in and the one-week experiment | Ch 3 |
| 3 | Time, priorities, and goals: the one-week time audit | Ch 8 |
| 4 | Discovering your motivation | Ch 5 |
| 5 | Resilience and adaptability | Ch 6 |
| 6 | Communication | Ch 10 |
| 7 | Building relationships | Ch 11 |
| 8 | A first development plan; retake the inventory | Ch 14 |
- With ten sessions, add Chapter 2 (self-awareness) after the Stance and Chapter 7 (becoming a self-starter) after motivation.
- Chapters 4, 9, 12, and 13 are left for later courses. Chapter 9's vision and mission exercises work well in a second-year course once students have a semester behind them.
A career development course
Ten sessions that run from self-knowledge to direction to the plan, with the book's motivation, vision, goal, and relationship chapters doing the work your own career tools (résumés, interviews, informational interviews) sit alongside.
| Session | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Self-Leadership Stance; take the inventory | Ch 1 |
| 2 | Self-awareness and emotional intelligence | Ch 2 |
| 3 | Discovering your motivation: what pulls you | Ch 5 |
| 4 | Personal vision and mission statements | Ch 9 |
| 5 | Time, priorities, and cascading goals | Ch 8 |
| 6 | Becoming a self-starter: initiative and the resource map | Ch 7 |
| 7 | Communication | Ch 10 |
| 8 | Building relationships: mentors and networks | Ch 11 |
| 9 | Global self-leadership: working across cultures | Ch 13 |
| 10 | The development plan as a career plan; retake the inventory | Ch 14 |
- Chapter 9 comes before Chapter 8 here on purpose: the vision and mission statements give the goals somewhere to point.
- Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 12 make good optional readings for students who want them.
An introduction to HRD or organizational behavior course
The book as the personal-development strand of a broader course: eight chapters, each paired with a topic the course already teaches. Read as every-other-week assignments, they fit a fifteen-week semester without displacing the core text.
| Pairing | Focus | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| The field and individual development | Self-leadership as a development strategy; the Stance | Ch 1 |
| Emotional intelligence | Self-awareness and the interruption between trigger and response | Ch 2 |
| Motivation theories | Self-determination and the three psychological nutrients | Ch 5 |
| Feedback and communication | The communication pyramid and situation-behavior-impact feedback | Ch 10 |
| Mentoring and leader-member relationships | Relationships, leader-member exchange, and adult development | Ch 11 |
| Conflict management | Conflict modes and the interpretive pause | Ch 12 |
| Cross-cultural management | Global self-leadership and cultural value frameworks | Ch 13 |
| Individual development planning | SWOT, SMART goals, and the 70-20-10 model | Ch 14 |
- The inventory works as a bookend here too: take it with Chapter 1 and again with Chapter 14.
- Chapters 3, 6, 8, and 9 pair with wellness, resilience, time management, and goal-setting units if your course has them.
Sample syllabus
An editable syllabus to start from
A Word document adapted from Oliver Crocco's Introduction to Leadership Development at LSU and reworked around the book. It carries the fifteen-week schedule above, six assignments that follow the arc of the book (a one-week experiment with the Stance, a wellness check-in, a leadership book review and presentation, a development plan, and course engagement), the rubric and grading scale that have run with them for several semesters, and placeholders for your institution's policies.
It is one workable set. Change the weights, swap an assignment, or keep only the schedule. Nothing in it is locked.
Free to use now
Open resources for your classroom
These are open and free, with no login. Assign them directly or use them to decide whether the book fits your course.
- The Self-Leadership Stance →
A one-page account of the framework the book is built on: the five actions, their core questions, where the idea comes from, and how to cite it. Assign it before Chapter 1, or keep it as the course's reference page.
- Self-Leadership Stance inventory →
The Chapter 1 baseline as a browser tool. Have students take it in week one and save the result in their browser, then take it again with Chapter 14; the page shows what changed, action by action. Nothing is sent anywhere, and a saved result stays on the student's own device.
- Sample syllabus (.docx) →
The editable syllabus described above: schedule, assignments, rubric, grading scale, and policy placeholders.