How Do I Use the Repository of Instructional Tools?

There are multiple ways to participate in the building and use of this repository of instructional tools for positive leadership. We would love to have you participate in as many ways as you would like. Ways to participate include:

• Use the tools in our repository.
• When you have used a tool, add comments telling the community how you used it, what worked, and what did not work.
• If you know of a tool that fits into one of our categories, share it with us by clicking the link at the bottom of the page and telling us about it.
• Include your email address when you make comments so that our system can let you know if others have asked questions or added to your comments. That way you can participate in ongoing conversations about the tools.
• If you think we are missing a category of tools relevant to positive leadership, let us know. Other suggestions and feedback are also welcome.

Organization of the Repository

We base our organization of the Repository of Instructional Tools on our model of positive leadership, which we depict here:

Figure 5.1 – Model of Positive Leadership

We reviewed this model initially, and recommend reading that section for an in-depth description of our model. However, this model also adds one more variable: Moral insight. Moral insight is a previously-unconsidered idea about how solve to the problem of what a person can do to exhibit more virtue in a given situation. People often need moral insight before the positive leadership process can begin because they take the conventional ways of acting in a situation for granted. When we take specific ways of acting for granted, it never occurs to us that there might be other ways in which we could act. Insights are ideas that we can only acquire by considering alternatives to the actions that are taken for granted. Many problems can be solved by following known logic and rules, insight problems can only be solved by questioning the assumptions that people take for granted.

We organize our Repository into two sections, based on this model. The first section contains tools that address this model as a whole, or address one of its constituent parts. We refer to these as “Positive Leadership Toolbox.”

The second section contains tools for teaching people how to become more excellent at exhibiting specific virtues. Virtuousness is the part of the three-step leadership process over which the leader has the most control, and for which the leader requires the most practice. Further, there are many distinct virtues which individuals can practice, and on which organizations may choose to focus (and these virtues have many synonyms, in case you use different words for the same virtue). However, if members of our community wish to share instructional tools for virtues not covered by our list, we are certainly willing to expand the list.

Instructors can use an organizing structure similar to this in designing courses or course modules on positive leadership. For example, instructors could begin their courses by teaching the overall model and its individual concepts and end by reviewing the concepts, while focusing on individual virtues in the middle of the course. Alternatively, instructors could intertwine the focus on the individual virtues with covering the overall concepts. Focusing on individual virtues in class would prepare students for the practice of exhibiting those virtues between classes, especially if they use the Leadership Amplifier mobile phone application to help them with their practice.

Previous: How Do I Teach Leadership Amplifier?