How to Teach with Leadership Amplifier

Introduction

The Leadership Amplifier app accelerates leadership development in ways that few other instructional tools can because it is embedded in users’ everyday lives, it requires users to come up with moral insight for everyday activities, and it does this within a community in which users learn from each other and hold each other accountable. Classroom instruction helps people to learn concepts about leadership, and classroom activities help people practice leadership skills, but even as people learn knowledge and skills well, they may never translate that knowledge and skill into everyday application. Alternatively, high-intensity leadership development experiences can help people see themselves and their world differently, but again there is no guarantee that these insights will translate into everyday experience. Leadership begins when people exhibit virtues such as courage, compassion, integrity, or humility in their actions, and consistent, skillful virtue requires practice in a wide array of everyday activities.

When people use Leadership Amplifier, it requires them to create or select events in their life in which they will practice virtue. It asks them questions that help them to acquire moral insight. It helps them make plans on how to implement that insight into their chosen events. It gives them the opportunity to seek feedback from a learning community about how to improve the virtue they exhibit, and to support others in their own efforts. It enables them to set goals for self-improvement, and to learn from others’ experiences as well as their own.

The following web pages are designed to help you use Leadership Amplifier in your corporate training or university classrooms. Leadership Amplifier can be used independently, or—even better—in conjunction with classroom instruction, leadership development activities, or even high-intensity leadership development experiences. We explain the technology, including how to install the app, how to set up communities, and how to manage the communities. We also offer ideas for how to design a class that uses Leadership Amplifier, and provide models, concepts, and ideas that you can use to help students understand and be motivated to use the application.

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