This chapter helps to navigate the day-to-day complexity of leading and following. It explains why seeing oneself as a leader and a follower is not something fixed but consistently changing, and how these ‘identity ebb and flows’ contribute to leader development. The chapter discusses how events within and outside of work can activate one identity over the other. It introduces a web application – the Leader-Follower Identity Tracker (LFIT) – which supports individuals and teams in assessing and reflecting on the complexity of leading and following from day to day.

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This chapter emphasizes the importance of goal setting and goal striving for new leaders transitioning into leadership roles. It guides students to reflect on their leadership goals, develop actionable plans to achieve them, and build relationships with individuals who can support their leadership development. The chapter aims to offer practical insights and exercises that help students make sense of their new leader roles and effectively navigate their leadership development process.

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In this chapter we address the phenomenon of impostorism, why individuals experience it, its impact on leaders and organizations, and strategies to manage it. Drawing on empirical research, popular media, and practical recommendations augmented by our academic expertise, this chapter provides a step-by-step guide to reframe how you view the experience of impostorism. Using a self-reflection exercise and case study, readers can further understand their own experiences of impostorism and build their own ‘Impostor Playbook’ to explore and overcome it.

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This chapter explains how leader self-complexity can enhance adaptability and how high-quality, diverse career experiences can foster this self-complexity. To support your development, the chapter presents two self-assessment tools that allow you to evaluate your level of leader self-complexity and your career experiences, helping you better understand your unique characteristics. The insights and strategies outlined in this chapter are instrumental not only for individual leadership development but also for those seeking to promote leadership growth within their organizations.

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Although 360-degree reviews are widely used for leadership development, different evaluators may provide different, or even conflicting, feedback which makes it challenging to summarize the results. The different types of items used in 360-degree instruments contributes to this problem. We contend that understanding the distinction between concrete and abstract language, coupled with the intended purpose of the ratings, is the key for improving the quality of 360-degree reviews.

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This chapter delves into the concept of thriving within organizational settings, emphasizing two crucial components: learning and vitality. Thriving is a dynamic state that encapsulates both cognitive and affective dimensions of an employee's work experience. Learning is described as the utilization and development of skills and knowledge, while vitality pertains to the excitement and motivation employees feel at work. The chapter covers the outcomes and drivers of thriving, focusing on how leader development can be an important method to enhance thriving in organizations that actually results in leaders engaging in more leader development.  This reciprocal relationship creates a positive feedback loop where leader development not only encourages thriving but also enhances its dimensions, including competence, engagement, and resilience. Finally, we share insights for measuring thriving.

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In this chapter, we discuss how contextual factors affect leadership and leader outcomes, the importance of considering context when assessing leadership, and currently developed contextually conscious measurement techniques. Woven throughout this chapter will be discussion of how practitioners can successfully navigate the scientific literature to understand what is currently known about the role contextual factors play in leadership and leader outcomes and suggestions for how practitioners can select, leverage, and interpret measures based on contextual factors.

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This chapter discusses a key moment where leaders need support: when they are transitioning out of their leader roles, whether for retirement, organizational restructuring, or layoffs. It uses three interrelated perspectives to explain why leader role exits are so challenging: leadership is linked to identity and to a self-reinforcing social network, and fosters power addiction. It introduces a series of five Write-Reflect-Act exercises to spur individual thinking and/or group discussion, which individuals in formal or informal leadership roles can apply to understand why this role exit is relevant to them and their experiences.

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