The Student Leadership Challenge Facilitation and Activity Guide, and: The Student Leadership Challenge Student Workbook and Personal Leadership Journal by James Kouzes, Barry Posner (review)

As authors, James Kouzes and Barry Posner state in the opening of both of the reviewed books, The Student Leadership Challenge^® is about how students mobilize others to make extraordinary things happen. It is based on The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership^® model, which began as a research project in 1983 and focused on what leaders did when they were at their “personal best.” Their research found that when leaders are at their personal best they: (a) Model the Way; (b) Inspire a Shared Vision; (c) Challenge the Process; (d) Enable Others to Act, and; (e) Encourage the Heart (Kouzes & Posner, 2008).

Each of the Five Practices has two essential actions and six leadership behaviors students should employ to make great things happen. The authors refer to the essential actions as the Ten Commitments of Leadership; and the six leadership behaviors that demonstrate specific ways students can embody each of the Five Practices.

Kouzes and Posner have created an entire suite of resources with the purpose of assisting students to use and develop The Five Practices. One of the authors’ beliefs is that leadership is an ongoing process and requires intentional practice. This fundamental belief is stated throughout all of their materials on The Five Practices. The Student Leadership Practices Inventory (Student LPI) is part of The Leadership Challenge suite of products and is focused on developing leadership capacity through reflection and assessment. The Student LPI is made up of two assessments, one the student takes and one that observers take.

The two books reviewed here are companion texts to Kouzes and Posner’s (2008) The Student Leadership Challenge. The Student Leadership Challenge Facilitation and Activity Guide is for anyone who is interested in teaching students The Five Practices. The Facilitation and Activity Guide provides multiple avenues to explore this topic with any collective organization in which a student is either a member or holds a formal leadership position. The Student Leadership Challenge Student Workbook and Personal Leadership Journal is designed for students’ reflection and capacity building of The Five Practices. It turns leadership as an abstract concept into practices and behaviors that can be taught to anyone who is willing to accept the challenge.

These companion texts mirror each other for the first eight modules. Module 1 provides the foundation of The Student Leadership Challenge. Module 2 discusses the Student LPI. The Instructor guide focuses on how to administer this development tool and the student workbook.

Modules 3–7 in both texts discuss the five exemplary leadership practices. Module 3 starts with Model the Way; Inspire a Shared Vision is the focus of Module 4; Challenge the Process is the focus of Module 5; Enable Others to Act is the focus of Module 6; and the final exemplary leadership practice, Encourage the Heart, is the focus of Module 7. Each module starts off with a summary of the practice focused on, then discusses how to frame the practice for students (instructor guide) and understand the practice better (student workbook). Next each module provides three activities to learn and apply the specific practice being discussed. The third activity in each of these modules focuses on a movie, which demonstrates the practice being discussed in action through a popular movie. The instructor guide provides facilitation tips for each activity and the student workbook guides students through an in depth reflection.

Module 8 focuses on students’ personal leadership journal. While the instructor guide provides specific tips on facilitating deep reflection for students who took the Student LPI, the student workbook provides specific guiding questions to assist students in this reflective journey. The Facilitation and Activity Guide has an additional ninth module which provides sample student leadership development curricula using The Student Leadership Challenge.

These...