Welcome to the Leadership Resource Hub

The Leadership Resource Hub provides easy access to trusted leadership resources that support continued growth. The hub offers curated articles, videos, frameworks, and tools to help you deepen learning, explore new perspectives, and apply leadership practices — on your schedule and at your pace.

On this page:

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Individual Leader

Leadership begins with self-awareness. Explore resources that help you understand your strengths, values, and growth areas so you can lead with authenticity and confidence. 

  • An Introduction to the Competing Values Framework (PDF)
    Introduces the Competing Values Framework as a tool for understanding organizational culture and leadership effectiveness, helping leaders adapt their approach across competing priorities. Especially useful for leaders navigating complexity and balancing flexibility with structure.
    Publisher: Haworth

    Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want
    Outlines the four core needs followers have of leaders—trust, compassion, stability, and hope—providing a clear framework for building stronger, more engaged teams. Especially relevant for leaders focused on people-centered leadership. 
    Publisher: Gallup

    Stop Overdoing Your Strengths (PDF)Challenges the assumption that strengths should always be maximized, highlighting how overuse can become a liability. Encourages leaders to practice balance and self-awareness in their development.
    Publisher: Gallup

    The Competencies for Civic Leadership (PDF)Defines key competencies for effective civic leadership, including diagnosing situations, managing self, and energizing others. A strong framework for leaders working across differences and driving collective impact.
    Publisher: Kansas Leadership Center

    The Troubles with Strengths-Based Development
    Provides a critical perspective on strengths-based development, highlighting potential limitations and unintended consequences. Encourages leaders to take a more nuanced approach to development. 
    Publisher: Maika Leibbrandt

    Unlocking Powerful Partnerships with CliftonStrengths
    Examines how strengths-based approaches can enhance collaboration and team performance. Offers practical insights for leaders aiming to build more cohesive, high-performing teams. 
    Publisher: Gallup

    What Is Your Leadership Style?
    Explores how individual strengths shape leadership style, helping leaders better understand and refine their approach.
    Publisher: Gallup

  • Brené Brown on Boundaries, Feelings & Core Emotions
    Podcast with Brené Brown on feelings, boundaries & emotions. In this podcast episode explores how better understanding the full spectrum of your emotions, rather than drowning in them, can become an upward spiral.
    Publisher: Ten Percent Happier Podcast

    CliftonStrengths Theme Descriptions
    This playlist offers a collection of conversations and learning resources on leadership, exploring topics such as leadership development, practical skills, and perspectives on leading effectively in academic and professional settings.
    Publisher: Gallup 

    Leadership Blind Spots
    This one-minute video highlights key insights on leadership blind spots and how coaching can help leaders identify and address them to improve awareness, effectiveness, and decision-making. 
    Publisher: Management Research Group

    Strengths Based Leadership: How to Be an Effective Leader
    This resource introduces a discussion on strengths-based leadership, explaining how understanding and applying individual strengths can enhance leadership effectiveness and support the development of others. 
    Publisher: Called to Coach Podcast

    The Hidden Power of Introverts in Leadership
    This video explores how introverted leaders can leverage their unique strengths to lead effectively, while also offering guidance for others to better recognize and support diverse leadership styles within organizations.
    Publisher: Leadership Foundry

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Leadership Context

Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation—it is shaped by teams, systems, and culture. These resources help you navigate complexity and adapt your leadership to the environments you influence. 

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Leadership Competencies

Effective leadership is built through practice. Dive into skills, behaviors, and tools that strengthen your ability to communicate, collaborate, make decisions, and lead change. 

  • A Competency-Based Framework for Departmental Leadership: Insights from College Deans in Higher Education
    Effective department leadership requires integrated professional, leadership, administrative, and employability competencies, particularly ethical behavior, emotional intelligence, decision-making, communication, adaptability, and strategic program alignment.
    Publisher: Educational Process: International Journal (2025)

    Predicting Leadership Competency Development and Promotion Among High-Potential Executives: The Role of Leader Identity (Article)
    Investigates the psychological foundations of strengths-based development and its impact on performance and well-being. Supports leaders in leveraging individual and team strengths for greater effectiveness.
    Publisher: Frontiers in Psychology

    The Friendship Dilemma: An Empirical Analysis on the Effects of Academic Leaders’ Friendships on Faculty Members’ Well-Being (Article)
    Examines how academic leaders’ social relationships and associated behaviors, such as favoritism and bullying, can affect faculty psychological well-being in universities, and offers recommendations for improving equity and leadership practices in higher education. 
    Publisher: Journal of Applied Science

    The Most Important Leadership
    Competencies

    Effective leadership requires competencies in leading organizations, others, and oneself, supported by self-awareness, learning agility, communication, influence, feedback, relationships, adaptability, and continuous development.
    Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership (2025)

    The Psychology of Small Wins (Article)
    Explores how recognizing small progress points can boost motivation, engagement, and long-term success. Encourages leaders to build momentum through intentional recognition.
    Publisher: Positive Leadership

    Where Are You Coming From? A Place-Based Approach to Developing Leader Self-Awareness
    Leadership development requires evidence-based, theoretically grounded approaches integrating individual and collective growth, experience, coaching, evaluation, inclusion, and attention to ethical leadership challenges.
    Publisher: The Leadership Quarterly. (2021)

  • Competency Management: Challenges and Benefits
    Publisher: Training Magazine (2016)

    What is Competency Management?
    Discusses competency management, its importance, and a step by step guide to competency management. Includes a use case (IBM).
    Publisher: Academy to Innovate HR (2026)

  • The Six Types of Working Genius.
    Working Genius identifies six natural gifts—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity—helping individuals understand strengths, frustrations, teamwork, roles, and performance more effectively.
    Publisher: The Six Types of Working Genius. (2023)
  • An Introduction to Competencies and Competency-Based Leadership 
    In this critical time of change for leaders, it has become increasingly important to understand the competencies associated with leadership. This essential book explores the ways in which Brent Ruben's Leadership Competency Scorecard can be used within an organizational setting.
    Publisher: Competencies for Effective Leadership (2019)

    Competency-Based Leadership Development
    The current chapter outlines the development of a competency model for leaders using a company example from the automotive industry and shows how the competencies defined in the model can be usefully employed in the assessment of leaders and in the elaboration of individual development plans for these leaders. The chapter thus combines the competency management approach with leadership development.
    Publisher: Handbook of Leadership (2025)
     

  • Competency Management: A Praciticioner's Guide
    Competency Management - A Practitioner's guide details the implementation of Competency Management within organisations. It draws experiences from the field.
    Publisher: Rosetta Solutions (2003)
  • A Competency-Based Framework for Departmental Leadership: Insights from College Deans in Higher Education
    A study identifying the key competencies required by academic department heads in Saudi Arabia; it explored the perspectives of college deans on the significance of the key competency framework developed during the project’s first phase. These findings will help higher education institutions design and implement targeted training programs to enhance the leadership capabilities of current and future department heads.
    Publisher: Educational Process International Journal (2025)
  • Competency Management: Challenges and Benefits 
    Effective and automated competency management creates a real-time and predictive inventory of the capability of any workforce. Discusses challenges and benefits of competency-based management.
    Publisher: Training Magazine (2016)
  • The New Leadership Structures that Unblock Innoviation (Podcast)
    Discover how leadership structure, culture, and systems shape an organization’s ability to innovate, with insights on how leaders can shift from decision-makers to architects, bridge builders, and catalysts who enable collaboration and experimentation at scale. 
    Publisher: HBR IdeaCast Podcast
  • Episode 89: Hiba Khalid & Leadership on the Line — Staying Alive Through the Dangers of LeadingThis episode explores leadership through the lens of burnout, adaptive challenges, and internal self-work, offering insights on how to sustain well-being and effectiveness while navigating the complexities and demands of leading. 
    Publisher: The Book Leads: Impactful Books for Life & Leadership

    How to Ask Great Questions as a Leader: Ask Powerful Questions
    This video explains how leaders can strengthen their effectiveness by learning to ask better questions and outlines practical actions to build this skill in order to improve insight, trust, and decision-making at work. 
    Publisher: Enhance.training

    Simon Sinek’s Top 3 Leadership Traits
    Simon Sinek emphasizes the importance of humility in leadership and learning, highlighting that true expertise is rooted in curiosity and a willingness to continuously grow rather than assuming full mastery.
    Publisher: Simon Sinek

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Values-Based Leadership

At the heart of impactful leadership at KSU, are our intuitional core values that guide action. These resources help you align your leadership with integrity, inclusion, accountability, and purpose in every decision you make. 

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