Sarah Read

I used to think leadership meant having the clearest answer in the room. I've learned it means asking the right question first, and knowing that the right question isn't the same for every person you lead.

People are partners, not resources.

That phrase came from a Group Vice President of Engineering I interviewed for this program, who told me he dislikes the word "resources" when it's used to describe people (R., personal communication, June 22, 2026). It's a small word choice, but it signals how a leader sees the relationship. Manage people like inputs, and you get exactly the disengagement that makes organizations slow and fragile.

I'd push it further: choose to trust people first, then do the harder work: learning how each person actually receives feedback, what motivates them, how they process a hard conversation. Not what would work for me. What works for them. Empowerment built the same way for everyone isn't empowerment. It's convenience.

Culture isn't what's written down. It's what's held accountable.

Howard Behar made a related argument from Starbucks (Barry-Wehmiller, n.d.): stated values mean nothing until leaders enforce them against short-term pressure. People-centered leadership and performance aren't opposites, but profit can't become the whole purpose. (Not every example he gives holds up as rigorous evidence, but the core claim does.)

I lead from one more instinct: name the real problem early, even when it's uncomfortable. Too many projects start with someone asking for training before anyone's named the actual gap. I'd rather slow a project down for a week than spend a month building the wrong thing fast.

Northouse (2021) defines leadership as influencing a group toward a shared goal. I'd add a condition: that influence has to be earned through clarity, and through understanding people individually, not managing them as a category.

Sources used · R., personal communication, June 22, 2026; Barry-Wehmiller (n.d.); Northouse (2021)

Five values keep surfacing across everything I've reflected on this term, not as a list I sat down and invented, but as a pattern I noticed after the fact.

Clarity before speed.

Naming the real problem before reaching for a fix. The cost of skipping this is written all over my own failure resume.

Trust, built individually.

Not a policy or a perk. It is something earned person by person, through understanding how someone actually works. This is the practical core of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), and Forner et al. (2021) show what it looks like when leaders actually apply it: supporting autonomy, competence, and purpose in ways that differ from person to person, not a single motivational script for everyone.

Growth, especially when it's inconvenient.

The leaders who shaped me most were the ones who saw more in me than I saw in myself, and made room for that to matter.

Accountability without over-functioning.

Owning what's genuinely mine, and no more. My failure resume includes a hard lesson about the difference between ownership and taking on authority that was never mine to hold.

Adaptability as a discipline, not a personality trait.

Situational leadership (Hersey et al., 2013) gives this one its clearest language: people don't all need the same thing at the same time, and neither do the moments I'm leading through.

Sources used · Ryan & Deci (2000); Forner et al. (2021); Hersey et al. (2013)

Primary result: CD style (Everything DiSC® Workplace), administered through my employer's Talent Development program (Wiley, 2026). CD combines Conscientiousness and Dominance: questioning, analytical, and unwilling to compromise on high standards. My dot sits near the edge of the circle, meaning I lean strongly into these traits rather than moderately.

I value competence enough that it can look like impatience with anyone who doesn't share it.

The report names this directly: CD types judge others by competence and common sense, want efficient results, and have little patience for disorganization. That's accurate. It also names the cost: bluntness, difficulty sharing responsibility, and a tendency to withhold praise or read enthusiasm from others as suspect rather than genuine.

A secondary, informal data point, LeadershipIQ's (n.d.) Pragmatist result, lines up almost exactly: high standards, results-first, unafraid of the untraveled road. Two independent assessments landing on the same core pattern (skeptical, standards-driven, results-focused) is stronger evidence than either alone.

Neither result fully captures the relational side I actually aspire to: the individualized-empowerment thread running through this whole manifesto. That gap between what I score as and what I'm working to become isn't a contradiction. It's the actual work.

Sources used · Wiley (2026); LeadershipIQ (n.d.)

I'm not inspired by one person. I'm inspired by every leader I've had since I was old enough to understand what leading even meant: a 4-H leader, a piano teacher, a band instructor, a favorite ELA teacher, and every good boss and bad boss since. Posner's (2021) large-scale study of over 34,000 people found that family members and direct supervisors are the two most commonly cited role model categories for learning how to lead, which matches my own list closely, if you count the adults who filled those roles for me growing up. I have a long list of both good and bad examples across those categories.

Two recent examples define the pattern most clearly.

She believed in me before I believed in myself.

A director I worked under led with a clear vision and fought for it, with stakeholders above her and on behalf of the people below her, at the same time. That's a harder balance than it sounds: leading up, down, and across an organization without losing conviction in either direction is what Northouse (2021) would call transformational leadership in practice, not theory. She built cultures of trust and accountability, brought clarity during change, and made the people around her feel capable of more than they thought; the kind of individualized support for autonomy and competence that Forner et al. (2021) describe as core to how leaders actually motivate people, not just how people remember their best leaders. What she built in the people she led didn't depend on her staying in the room. It held on its own.

He doesn't need to be in the room for the team to still work.

A Group Vice President of Engineering I interviewed for this program measures his own success by whether a team can function without him: servant leadership, in Greenleaf's (1977) original sense, as a daily practice rather than a slide in a deck. Canavesi and Minelli's (2022) review of the servant leadership literature confirms this isn't a dated idea, and it's one of the more consistently supported leadership styles in recent organizational research. He also refuses to treat AI as an oracle; accountability for outcomes stays with the person in the role, not the tool, which means leading through real ambiguity instead of deferring to whatever a system outputs (R., personal communication, June 22, 2026). And he doesn't lead everyone the same way. He adjusts what he offers based on where a person actually is.

They led differently, but the same thread runs through both: they made the people around them better, on purpose, and neither needed to hold onto control to prove it. That's the kind of leader I'm trying to become: one whose impact is still standing after the title is gone.

Sources used · Posner (2021); Northouse (2021); Forner et al. (2021); Greenleaf (1977); Canavesi & Minelli (2022); R., personal communication, June 22, 2026

Sources used · Wiley (2026); R., personal communication, June 22, 2026

Three failures, out of a longer honest list, taught me the most about the leader I'm becoming.

Assuming clarity existed when it did not.

I built training before the actual problem was named. It's the same mistake I warn against in my own leadership philosophy now, a lesson I only fully believe because I paid for it once.

Believing expertise would speak for itself.

It doesn't. Expertise has to be translated into language the business actually uses, or it stays invisible no matter how sound it is.

Taking ownership beyond my actual authority.

Ownership and over-functioning look similar from the outside. They are not the same thing, and confusing them cost me more than it should have.

Failure isn't the opposite of expertise. Most real expertise gets built by getting something wrong first, and staying honest about what that wrong thing actually was.

I want you to walk me through building a personal "failure resume" — a concept developed by Stanford professor Tina Seelig, where instead of listing accomplishments, you document real professional failures and what they taught you about how you lead, work, or make decisions.

Here's how I want you to guide me:

Start by asking me to describe one specific professional failure or setback — not a vague regret, but a real situation with a beginning, middle, and end. Ask me one question at a time, not a long list at once.

For each failure I describe, help me dig into what it actually taught me by asking follow-up questions like: What did I believe going into this that turned out to be wrong? What would I do differently if I could redo it? What pattern does this reveal about how I tend to work or lead?

Offer — but don't force — three optional lenses I can use to categorize each failure, if they fit naturally: Assuming clarity existed when it did not (acting before the real problem was actually named); Believing expertise would speak for itself (not translating knowledge into language others could act on); Taking ownership beyond actual authority (confusing ownership with over-functioning). If a failure doesn't fit any of these three, that's fine — help me name what it actually reveals instead of forcing a fit.

Repeat this process for 3-5 failures. Keep each round focused — one failure at a time, a few follow-up questions, then move to the next.

At the end, compile everything into a clean, formatted "Failure Resume" — each entry with a short title, what happened, and the lesson — plus one closing reflection: what pattern, if any, connects most of these failures together.

Start by asking me about the first failure whenever I'm ready.

Three theories keep showing up across everything I've studied and experienced this term, and I don't think that's a coincidence, and it's a pattern worth naming directly.

Adaptive leadership

(Yukl & Gardner, 2020) resonates most. I value clarity, honesty, and the ability to lead through ambiguity, helping a team identify the real challenge instead of rushing to a surface-level solution. My own failure resume proves the cost of skipping this: more than one project started with a training request before anyone had named the actual problem.

Servant leadership

in Greenleaf's (1977) original sense, reflects how I want to lead, not just what I believe about leadership. Canavesi and Minelli (2022) confirm it's still one of the most actively studied leadership styles in current organizational research: leadership as removing barriers and staying committed to people's growth, not managing them toward a target. It's a theory I've watched lived out daily, and one Howard Behar argues for from a completely different industry (Barry-Wehmiller, n.d.).

Situational leadership

(Hersey et al., 2013) gives language to something I already believed in practice: people don't all need the same support at the same time. Knowing when to direct, when to coach, when to step back. That's the individualized-empowerment thread running through this entire manifesto.

Where the gap is: these three theories are relational by nature. My own assessments (Everything DiSC®'s CD style and LeadershipIQ's Pragmatist result) are more results-driven and less naturally relational, and DiSC® names the cost directly: bluntness, difficulty sharing responsibility, skepticism toward others' enthusiasm. I don't think that's a contradiction so much as an honest tension worth naming: I'm drawn to leadership theories that ask me to slow down and understand people individually, while my instinct under pressure, confirmed by two independent measures, leans toward moving fast and hitting the target. Reconciling those two isn't finished work. It's ongoing.

Sources used · Yukl & Gardner (2020); Greenleaf (1977); Canavesi & Minelli (2022); Hersey et al. (2013); Barry-Wehmiller (n.d.); Wiley (2026); LeadershipIQ (n.d.)

My own job posting analysis found something I didn't expect going in: postings across major companies barely mentioned instructional design deliverables. What they asked for instead was change leadership: people who can drive AI adoption, not people who can build a course about it.

The tool isn't what's accountable. The person leading it is.

That distinction came directly from a Group Vice President of Engineering I interviewed: AI is not something you deploy and walk away from. Accountability for outcomes stays with the person in the role (R., personal communication, June 22, 2026). Leading through this disruption looks less like mastering a new system and more like the NFL analogy this course keeps returning to, where everyone's good, everyone's improving, and standing still is the actual risk.

There's no single right answer below, because each path leads to a real tradeoff. Try a few and see which one matches how you'd actually lead.

Sources used · R., personal communication, June 22, 2026

The AI-in-instructional-design thread didn't start with this course. It's been building for a year.

Sources used · R., personal communication, June 22, 2026; Wiley (2026)

This isn't a hypothetical plan built for an assignment. It's my actual 2026 Individual Development Plan at work, integrated with what this program keeps pointing me toward.

Executive presence: learning to hold a point of view in rooms I didn't used to be in.

As an IC5 Senior Manager, I'm increasingly expected to operate as a strategic partner, not just a program executor, which means asserting a clear recommendation with VP-level audiences, not just executing well once a decision's already made. This is a real, named growth area from my manager, and it sits in honest tension with my DiSC® result: I'm not short on directness in general, but that directness doesn't always survive translation into senior-level rooms. My concrete action here is completing the Foundation of Influence & Innovation Credential (FIIC) and applying a structured communication framework (a clear recommendation, a direct business link, an explicit ask) in leadership-facing conversations, not just informal ones.

Making my doctoral coursework visible in my actual work, not just my transcript.

This is the same instinct behind Section 9 of this manifesto: the AI-in-instructional-design throughline running across four courses wasn't an assignment exercise, it's a pattern I noticed because I went looking for it. My 2026 goal makes that explicit: identify one academic framework per semester and apply it to an active program, and document the connection rather than letting it stay theoretical.

Advancing AI fluency as a practitioner, not just a designer of AI training for others.

I'm already using Claude, Claude Code, and Windsurf in my own program design workflow; this isn't a future intention, it's current practice. My concrete next step is completing a Workera AI assessment to establish an honest baseline, and finishing Anthropic Academy's AI Fluency sequence (Framework and Foundations → Teaching AI Fluency) (Anthropic, 2026a, 2026b) specifically because that second course is built for instructional designers and educational leaders applying AI fluency to teaching practice, a closer fit than a generic AI credential would be.

Where Chapter 26 still fits: Klein and Rushby (2018) make a case for professional organization membership as part of staying current in the field. That's not where my energy is going in 2026. The three goals above are the real priority, but it's a reasonable next addition once these are underway, not something to force in now for the sake of checking a box.

Sources used · Klein & Rushby (2018); Anthropic (2026a, 2026b)

I'm most confident in adaptive leadership and results-driven execution, both confirmed independently by two separate assessments (Everything DiSC® and LeadershipIQ) as core to how I actually operate, not just how I'd like to see myself. The honest growth areas are named just as clearly, and they're less comfortable to sit with: my DiSC® report flags a tendency toward bluntness, difficulty sharing responsibility or depending on others, and an instinct to withhold open praise or read others' enthusiasm skeptically rather than at face value (Wiley, 2026). Psychological safety (creating space for people to take real risks without fear of my own high standards) is where those traits show up as an actual leadership gap, not just a personality quirk (Edmondson, 2018).

Results-orientation is where two independent assessments agree most strongly: Everything DiSC®'s CD style and LeadershipIQ's Pragmatist result (LeadershipIQ, n.d.) both land here. Psychological safety and situational empowerment are lower not because I don't value them, but because my own assessments name the specific ways my instincts work against them: bluntness, difficulty sharing responsibility, and skepticism toward others' enthusiasm. That's the actual growth work this manifesto is pointing toward.

That gap matters more now than it used to. My own job posting analysis named large-scale change leadership as the direction the field is moving, and change leadership depends on exactly the collaborative trust-building my assessments say is my weakest instinct. Closing that gap isn't optional if I want to grow into the roles I'm actually aiming for.

Sources used · Wiley (2026); Edmondson (2018)