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You can start drafting your statement simply by setting up four sections and working with the ideas you’ve generated through these engagements. But as you form and refine your ideas, it’s likely the material will guide you to an arrangement that makes the most sense for what you want to say and how you want to say it. Some people start with broad statements of principles and then show how they enact them in practice; others begin with a key aspect of their identities and how it has shaped their leadership; still others prefer to open with a specific experience that sets the stage for the ideas to come.

While your leadership statement might be the culmination of thinking as it’s developed from interacting from Learning to Lead and these engagements, if your reaction to summative documents is anything like ours, you’ll realize that a leadership statement (like the very best exam) isn’t the end of learning. We’ll return to our pragmatic roots one more time to point to what has become a commonplace phrase in education: it’s a process. As we and our contributors have done here, we need to continually revisit our influences and our own thinking as we make our leadership journey. As higher education leaders, the paths we walk and the futures they lead to are different—and they are often chaotic, tumultuous, and complicated.

Your leadership statement, ideally influenced by the mentor texts in Learning to Lead and these engagements, can outline your method and your aims as you seek to create this path for yourself and with others. Use the exercise below to begin.

Exercise: Synthesizing Engagements 1–4 [PDF] [Microsoft Word]

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Cite this Resource

Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Chris W. Gallagher, eds. 2026. “Your Leadership Statement.” Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn: Playbook. Center for Engaged Learning. https://doi.org/10.36284/celelon.oa11.