Book Title: Nourishing Leadership

Book Description

This book was written by the eleventh cohort of doctoral students as part of their journey through the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program at Concordia University in Irvine, California. Written as part of the Technology in a Systems Approach to Leadership class taught by Professor, Dr. Bonni Stachowiak, students learned how to be writers, readers, and storytellers.

This book has been written by educational leaders in differing contexts and who work to serve a myriad of stakeholders. As teachers, professors, principals, managers, specialists, and researchers they bring into this program leadership challenges and opportunities, along with a love for the InstaPot (or, at least, having a loved one with a passion for it).

Concordia University is a Christian university, though the program does not have a religious requirement to pursue a doctoral degree in the program. A few of students include mentions of the way in which they developed spiritually in their leadership pursuits. They welcome you into this reading, regardless of your perspectives on such things.

Each chapter contains an essay that reflects how these students have learned to become a more nourishing leader to those they serve. These are stories of opportunities, situations, and conversations that have had an impact on their leadership – along with powerful lessons learned from failures and setbacks.

At the end of each essay, is a leadership recipe to help you focus on putting new ideas into practice. These are the kinds of recipes that encourage you to experiment and apply to your own contexts. Each essay is meant to inspire you to change up the ingredients a bit and find new ways in which to serve something sustaining to those whom you lead.

Finally, included in each chapter,  is a recipe you can try out if you happen to be an InstaPot owner. While this is not intended in the slightest to take the place of a good InstaPot recipe book, or a collection of them on Pinterest – they are included in hopes that you find an enjoyable recipe to try.

May this book be a good companion to you as you serve up a feast of nourishing leadership in your organization.

If you would like to learn more about how this and the other books were written, visit the Teaching in Higher Ed (https://teachinginhighered.com) and search for open textbooks. There are Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episodes on the topic, along with some blog posts to explore.