David V. Day is a professor of psychological science and academic director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College, specializing in leadership and leadership development. A widely published researcher and fellow of multiple psychological associations, David has received prestigious awards, including the Walter F. Ulmer Research Award for his contributions to applied leadership research.
David V. Day
Featured Leadership Topics
Communicate Effectively
“They should communicate, and the communication is not just a verbal communication, but one way to stay in touch with the people around you is to disseminate written communication, which is, I think, why a liberal arts education is also so valuable. Our students learn to write.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
Lead Confidently
“But if you think about actually working out, it’s stretching your capabilities beyond where you are presently, not to the breaking point, but to build the kind of aerobic capacity, the muscle mass that will bring about the kind of body image that you want, or the kind of health status that you want…It’s the same with leadership; you’ve got to be stretching yourself a little bit every day in terms of what you do in order to change your leadership capacity over time.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
Understand Leadership
“With leader development it’s really thought that it’s an intrapersonal or human capital issue. It’s your knowledge, skills and abilities that you’ve acquired. With leadership development, it’s really much more where leadership resides is not in you, or not in me, it’s between you and me. It’s the relationship between us.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
Promote Values and Ethics
“Some people view leadership in very idealistic and virtuistic kind of ways... I know other authors who will say, ‘Well, it can’t really be leadership unless it has some virtuous, ethical component to it.’ I don’t buy into that version of leadership because I think there’s a lot of examples of destructive leadership in societies, in organizations, large and small.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
Lead Authentically
“...It also opened my eyes around union leadership, which I maybe went in a little bit idealistic but came out much more clear-eyed that the union has got as many problems, if not more so, than does management.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
Develop a Team
“Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn’t reside in any one leader.”
Description of the video:
Leadership development is really about developing a collective, a group, a team to build certain leadership approaches that they can then use to address adaptive challenges in their shared work. But the leadership doesn't reside in any one.
David V. Day holds appointments as professor of psychological science and academic director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. He also is the Steven L. Eggert Professor of Leadership and a George R. Roberts Research Fellow at the College. Day is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, International Association of Applied Psychology, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and book chapters, many pertaining to the core topics of leadership and leadership development.
Most recently, Day is the author of the Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes (Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature, 2024). In 2010, Day received the Walter F. Ulmer Research Award from the Center for Creative Leadership for outstanding, career-long contributions to applied leadership research.
Explore the full oral history of David DayBorn or Made?
“And this is kind of formative in what has happened later in terms of what we think develops more approximately in leader development and what comes later with practice.”
Leaders Are Readers
“You can choose to read things that only support what you believe in, much like you could turn on the television and only watch certain shows that reinforce what you already believe in. But reading, I think, opens the world in so many different facets than television or the digital media can do. So, yeah, absolutely, leaders should read.”
Books I Recommend
- A Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations
—by Karl Weick
Books I’ve Written
- Developing Leaders and Leadership: Principles, Practices, and Processes (2024)
- The Nature of Leadership (2017)
- An Integrative Approach to Leader Development: Connecting Adult Development, Identity, and Expertise (2008)
- Leader Development for Transforming Organizations: Growing Leaders for Tomorrow (2004)
