Leadership Skills For Young Adults
Author: RJ Barranco · Status: Coming Summer 2026
What this book is about
Leadership at the scale young adults actually live at — friend groups, group projects, teams, family meals, summer jobs, the lunchtime kitchen of a chain restaurant. Not the corner-office version, not the corporate-magazine version, not the "natural-born-leader" version. The opening definition runs through every chapter: leadership isn't being in charge — it's being responsible for what happens when no one's in charge.
Who it's for
Grades 9–12, college first-year, advisory / SEL, AP US Government, AP Psychology, AP Language, athletics captains programs, student government, peer mentoring, honor society, service clubs, CTE workplace-readiness, and dedicated leadership-development electives. Strong cross-curricular fit with civics, ethics, and social-studies courses that cover social-movement theory.
What's inside
Fifteen chapters across four parts. Recognize (Chs 1–3) names the leadership students are already doing, asks them to own their story, and maps their hidden influence. Engage (Chs 4–6) covers trust, emotional intelligence as a working skill, and reading the room. Amplify (Chs 7–10) is the operational substrate: meetings, follow-through, accountability, developing other leaders, building real teams, deciding under pressure. Launch (Chs 11–14) goes outward — vision that does the work, change without authority, leading across differences, and the long-arc legacy practice. The conclusion assembles a portable thirty-day practice the student carries forward.
Industry frameworks, attributed in body
Bill George on authenticity (Ch 2); Cialdini and Kotter on influence (Ch 3); Stephen R. Covey, Stephen M.R. Covey, and Brené Brown on trust (Ch 4); Mayer–Salovey and Goleman on EI (Ch 5); Heifetz–Linsky and Edmondson on reading rooms and psychological safety (Ch 6); Drucker on effectiveness (Ch 7); Whitmore (GROW) and Hersey–Blanchard (situational leadership) on developing others (Ch 8); Tuckman and Lencioni on teams (Ch 9); Bain's RAPID, the Heath brothers' WRAP, and Annie Duke previewed (Ch 10); Sinek's Start With Why plus four real exemplars — MLK 1963, Greta Thunberg 2018, Bryan Stevenson, Fred Rogers 1969 — on vision (Ch 11); Kotter's eight-step change framework (Ch 12); Erin Meyer's Culture Map and Kenji Yoshino's Covering on leading across differences (Ch 13); Greenleaf, Grant's Give and Take, and Duke's Quit full treatment on legacy (Ch 14). Every framework cited at point of use with author + book + year; no invented acronyms passing as proprietary frameworks.
For educators
The free educator companion guide for this book — chapter-by-chapter teaching notes, sensitivity protocols, discussion questions, and standards-alignment documentation (CASEL, Common Core ELA, AP, Nevada CTE, ISTE) — lives at skillsforyoungadults.org and is freely usable in adopted classrooms and adjacent contexts.
The full fifteen-chapter classroom toolkit — twelve files per chapter (lesson plans, anchor-read excerpts, worksheets, student-retained reference cards, project rubrics, Marp slide decks, quiz banks, standards-alignment crosswalks, differentiation protocols, teacher notes) plus a synthesis-capstone portfolio assembly for the closing class — is available to schools, districts, and programs adopting the book for classroom use. Strong adoption fit for AP US Government social-movement units, AP Psychology personality + prosocial-behavior content, AP Language synthesis and rhetorical-analysis sequences, civics action-projects, and student-leadership / honor-society programs. To inquire about classroom adoption + toolkit access, contact skills@mojavepublishing.com.
Get the book
Releasing Summer 2026 with the rest of the publish-track series. Sample chapters and direct-purchase links will be posted here as the book ships.
For press, school visits, librarian inquiries, or institutional licensing: skills@mojavepublishing.com.