Leadership from the Inside Out

Faculty: Michael Wesson and Lei Huang

Course Description

This two-day executive leadership program develops the personal and interpersonal capabilities leaders need to lead with clarity, credibility, and sustained impact. Beginning with Leading Within, participants examine how their values, identity, purpose, self-awareness, emotional patterns, and well-being shape their judgment, presence, resilience, and the way they are experienced by others, particularly under pressure. This session includes a full personality / motivational assessment that participants will complete prior to arriving. Building on that foundation, Leading Others focuses on the practical leadership behaviors that create trust, strengthen culture, develop talent, and drive performance, including effective communication, feedback, coaching, motivation, expectation-setting, and team alignment. Framing leadership as an inside-out process, the program combines focused reflection with immediately applicable practices, enabling managers and executives to better understand themselves, lead others more intentionally, and mobilize people around shared priorities.

Target Audience:

Who will benefit most from this course?

• New and emerging people managers transitioning from individual contributor to leadership roles

• Mid level managers seeking stronger emotional intelligence, presence, and consistency under pressure

• High potential employees in leadership development or succession pipelines

• Functional managers and supervisors responsible for team performance, engagement, and culture

• Project and program leaders influencing others without formal authority

• Experienced managers preparing for senior leadership roles with broader impact

• Technical or professional experts moving into leadership roles for the first time

 

Learning Objectives & Outcomes:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Assess their leadership strengths, values, motivations, and behavioral patterns and understand how these influence their decisions and relationships.
• Clarify their leadership purpose and identity to lead with greater authenticity, consistency, and credibility.
• Recognize how they are experienced by others and adapt their leadership presence and communication style to different situations and stakeholders.
• Apply practical strategies for managing pressure, maintaining resilience, and sustaining personal well-being over time.
• Build trust, motivate employees, and create an environment in which people feel valued, engaged, and empowered to contribute.

 

Faculty Biography:

Dr. Michael Wesson - Associate Dean  Graduate and Executive Programs

Dr. Michael J. Wesson is the Luck Professor and Associate Dean of Graduate and Executive Programs in Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business. He received his PhD from Michigan State University. He has taught leadership, organizational behavior, and human resource management-based classes at the undergraduate, graduate, executive, and doctoral levels. He has received awards for teaching excellence both at the college and university levels and is co-author of a popular textbook on Organizational Behavior.

Wesson’s research interests include leadership, turnover, organizational change, organizational entry (employee recruitment, selection, and socialization), and compensation and benefits. His articles have been published in top journals such as Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Review, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. His works have been cited over 23,000 times (Google Scholar).

Wesson has served as a consultant to companies in the automotive supplier, oil and gas, and technology industries in areas dealing with leadership development, recruiting, selection, onboarding, compensation, and employee retention.

 

Dr. Lei Huang

Dr. Lei Huang is George Phillips Privett Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at Auburn University's Harbert College of Business. He received his Ph.D. in Management from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His current research focuses on leadership, creativity, and behavioral ethics. His work has been published in a number of outlets such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Group and Organization Management, and Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, among others. His research has been cited in national and international media outlets, such as Forbes, Yahoo, INC Magazine, Science Daily, Business News Daily, Medical Daily, The Economic Times, etc.

Dr. Huang serves on the editorial boards of several journals. He is also a former Associate Editor at Human Relations (FT50), Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Journal of Business Research. He has been recognized for his research excellence and received the prestigious Outstanding Faculty Research Award (2024) and the Outstanding Rising Scholar Award (2022) both from the Harbert College of Business, as well as the Outstanding Research Award and the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship. He and his colleagues also received the Best Leadership Paper Award (2021) for their pioneering work on ethical voice in the context of ethical leadership from the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership at the Ivey Business School of Western University (Canada), which recognized leadership research that delivered the highest societal impact on a five-year time span (2016-2020).