What do you think?
Rate this book
The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Student At a Time
272 pages, Paperback
Published November 11, 2025
About the author
Stephen R. Covey
673 books6,469 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Stephen Richards Covey was an American educator, author, businessman, and speaker. His most popular book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time. In 1996, Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people. He was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University (USU) at the time of his death.
Stephen Richards Covey was an American educator, author, businessman, and speaker. His most popular book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The 8th Habit, and The Leader In Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time. In 1996, Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people. He was a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University (USU) at the time of his death.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 31, 2026
** I read this as a requirement for work. **
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this one… There are definitely some good points, but I also feel like so much of this is out of touch with what our world of teaching actually looks like today. As much as we want to create leaders and provide leadership opportunities for students, there is genuinely not enough time within our days to implement everything this book suggests. Plus, some of the language is almost laughable, and I just don’t see students connecting to it as much as the book claims they will…
WIGs and PIGs are probably the funniest way you could explain goals. Wildly Important Goals? Yes, they may be wildly important, but I could not imagine a middle school student being like, “YES! I can’t wait to build my WIG!” and actually striving to do it independently.
There’s also a moment where they talk about the owners of Panda Express coming into a school, and a GRADE 3 student asks Mr. Cherng how they can fix their “deltas”?! There is not a world where I can imagine even a Grade 8 student asking something like that, let alone a Grade 3 student. Maybe I’m just a little blind to that possibly happening, but… be so for real.
This book wants to be the framework for something that, at its core, is actually pretty simple. Yet, there isn’t nearly enough guidance on what each of these goals should actually look like in a classroom or how to implement them in a way that is realistic and manageable.
Simply put, I agree with the habits and think they are a nifty way for students to exhibit leadership and take ownership of their learning. But this book does a whole lot of feeding you the “possible” without showing you the “achievable.”
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this one… There are definitely some good points, but I also feel like so much of this is out of touch with what our world of teaching actually looks like today. As much as we want to create leaders and provide leadership opportunities for students, there is genuinely not enough time within our days to implement everything this book suggests. Plus, some of the language is almost laughable, and I just don’t see students connecting to it as much as the book claims they will…
WIGs and PIGs are probably the funniest way you could explain goals. Wildly Important Goals? Yes, they may be wildly important, but I could not imagine a middle school student being like, “YES! I can’t wait to build my WIG!” and actually striving to do it independently.
There’s also a moment where they talk about the owners of Panda Express coming into a school, and a GRADE 3 student asks Mr. Cherng how they can fix their “deltas”?! There is not a world where I can imagine even a Grade 8 student asking something like that, let alone a Grade 3 student. Maybe I’m just a little blind to that possibly happening, but… be so for real.
This book wants to be the framework for something that, at its core, is actually pretty simple. Yet, there isn’t nearly enough guidance on what each of these goals should actually look like in a classroom or how to implement them in a way that is realistic and manageable.
Simply put, I agree with the habits and think they are a nifty way for students to exhibit leadership and take ownership of their learning. But this book does a whole lot of feeding you the “possible” without showing you the “achievable.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review