The Leadership Instinct: Leading Yourself Out of Social Mediocrity is the outcome of nearly two decades of leadership development efforts by its author. It is the direct result of extensive years of classroom, laboratory, and advanced research and development mentoring activities. This experience, through the development of budding leaders, has led to the creation of this insightful leadership development working text. Inspired by decades of leadership development opportunities across various types of professions, disciplines, and personalities, The Leadership Instinct offers a unique strategy to inspire and promote leadership development and personal goal-directed growth in any individual seeking to become the best self they intend to become. This working text is focused on the essence, function, and required elements of leadership development that spring from the very core of our genetic makeup. This is in contrast and often counter-indicated within the numerous educational programs devoted to the development of management skill sets. The largest fallacy perpetrated in many improvement programs is the assumption that leadership and management are interchangeable concepts, which they are not. Currently our society has an obvious shortage in these necessary "big picture" leadership capabilities. The evidence, for example, can be found in the decades-long shrinking of our nation's manufacturing capacities, a decrease in the taught fundamentals in the school system, and, more importantly, the slowing of the introduction of game-changing technologies and processes into our social fabric. With this leadership development program's focus on your specific needs and desires, this program should help to stimulate your focus and attention, thus helping you achieve your future The Intended You. From this vantage point, you will then become an obvious candidate for those organizations looking for leadership talent. More importantly, as a leader you may choose to look to a new direction in your life, one that you may not have even considered at this point. This working text was developed to fill some of the gaps in our current leadership development needs. It individualizes the leadership process and can make it effective in anyone's personal and professional development. The uniqueness in this leadership program is its ability to provide value to almost any age group and across all disciplines. It also doesn't require the processing and acquisition of large quantities of knowledge.