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The purpose of this paper is to consider leaders as continuing learning and development (L&D) crafters.

To maximize leaders’ “self-awareness” and “learning agility”, this article addresses itself to positive, purposeful and planned self-development by means of continuing L&D crafting.

Executing leader’s structured and personalized developmental portfolios produce both personal and organizational gains, as reported by participants in the global “Learning Entrepreneurs” research project.

The article offers a “designy” tool that executives can use in the workplace and outside.

Apart from the fact that it seems highly practical to employ L&D crafting as a business leadership development method, one can extrapolate this idea, and recommend this technique to leaders outside of business. This may transform institutions at large into learning organizations.

Rooted in design thinking and positive organizational studies, the article advances a “continuing developmental portfolio” made up of two components: a continuing executive development “Check-in” and “Design”. These together are a mechanism for natural and disciplined learning from opportunistic incidents.

I present a framework for thinking about personal happiness. Ideas from philosophy are combined with research on happiness from various scientific traditions. But treatments in philosophy tend to be atomistic, focusing on one narrow approach at the exclusion of others; treatments in psychology tend also to be circumscribed, emphasizing specific hypotheses but at the neglect of overarching theory. My approach posits a far-reaching theoretical model, rooted in goal-directed action, yet mindful of nonpurposive sources of happiness as well. The heart of the theory is self-regulation of desires and decisions, which rests on self-conscious examination and application of self-evaluative standards for leading a moral life in the broadest sense of guiding how we act in relation to others. Seven elements of happiness are then developed and related to the conceptual framework. These encompass love and caring; work as a calling; brain systems underpinning wanting, liking, and pleasure; the need to deal with very bad and very good things happening to us; the role of moral concerns and emotions; the examined life and its distractions; and finally spirituality and transcendental concerns. The final section of the chapter sketches everyday challenges and choices academics face.