The Guidon Foundation

For high-school students · Summer 2026 cohort

Service Leadership
Academy

Eight weeks. Sixteen sessions. Sixty-four hours of leadership formation for the young Americans who will lead the next generation of service.

Dates

15 Jun – 6 Aug 2026

Schedule

Mon & Thu · 1700–2100

Cohort

35 students · 5 teams

Cost

$0 tuition

Mission

Form high-school students into self-aware, ethical, team-capable leaders who can diagnose the cultures they enter and produce real outcomes for their communities.

Hosted at Honor Bound FIT in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Designed for the rising leaders of the region and tested against the standards of the people who have led real teams under real pressure.

Outcomes

What graduates can do.

  1. 1.Name their own leadership tendencies through validated assessments.
  2. 2.Diagnose organizations using Logan's stages and Lencioni's pyramid.
  3. 3.Operate inside Jocko's Laws of Combat under team pressure.
  4. 4.Execute a real community project from concept to public presentation.
  5. 5.After-action review honestly.

Closes with a public graduation — families and community members served by each Community Leadership Project in attendance.

Four phases · sixteen sessions · sixty-four hours

A real curriculum. Real instructors.

01

Phase 01 · Days 1–4

Self-Awareness & Self-Leadership

You cannot lead others until you can lead yourself. Physical challenges. Validated assessments — DISC, Big Five, MBTI, CliftonStrengths. Five voices: Peterson, McRaven, Frankl, Hoban, Jocko.

02

Phase 02 · Days 5–9

Good & Bad Leadership: How to Identify It

Live battlefield study led by combat veterans. Sinek & Logan on the Cleveland Clinic. Bad leadership under a badge: LAPD Rampart and BPD GTTF. Enron, Theranos, Gerstner. Musk and Twitter — a live, unresolved case.

03

Phase 03 · Days 10–12

Building & Leading Teams

Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions next to Jocko's Laws of Combat. McChrystal's Team of Teams and Maxwell. A capstone team challenge — productive conflict, engineered into the five-team structure.

04

Phase 04 · Days 13–16

Community Leadership Project

Each team executes a real community project. Plan finalization, execution, documentation, graduation rehearsal. Closes with a public graduation — families and community members served by each project in attendance.

What makes it different

What you will not find anywhere else.

  • ▸Live battlefield study led by combat veterans.
  • ▸Live unresolved case — Musk and Twitter, examined through Logan's stages.
  • ▸Bad-leadership cases under a badge — Rampart and GTTF.
  • ▸Five-voice Phase 1 — Peterson, McRaven, Frankl, Hoban, Jocko.
  • ▸Real community project closing with a public graduation presentation.
  • ▸Honest “we missed it” beats dishonest “we made it.”
  • ▸Cohort-led AAR — students debrief their own performance.

Apply now

Take your spot.

Open to high-school students. Cohort is intentionally small — thirty-five seats, five teams.