Leadership programs establish relevance and garner public trust in higher education by demonstrating their usefulness to communities and society across sectors. In this article, the General Principles were leveraged as a tool to make sense of a pedagogy of practice applied to coursework and programs over the course of programmatic growth. This article will explore how the principles were applied to build practice orientations to knowledge. Learning as a practical application brings knowledge into the field and requires practical application through understanding and attendance to cultural capital. As collectives navigate the social hierarchies and realities of connecting knowledge, a core practice of how humans make sense of knowing by doing, the General Principles are a tool.