Education 6.3 Assignment: Change Communication Gone Wrong

6.3 Assignment Change Communication Gone Wrong.html

Getting Started

How can we make it better?

In this assignment, you will relate concepts you have learned from the course text to a real-world experience. To do so, you will write a verbatim. A verbatim is a summary account of an experience in which you participated. Writing down the experience provides you the opportunity to examine the event and learn from the positive and negative communication dynamics that occurred. The verbatim creates an opportunity for you to view the event from multiple perspectives.

Your verbatim will describe a time in which your leader or organization instituted a change and your analysis of that experience. Using resources from this course and previous courses, address what went right, what went wrong, and how it could have gone better. This is a chance for you to pull multiple tools from your leadership toolkit built up over the program and use them together.

Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to:

• Critique a previous change initiative using select knowledge and skills gained through the BSOL program.

Instructions

1. Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade. 
2. The paper must be 5-7 pages in length.
3. The paper should have a minimum of seven different sources cited. 
4. Compose a verbatim in which you address the following: 
   1. Explain the change your leader or organization was implementing. 
   2. Use the Introduction to Communications videos from Workshop One and identify communication principles that were appropriately addressed and ones that were not addressed well (for example, maybe there was too much “noise” around the announcement). 
   3. Using Crucial Conversations, state the identified communication principles that were appropriately addressed and ones that were not addressed well (for example, did the leader or organization make it safe for employees to discuss the change and its implications). 
   4. Did the communication about the change take into account personal communication styles, intergenerational communication, or cross-cultural communication principles?
   5. What Biblical principle have you learned from this course that could have helped this communication effort be more effective?
   6. Referring back to LDR-385, the course on teams, what team dynamics were at play at the time of the change announcement? How were these addressed (or not?). 
   7. Referring back to LDR-410, did the communication effort around this change effectively cast vision for the change effort?
   8. Using all you have learned thus far, provide a best-case scenario for how this change effort could have been communicated.  
5. Submit your verbatim by Day 7 of the workshop. 

Review the associated rubric

Access the assignment submission page

6.2 Discussion Create Your Own Parable.html

Getting Started

Throughout this course, you have read the parables of Jesus. You have also read two books written in a fable/parable style. In LDR-385 you read the fable The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Using what you have learned from reading these biblical and modern-day parables, construct your own parable designed to communicate an important leadership or organizational principle.

Begin by deciding the principle you want to communicate. You could pull from LDR-410 and communicate about the use of wisdom or about a particular value. You could pull from LDR-405 and create a parable designed to demonstrate the importance of developing others as leaders. You could pull from LDR-385 and design a parable to communicate a specific team leadership principle. We will not list every previous class you have had, but the point has been made: you have previous courses and resources you could draw on to determine your parable’s topic.

You could also consider a particular issue you are having at your organization and create a parable to use in addressing it. Maybe a particular employee does not understand how disruptive their behavior is and previous attempts have not gotten through. You could use a parable to address that.  This is just an example and it is likely that each of you has an issue at work you wish could be addressed. These are all fair game as options for your parable.

It is recommended that you test out the parable on several different people before you turn in your final version. Each time you tell the parable, you can ask the listener what principle they took away. If they are not taking away from it what you are hoping they take away, then you need to edit the parable. You can also ask them if the parable was compelling – once you started, did they want to hear the rest? Did it hold their attention? Was it too short or too long?

This should not be something you try to create the night before it is due. This is something you need to draft, edit, tell, receive feedback, edit again, retell, receive feedback, and so on until you think it is a story that is effective.

Upon successful completion of this discussion, you will be able to:

• Construct a new parable design to communicate an important leadership or organizational principle.

Instructions

1. Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade. 
2. Create an original parable to address a topic you have learned about while in the Organizational Leadership program at IWU.
3. Whatever your topic, make sure it is clear. Do not try and address multiple topics or issues. 
4. You may turn in a written parable or you may record yourself telling the parable. Try for something that, if you read it out loud, would be in the 3-4 minutes range. Whether you write it or record yourself:
   1. You must begin by clearly communicating what your topic is and why you are addressing it. If it is a value or team leadership principle, what is it specifically and why is it important to address in your organization at this time. 
   2. Then tell the parable. 
5. Post your parable by the end of Day 4 of the workshop.
6. You must respond to at least two of your peer’s submissions explaining what you thought they did well in their parable by the end of Day 7 of the workshop. 

Review the associated rubric

Access the discussion topic page