Capstone: Apl Prac & Princ Ldg

2.3 Leadership Perspective - Who Am I

Getting Started

The Department of Leadership Studies at the University has a saying:  leadership always matters. Regardless of one's academic discipline or career field, leadership will eventually play an important part. Leaders play a key role in keeping everyone thinking about the organization's mission, keeping everyone inspired and motivated to pursue that mission, and making sure that all the organizational systems, processes, and resources are available to support the mission.

To say that leadership always matters is to offer a value proposition or even a core commitment statement. As you learned very early in the program, values and core commitments often emerge out of one's fundamental worldview, whether they recognize that they have a worldview or not.

How about you? Where does your perspective of leadership connect to your underlying worldview?

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

· Integrate a philosophy of leadership with worldview and faith.

Background Information

Thinking back to your LDR 260 Critical Thinking for Leaders course, you may remember being introduced to James Sire (2020) and his work on worldview. Sire suggested that one's worldview exists deep inside the person. It is the central operating system or programming from which all our thoughts and actions proceed. Sire also indicated that one's worldview can be expressed as a series of propositions or even a story. The stories or propositions are not our worldviews but a way of expressing the set of assumptions that guide the way we think and act.

In summary, Sire identified 8 questions that can help reveal our worldview.

· What do we think is prime reality or really real?

· What is the nature of external reality or the world around us?

· What is a human being?

· What happens to a person at death?

· Why is it possible to know anything at all?

· How do we know what is right or wrong?

· What is the meaning of human history?

· What are the personal life-orienting core commitments consistent with our worldview?

Perhaps we could summarize these ideas (as well as other work on worldview) as:

· What is real?

· What is good?

· What is the meaning of life?

· What is our destiny?

A substantial part of your academic program has encouraged you to deeply reflect on what you believe, why you believe it, and how it impacts your personal and professional behaviors. Other courses that you completed considered questions about ethics, good decision making, followership, organizational culture, personality, motivation, mission, vision, values, and how to develop yourself and others. You have examined multiple biblical passages, threads, and ideas along the way. You have considered how your faith perspective influences your attitudes and behaviors for leadership. Hopefully, you've gained some good insights and self-understanding that you can now pull together in a clear and cohesive way.

**Preparation Instructions for Required Video**

Instructions

1. Review all the materials assigned in Workshop Two. Consider some of your assignments in past courses (including devotional reflections). Conduct any new research that might be needed to complete this assignment.   

2. Create an 8 – 10-minute video addressing the following prompts.  Begin by creating an outline of the material. Then, you can use the outline to plan and deliver your video content. You will submit both the video and the outline for this workshop. The outline will be useful when you compile your final course project in Workshop Six. (Review video preparation instructions included in the Background Information section.)

3. Worldview and Faith Integration: 

a. Reflect on your past work on worldview, devotionals, or similar themes in the program. How have you changed or developed your thinking? Discuss at least three important insights you gained from your studies in these areas. Focus on insights that influence the way you think, believe, or perceive (e.g., yourself, life, what matters).   

b. What are those insights?   

c. What impact have they had on you? How are you different or operating differently because of those insights?   

d. How will those insights impact you as a leader?   

4. Organizational Leader Concepts: 

a. Select at least two other core topics (maximum of four) from the program (see some examples in the last paragraph of the background section). Focus on concepts/topics (e.g., ethical system, self-development, motivation) in which you can make connections to things (thinking, assumptions) that happen “below the surface” as a person. Discuss those topics either one at a time or connected to each other.   

b. What are the concepts/topics?   

c. Why or how did those concepts or your study of them impact you? How are you different or operating differently because of those topics and your study of those topics?  

d. How will your understanding of those concepts/topics impact you as a leader?  

5. Perspective Statement: 

a. Integrate your insights (and impacts) about worldview, faith integration, and your selected organizational leader concepts to leadership.  

b. How does your philosophy of leadership (you developed last workshop) emerge from and/or contribute to your worldview, faith, and organizational leader concepts perspective?  

c. In other words, how does your view on leadership emerge out of who you are?  

6. NOTE: You do not need to include an introduction or conclusion for the outline. Simply provide a title page, the outline based on prompts noted above, and a references page. This assignment is part of the larger project for the course. You will compose your introduction and conclusion for the larger project in Workshop Six.   

7. Inasmuch as this is a reflection paper, first-person voice is acceptable.   

8. When you have completed your assignment, submit a copy of the video (or video link) and outline using the Assignment submission link by the end of the workshop week.  

9. Feel free to utilize  Academic Writer (new tab)  (APA formatting resource) and Grammarly (grammar and plagiarism check) on the  IWU Resources (new tab)  page. 

10. All papers must be written per  APA Guidelines (7th ed) (new tab) , including format guidelines. Papers must be logical, well organized, grammatically correct, and have correct spelling and sentence structure.  Write in complete paragraphs of at least three sentences in length.