Capstone: Apl Prac & Princ Ldg

4.3 Assignment. Leadership Points of View

Getting Started

What could you teach or share with another about leadership? By this point in the program, you have learned a lot, heard a lot, read a lot, and experienced a lot. Hopefully, all that material has benefited you both personally and professionally. At some point you may become the one being interviewed (or leading a workshop) and not just the one doing the interview. What are the key insights you would share with another? This assignment gives you the opportunity to summarize what you’ve learned from leaders that you could share with others who might ask you about leadership.  

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

· Synthesize key learning from leaders that could be shared with others. 

Background Information

Among the key elements of highest-level critical thinking are analysis and synthesis. Analysis is the process of breaking “wholes” down into parts for consideration. Imagine taking your car apart piece by piece until all the parts are laid out on the garage floor so that you can look at each more in-depth.  

Synthesis is the process of taking parts (usually from various sources) and reassembling them into a new “whole.” Imagine then that you broke down several vehicles into constituent parts. Then, you selected parts from among those vehicles to create a brand-new vehicle that no one has ever made previously. As you have listened to your leader interviews and provided reports, you have done both analysis and synthesis throughout the program. Re-examining your learning and doing more critical thinking can help you build some new parts and some new wholes to inform your own leadership as well as help others with their leadership activities.  

This  video (new tab)  contains some good ideas about synthesizing information.

Instructions

1. Review all the materials assigned in Workshop 4. Consider some of your assignments in past courses (including devotional reflections). Conduct any new research that might be needed to complete this assignment. For example, you may want to conduct another brief Leader2Leader conversation to reflect on the work you are building for your capstone project. 

2. Write a three- to four-page paper (750 – 1000 words double-spaced in a Word document), addressing the following reflection prompts: 

a. Leader2Leader (about 1 to 2 pages in length): 

i. During the program, you conducted several Leader2Leader conversations. You may have also had other conversations with leaders in your life during your time of study (whether or not directly related to a class you were taking). For this week's project's first page(s), provide a listing of your interviewees. Provide their name, organizational affiliation, role, the course (e.g., LDR 205) or other reason you spoke to them, and your assessment of how they might be of value to you in the future (e.g., this would be a good person to talk to about “this topic” in the future if I have questions).  Consider adding professional contact info (e.g., phone number, email address, etc.) to facilitate a future connection should you have leadership questions and want to talk to an expert.

b. Points of View (about 1 to 1.5 pages in length): 

i. During the program, you gained valuable perspectives from your Leader2Leader interviews (and similar conversations). Review your notes and the submitted assignments reporting insights from those interviews. What are the most important things you learned? Organize those insights into bullet points (or another way of presenting them) that summarize the best points of learning, advice, etc., you gleaned from those conversations. No specific number of insights is required. Rather, you should provide 1 to 1.5 pages of that type of reflection, report, or synthesis. That is, “what I would share with another.” You may present the points of view in a graphical form (e.g., an infographic).  Note. Do not just copy and paste ideas from your previous reports. Take the time to synthesize key learning from among all the interviews (be sure to watch the video in the Background Information section).  

c. Key Points Statement (no more than 1 paragraph or ½ page). 

i. Integrate your insights (and impacts) from the Leader2Leader assessment and points of view summary with your thinking about service and leadership. What seems to be the one or two most important insights from your leaders? How do some of your learning from other leaders connect to your philosophy, perspective, or purpose statements that you wrote previously in this course?

3. NOTE: Do not include an introduction or conclusion for this paper. Simply provide a title page, the three sections 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.  

4. Inasmuch as this is a reflection paper, first-person voice is acceptable. No additional sources are required, as well. 

5. When you have completed your assignment, submit a copy using the Assignment submission link by the end of the workshop week. 

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

a. 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. 

b. Proofread your paper using Grammarly. Grammarly is provided to you as a student at no cost to proofread and spellcheck your paper. Proofreading your papers prior to submitting them ensures the highest quality of presentation. 

7. The maximum number of pages is given to encourage you to be concise and use meaningful words.  

8. Failure to meet these minimum writing and formatting requirements will result in a lowering of the overall grade.  Use a #12 black font in Times New Roman.