Leadership paper

Managerial and Leadership Skills:

Self-Reflection Exercise:  Prepare a brief paper detailing each the points below.  Please be concise and to the point.  Brevity is preferred in business writing.  Your paper should be no more than 3 pages, single spaced. 

1 What traits, behaviors and/or decision styles best describes your personal approach to management and leadership (see lecture on leadership).  Explain what you see as your personal leadership strengths and potential weaknesses or areas for improvement? 

2 Considering situational and follower characteristics (see the task and follower characteristics in the leadership lecture and Fiedler's Contingency Model), identify how your personal strengths and weaknesses match with the specific situational and follower characteristics you expect to encounter in your current or anticipated leadership role.   Explain.

3 Describe how you will attempt to apply what you are learning in this course over the next six weeks.  Identify one situation or context (describing follower and task characteristics) in which you will practice these skills. Be specific.  Identify specific situations and skills you plan to practice over the next 6 weeks and set specific goals (i.e., what will you do in what situation(s) and how will you assess the impact).

This course is about leadership, not management, and thus you can be a leader without having an official position or title.  Many of you will not have had, or be in an official leader or manager role, but you can certainly be a leader among you peers.  So, this assignment is not limited by any official position you may, or may not hold. IMPORTANT: Your self assessment/reflection assignment at the end of the course will require you to detail what leadership principles you applied, how you adapted those principles to the situation and follower characteristics, and evaluate how well you did as well as identify areas for further development.  That assignment will be much easier if you articulate specific plans, set specific goals, and identify how you will assess your progress against those goals in this Module One assignment. Grading Criteria: Your responses will be graded based of how well the model(s) of leadership outlined in the lecture and readings are reflected in your self-assessment.  Your grade is NOT based on the specific leadership strengths or weaknesses you identify, but rather on the level of insight and application of the leadership material from the text and lecture that you reflect in your responses.

 

Rubric

Leadership Self-Assesment