Assignment Title: Leadership Experience Paper Assignment Instructions:   Good writing skills are essential for success in any academic or professional work. This is particularly true for people in a

Assignment Title: Leadership Experience Paper

Assignment Instructions:

Good writing skills are essential for success in any academic or professional work. This is particularly true for people in a leader position, where writing is the major way to communicate ideas to lower-echelon managers or entry-level employees. Good writing is a skill that requires practice to become perfect. 

The purpose of theLeadership Experience Paper is to apply the leadership concepts (from the lectures, class notes,book, additional readings,…) to your personal life:to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses as a leader and to recognize which situations align with your style, and which do not.

Task: 

Use leadershipconcepts to systematically evaluate your leadership and your relationship with your followers. Specifically, think about a time when you were in a leadership position and when you had to influence others. For example, you can talk about a situation that happened in school (e.g., group project, school event) or outside of school (e.g., summer jobs, internships, volunteer work). Address and evaluate your leadership behaviors/ style and your relationship with your followers. Please arrange your paper in the followingway: 

·Context. Briefly describe the context. Make sure you briefly(i.e., one or two sentences for each question) address the following questions: What was the setting (e.g., school, work, …)? Who was involved? What was your main task? What was your goal? Who were your followers? How many followers did you have? In other words, tell me only what I need to know to understand your analysis.

·Analysis. After describing the context, you should relate the experience to the leadership literature. Focus on a limited set of leadership aspects and explain how you addressed these. Show that you truly understand the aspects you wish to focus on by providing an insightful description.

Specifically, use leadership concepts we discussed during class (LMX and others that fit your analysis)to address the following questions (you do not have to tackle all these questions, I prefer you select some and answer them in a thorough way than answering all of them in a shallow way):

·         What was your relationship with your followers like? How did you develop that specific relationship (e.g., if it was good, why was it good? If it was weak, why was it weak)? Why did they follow you? What was the quality of your relationship with your followers? Make sure you explain this relationship.

·         Explain how you motivated the followers. How did you inspire them?

·         Which types of powerdid you have over your followers? Explain. How did you use the power?

·         What was your leadership style? How did it help you/hurt you? Would another style be more appropriate? Explain. How did the followers see you as a leader? (see "Leadership that gets results").

·         Examine the quadrants of the Situational Leadership Theory. What situational leadership style do you find to be the most natural to you? Explain your answer. Did this match the types of followers you had to lead? Discuss how you would realistically work with the 3other types of followers. What challenges would you face? When would you be successful? How do you think you would realistically handle such followers? Make sure you support your answers with examples or hypothetical examples (if you don't have experience working with that specific group of followers).

·         Which phases of the leadership making (LMX) did you go through? Explain how you went through the different phases.

·         Did you have to manage some conflicts? How?

Make sure you explain and support your claims and make sure you provide specific examples and relate them to leadership theories.Include other class principles/ leadership theories to support your statements, when appropriate.

·Conclusion.

·         Were you successful in influencing and leading your followers? If so, why were you successful? If you were not successful in leading others, why were you not successful? Make sure you address how your success was measured. What would you do different next time?

·         What aspects of being a leader do you value most? Give arguments why these aspects are indeed important to focus on (give evidence why they are useful for a leader).

General Tips: 

Make sure that you addthe necessary theoretical foundations.Make sure that you support any claim that you make. For example, saying "I had an in-group relationship with my followers" will not earn you points. Instead, elaborate on how you know which type of a relationship you had, how your followers showed that, how you showed that, etc.Saying "My more participatory leadership style works best with individuals who are willing and able to do work" will also not earn you many points. Full credit will be granted for drawing clear links between your examples and class concepts (i.e., why is your style conducive to working with individuals who are willing, but unable to do work? What was your outcome?).Last example: if you find being anethical and fair leader is important, it is necessary to substantiate this more in terms of, for example: what kind of fairness was important in your experience, fairness to whom, why wasfairness important and what did it signal to the followers? You can formulate such questions to make sure you provide a deeper description of the aspects you are discussing.

Your paper will be evaluated the depth of your analyses. If another theory is obvious and you do not discuss it, you will be penalized. 

Make a coherent story by relating theories to each other and tightening the description of your analyses, and the theoretical background.

Pay attention to spelling, grammar and sentence construction.  This is not a writing course, but I do care about details. 

To communicate effectively as a leader, it’s important to be concise and remove all clutter. Therefore, your leadership paper should be maximum 3 typed pages (excluding possible references) in length, 1 1/2 spaced, 12pt font.  Hence, this is also an exercise in getting your message across in a space-efficient manner.

Don’t Plagiarize!  In academia, one of the worst sins you can commit is to plagiarize. To plagiarize means claiming someone else’s ideas or writing as your own.  When you don’t acknowledge that you are using someone else’s ideas or writing, that is plagiarism. In academic writing, you acknowledge the ideas of others by citing them in the body of your paper and in the bibliography. The use of unacknowledged ideas or writing is plagiarism. This includes published works, but also includes using papers written by other students. 

Don’t procrastinate! The due date for your leadership paper will arrive rapidly and it will coincide with other demands in this course, such as preparing your groups’ presentation, as well as demands in your other courses.

GRADING RUBRIC

Presentation of the context.

(30 %)

A

Range (26,1-30)

B

Range (23,1-25,8)

C

Range (20,1-22,8)

D

Range (18-19,8)

F

Range (0-17,7)

CLO 1; PLO 5; ZULO1

·    The context reflects the topic assigned for the paper.

·    It is clear where the incident happened, who was involved.

·    There is enough information to understand the analysis.

·    The context is clear and succinct without providing unnecessary details.

·    Examples areappropriate and are clearly linked to leadership concepts& theories.

·    Demonstrates good writing skills.

·    Sufficient description of the context: it is clear what happened and who was involved, and how this context relates to the analysis.

·    Examples provided are mostly fitting,but there are occasional ambiguities.

·    Ok description of the context but some components of the context arestill unclear.

·    Context is at times more detailed than it needs to be/ unnecessary information is provided.

·    Identification of the context is not succinct enough.

·    It is clear what happened but the context is not described in enough detail.

·    Context is limitedand at times unclear: the focus is too much on the actions the student took instead of identifying the context.

·    Context is not related to paper's objectives.

·    It is unclear how this context relates to the problem-solving analysis.

·    It is not clear what happened and who was involved:storyline is too limited.

·    Only described very general behaviors, vague situation.

·    Poor writing skills

Analysis andCritical thinking

(70%)

A

Range (60,9-70)

B

Range (53,9-60,2)

C

Range (46,9-53,2)

D

Range (42-46,2)

F

Range (0-41,3)

CLO 1; PLO 9; ZULO 5

·    Perfect application of critical thinking and problem solving.

·    Very strong integration of argumentation and critical thinking.

·    Arguments are deeply embedded in the literature.

·    All relevant leadership concepts and theories are incorporated in the case analysis.

·    In depth analysis and evaluation of the situation.

·    Good evaluation about own behavior and future suggestions/ problem solving.

·    Makes correct links to HR and business knowledge.

·    Reflects good application of critical thinking and problem solving.

·    Rich reflection, thorough understanding of the literature, using good arguments to substantiate claims.

·    Most relevant leadership concepts are incorporated in the case analysis.

·    Sufficient analysis of the situation with supporting logic.

·    Discussion is still incomplete in a few areas.

·    Adequate evaluation about own behavior and future suggestions/ problem solving.

·    Adequate application of some critical thinking and problem solving.

·    Adequately interprets the context but has some inaccuracies.

·    Argumentation is there but could be described in more depth.

·    Leadership concepts are meaningfully incorporated in the case analysis.

·    Some concepts that do not apply to the case are used.

·    Insufficient application of some critical thinking and problem solving.

·    Showed onlyminimal reflection and evidence-based argumentation.

·    Attempts to analyze the problem with minimal supporting detail.

·    Limited use of leadership concepts and theories.

·    Important issues are mentioned but not developed or convincing.

·    Has no application of critical thinking or problem solving.

·    Has significant misconceptions or misinterpretations.

·    Does not show any evidence-based argumentation or reflection: no use of leadership concepts.

·    Does not analyze or evaluate the situation. No future solutions are identified.

·    No links to HR and business knowledge.

Total

87-100

77-86

67-76

60-66

0-59