Written Report
Learning Outcomes
The purpose of this assignment is to design your own personal Strategic Leadership Plan to take you from where you are now, to where you want to be in the future.
Remember, you are responsible for your own life and therefore it is up to you to plan for, and secure, your ‘best' future.
Instructions
The key task is to write up in Assignment your own personalised Strategic Leadership Plan based on your learnings from:
1. The lectures and your text book
2. The guest speakers in the Leadership Seminar series
3. Your own contributions to, and learnings from, the unit's discussions
4. The Leading Change Journal (see below). The Report should include the following:
1. A Title page
2. A Contents page
3. An Introduction
4. The essential characteristics of a good leader
5. Am analysis of your own leadership strengths and weaknesses
6. A Plan to develop your leadership skills
7. Conclusions 8. References
School of Business & Law
Introduction (200 words)
Start with an outline of what is to follow. This helps the reader to anticipate the content of the report and to understand its scope. You may choose to indicate here that this report is primarily focussed on your own development as a strategic leader and is therefore both reflective and critical. For example, the report opens with a brief overview of what characterises a good leader. This is followed by an analysis of your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader.
Discussion
This includes sections 4-6 of the report. Each section should have an appropriate heading (not Section 4 etc). Section 4 - The essential characteristics of a good leader (250 words) This section is descriptive and should explain what you see as the key characteristics of an excellent leader in your field of business. This section needs in-text referencing to tell the reader where your ideas and/or words come from.
Section 5 - Analysis of leadership strengths and weaknesses (800 words)
This section involves an analysis of your leadership strengths and weaknesses.
Here you describe your THREE BEST Leadership skills or strengths, as well as THREE Leadership skills you will DEVELOP in future.
This section is reflective and personal so you can use ‘I'. The section is based on your journal, in which you were asked to ‘follow a process to improve self-awareness and capture what you determine to be the key aspects of Leadership required to manage and implement change'.
In this section you need to demonstrate critical thinking. You need to say how you identified your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. To do this you need to consider what you have learned in this unit about the qualities needed for leadership, for being a strategic leader and a leader of change. This includes lecture material, guest lecturers, textbooks and Discussion Board. Use your journal entries to help you. You need to reference everything here.
Plan for developing leadership skills
This section is your forward plan and should be expressed using ‘I'. It is the most important part of your assignment. Be specific about your intentions. You should include the following:
- A decade from now I see myself as being ... [position in company / job / company owner etc] in ... [Country]
- To achieve this I need to ....
- Along the way I see myself being in the following jobs .........
When I achieve my greatest job the legacy I will leave to the world will be my ..............?
Conclusions
In your conclusion you should start by echoing the question and the introduction. Include a statement about what you have learned from formulating this Strategic Leadership Plan and what use you think it will serve in your future. You could conclude by making some general statements about the ongoing need for leaders to be self-aware, to reflect and to plan, and summarise how you will do this. Please see the Marking Schedule for this assignment.