Assignment: RECALLING YOUR PERSONAL-BEST
LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
With leadership, as with most things in life, experience can be the best teacher. We learn what to do by trying it ourselves or by watching others. The problem is that not all of what's done or observed is effective or appropriate behavior. It's important for us to base our leadership practices on the best of what people do and observe-the actions that represent our highest standards. Therefore, the Leadership Is Everyone's Business® Workshop will begin with a discussion of the "Personal-Best Leadership Experiences" of all the participants in the program.
Purpose of Activity
The purpose of this assignment is twofold:
• To help you prepare to describe one of your Personal-Best Leadership Experiences to other workshop participants.
• To begin the process of learning from your own experiences.
Complete this assignment before the workshop and bring it with you so that we can all benefit from your success. You'll be discussing your story with a few other participants, so it's important to be prepared when you arrive. Completing this assignment will take forty-five to seventy-five minutes.
Definitions
In this assignment we ask you to describe a Personal-Best Leadership Experience. Here is what we mean by the term.
Personal Best. A "personal-best" experience is an event (or series of events) that you believe to be your individual standard of excellence. It's your own "record-setting performance," a time when you excelled. It's something against which you can measure yourself to determine whether you're performing at levels you know to be possible. It's a time you recall as a peak performance experience.
Leadership Experience. You have been involved in many experiences in your life. For purposes of this exercise, we ask that you focus your thinking only on those experiences during which you were the leader. We use the word "experience" to mean any kind of project or undertaking that had a definable beginning and end. It might have lasted a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years, but it was something that was within a specific period of time.
Here are some things to think about when selecting your Personal-Best Leadership Experience:
• It could have taken place recently or long ago-any time when you felt you performed at your very best as a leader.
• You could have been the official leader or manager, or you could have emerged as the informal leader of a group or team. You could have held a staff position or been a volunteer.
• The experience could have taken place in the workplace or in a non-work setting. It could have been when you were part of a community group, a club, a professional organization, a sports team, or at school.
The Context
Where did your Personal-Best Leadership Experience take place? Name the company, government agency, nonprofit organization, work group, school, sports team, community association, political organization, and so on.
When did it take place? How long was it from start to finish?
What kind of project or undertaking was it? For example, was it a start-up, a turnaround, a new marketing campaign, an initiative to improve the quality of service or product, a civic improvement campaign, a school reform effort, an initiative to pass new legislation, a relief effort after a natural disaster, and so on? Say a little about the nature of the project.
What was your specific role in this project or undertaking?
Who else was involved?
What external or internal challenges did you face?
What words best describe how you felt at the beginning of this experience? How would you describe your feelings during this experience?
What else do we need to know about the experience to get a sense of the context?
What were the actual results of the experience, both quantitative and qualitative?
Intentions
Who initiated this experience?
If you were the one to initiate this project or undertaking, why did you do it? What motivated you?
If someone else initiated it and you were appointed or selected as the leader, what were the expectations of you? What goals were set?
Why was this project important? What value was it adding?
What were your personal hopes or dreams for the project? In the best of all situations, what did you aspire to accomplish?
What values and beliefs guided how you worked with others and how you expected them to work with you and with each other?
Leadership Actions
In the spaces that follow, describe your behaviors as a leader. Be as specific as possible about the actions you took to get extraordinary things done. Here are a few questions to stimulate your thinking, but don't limit yourself to answering only these questions. Tell the story as you recall it, and convey to us what you did to make this your personal best.
What did you do to demonstrate your own commitment to the project or undertaking?
What did you do to make sure everyone understood the purpose?
What did you do to keep people moving in the right direction?
What did you or others do to overcome any major challenges or setbacks?
What did you do to engage others and get them to participate fully?
What did you do to keep people motivated to perform at their best, especially during those times that might have been especially challenging?
What did you do to make the experience special, memorable, and rewarding?
What else would you like to share about what you did that made this your personal best?
Lessons Learned
Review what you wrote in response to the questions above and then summarize the 5 to 7 leadership actions you took that most contributed to success.
If you were going to teach someone else about leadership based on this experience, what morals and lessons would you pass along about being an exemplary leader and about performing at your personal best?
What is the single most important bit of advice you would give a leader on how to get extraordinary things done in organizations?
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.