Final Project
Write up a basic "Leadership Development Plan" using a Word or GoogleDocs document that can be submitted below.
This will be a plan that looks ahead over the next 12 weeks---or it could look ahead to another three-month period sometime in the coming year, e.g., to a job or project that you will begin. This three-month, 12-week plan for leadership development is another opportunity for you to review key concepts and examples in our course. Focus on one theme or topic per week (12 themes total). Also, in each week you will include TWO or more QUOTES (24 or more, total) according to the guidelines below:
Make sure that in each of the 12 weeks you incorporate quotes from Kouzes and Posner's 5 Practices (meaningful quotes from within, not merely "surface-level" or superficial quotes naming or defining one of their Practices).
Also ensure that in each of the 12 weeks, you include in-depth quotes from our other readings, especially from Arnold van Gennep's The Rites of Passage and from Marcel Mauss's The Gift. In addition, the strongest projects will also include quotes from most of the following: Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, Homer's Odyssey, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the philosophy of Ubuntu, notes on our featured Nobel Prize winners, and various other OGL 360 materials. (The final "look and feel" of the plan is up to you, but in addition to the above, you might like to include reminders to yourself of OGL 360 films, audio, cartoons, and more.) The quotes that you include here can vary in length, from short (pithy and memorable) to long, but at least 5 or 6 of these 12 weeks should include some longer quotes in addition to the other material you include.
Although you should write this in a simple format (with one or two paragraphs for each of the twelve weeks), please add illustrations/graphics to boost the quality of the presentation. (The "A Papers" will be "interesting" in this regard, in addition to meeting all other requirements.)
These quotations will either provide inspiration, examples of your concerns for that week, or reminders of the kind of leadership skill you wish to emphasize in any given week. As you write up this 12-week plan, please feel free to design it for use in your actual, "real-life" situation at work or in college (or at home), as this would bring more value to your life (at least that is my hope)! Obviously I won't check a year from now to ensure that you have enacted every single detail from this plan (you'll be free---I can't bug you afterwards! :-) but "a vision" or at least an organized list of priorities could be very helpful to you.
THE "LOOK": Use some graphics or at least a good color scheme. (No need to waste time finding dumb "filler" graphics if they don't seem good or useful to you personally---but if you find stuff you really like, then yes, by all means, paste them in. Illustrations such as drawings, Web images, tables, etc., are recommended for a higher grade. Rule of thumb: If you would enjoy or benefit from those illustrations in the future when you (hopefully) look over this "12-Week Plan" to guide you on your way, then by all means, paste some in. Copyright restrictions won't apply, since this is for your personal, individual use.
A final caveat: This was previously a "20-Week Plan," but I shortened it to 12 Weeks in the hopes of receiving QUALITY over mere quantity. If you find yourself in doubt, ADD MORE QUOTATIONS or a few additional sentences for each of your 12 weeks, to show me that you are truly reviewing and attempting to "bring forward"---or "bring out of the course"---a variety of the material that we have used. THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK ON THIS!
I truly hope this will become an enjoyable and practical project. And based on the experiences of students over the last couple of years, I believe that it will be useful and interesting for you, if you allow it some time to percolate---to brainstorm a bit, to assemble a range of quotations, and to let yourself enjoy the work. Please email me [email protected] should you have any questions. ---Stephen