Assessment - Understanding yourself as a leader

Aims: This assessment item aims to develop the following learning outcomes as stated in the course profile. The ability to:

1. Recognise the contribution made by leaders in different organisational settings, and to understand the characteristics of successful leaders.

2. Understand the principles underlying leadership development and good governance.

3. Discuss the role of leadership in ensuring the good governance of organisations.

4. Discuss different theoretical approaches and models in the study of leadership and governance.

Purpose: The purpose of this assessment item is to increase your awareness of your self as a leader through reflective practice and the stimulus of a case scenario. It provides you with the opportunity to practice and improve skills related to research, analysis, critical thinking, problem solving, and academic writing. You are expected to analyse yourself as a leader and reflect on the problem presented in the case study by using, and correctly citing, a range of relevant scholarly literature. This literature must be used to justify and support your reflection on your leadership practice. In doing so you are expected to use appropriate conventions of reflective essay writing: structure, language, length and tone.?You'll also be expected to appropriately use the American Psychological Association (APA) referencing system which will be quite new to many of you.

Task:

The assessment item is based on the case study titled "Chris Peterson at DSS Consulting" by Deborah Ancona and David Caldwell (the case in available on Moodle). You should carefully read the case and imagine yourself in Chris Peterson's position. At the end of the case Chris is asked "if she was prepared to lead the group in a new direction or if she would be more comfortable and successful returning to the IT practice as a functional specialist?" Your task is to reflect upon what your knowledge of yourself as a leader indicates you would do next if you were Chris Peterson.

During the Saturday workshop/s covering Topics 1, 2, 3, & 4, diagnostic tools and reflection activities will be undertaken to enable you to understand your self-confidence and emotional self-awareness as a leader through accurate self-assessment. Your task is to use the results of four of these tests to reflect on the decision that you will make as Chris Peterson. The results of the workshop diagnostic tools and reflection activities must be included in the appendix of the essay.

For example, you might choose to use the results of the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire from Topic 1; the Managerial Leadership Skills self-assessment from Topic 2; the Job Motivators and Maintenance Factors self-assessment from Topic 3; and the Leadership Style Your Fiedler LPC from Topic 4 to learn more about yourself and what you would do next in Chris's position.

This is an example only the diagnostic tools and reflection activities that you use are your choice. The marker will be interested not so much in which you choose but in your understanding of the concepts tested and what your results mean for your leadership practice.

Reflection is all about deepening your learning. By reflecting, you are able to:

• get to know your own strengths and weaknesses,

• discover your own underlying assumptions - and challenge them,

• make connections between your own experience and what you are learning learn from your mistakes - and thus become a better practitioner.

8 APA reference.