Leadership is not something you can practice in isolation. You have to practice in front of the very people you are trying to influence. This leadership experience will provide you with the opportunity to practice leading and then reflect on the challenges of leadership. This assignment is as much about learning from our leadership efforts as it is about achieving results. It will require integrating the class concepts with your experience.
People who struggle with this assignment usually fall short in two ways:
They tend to procrastinate and then are surprised when everything does not go exactly as planned. In contrast, excellent projects result from careful planning, anticipation of challenges, determination and creativity.
They fail to apply the leadership materials discussed in class (e.g., text, etc.) to their experience. Critical thinking about the leadership experience (what/why/how) is essential.
This assignment is worth a total of 400 points; 300 points for the written report and 100 for the oral report
Recommended process:
Identify a cause that you would like to support or a not-for-profit with which you would like to collaborate.
Define a project that you would like to accomplish that would take about 4 hours to complete with 4 people; in short, a valid project requires at least 16 hours of work. You could propose a larger project if two of you wanted to work together and include more people on your project.
Prepare a proposal with for my approval. See below for guidelines on the proposal.
Line up 3 people to work on this project with you. You may include one of your Leadership 3800 classmates. You may include one family member. You may not include anyone who works directly for you.
Schedule a date(s) to do the project.
Complete the project.
Leadership Challenge Proposal
Please answer the following questions in two pages (double spaced) or less.
Please describe the project:
What extraordinary result(s) do you want to create? How will you measure success?
Who will be impacted by your project and how?
How does this project relate to your personal values?
Please list resources that you have available to complete this project.
Who do you plan to recruit and what is your relationship to each person?