This assignment is intended to be a reflective and thought-provoking exercise in telling your personal leadership development story. The reflective aspect of this assignment examines the leadership experiences that have brought you to where you are. The second aspect recognizes that “what got you here, won’t get you there.” Accordingly, the thought-provoking aspect of this assignment aims at identifying where to go from here and how to get there. Additionally, this assignment seeks to examine the fitness of your personal leadership story with your personal credo memo.
2. Create your personal leader development story, following these instructions:
Step 1: Create a narrative story of your journey as a leader to this point in your life:
Describe your leadership path or road. Include descriptions of important twists and turns, as well as highs and lows.
Tell about important events or experiences that have shaped who you are and how you think and act as a leader.
Identify important people who played a role along the way.
Note any trigger events in your journey.
Explain who and where you are as a leader today.
Step 2: Extend your story out three to five years into the future:
What is/are your goal(s); where do you want to be in three to five years?
Identify the learning opportunities, experiences, and relationships you want to pursue to become a more effective leader.
Describe the path you will take to achieve your goal(s).
Step 3: Review the personal credo memo that you developed in Week 4 of this class.
How well do your goal(s) and your personal credo memo align with one another?
What can you do to bring your personal credo memo and your leader development plan into harmony?
Step 4: Finish the paper with a Conclusion section that summarizes and highlights the key points of your paper and that offers some insight into your intentions of where to go from here and how you will get there.
3. Use the following guidelines for this assignment:
Remember what you learned from the Message Map and Composition Code exercises.
Use the “Template for Student Papers” provided for this assignment.
Begin with an opening paragraph that introduces the subject of the paper and provides a roadmap of where the paper will go. This should be about one-third of a page.
Develop paragraphs that address each point in the four steps, above.
Complete the paper with a solid “conclusion” paragraph.
A well-developed paper will cover four, full pages.
