Assessing Yourself and Your Environment
One common focus of coaching in organizational settings is to work with an employee to construct a personal development plan. In this SLP, you will be developing your own Leadership Growth Plan (LGP). The purpose is to have you learn the steps to developing such a plan so you can help others you are coaching to do the same, but also to come out of the class with a personal plan for your own development as a leader.
Why create a Leadership Growth Plan?
It is one thing to want to be a good leader. It is another thing to achieve it. Research shows that people who have a vision for where they want to go and then write it down and develop a plan to achieve it, are more successful than people who do not. An LGP is designed to help you assess your current skills and capacities as a leader, set goals, and make a plan for enhancing your effectiveness by acquiring new skills.
For an example of what a personal leadership growth plan might look like, see the following:
Hertz, T. (2021, February 21).
Creating a leadership development plan [Video].
YouTube.
Lamm, M. (2020). Creating leadership development plans for Gen Z.
Property & Casualty 360. Available in the Trident Online Library.
Passmore, J., & Sinclair, T, (2020). Chapter 27: Personal development plan. In
Becoming a coach: The essential ICF guide. [Skillsoft. Version] Available in the Trident Online Library.
Assignment Instructions
· In this module, we will begin with the first phase of creating your plan. You will engage in some assessment and reflection addressed toward giving you a picture of “Who am I”? Then you will write up what you have learned about yourself in a two- to three-page paper. The paper should be an integrated essay assessing your current attributes and capabilities as a leader. Use the topics to “tell the story” of who you are. Since headings are required in all papers, you can definitely use the 4 topics of this assignment as headings so that you meet the “organization” requirement in the grading rubric. For example, your paper could have headings such as My Personal Values, My Leadership Style, My Motivators, and My Competencies.
Keys to the Assignment
To assess yourself as a leader, consider the following and incorporate your answers into your paper.
· What are your
values?
· Make a list of everything that is important to you in life. Do not censor or edit anything, just get it all on paper. You may find that you think of things you would not have expected.
· Read through the list several times, choose the five most important values, and list them in order of importance.
· Define each value in terms of why it is important to you.
· What is your
leadership style?
. Using the
authoritative style, you tend to make all important decisions, including how jobs are performed.
. Using the
consulting style, you ask for employee input, but then make the decision yourself.
. Using the
participative style, you involve employees as partners in the decision.
. Using the
delegating style, you empower employees to make the decisions on their own as appropriate.
· You have undoubtedly assessed your leadership style in one or more classes or at work. If you can recall your dominant style, name and describe it. The most common styles are authoritarian, consulting, participative, and delegating, but there are others.
· If you want to take a new assessment questionnaire, there are many on the Internet. Just cite the instrument you are using.
· What
motivates you?
· Not everyone is motivated by the same things. What does it for you? Compensation, titles, perks, social status, money, helping others, doing a good job, winning?
· Repeat the process you used in assessing your values.
· How are your skills in the following
competencies?
·
Developing subordinates: Fostering employee engagement and commitment to the job and the organization, developing job-related skills and abilities, building decision-making capabilities, encouraging personal accountability for job responsibilities.
·
Modeling desirable behaviors: As a leader you are the “voice” of the organization. You exemplify its ethics, values, and expectations of employees. You do not ask people to do things you would not do yourself.
·
Challenging the status quo: Are you willing to try something different, think outside the box, take risks? Leaders do not simply accept things the way they have always been, but ask, “How can we do it better?”
·
Accountability: Leaders take responsibility for getting the job done. Leaders try new ideas, create action plans, and evaluate results.
SLP Assignment Expectations
· Include a cover page and reference page in addition to the 2-3 pages of analysis described above. Remember that when an assignment calls for 2-3 pages, the assignment was created to result in a paper 3 pages in length; however, your professor may accept a paper that is at least 2 full pages.
· Your paper must include introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
· Use headings to indicate major sections of the report (this is the “organization” part of the grading rubric).
· Cite and reference all sources used to complete this assignment. Your reference list must contain at least 1 high quality peer-reviewed reference from the Trident Online Library.
· Use APA formatting according to the 7th edition.
· Proofread and edit your papers carefully. The expectation is zero errors.The best tool to do this is the Editor tool found in MS Word toolbar at the top of the page.
