Your Personal Leadership Development Plan
A Final Paper for MOR 571 PM
Fall 2014
Objective:
Using mastery of the five demands of leadership as a reference point, where do you stand now, what is the next step in your development, and what will you do to achieve it?
The details:
You may or may not work for an organization with robust developmental processes and opportunities (like P&G), but as Moheet Nagrath emphasized, you are the master of your own development; no one can make you develop or do it for you. The final paper challenges you to 1) assess your level of mastery of each the five demands of leadership at this stage in your career and 2) choose a specific leadership development goal related to one of the five demands, explain why you chose this particular goal, and come up with a concrete plan for achieving it.
1) Assess your degree of mastery of the five demands of leadership, see below for the 5 demands). We?ve spent 14 weeks exploring the five demands, illustrating them with case studies, readings, lectures, guest speakers (and your reflections on them), videos, classroom discussions, thought questions, etc. In this section you should demonstrate your knowledge of what each demand requires and assess where you stand relative to mastering those requirements. This part of the paper will be evaluated on a) how well you use course material to frame each demand and b) the persuasiveness of your self-assessments.
Show your understanding of each demand by exploring it in some depth (e.g. don?t just say ?able to set and communicate direction?). In assessing where you stand on the demands, draw on your work and life experiences to make a persuasive case for your self-evaluations. It is highly recommended that you create a chart in an appendix so the text can be devoted to analysis.
2) Choose a leadership development goal related to one of the five demands and come up with a plan for achieving it. Based on your self-assessment in the first part of the paper, choose a goal you will work to achieve over the next 6 months to a year. The goal should be specific, measurable, and do-able.
Please note that overly general development goals like “I want to learn to communicate more effectively” are not helpful. Following through with that example, if there is an aspect of communication you need to develop, be very specific regarding what kind of communication you mean (e.g., verbal, written, body language, large group presentations, one on one conversations, performance appraisals, negotiation, managing up, under stress etc.); with whom in particular you want to improve communication (e.g., boss, peer, customer, etc.), and why this is an issue for you (backing up your assessment with feedback from others or some other objective source).
Once you have set your leadership goal, come up with a specific, experience-based plan for achieving it and a specific way to measure your progress.
In creating your plan, draw on anything you have learned, read, seen, or heard during class. And, of course, reference it. You may use everything from speaker reflections to your mid-term interviews to life maps. The course has emphasized experience-based leadership development, so your leadership development plan should be strongly experience-based rather than course- or program-based. Creating experience-based ways to learn a new skill, attitude, or behavior is a difficult task. Few managers do this well. You have to think creatively to come up with the experiences that might teach what you want to learn.
This part of the paper will be evaluated on a) how well you frame your leadership development goal and b) the quality of the action plan you develop to achieve it.
The five demands of leadership
Setting and Communicating Direction ? Purpose, vision, mission, point of view
? Technical/professional skills
? Business knowledge
? Strategic thinking
? Taking responsibility
? Structure and control system
? Innovative problem solving
Alignment ? of critical constituencies
? Political Situations
? Getting People to Implement
? What Executives are Like
? Working with Executives
? Negotiation Strategies
? Influence without Authority
? Understanding Other Perspectives
? Dealing with Conflict
? Directing and Motivating Subordinates
? Developing People
? Confronting Performance Problems
? Managing Former Peers or Bosses
Development an Executive Temperament
? Being tough when necessary
? Self-confidence
? Coping with sitatusions beyond your control
? Persevering through adversity
? Coping with ambiguous situations
? User of power
Setting and Living Values
? Needing Others
? Sensitivity to People
? Management Values
Growth of Self and Others
? Balance of Life and Work
? Knowing What Excites You
? Personal Limits and Blind Spots
? Taking Charge of Your Career
? Recognizing and Seizing Opportunities
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