Assignment: Personal Leadership Paper
Write a personal statement/ persuasive essay on your key leadership philosophies and/or strategies. Using principles of persuasive business writing, you should include salient information and powerful language to write a compelling essay. Define your topic in a thesis statement. Provide relevant evidence (research, case studies, stories, and or/quotations), critical thinking, and analysis to support and strengthen your viewpoint.
Length: 1,800 words minimum (about 6 to 7 pages), double-spaced, 12-pt Courier or Times New Roman font.
Revisit our class readings, studies, presentations, and your own free-writes and short essay writing on:
- Vision, Mission, and Value Statements
- Leading for Positive Change (Whetten Chapter 10)
- Key elements of success with teamwork and facilitation
Imagine you are writing a personal statement for a graduate school or job application. Think about the following questions as writing prompts, and focus the main theme of your essay on one or both of the following areas:
1) Your personal leadership philosophy: Consider your academic and career vision and mission, and contemplate your life values. What would you like to achieve? What change would you like to influence in the world? What leadership principles will you emphasize in your career pursuits?
2) Your personal leadership strategies: What skills and traits do you view as essential to your own leadership style and success? What messaging and methods will you emphasize as you apply your personal and team philosophies toward strategic business planning, decision-making, implementation, and assessment?
First Draft: Focus on Content
The first draft (minimum 1,500 words) is due on February 1th for peer review. The review focuses primarily on content, so focus on the following questions
- Research: Have you included research information to take this beyond a mere opinion piece? Does the paper give solid quantitative and qualitative evidence to support your thesis?
- Critical thinking: Is the leadership theme identified, explored, and developed? Is the analysis presented thoroughly, cogently, and convincingly?
- Overall structure and organization: Is there an intro paragraph with a thesis statement? Is there a logical flow of ideas? Is there a strong conclusion paragraph?
Final Paper due on Canvas Feb 15th: Based on feedback from classmates, writing center coaches, and the instructor, you will revise the first draft to improve the content elements and focus on the following questions, as well:
- Original thinking: Does the paper reach a compelling conclusion and present insightful leadership concepts?
- Paragraph usage: Is there proper use of paragraphs? Are paragraphs led by topic sentences? Three to four sentences per paragraph? Good transition sentence at the end of each paragraph?
- Style and tone: Are style and tone professional? Engaging? Does the writer use artful diction and syntax? Varied sentence length? Accurate and optimum word choice?
- Grammar, punctuation, and spelling: Is the paper polished and free of errors?