Reference no: EM133618379

Homework: Perspectives on Creative Leadership

This individual homework will give you a chance to reflect upon various aspects of leadership in a structured and focused way. The essay will be 2000 words. You are expected to be creative in this homework and use experiential data to reflect upon certain aspects of leadership discussed throughout lectures, seminars and suggested readings. Source of experiential data may come from:

I. Your own experience of a group work during the previous years. The context of a group work can be (but not limited to):

1. Educational settings such as a group project that was undertaken within a module, or a program at the University, high school or trainings

2. An organized group work out of the University, e.g., a civic project, a business project, family project, charity work, community/religious work, or else.

II. Collecting data:

1. In the form of interviews you conduct with leaders

2. Shadow a leader or leaders and use these ethnographic observations as your data source.

3. Reading a novel or set of books (whatever kinds) on certain leaders and/or certain aspects of leadership.

4. Films or documentaries about certain leaders and/or certain aspects of leadership.

5. Magazines, news clips or columns about certain leaders and/or certain aspects of leadership.

6. Social media accounts of leaders such as Instagram accounts.

7. You can also blend those sources listed above by citing your references clearly.

In structuring your writing, you can draw on reflective writing models. We have combined two frameworks to help you with this task: (i) Gibbs reflective cycle (1988) and (ii) Ash, Clayton, & Moses (2009) Learning through Critical Reflection, which are adopted to be used in an essay format.

The suggested structure, which you can find in the assessment details section, would help you to structure your approach towards reflective writing & practice, which is helpful to think of reflection in a cyclical as well as categorical manner.

Task

The assessment is structured around major elements listed below:

I. Introduction: Introduction should state practical/managerial and personal relevance as well as theoretical motivation/justification.

II. Structure: Structure should involve the language, which is clear and expressive. The reader should be able to create a mental picture of the experiential situation described. Abstract concepts are explained accurately. Explanation of concepts makes sense to an uninformed reader.

III. Relevance: This part measures to what extent the learning experience reflected upon is relevant and meaningful to student and/or homework brief & learning goals.

IV. Analysis: The analysis captures to what extent the reflection moves beyond simple description of the experience to an analysis of how the experience contributed to student understanding of self, others, and leadership frameworks/concepts.

V. Interconnection: This part captures to what extent the reflection makes creative and rigorous connections between the experience and material from other research, experience, and/or personal goals.

VI. Critical Art: The reflection demonstrates the ability of the student to question their own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions, and/or assumptions and contextual and/or theoretical assumptions or biases, etc., which define new modes of thinking as a result.

Details

I. Title: Find a brief and catchy title that will reflect the main message and/or context of your reflective essay

II. Introduction: Start with briefly introducing what we will be reading in this essay by addressing questions like:

• What is the purpose of the study? Clearly state your theoretical motivation in addition to the practical/managerial or personal relevance.

DESCRIBE THE EXPERIENCE

I. Stage I: Description of the event

• Describe in detail the event you are reflecting on. Include e.g. where were you; who else was there; why were you there; what were you doing; what were other people doing; what was the context of the event; what happened; what was your part in this; what parts did the other people play; what was the result.

II. Stage II: Feelings

• At this stage try to recall and explore the things that were going on inside your head i.e. why does this event stick in your mind. Include e.g. how you were feeling when the event started; what you were thinking about at the time; how did it make you feel; how did other people make you feel; how did you feel about the outcome of the event; what do you think about it now.

EXAMINE THE EXPERIENCE

III. Stage III: Evaluation

• Try to evaluate or make a judgement about what has happened. Consider what was good about the experience and what was bad about the experience or didn't go so well

IV. Stage IV: Analysis

• Break the event down into its component parts so they can be explored separately. You may need to ask more detailed questions about the answers to the last stage. Include e.g. what went well; what did you do well; what did others do well; what went wrong or did not turn out how it should have done; in what way did you or others contribute to this

ARTICULATE(REFLEXIVE) LEARNING

V. Stage V: Conclusion

• This differs from the evaluation stage in that now you have explored the issue from different angles and have a lot of information to base your judgement. It is here that you are likely to develop insights into your own and other people's behaviour in terms of how they contributed to the outcome of the event. Remember the purpose of reflection is to learn from an experience. Without detailed analysis and honest exploration that occurs during all the previous stages, it is unlikely that all aspects of the event will be taken into account and therefore valuable opportunities for learning can be missed. During this stage, you should ask yourself what you could have done differently.

VI. Stage VI: Action Plan

• During this stage you should think yourself forward into encountering the event again and to plan what you would do - would you act differently or would you be likely to do the same? Here the cycle is tentatively completed and suggests that should the event occur again it will be the focus of another reflective cycle.