FORMAT
The 2500-word (+/-10%) essay should comprise of:
1) An introduction
2) Main body of essay: a collection of 3 thought-pieces which apply at least ONE leadership practice, to a leadership issue of your choosing.
3) A conclusion
Each thought-piece should critically reflect on a specific leadership issue that has arisen for you through the module. As a compulsory appendix to your assignment:
Type out your ‘My Leadership Resolutions’, taken from the exercise on pages 131-132 of your course textbook Pedler et al (2010) A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Berkshire: McGraw-Hill. Include these on a page at the back of your word document, as an appendix.
ASSIGNMENT 2 GUIDANCE
1. WHAT ARE THE LEADERSHIP PRACTICES ?
Following Pedler et al (2010), a leadership practice is an action that leaders can take to move forward in response to a challenge. The seven leadership practices are:
1.Self-Leadership
2.Acting with Purpose
3.Using Power Responsibly
4.Taking Risks
5.Asking Challenging Questions
6.Networking
7.Facilitation
When making your choice, remember that if you have already covered part of your topic in assignment one, you will need to substantially build on what you have previously said, and not just reiterate it.
2. WHAT IS A THOUGHT PIECE?
A thought piece is a fairly short, original piece of work that weaves together ‘real life’ issues with theoretical awareness and your own point of view. Your thought pieces are an opportunity to demonstrate your applied understanding of at least one leadership practice. In fact, Assignment 1 was an opportunity for you to write a ‘thought piece’, combining theory and practice in a short reflective piece of writing. You could apply your chosen practice(s)to any of the following contexts:
• A leadership challenge–e.g. a specific issue that an organization, team, individual or community is facing.
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Examples include: re-structuring, making change, designing a vision, leading in times of crisis.
• A leadership perspective–a specific way of looking at leadership.
Examples include: distributed leadership, leadership as ‘an alienating social myth’, transformational leadership, or any perspectives/concepts introduced through the readings, lectures, and/or guest speakers.
• An event or story from the news, fiction, film or history or from your own experience (whether related to current or past employment, university, family, or other interests)
Examples include Greta Thunberg’s Climate Action campaign, examples of political leadership from your own country, the leadership of a multi-national organisation etc
Remember to be focused! You are NOT expected to respond to each and every one of the options above. It is important that you choose to focus on what holds the greatest interest and relevance to you. We will be exploring the concept of a thought piece during workshop and lecture activities.
3. CONNECTING YOUR THOUGHT PIECES
Each thought piece should have a primary focus that you explore in detail –but your work should be coherent as a whole. Easy ways to do this:
7 Examples:
1. Greta Thunberg’s use of power in three different settings (e.g. UN climate summit, meeting political leaders, leading the school strike, press campaign etc) during her 2019 Climate Action campaign. Drawing on different theories of power in each thought piece.
2. A leadership experience of your own, in which you adopted three different leadership practices (e.g. self leadership, taking risks, acting ‘on purpose’) to bring about change or to make a difference.
3. An analysis of a business, political, social leader (eg Elon Musk, JK Rowling, Barak Obama, Anghela Merkel) – exploring a leadership practice (eg asking challenging questions) in relation to three different situations/interactions eg policy change, staff communication, customer communication, other stake holder focus (eg shareholders, government, pressure groups, media etc).
4. An analysis of a leader from business, politics, sport, history, (Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jurgen Klopp, ) and an exploration with examples of three of their leadership practices (purpose, power, self leadership, etc) in different settings (public meetings/communication, political influencing, decision making/policy change, use of power to enact change etc).
5. The importance of ‘risk taking’ in three separate leadership contexts/challenges, for example: i) first response by the emergency services/disaster relief (Red Cross) ii) large scale change in an MNC such as a merger iii) start-up decision by a micro-entrepreneur
6. An analysis of a TV/Film programme or character (eg Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Peaky Blinders etc) and an exploration of three different leadership practices (power, influencing, risk taking, self-leadership etc)
7. A contemporary issue (eg climate change, post COVID strategy, global recession, homelessness) and how three separate leadership practices (risk taking, power, influencing) are being used by individuals or groups to tackle or perpetuate the issue.
Remember to show an awareness of how your thought pieces are of relevance to one another, by linking them together in your writing. You can achieve this by:
• Explaining a common theme in your introduction or conclusion (e.g ‘This assignment is about power/ Greta Thunberg, Political Leader, MNC Leader’)
• Using ‘linking sentences’ at the end of each thought piece to show how your ideas are connected and to make your work flow well.
• Developing the arguments of one thought piece by extending them or critiquing them in the thought piece.
4 STRUCTURING YOUR WORK
Sub-headings will help to show where each thought piece starts and ends.
The introduction and conclusion will provide you with a further means of integrating your writing into a meaningful whole. Advice on these two sections of your essay can be found below:
Introduction: between 200-250 words
Be clear about what you have chosen to focus on in the thought-pieces, and why. How/why are these leadership issues of relevance, significance and/or interest to you?
Explain how the main body of your essay is structured, and the logic behind this. How does your essay unfold? Why this thought-piece first, why another one second, etc. and how do these follow on from one another? What is the ‘conceptual storyline’, or the argument that you are developing as you make your way through the essay? Why are the thought pieces relevant to one another?
Main Body: three thought pieces approx. 600 words each
Clearly distinguish between each thought piece and use theory critically to evaluate the practice. How does your understanding of leadership theory inform your evaluation of practice? What are the strengths and limitations of the practices that are evident in each thought piece?
Conclusion: approximately 500 words
This is where you synthesise your ideas –bring them together to identify the key points that you’ve learned during the course of the assignment. Here are some different suggestions for interesting ways to conclude:
• How has your understanding of leadership been developed, affirmed, clarified and/or challenged through your critical engagement with this specific leadership issue?
• How are your ways of doing leadership, and/or your ways of responding to leadership in practice, shifting as a result of what you are learning, or how these may shift in the future?
• What have YOU learned about your personal engagement with leadership–such as your capacities, experiences and aspirations –through completing this essay?
• Address the ‘so what’ question: ‘What does this all mean for my understanding of leadership? And what does this all mean for my practice of leadership, now and into the future?’
• Make links to your ‘leadership resolutions’ appendix
5 ADDITIONAL READING
Please note that for this assignment, you will be expected to read more widely than the core text and the readings provided in the lectures. This is where the reading list provided early in the module will come in useful.
You will be expected to conduct your own ‘literature search’ to find suitable readings which help you to better understand and/or critique the leadership issues which you are discussing. You are strongly encouraged to access the University’s Electronic Library (http://www.library.ex.ac.uk/electronic/) and particularly the Electronic Journals in order to do so.
You may wish to start with the EBSCO EJS, JSTOR, and Business Source Complete journal collections. Using these databases, you can conduct keyword searches, which will help you to identify relevant articles.
Alternatively, you can use Google Scholar (http://www.scholar.google.co.uk) to search for articles using key words –but this is a less scholarly and weaker way of making sure that your work covers key literature in the field.
5 HOW WILL I BE ASSESSED?
You can see the University’s generic assessment criteria for this assessment on the ELE page.
Mark allocation:
Task Comments Allocation
Introduction – clearly explained aims and objectives, links to key theoretical frameworks and a clear argument /10
Thought Pieces – clear evaluation of practice with reference to theory and coherent narrative /60
Presentation (grammar, spelling, references) /10
Conclusion – clear summary of main practice and theoretical findings. This should be reflective, focused on the ‘so what’ and ‘now what’, and reflect what yu have learned about your own leadership in this module /20
6 REFERENCING
Referencing must conform to APA guidelines – details on the ELE site