Week 7 Assignment (PSY 693 Professional Capstone Full Course)

Benchmark Assignment – Leadership Reflection Paper

In 500-750 words reflect on what you learned from your leadership interview.

Describe what you learned from your interview.

Describe how you will use the information in your own leadership experiences.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide and Typing Template, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center.

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies: 2.4: Evaluate intrapersonal skills.

Benchmark Assignment – Leadership Reflection Paper

Step 1: Chose a leader in your prospective career field to interview. He or she should be someone who is respected and viewed as an effective and/or exemplary leader in their organization or field. The leader must be preapproved by your instructor.

Step 2: Set a date and time for the interview. This should be, preferably, a face-to-face interview. A phone interview will suffice if your leader lives out of state. Be sure to organize the interview well in advance. An email interview is not acceptable.

Step 3: From the list below, choose at least four questions you would like to ask your leader. You are also required to create three of your own questions, specific to that leader or field. Make sure your questions are open-ended and address the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership

• How did you enter your career field?

• What were some of the biggest challenges?

• What is your educational background?

• How important is networking?

• What steps/advice do you recommend for those entering the field?

• What strengths do you believe you possess as a leader? Weaknesses?

• What are three to four actions you believe are essential to enable others to be successful?

• What advice do you have for building relationships and trust in an organization?

Step 4: Conduct your interview using a recording device or taking effective notes. Include the date, time, and location of your interview.

What you will turn in: three original questions, notes from interview (questions and answers), and reflection assignment. Also, be prepared to share your interview and reflection with other learners in this class.

This benchmark assignment assesses the following programmatic competencies: 2.4: Evaluate intrapersonal skills. PSY 693 Professional Capstone Full Course.

 

 

MORE INFO 

Writing a Leadership Reflection Paper

Introduction

If you want to improve your leadership skills, a reflection paper is a great way to do so. Leadership reflection papers are a process in which you can evaluate your leadership abilities and develop new ones.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Have a clear idea of what you want to write about. This will help you focus on the important things and ignore any distractions.

• Keep all the necessary information handy, so that if something comes up during your research, it won’t take much time or effort to fill in the blanks.

• Decide on an outline for how you will organize each section of your paper before starting your research process (and make sure it’s clear). You’ll thank yourself later when everything falls into place!

Writing the Paper

Writing a reflection paper is an opportunity to reflect on your leadership. It can be a challenge to think about your leadership experiences and how you can improve, but it’s important that you take this opportunity seriously.

To begin writing your reflection paper, think about what you did well and where there were areas for improvement. Use the seven principles of effective leadership as guideposts for this process; they will help you reflect on things like:

• creating an environment where people feel safe speaking up when they have concerns or questions (Leadership Principle #3)

• being open-minded about new ideas (Leadership Principle #5)

• listening carefully so others feel heard (Leadership Principle #6)

You might also want to consider whether or not there were any lessons learned from these experiences that could help in future situations too!

Things to Consider

In order to write a reflection paper that is both effective and relevant, you should consider what you want to learn. This can be difficult because it is hard to know where your current knowledge ends and where your next steps should begin.

A good way to approach this problem is by thinking about what your goals are for writing this paper. If you have set out on an educational journey with a specific goal in mind, then we may need some adjustments as far as our plans go: we might need more time on certain aspects of leadership or less time on others; perhaps even change our focus entirely depending upon what we feel works best for us at this moment in time (for example: if one day feels like too much work without any return benefit).

Another aspect worth considering when picking up where we left off last week is who exactly will benefit from reading through these reflections? Who would find them helpful in some way? Who wouldn’t care enough about their life experiences so they wouldn’t bother reading through all those pages worth of thoughts anyway? And finally – perhaps most importantly – how will I use such material later down the road?

Outline and Format

The first step is to outline your paper. This will help you get started, but it’s not necessary to follow the outline exactly. Once you’ve got an idea of what your paper will look like, you can use a template or freewriting exercise to help you write it down.

The next step is outlining the structure of your piece: who are its main characters? What happens in their lives that affects them and why? How do they relate to one another? What does each character want from life—and how does he or she go about getting it (or not)? How does this affect his or her relationships with others: friends/family members/colleagues etc.?

Leadership reflection papers are a great way to learn more about your own leadership abilities.

Leadership reflection papers are a great way to learn more about your own leadership abilities. They can help you identify strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement. You may even discover that there are some things about yourself that you never knew before!

You can also use these reflections to help others who work with you. If they’re not sure how to approach their boss or coworker, having an up-to-date knowledge of what makes them tick will go a long way toward improving morale within the workplace and making it easier for everyone involved

Conclusion

A leadership reflection paper is a great way to learn more about your own leadership abilities. It’s an easy way to get started writing and it will help you think through things like how you communicate, who your audience is, and what makes them feel inspired by you.