Reflective Essay for Leadership Development Module

Task

The Reflective Essay counts as the final examination for the Leadership Development module.
Each student is required to submit a reflective essay of between 8 000 and 10 000 words (excluding introduction, references and appendices). The purpose of the assignment is to integrate and capture your development as a leader during the leadership module and beyond. The objective is to integrate personal learning aspects from all sessions and material covered in the leadership module into the growth of yourself as a leader, culminating in drafting a personal development plan going forward. It has a strong focus on your understanding of yourself as an authentic leader and exercising your leadership in terms of personal, interpersonal, and organizational leadership. There are no correct answers, just critical, reflective thought, combined with high levels of critical thinking and argument, substantiated by academic literature. Your assignment must deliver an in-depth personal analysis, sense-making and critical, researched, reflective, and within a coherent document. 
All the material and topics covered in the Leadership Development module should be your guide and foundation for completing this assignment. Make use of a selection from all of the theoretical material, exercises, models, theories, etc. to reflect on your development as a leader during the module. Also, evaluate your own competency gaps and discuss the potential and real derailments. Reflect on and identify those areas of good/excellent competence (enablers) in your life relating to your leadership competencies and development, then discuss how you would enhance the enablers to grow. 14 

In addition, you have to complete again the Competency Assessment for Responsible Leadership (CARL; www.carl-test.org) that you have also completed at the beginning of your MBA journey for the Business in Society Module. From the CARL feedback you receive after completion, reflect on your development as a responsible leader, what it means to you and your further development as a responsible leader. You do not have to include the outcome of the CARL assessment in the assignment, but are welcome to do so. 
Provide a personal leadership development plan for the next 24 months after the MBA (what you can, and will do) for shifting the stumbling blocks and leveraging/further enhancing the enablers. Additionally, it would be useful to see a table in the appendices that provide timelines for the implementation of the recommendations. 
Reflecting on your growth as a leader and a team member over the course of the module. Feedback will be anonymous and USB will assign who gives feedback to whom. This feedback gives evidence of applied leadership competency and is not scored separately, but forms part of the overall assessment. You are strongly encouraged to view the Reflective Essay as an opportunity to develop your learning (and as the first step to a process of lifelong learning). Your final grade should be viewed as a by-product of that learning, rather than its cornerstone.