Developing Leadership Competences in a Business Context

There is no penalty for submitting below the word/count limit, but students should be aware that there is a risk they may not maximise their potential mark.

If an assignment exceeds the word count this will be taken into account (negatively) in the marks given using the assessment criteria shown.

Assessment Task

You are required to produce a personal portfolio that provides evidence of your development of leadership competences within a business context.

Your portfolio should include a combination of your reflections on your experiences along with your reading about leadership combined to show the development of your own leadership skills, attitudes and behaviours. The portfolio should show how you have developed and enhanced your leadership potential during the period of the module. The evidence might include exercises that you have completed during the seminar sessions or that were set as directed learning, reading and self-completion tasks. You may also have acquired other evidence over the duration of this module where you have applied leadership competences that you have developed. You might also useany relevant work expereinces you have had.

Your portfolio must cover the following two topic areas:

1. Effective leadership communication

2. Decision making and problem solving as a leader

Plus TWO of the following topic areas (in the context of leadership)

3. Effective team work.

4. Effective negotiation.

5. Conflict management.

6. Performance management.

7. Self-management.

8. Coaching & mentoring others

9. Developing your professional identity.

In each of the 4 sections you should consider how your own leadership development is relevant for a 21st century workplace and the leadership required within it.

Supporting evidence (based on your relevant experiences) should be included in the appendices, you must collect such evidence throughout the module. For example, you may include a completed exercise in which you have applied leadership competences which you refer to in your reflective work the main report. Appendices are not included in the word count.

Each of the 4 themes from the above list should be approximately of equal length. All sections should include reference to appropriate theories and or applied models that should be used critically to help you discuss and make sense of your leadership development.

You are strongly encouraged to adopt a reflective learning cycle, such as Kolb (1984), Gibbs (1988) or Rolfe (2001), and to follow the structure of your chosen cycle in your reflective accounts. Your reflections should focus on what you learnt and how you will apply this or how you plan to change you approach in the future. You should describe the experiences and what  you did BUT avoid being overly descriptive in you provide in the portfolio.

Your submission should be formatted in a professional manner. This is an academic undertaking and therefore requires appropriate Harvard Referencing throughout.

This assessment will enable students to demonstrate in full or in part the learning outcomes identified in the module descriptors.

Students are reminded that:

i.If this assessment is submitted late i.e. within 5 working days of the submission deadline, the mark will be capped at 40% if a pass mark is achieved;

ii.If this assessment is submitted later than 5 working days after the submission deadline, the work will be regarded as a non-submission and will be awarded a zero;

iii.If this assessment is being submitted as a referred piece of work then it must be submitted by the deadline date; any Refer assessment submitted late will be regarded as a non-submission and will be awarded a zero.