- An analysis of organizational leadership
Purpose of the assignment
The assignment has two purposes and two main sections. Both must be successfully completed in order to pass the assignment.
1 The purpose of this section of the assignment is to give you the opportunity to explore some contemporary themes on leadership in organizations and through this be able to identify best practice that can be applied to a specific organization.
2 The purpose of this (smaller section) is for you to conduct an objective study of your own leadership skills and identify (with evidence) areas of strength and weakness. In order to do this you must consider you own ability to lead the changes that you recommend for the organization that you have written about.
The Task:
Section 1:
Produce a critical analysis of the leadership style adopted by an organization (probably your own) and benchmark it against best practice. Best practice in this case, is that identified within the academic research and literature. It should be about organizational and NOT personal leadership. You should NOT therefore write about the leadership styles and behaviour of individuals within your organization. You must write in detail and depth about the theory and its application.
Based on this benchmarking you should make recommendations for areas of improvement and effective implementation. You must make use of objective evidence to support you own opinion about the leadership of the organization. The ‘best practice’ theory must be based on academic research and not personal opinion.
Section 2:
You should produce an assessment of your own leadership. This is to be specifically related to your ability to take a leadership role in implementing the leadership changes that you have recommended in the first section of this assignment. Please note that this is about your abilities to take a lead role. Please bear in mind that this is an assessment of capabilities so you do not actually have to be in a leadership role to do this section. You should use objective evidence to help you to assess your own areas of strength and weakness. Objective evidence is typically a mixture of leadership self questionnaires and the opinions of those with whom you work. Your own personal opinion is permissible but any statements that you make must be supported with objective evidence.
Please not that this section is relatively brief and should take up no more than 1500 words of your assignment.
A suggested structure would include:
Introduction:
Gives brief details about the organization. Identifies and provides evidence to support the identification of the specific leadership approach used within the organization or business unit.
Exploration of theory
Having identified the leadership approach this section considers the academic research conducted into this particular leadership style or behaviour. It must not be purely descriptive but should contain in-depth and detailed analysis of contemporary writings and research into the theory and its use in a variety of circumstances and contexts.
Please note that you should focus on one theory and not try to explore a range of leadership theories. You are therefore required to write about the one that best matches the leadership style adopted in the organization under examination.
Benchmarking the organization against best practice.
You should critically compare how the leadership style adopted within the organization is being implemented against the ‘best practice’ describe in the previous section. Based on this you should make recommendations for effective implementation (or follow the notes below)
Important note
It may be that your organization (or the one being investigated) has adopted a style that the research indicates is not appropriate for its context (e.g. you would not expect the military to have a highly devolved leadership style). In this case you should cover step 1 as described in the Introduction above but include evidence about why this is inappropriate to the organization. Your theory section can then focus on a different theory that the literature indicates is more appropriate and you should continue with the ‘Benchmarking’.
Also note that if your investigation reveals that the organization has adopted an appropriate style and is implementing it properly and successfully (as evidenced in the benchmarking) you can write about this whilst providing evidence to match the theory.
Section 2:
Reflection of your own leadership.
You should reflect upon your own abilities to take on a leadership role. You should not write about how you would implement change but about your suitability to lead the change. You should therefore produce an assessment of you own leadership which must be based upon objective evidence (colleagues and peer opinion/leader questionnaire results etc.) and not merely upon personal opinion. You should then produce a specific plan for improvement (a general plan involving comments such as ‘I need to work on my ability to communicate’ is not adequate).
You are required to investigate and write about theory in depth. Merely describing the theory based on reading a textbook or some web articles is not adequate and is likely to contribute to a poor grade or a fail. You should use recognised and respectable academic sources such as journals.
