Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring Course

Leadership Coaching and Mentoring Course

 

Assignment 3: Self-Reflective Report—Leadership Portfolio

 

Worth: 35%

Length: Open but go for Quality rather than Quantity

What is a Leadership portfolio?

 

The leadership portfolio/journal is a collection of thoughts, ideas, concerns and reflections on your learning as you take the leadership journey over the course of this subject. You should reflect on what you are learning, what is changing and how you are putting into practice what you are learning as you study. Your reflections can include, but are not limited to:

• your experiences in the seminars
• your thoughts while reading and reflecting
• thoughts and feelings from your learning that you notice have entered your head while working and dealing with organisational issues and problems
• thoughts and feelings during and after completing exercises, doing your individual and group assignments and so on.

The leadership portfolio must be a creative piece and should begin from Day 1.

 

Why a leadership portfolio?

 

Several studies in management education, and postgraduate education generally, have provided strong evidence that reflective learning is one of the most critical and powerful components to lifelong learning (Gustavs and Clegg, 2005). Many studies have shown that when students are asked to keep journals the impact of learning is far greater, richer and rewarding- this is especially so when approached creatively and symbolically [through art for example] (Barry, 1996).

 

You are doing a leadership portfolio because it will facilitate your learning in a way that how you think and what you think is influenced by what you learn. Typically, what you know usually affects what you do. Hence, the journal aims to bridge the gap between what you think and what you do (i.e. Theory and Practice or the Knowing-Doing Gap), while at the same time developing and improving the knowledge and how it is applied.

 

The additional aim of this portfolio is that you will be using a similar approach to coach and mentor the people you lead. This journal can be adapted in a way that it is used as a group portfolio in a workplace context. Imagine how powerful such a group portfolio would be, as people work together on projects and organisational problems.

 

How do I keep and present a leadership portfolio?

It is surprising how few people keep journals. It is also surprising how many successful people keep journals. Typically it is usually successful people who keep journals. There are a lot of misconceptions around journals. One student of this subject once said “I’m not keeping a journal, I’m not a school girl”. There seems to be a common perception that journal keeping is somehow either childish or stereotypically gendered as a feminized task.

Please be aware that if you miss some of our class sessions you will not be able to include any reflections on the missed sessions, and this will influence the quality of your portfolio.

 

While I do not want to determine what your creativity will look like, I do have to place some boundaries around your leadership portfolio in order to ensure it serves its purpose. Your journal must contain the following:

• Date of journal entry (at least once a week).
• The first entry should include a short introduction on how you feel about keeping a journal.
• A description of thoughts and feelings as they happen.
• Discussions of how you implemented or utilised learnings from this subject in practical ways.
• A collage of relevant newspaper, creative works, movies, readings, proverbs and metaphors, drawings, cartoons, etc that have either caused you to reflect on leadership, coaching and mentoring or exemplified an issue or topic covered in the class or in your readings and discussions and assignments (there are a couple of excerpt of a leadership portfolio at the end of this document). These creative pieces do not need to be in every entry, don’t force your self to find things – use them as they appear, but try and be perceptive and attuned to what is out there.
• A final entry of about 500 words that seeks to synthesise all your entries and bring together all your key learnings.
• I am not too fussed how you present your journal, you may type it using word (etc), or you can keep an art scrapbook. You can do a combination of both, and print your word documents, cut them up and place them in the scrapbook. You can also use an electronic journal but please keep in mind that I will need a hard copy in order to be able to provide feedback. Use whatever you are most comfortable with. However, please do not handwrite as handwriting is almost always difficult to read.
• AND PLEASE BE CREATIVE!

 

How is a leadership portfolio assessed?

 

There are a number of criteria that are used to assess the portfolio, some of these are not mutually exclusive, but they are subtly different to each other. These include:

 

ITEM	DESCRIPTION
Depth of thinking and reflection (inside knowledge communicated and contemplated intrapersonally)	How well does the student demonstrate his take up of new knowledge in the class? Does the student think about how well his existing knowledge is working for him in his everyday practice, and what needs to or has changed in terms of his thinking?
Transference (inside knowledge applied outwards)	How well does the student show that s/he is able to integrate the knowledge learned in class and apply it into practice? Does s/he provide well thought out examples?
Perceptions and interpretations (outside environments turned inwards)	How well does the student demonstrate an ability to read his/her environment and make sense of it with his/her newfound knowledge? That is, what signs, symbols and stimuli catch his/her attention and how is s/he making sense of these things.
EQ (managing both the inside affective component and the outside contexts in unison)	Part of being more in-tune to one-self is that the student automatically becomes more in-tune to others. How well does the student show s/he is more reflective and sensitive to her/his internal feelings and to those coming from the external environment – especially people?
Creativity (the ability to take knowledge and perceive things in new ways)	Is the student demonstrating that s/he is able to think about things in new ways, come up with new ideas and solve problems both internally (intrapersonal) and externally (contextual)?

 

 

Typically the poorer portfolios have some or all of the following characteristics:

• Illogical, unreflective journal entries that provide no synthesis in learning (it’s just a bunch of entries – unrelated and independent of each other in terms of thinking and reflexivity.
• Similarly, creative and practical illustrative example are ambiguous, disengaged and fail to demonstrate reflective learning.
• The student forgets the portfolio is about leadership/coaching/mentoring and treats it more as a personal journal. While it is good that you view this task in a personal way, DO NOT forget it must always be reflexive of leadership/coaching/mentoring as practice – this is not a life coaching journal; it is a leadership/coaching/mentoring journal.
• The student tries to write the portfolio in a week (and sometimes) a night before it’s due for submission. Students who do this almost always fail the task. If you miss the odd entry it is best to just be honest about it, state it, and continue your entries the following week.
• The portfolio provides little or no reflexivity. Rather it is nothing more than a descriptive piece that lists what happened and what was said in class. For example
  • “Today we played the Prisoner’s Dilemma” we were put into groups which I did not like. We were then given instructions to bid. I said I wanted 20, someone said they wanted 30….The lecturer then debriefed and we went home’.

 

A SMALL EXAMPLE OF A portfolio

 

These are small excerpts from a previous student’s portfolios.  The three dots “…” in the examples refer to passages taken out due to their length or contentious nature. Two forward slashes refer to large paragraphs taken out (..//..). Words in brackets refer to my own additions for clarity […]

 

2007 –  LCM student G (G would usually do his/her entries 4-5 times a week depending on his/her interest and engagement with the topics, what was happening around him/her, as well as workload..

 

Entry 3 – I know this entry is talking about something that was covered two weeks ago but I was doing some stuff on the net and I remembered the picture brought in to us by [student], and how funny it was. Especially after Tyrone’s presentation on Ronald McDonald as a leader and that reading by Rhodes. I saw this picture on the net and I straight away thought about Ronald..//..
A little later I saw this picture of W. Bush and it when you stick them side to side it’s really funny because they could be brother, both waving and stuff.

It’s scary to think that Ronald is probably a better leader..//..I am trying to think about what kind of leader Bush is, I mean how do you get to be the most powerful position on earth? He must have something? None of the theories really deal with it. He’s not transformational, he’s not transactional, and he is definitely not charismatic, so what is he. I’m stumped. I posed this in class and no one could answer beyond the old clichés about him. Tyrone asked me to try and think about it, and suggested I look at power and politics.  I suppose what he means is that Bush may be an excellent power and political player, but not a good leader. Or does he mean that Bush is there because of powerful and political people.  I think I now know why we were given the Ronald McDonalds as leader article and it makes total sense now…many leaders have more in common with Ronald then we might think…

 

Entry 10 – It’s quite amazing, I had a big fight with one of my staff yesterday. It had been brewing for a while and it was pretty bad. I feel bad…I wasn’t going to go [to class] at night but it was on conflict which would have been ironic I suppose – missing a class on conflict because of it [conflict]. It’s like not going to the doctor ‘cause your sick I suppose. So I went and it was really interesting because I got to class and I was so pissed off, and Tyrone really pushes your buttons which is confronting, especially if you show him your pissed off…//..what we did on levels of relationships and locus of control was a revelation to me. I know I talk to people in a really condescending way, I have three boys all under 7, and even my wife thinks I talk to people as if I talk to them like their kids. When he [Tyrone] was talking about adult-adult relationships it hit me. I sorted it out with [work colleague] today, I realised that I do treat her like a child. If I’m honest with myself I knew this anyway, before the lecture…

 

Another student had a wonderfully creative portfolio, full of mind maps, pictures, and even had some of her/his staff add comments which s/he reflected upon.

 

 

So be as creative and as free as possible. But most of all be REFLEXIVE!

 

Some Important Notes on All Assignments

 

To pass this subject you MUST gain an overall mark of 50.

Return of Assignments

Every effort will be made to return graded assignments before the next assignment submission. To give some perspective, you might think 2,000 words seems like a lot to write – 2000 words multiplied by the number of students (e.g., 40) is a lot of words to mark (2,000 x 40 = A LOT OF WORDS!)

Subject & Assignment Grading

High Distinction 85%	Outstanding material, in terms of depth, academic research and the entire work is flawless. The assignment could be submitted for publication in a refereed management journal. Typically, HDs are rare.
Distinction 75%-84%	Excellent critical and analytical work supported by in-depth research. No grammatical, referencing errors. The assignment can be submitted as a paper for a refereed management conference.
Credit 65%-74%	Very Good work. No grammatical, referencing errors. Written at a high postgraduate level – MASTERS level. The work can be submitted to a national refereed conference.
Pass 50%-64%	Lower Pass: The student completed ALL aspects of the assignment at a satisfactory level.  Higher Pass: Good work. Demonstrated a high level of critical thinking and analysis. All elements of the assignment are covered well. There are no errors in any aspect of the logistics of the presentation, as stated in the subject outline. The work can be submitted as a working paper at the University.
Fail 0-49%	The assignment lacked depth, research, analytical thought and critical analysis of the material.  Little attention is paid to the requirements of the assignment.  If Student is shown to have plagiarised (instant fail may be awarded= 0).

 

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