Personal Leadership Journey Paper

Personal Leadership Journey Paper This paper is an opportunity for you to draw together and examine your thoughts on some of the most important experiences that have shaped you as an individual up to this point and to consider what you are bringing to our community. You may include the stories from your Leadership Journey Presentations and add some that you did not have time to share before. Below are five headings with guidance about what they could mean. Use these as starting points to write a comprehensive narrative of your personal leadership journey up to this point. Be creative in how you tell your story. Don’t just answer the questions or bullet points as stand alone questions; focus on telling your story. Please use the following headings to guide and shape your Leadership Journey Paper: Heading 1: Context What is your context–your place, your culture, your family, your religion? Heading 2: People Choose and describe 2-3 people who have been mentors or role models for you. What have they given or taught you? What do you most value about them? Heading 3: Moments Choose moments that have affected who you are today: what have been the greatest moments of your life and what do those moments say about you? What have been the moments in your life that caused you to change and why were they powerful? Heading 4: Failures, Edges and Fears What has been your greatest personal leadership failure? What did you learn from it? What is your “edge” – meaning a place where you want to grow and get stronger but right now you feel like you struggle or are stuck? What are your fears, worries, or insecurities about your life? What stories do people tell about you that aren’t true? What stories do YOU tell about yourself that aren’t true? What stories are true that you do NOT tell about yourself? Heading 5: Strengths Identify your StrengthFinder results. Reflect on them by providing specific examples from your past where you have been able to demonstrate. Explain how your Strengths may show up in your future as part of your leadership life. Writing Mechanics Your paper should be free of grammar, spelling, and syntax errors. It should be 7-9 pages long. Readable font, 12 point, one inch margins, citations as needed. Writing Memo: The first page of your paper should be a 1-2 paragraph Writing Memo in which you tell the reader what you want them to notice in your paper. What section came easiest for you and what was the most difficult? Which sectio or story would you have worked on more? A NOTE ABOUT REFLECTION The Leadership Journey Paper and Presentation are both fundamentally reflective in nature. Most basically a reflection “shows a writer’s mind at work” as the writer expresses views or feelings about a question, makes observations about a contemporary problem, or illuminates a unique idea. Reflection writers reveal and discuss what influenced their thinking, such as life experiences (with your family, during our class, from their work, etc.), the voices from their past, class readings, and why they were significant. These other voices connect how the writer comes to the idea(s) expressed in the writing and why these are important for the writer. Reflection is shaped by the thing or things a writer wants to understand – about the world, an idea, or a work of writing. Often the shaping is about not only seeking to understand all three of these things – but to also reflect on how they connect. One of the goals of this course is for you to discover and develop your voice as a leader. This assignment is one way in which we will journey together to discover this. It’s also one of the ways we seek to understand.