115764 Assessment 2

Learning outcomes

LO1 – Apply theory to analyse and inform improvements in leadership and teamwork practices.

LO2 – Critically discuss the structural, cultural and political factors that influence leadership and teamwork change interventions.

LO3 – Critically reflect upon their own approach to leadership and teamwork, including issues of communication.

LO4 – Discuss the impact of cultural differences in leadership, including Māori and other indigenous models of leadership.

LO5 – Develop an ongoing personal development plan in relation to their own teamwork and leadership practice.

Topic

Select a leadership-related problem or opportunity in your current or previous workplace and, informed by the required and recommended readings for this course, plus other scholarly sources as required:

1. provide an analysis that explains the nature, causes and effects of the problem or opportunity, including discussion of the cultural norms and power relations that influence the leadership issues observed; AND

2. identify an intervention or approach that you argue will help to address the problem or opportunity, including what leadership communication would aid in its success.

Guidance

The problem or opportunity you select should be something leadership-related in your chosen organisation. The list below provides indicative examples of the kinds of issues you could explore, any ONE of which could be developed into an essay. You are better to analyse one or two related issues in depth rather than offer a shallow analysis of more issues.

•  The leadership approach/style or capability of your organisation/unit and how this affects matters such as employee motivation, trust, organisational culture or performance
• How issues of vision, mission, purpose and values are led within your organisation
• Change leadership within your organisation (NB: do not confuse this with the use of standardised change management or project management methodologies!)
• Gender-related issues and dynamics in leadership in your organisation
• Dysfunctional or toxic leadership within your organisation
• Cultural influences on the leadership approach taken or needed in your organisation

You are to produce an account of ‘what is going on’ (diagnosis — element A) and ‘what can be done about it’ (prescription — element B), which is analytically framed (i.e. using the theories we have studied to explain what is going on) by reference to scholarly knowledge and not just telling the story of what happened as a narrative.

The literature that you should look to first and foremost for this essay comprises the required and optional readings provided as part of this course. Go beyond these if you find they do not cover all the issues you wish to examine. The marking criteria rewards you for demonstrating your grasp of the required readings for Topics

3–7 of this course.

Guidance for Part A

Your response to element A of the topic statement should explain what the problem or opportunity is and examine how the issue affects organisational functioning in some way. If it is something that happened in the past, don’t just describe what was done about it then, but treat it as if it was a new issue, that you can now apply your new learning from the course to.

Use the literature to inform and justify your diagnosis. To consider how cultural norms affect the leadership issues you are exploring you may find the required and/or optional readings for Topic 5 helpful. To consider how power relations affect the leadership issues you are exploring then you may find Levi chapter 8 helpful, as well as various of the readings in Topics 3–7.

Guidance for Part B

Your response to element B should explain what you propose should be done, why you are proposing this and how your proposal will be implemented. As part of this you need to specifically address issues of leadership communication. The required reading by Mayfield and Mayfield in Topic 4 may be helpful in relation to communication issues. Check to ensure that your focus remains on leadership issues, not management issues — see Hughes et al., Topic 3 for guidance.

Your essay must be analytic in style and focus, not descriptive. The following example is descriptive.

The problem first arose when senior leaders awarded themselves bonuses at the same time as frontline employees were told staffing levels needed to be cut by 10%. Staff were unhappy about this double standard but felt too powerless to complain directly, for fear of being targeted.

While you will need to make some occasional and brief descriptive statements like this to set the scene, limit these as much as possible because they offer no theoretical/conceptual analysis to demonstrate your engagement with scholarly literature.

Instead, provide evidence of your engagement with relevant literature by using citations and scholarly terms in your analysis and weave this with brief descriptive statements. This is done effectively in the following example.

An absence of a shared social identity has eroded the trust between senior leaders and the workforce, who perceive the senior leaders as not being ‘one of us’ (Reicher & Haslam, 2016). This arose when senior leaders awarded themselves bonuses while simultaneously cutting frontline staffing levels. However, due to widespread use of ingratiation as a means to try to gain influence and power (Tourish, 2018), along with the influence of conformity and obedience pressures (Levi, 2017), the extent of the loss of trust was not initially obvious to senior leaders.

Your case study will be treated in confidence, so you can be as open about events as you wish.

Basic guidance about writing this essay-style assignment

The following is a list of some basis tips about structuring your case study and writing style.

Structure your case study as you would an essay, i.e. with an introduction, a body and a conclusion.

Approximately 10% of your essay (i.e. 200 words) should be dedicated to your introduction and conclusion, so these need to be carefully crafted to be succinct.

Parts A and B should be roughly 1000 words each the diagnosis (what is the problem/opportunity) and the prescription (what should be done about it) need an equal depth of treatment.

You don’t need sub-headings for an essay of this length

Write in sentences and paragraphs and avoid bullet points. A new paragraph for each new concept can be helpful

Write in a professional tone, but you may you use ‘I’ where relevant as this is your organisation and your 2

Leadership and Teamwork: Assessment 2: Essay (Analytic): Workplace Problem or Opportunity analysis of it.

Reference to a range of the required readings is expected. Wikipedia is not a scholarly source. Commercial websites are not scholarly sources. Trade magazines are not scholarly sources. YouTube is not a scholarly source. The scholarly sources that are expected include the required and/or recommended readings provided to you for this course, in particular those relating to topics 3 to 7. If you need to and want to go beyond these then your focus should be on be peer-reviewed journal articles in scholarly journals or books or chapters written by scholars.