Assignment: Assessing Your Leadership Style

During the Discussion this week, you explored different leadership styles. For this Assignment, you will use your leader assessment results to identify a style that comes naturally to you and a different style that might be useful in the leadership role you selected. As you do so, keep in mind that leaders often use more than one style at a time to meet the unique needs of the organization and followers. As a result, you may determine that it is best to combine styles to be most effective in the leadership role you selected. In addition to identifying your leadership styles, you will consider your current and desired stages of development in the Leadership Maturity Framework. The framework includes nine stages of leader development, with lower stages representing rigid and simplistic ways of thinking and higher stages representing flexible and complex ways of thinking.

To prepare for this Assignment:

• Review the results of your leader assessments. Identify a leadership style that comes naturally to you and a different leadership style that would be effective for your chosen leadership role.
• Read the article, “Leadership Maturity Framework.” Consider the characteristics associated with each stage of development. Identify your current stage of development and the stage of development that most closely maps to the leadership role.
• Go to the leader development Learning Resources.
  • Review the resource entitled “SMART criteria” and the chapter “How to Set Development Goals.” Create one SMART goal to improve or maintain your stage in the Leadership Maturity Framework and one SMART goal to develop a leadership style (or combination of styles) that would be effective for the leadership role you selected.
  • Peruse the other resources and identify one development activity you would complete to achieve each goal.
  • Read the article “Evaluating Leadership Development Programs.” Consider the methods you would use and data you would collect to assess whether you achieved your goal. Be sure to focus on Level 3 (Application and Implication) and 4 (Results or Business Impact) of the evaluation framework.

By Day 7

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper that addresses the following.

• Using the Leadership Maturity Framework, identity the stage of development that is closest to how you currently operate. Then identify the stage that most closely maps to the leadership role you described in Week 1.
  • If the stages are different, create one SMART goal and identify one leader development activity that would help you progress to the desired stage of the maturity framework.
  • If the stages are the same, create one SMART goal and identify one leader development activity to help you maintain that stage.
• Based on your results from the leadership assessments(MLQAL attached), identify one leadership style that comes naturally to you. Then, identify a different leadership style you think would be effective for the leadership role and explain why. Finally, create one SMART goal and identify one leader development activity that would help you further develop that leadership style.
• Explain the methods you would use and data you would collect to assess whether you have achieved each of your SMART goals.