Instructions:

This essay is meant to get you thinking about what leadership means in
todays world, what your personal characteristics are and how they fit certain
styles of leadership, as well as demonstrating that youve read and critically
assessed the recommended literature and have thought about the topic in
depth.
Part 1: this should focus on a style of leadership that fits (maybe) a certain
culture, or could be universal (you need to argue that part!); the clue here is to
decide what is a good leader, in which context. You have complete freedom
to choose a style that you want, but make sure that you back up all your
arguments with theory and maybe contextualise your examples to a certain
environment. Make sure that you backup all your arguments with academic
references.
(Talk about transformational / situational leadership and compare)
Part 2: critically looking at leadership theories, decide what kind of leader you
could be, and why (the narrative should include brief reflection on instances
from group work in class, or outside class experiences). You could link it to
part 1, to say why you could or couldnt have that style of leadership, and how
it could work in the longer run.
Since there is a strong angle on self-reflection here, especially in the part
discussing why this style is suited to you and how it could affect your future
actions (as possible leader), you are encouraged to use, amongst other
sources of inspiration, the self-discovery tests from class and Northouse
(2013 and 2015), as well as your group-members feedback and notes during
case-study work.
-think of your future actions (what you would like to do/ how you will be)
-think of your past experiences (what you have learnt from them)
Part 3:
- Choose the main 5 academic sources that you have deemed relevant
for the part 1 of this assignment.
- Include the source in Harvard style format
- Summarize each source and show how it helped you answer the
assignment, which theme it was applicable to, or how you used it to
build your arguments.
Some more information: What exactly is an annotated bibliography?
BIBLIOGRAPHY = l1ist of citations information sources (books, articles,
documents, websites or webpages, audio, video). ANNOTATION = a brief
(often about 150 -200 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, meant to
inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
An annotated bibliography summarizes the central theme and scope of each
source in the list. Each annotation should include:

CITATION: a complete citation for each work included.

SUMMARY: a few sentences summarizing the authors main point.


USE: Your own thoughts on why this is relevant for you in the context
of your research paper, and how you will use this source.

TIPS
Don't confuse abstracts or summaries with annotations. Abstracts are the
purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal
articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they
expose the author's point of view, clarity and appropriateness of expression,
and authority.
The example below includes details on a book, but of course, it would need
the extra details on how you used that information. For peer reviewed articles
this information would be much more targeted and concise (make sure you
dont plagiarise the abstracts).
Caroselli, Marlene. Leadership Skills for Managers. New York: McGraw-Hill,
2000.
This book examines the characteristics and abilities that differentiate leaders
from managers. Readers may use it to develop a plan to improve their abilities
and assess themselves on different characteristics using questions and
checklists throughout the book. Various leadership roles are described,
including being a visionary, problem-solver, team-builder, manager,
communicator, power distributor, liaison (forming partnerships and strategic
alliances), and planner. Skills and traits needed to be an effective leader are
also discussed, such as courage to handle objections and criticism, the ability
to instil pride in ones followers, sincerity (showing concern for others, the
personal touch), adaptability to face opposing ideas and viewpoints, the
ability to use influence and not solely rely on ones authority to accomplish
things, and the ability to communicate with various specialists in ones
organization.
Reading
The core texts for this course are:
1. Northouse, P. 2013. Leadership: Theory and Practice. (6th edition).
London: Sage Publications
2. Rowe, G.W. and Guerrero, L., 2013. Cases in Leadership. (3rd edition).
London: Sage Publications.
For Northouse (2013) there are some further web-based student study and
reference materials available via www.sagepub.com/northouse6e
The module will draw on other textbooks including:
Northouse, P., 2015. Introduction to leadership - Concepts and Practice.
London: Sage Publications
Gill, R., 2011. Theory and Practice of Leadership (2nd ed), Sage Publications
Humphrey, R., 2014. Effective Leadership. theory, Cases and Applications.
London: Sage Publications

Mabey, C., & Finch-Lees, T., 2008. Management and Leadership

Development. London: Sage Publications
Gosling, J. et all, 2012. Key concepts in Leadership. London: Sage
Publications
Avery, G., 2013. Understanding Leadership. London: Sage Publications
For the essay (and the course as a whole) it is advisable to access insights
and debates around the leadership topics that most interest you from good
quality academic papers.