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Personal Leadership Identity, Resilience and Reflection

Module description

Relationship building, engaging people, effective communication and managing conflict are core competencies for the modern leader. This practice-based module will enable you to develop your inter-personal and contextual leadership skills. By taking a wider systems and global perspective, we prepare you to face the challenges of a rapidly evolving leadership environment. Using psychological approaches developed in our portfolio of leadership training across the University, this module invites you to reflect on, evaluate and enhance your leadership performance.

This module will support you in developing a high-performance work culture, discovering how to set goals and accountabilities for teams and individuals, and to inspire, empower and motivate others to achieve targets. You will learn how to champion development, ensuring workforce skills are well utilised across your organisation – balancing people and technical skills, and undertake mentoring and coaching to create a learning culture.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of this module is to develop your self-awareness, emotional and social intelligence, empathy and compassion, and your ability to identify and promote mental wellbeing in others. Through a series of structured self-reflections on your leadership performance in practice, you will become more aware of your own leadership style. You will also have the opportunity to explore your approach to resilience and to develop a personal action plan to support sustainable, authentic and resilient leadership.

The module introduces you to current research undertaken by module leads, and module content is updated every year to explore topical research areas, such as personal resilience. You will learn about the tools required to reflect on your own leadership practice. The module supports you in developing your leadership identity by inviting you to reflect on your practice though a series of structured assignments using evidenced-based psychological methods.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate high levels of self-awareness, emotional and social intelligence, empathy and compassion, and identify mental wellbeing in others
• 2. Identify how a wide range of resilience skills helps you to manage complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty by developing pragmatic strategies for self-care and managing boundaries
• 3. Demonstrate an advanced ethical approach to inclusivity, recognising and championing diversity and enabling cultural inclusion
• 4. Reflect deeply on your own performance, identifying and acting on learning and development needs in accordance with professional standards

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Develop individuals through a range of communication and feedback approaches
• 6. Reflect on a range of coaching and mentoring skills to develop others

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate advanced skills as an imaginative and critical thinker and problem solver
• 8. Exemplify a range of approaches to leading and effecting change, being empowered to make a responsible and sustainable difference as a future leader

Syllabus plan

The module will explore the following topics:

• Leadership identity – theory and practice.
• Developing and reflecting on coaching and mentoring skills.
• Resilience and sustainable leadership.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Two assessments are required for this module. In all cases re-assessment will be the same as the original assessment. Where you have been referred/deferred for any form of assessment detailed above you will have the opportunity to resubmit within eight weeks from the date that feedback was provided.

If you pass re-assessments taken as a result of deferral, your re-assessment will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment and the overall module mark will not be capped.

If you pass re-assessments taken as a result of referral (i.e. following initial failure in the assessment), the overall module mark will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Amabile, T.M. and Kramer, S.J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 89(5): 70-80.
• Bennett-Levy, J., Turner, F., Beaty, T., Smith, M., Paterson, B., & Farmer, S. (2001). The value of self-practice of cognitive therapy techniques and self-reflection in the training of cognitive therapists. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 29, 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465801002077
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-ef?cacy: The exercise of control. Freeman, New York.
• Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Harnessing the science of persuasion. Harvard Business Review, 79(9): 72-81.
• Prochaska, J.O. and DiClemente, C.C. (1983). Stages and processes of self-change of smoking: toward an integrative model of change. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 51(3): 390-395.
• Peterson, C., and Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• TED talk (2004). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness. url: http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – All resources will be made available on ELE. This includes additional material covered in the tutorials, the required readings, information about assessment and additional material (e.g., videos).

Key words search

Resilience, reflection, leadership, identity