Guidelines for the Leadership Development Plan

The Leadership Development Plan (LDP) will be used as a tool for planning, measuring, and
demonstrating your personal development throughout the certificate experience. It is a living
document that should be further developed as you gain additional knowledge and insights.

The deliverable should be a summary of the requirements below. It should draw heavily from
previous assignments and align with the competencies described at the end of this document.
Grading for this deliverable is explained in the syllabus.

Required components (reference attached table)

1. For each Competency or Skill prepare short statements describing how you see yourself
now (Who I am) and who you see yourself becoming over a specific period of time (Who I
want to become). These statements should draw from the Personality Assessment, and all
of the Whetten and Cameron assessments from the chapter readings.
2. Evaluation of core values, character strengths, and ethical principles. The leadership
development plan should align with these personal traits.
3. Assess each Competency or Skill contained in the RCEL Framework included in this
Leadership Development plan template and document the results in the Current
Assessment column. The assessment should be based on the latest results of the Whetten
and Cameron assessments from the chapter readings as mapped to the RCEL Competencies
and Skills. If this is the first time you have developed this plan the Initial Assessment and
the Current Assessment should be the same. If you are updating a previous version, leave
the Initial Assessment column as is and update only the Current Assessment.
4. Assign a Target Proficiency to each Competency or Skill based on your personnel goals for
that skill and your long term vision for your Leadership competency. Again, the Target
Proficiency should reference the Whetten and Cameron assessment scales.
5. Place each Competency or Skill into the prioritization matrix based on your view of the
importance of the skill to your overall development plan and the urgency of refining that
skill. The urgency assessment should be based on how soon you view this skill as being
critical to your short term success. Something that will be important over the next two
years might be considered urgent while a skill that is important to you overall career choice
but may not come into play for several years might be less urgent. Note the quadrant
number in Roman Numeral format in the Priority column of the Leadership Development
Plan template.
6. Force rank each Competency and Skill within each domain from 1 to 5 or 6, based on your
view of its importance/criticality with 1 being the most important and 5 or 6 being the least.
Reference the prioritization matrix to guide you in developing this ranking. Add the ranking
to the priority column as a modifier to the Quadrant designator developed above. The
completed Priority column might contain a value such as I.5 for some ranked as important
and urgent with an overall priority ranking of 5.
7. Short-term goals. Create short-term personal development goals that align with methods
described in our text. Choose four of the highest priority skills from the full list of

1 Leadership Development Plan

 competencies of the RCEL Leadership Framework that you want to develop. Use the SMART
Goals format in the Leadership Development Plan template to document your selected goals
complete with action plan.

Prioritization Matrix

Low Urgency High Urgency

High Importance

Quadrant II Quadrant I

Quadrant IV Quadrant III

Low Importance

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Certificate Competencies, Skills and Components
Competencies and Skills
1. Developing self-awareness – an
ability to understand oneself and
one’s aspirations and possibilities
2. Life-long learning – an ability to
take charge of, and manage, one’s
personal growth and development
3. Setting and achieving goals –
knowing how to set personal
3 Leadership Development Plan
Leadership
Communication
Management
Interpersonal
Personal
Personal Domain
Initial Current Target
Components Priority
Assessment Assessment Proficiency
 Has a practical understanding of “who I am”
and “who I can become”
 Knows personal strengths, constraints, and
development opportunities
 Develops self-confidence
 Routinely seeks out and receives feedback
from others
 Builds emotional intelligence
 Knows one’s basic needs, motivations, and
values
 Strengthens one’s ethical values and principles
 Knows how to learn from practical experiences
 Knows one’s tolerance for ambiguity and
change
 Develops professional expertise and
capabilities
 Manages one’s personal and career ambitions
 Has a personal and professional vision
 Sets SMART goals
 goals, allocate resources
accordingly, monitor progress, and
achieve results.
4. Managing stress – the ability to
diagnose, cope with, and respond
positively to stressors
5. Problem solving and decision
making – the ability to make
effective decisions using rational
and creative methods
Competencies and Skills
6. Managing conflict and
negotiation – The ability to
experience and manage
differences in constructive ways
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 Taking initiative
 Plans, monitors, and manages goal
achievement
 Develops drive, perseverance, and
resourcefulness in achieving goals
 Achieves measureable results and learns from
the process
 Diagnoses and identifies stressors in one’s life
 Manages reactions to stressors
 Manages time and commitments
 Builds personal resiliency and hardiness
 Develops and maintains life balance
 Being decisive
 Defines problems, generates alternatives,
evaluates alternatives, implements solutions
 Practical ingenuity
 Learns from problem solving experiences
 Applies creative processes
 Builds intuition and insight
 Builds capacity for innovation
Interpersonal Domain
Initial Current Target
Components Priority
Assessment Assessment Proficiency
 Diagnoses sources and foci of conflict
 Manages emotions surrounding conflict
 Values and learns from diversity
 Understands one’s preferred conflict
management style
 Matches appropriate conflict management
styles to conflict situation
7. Building positive relationships –
The ability to initiate, create, and
maintain mutually satisfying and
beneficial relationships and social
ties
8. Managing followership – Being a
positive, productive, and
sometimes outstanding individual
contributor
9. Reputation management – Builds
and manages one’s personal
reputation
10. Oral and written communication
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 Understands and builds one’s emotional
intelligence
 Understands mutual needs and concerns
 Creates mutually satisfying and beneficial
connections with others
 Builds trust and credibility
 Assesses current networks for personal and
professional purposes
 Builds and manages networks
 Builds social intelligence
 Assesses current commitments and allocates
time and effort to make a positive and
productive impact
 Knows how to discover what is expected for
strong results
 Delivers outstanding results
 Understands and manages interdependencies
 Challenges the status quo, especially when it is
the “right thing to do”
 Develops awareness of how one is perceived
by others
 Creates and manages one’s personal
reputation
 Communicates clearly, confidently, and
persuasively in written, oral, and visual genres
 Identifies and develops multimodal
communication strategies appropriate for
audience and purpose
 Gathers, synthesizes, and analyzes information
effectively to deploy powerful and focused
arguments
 Inquires, listens, accurately articulates, and
responds productively to others

Competencies and Skills
11. Strategic management – Creating
and implementing a shared vision,
goals, objectives, and plans for
achieving these aspirations
12. Organizing – Designing and
developing a structure to achieve
desired results
13. Staffing – Assessing and selecting
individuals for specific roles
14. Empowering and delegating –
Enabling others to have the
authority, control, and voice in
achieving shared objectives and
making group decisions
15. Providing feedback – The ability
to deliver developmental feedback
to others for coaching, counseling,
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Management Domain
Initial Current Target
Components Priority
Assessment Assessment Proficiency
 Defining purpose, goals, and strategies
 Creates awareness of strategic context or
environment (sensemaking)
 Creates a shared vision and mission
 Translates mission into goals, objectives, and
measures of success
 Creates plans to achieve goals and objectives
 Communicates goals and feedback to guide
collaboration and solve problems
 Implements and updating plans to achieve
desired results
 Create an overall structure of shared
responsibilities and interrelationships
 Create individual roles requirements,
responsibilities, and expectations
 Recruiting and selecting individuals for roles
 Assign people to roles based on interests and
strengths
 Diagnoses situations where empowerment or
delegation is appropriate
 Deploys strategies for enabling others to
become empowered and confident in their
roles
 Uses delegation strategies appropriately in
decision making situations
 Group decision making
 Develops a plan for delivering feedback
 Delivers feedback that is descriptive, problem-
oriented, actionable, and specific.
 and other purposes
16. Teamwork – Launching,
managing, and adjourning
temporary, project -based groups
and teams
Competencies and Skills
17. Motivating and inspiring others –
Creating an environment that
enhances the ability, motivation,
and opportunities among
members to achieve outstanding
results
18. Building power and using
influence – Understanding the
existence and necessity of power
and building power for ethical and
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 Communicates feedback in ways that are
conversational, validating, and respectful.
 Takes ownership of messages
 Understands principles of project management
 Deploys strategies to effectively compose and
launch project teams
 Deploys strategies to structure, measure, and
monitor the work performed in projects
 Deploys strategies for adjourning project
teams and learning from team experiences
 Managing diversity
Leadership Domain
Initial Current Target
Components Priority
Assessment Assessment Proficiency
 Diagnoses performance problems
 Deploys strategies for resolving performance
problems
 Creates a motivating work environment
 Uses rewards and recognitions to motivate
others
 Uses discipline to improve poor performance
 Designs jobs that are motivating
 Communicating a clear and meaningful vision
(sensegiving)
 Uses rhetorical strategies to enhance charisma
and/or the effectiveness of leader
communications
 Diagnoses sources of personal and positional
power
 Manages one’s boss
 shared purposes. The ability to
gain others’ attention,
commitment, and cooperation
19. Leading change –Creating and
implementing positive and lasting
change
20. Adapting leadership styles – Using
a repertoire of different leadership
styles to meet the specific
situational requirements
21. Creating cultures and identity
Creating and maintaining shared
values, practices, and identities
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 Builds and manages personal sources of power
 Manages positional sources of power
 Knows how to covert power into influence
 Diagnoses situations to select appropriate
influence strategy
 Knows how to influence upwards
 Envisioning and articulating new possibilities
 Engaging and aligning relationships
 Executing planned change
 Embedding lasting changes
 Develops awareness of one’s natural or
preferred leadership style
 Selects behavioral strategies to meet specific
situational needs (i.e., balancing a focus on
relationships versus delivering results).
 Develops a meaningful and motivating shared
identity
 Identifies, selects, and reinforces shared values
 Translates values into shared norms and
routine practices
 Knowing when to change versus preserve
existing cultures