Leading with Credibility

LSM586: Leading with Credibility

Cornell University

Leading with Credibility

Course Project

Instructions:

Working through this project, you will practice the skills and habits necessary to build your credibility.

In Part One of the project, you will manage a situation in which a request is being made of you. You will evaluate the situation according to the guidelines provided in this course, and you will reflect on the experience of making and fulfilling a promise, or of choosing another way to respond to the request.

In Part Two, you willcompare actions and values in yourself, your team, and your organization, and you will develop a mitigation plan for any value-action misalignment.

Part Three is a first step in bringing impeccable credibility practices to your team. You will take an inventory of the interactions among members of your team by creating request maps. You will also identify and characterize any communication breakdowns that may be contributing to real or perceived broken promises.

Once you have completed all three parts of the project, submit this project document and any supporting documents to your instructor for grading. A Submit button can be found on the Part Three assignment page. Information about the grading rubric is available on any of the course project assignment pages online.Do not hesitate to contact your instructor if you have any questions about the project.

Part One—Manage and Reflect on Requests

You may face many requests over the course of a week. You should already have begun building a record of these requests, taking note of when each request came to you, where it originated, how you responded, and any critical time requirements for the request. You may be using the Structured Journal tool available for download in the first module of the course, or you may have switched to another system for tracking commitments, in which case you should be working in that system instead.You should be making frequent updatesto whatever commitment tracking system you have decided to use.

In order to satisfy this part of the project, you must complete the following two items.

Tracking Promises

Turn in a copy of your structured journal, or an export from or photos of whatever tool(s) you are using to track your commitments. Your submission should indicate that you are tracking the important components of a commitment, including:

Due date
Person to whom you made the commitment
Status of the commitment

Though your work will only be seen by those grading the course and will not be used or shared outside the course, you should take care to obscure any information you feel might be of a sensitive or confidential nature.

Committing Thoughtfully (150-350 words)

Report on one request that was made of you after you completed the first two modules of this course. Answer the following questions:

What was the nature of the request?
What strategy did you use when responding?
Did you stop to reflect before giving a response? Why or why not?
What, if anything, would you do differently if you could replay the interaction?

Choose a request that was not trivial or one that is not the sort of request you routinely face.

Part Two—Compare Actions and Values

The values you hold may or may not align with your actions. In this part of the course project, you will explore this alignment.

In order to satisfy this part of the project, you must complete the following three items.

Personal Value-Action Alignment

You have developed and prioritized three or four core values to which you are personally committed. List these values in priority order below.
Make an honest reordering of prioritization taking into account only the time you devote to supporting each value.
Now do the same thing considering only the resources you devote to supporting each value.

If you can’t account for the majority of your time or resource allocation given the espoused values listed, consider what other values your time and money might be supporting. Revise the table to reflect these other values and their priorities.

Note: If you completed theMy Personal Values tab in the Excel spreadsheet earlier in this module, you can just copy and paste your results here instead of filling out the table. (Copy only the first four or five rows of columns B, C, and D.)

Personal value-action alignment
Priority / Espoused / Time devoted / Resources devoted
1
2
3
4

Discuss any value-action misalignments that have become apparent through this exercise. (100-250 words)

What, if anything, will you do to mitigate the value-action misalignment? If you plan to take no action, explain your reasoning. (50-150 words)

Team Value-Action Alignment

Repeat the exercise from part a with your team, focusing on team values.

Perform a card-sort activity with key members of your team.
For value-action misalignments that are identified, brainstorm with your team about how to address value-action misalignments.

Team value-action alignment
Priority / Espoused / Time devoted / Resources devoted
1
2
3
4

Discuss any value-action misalignments that have become apparent through this exercise. (100-250 words)

What responses did the team consider to address misalignment? (50-150 words)

Organizational Value-Action Alignment

Repeat the exercise from part a with your team, focusing on the organization.

Use as a starting point any published core values for the organization.
Perform a card-sort activity with key members of your team.
For value-action misalignments that are identified, brainstorm with your team about how to address value-action misalignments.

Organization value-action alignment
Priority / Espoused / Time devoted / Resources devoted
1
2
3
4

Discuss any value-action misalignments that have become apparent through this exercise. (100-250 words)

What, if anything, will your team propose to mitigate value-action misalignments? If you plan to take no action, explain your team’s reasoning. (50-150 words)

Part Three—Optimize Team Request Interactions

Now that you have begun to systematically manage your requests, it is time to bring these practices to your team. Besides modeling high integrity with respect to commitments and values, you need to support and require the same from each member of you team. Before you can do this, you need to clarify your understanding of how your team works.

In order to satisfy this part of the project, you must complete the following two items.

Request Maps

Turn in a copy of a request mapping that takes into account the requests to and from each member of your team, including yourself.

Format: This can be either an export from an electronic tool (e.g. from mind-mapping software or a presentation slide deck) or image files captured from a pen-and-paper exercise.
Separate or joined: You may create a separate request map for each person, or you may prefer to show all team members together on one sheet to show networking effects within your team. Degree of complexity should determine your choice.
Use arrows pointing from the person fulfilling the request to the person who makes the request.

Make certain you also include requests made from and of others outside the team.

Identify Breakdowns (150-350 words)

Using the request maps you created in part a, identify the three most significant or troubling breakdowns in communication around requests. Your criteria for choosing these should be business risk and impact on the team (including morale and productivity).

For each situation where you see a communication or commitment breakdown, state the problem as you see it and an action you will take to address the issue.