Term Paper on "Stress Management and Conflict"

Quoted Instructions for "Stress Management and Conflict" Assignment:

Self-Awareness Assignment

This assignment is designed to help you better understand yourself. In this course, you will explore who you are in terms of your personality, skills and values. Further, you will examine how you work and interact with others. Understanding your developmental needs and how they can affect your performance is a skill that will help you throughout your career. This assignment requires you to identify one area of strength and one area in need of improvement and to write a developmental plan for your area in need of improvement.

Part 1:

1. The first step in this assignment is to identify one area of strength and one area of weakness of managerial competencies (Here: my strength is "Stress Management", and my weakness is "Conflict Management"). Use appropriate terminology to describe them.

2. Consider how you exemplify these two areas. Provide concrete examples of how you demonstrate this strength and this weakness in your daily life (at work or at school).

3. Describe how each of these might help and hinder your current performance at work and/or in school. If you find that you cannot identify how the area for development might hinder your performance, then consider why you would want to improve it or, go back to step 1 and identify another area for development.

4. Finally, drawing on theory, explain why this strength and developmental needs might affect your current performance and/or how they might negatively impact your future career. When considering theory, you will want to find research articles (academic ones) in support of your hypothesis that the area for development will negatively affect your performance, or, alternatively, why improvement in this area will be necessary for your career.

Part 2: Developmental Plan

The next part of the assignment is to develop a plan for improving the weakness you identified. Your plan should be realistic and you should provide a convincing argument for why you believe it will be effective. In order to be persuasive, please support your plan with evidence (i.e., research the potential methods that can be used to improve a particular skill and include this evidence in your paper).

1. Develop a plan for how you believe you can improve your area of weakness. Use specific behavioural example(s) to indicate how your plan will be implemented. The plan should be realistic and you should apply what you know about goal setting to ensure that the plan is likely to be motivating (e.g., consider whether your plan has SMART(Specific, Measure, Attainable, Realistic, Timly) goals).

2. You will need to indicate what would constitute improvement. You should explain the criteria for achieving proficiency on the skill. In addition, you should provide a specific behavioural example of how you would demonstrate improvement in your own life/career.

3. Research the plan. Look for evidence to support the idea that you can improve the identified skill and that your method is likely to be successful. If your idea has not been tested, then you should provide a theoretical explanation for why it will work. Please use academic theory and research to support your plan.

* Format Requirements

This draft should be no longer than 4 pages in length and should be 12-point Times New Roman Font, double spaced, with 1-inch margins. You should have a minimum of 4 distinct academic references.

*Grading Criteria for Self Awareness Assignment:

Introduction (2.5 marks)

Discussion of Two Competencies (One strength & one weakness)(2.5 marks)

Behavioural Examples of each(2.5 marks)

Discussion of how each of these competencies will impact current/future performance (5 marks)

Drawing on appropriate theory explained why these competencies will impact performance (5 marks)

Realistic and applies to the identified weakness (2.5 marks)

Use of SMART goals (applied goal setting theory) (5 marks)

Behavioural example(s) of how plan will improve weakness (2.5 marks)

Measurable: measures of competency outlined (5 marks)

Feedback: it is clear how individual will receive information on whether improved (5 marks)

Research demonstrating that it has been tested and will be successful Or Theoretical explanation / logical reasoning for use of plan (10 marks)

Conclusion (2.5 marks)

Structure of the Paper (5 marks)

Format & Clarity of Communication (APA references, 4 pages, 12-point font) (5 marks)

Total (60 marks)