The capstone project provides the opportunity for each student to engage in the research of a leader’s decision in a pivotal situation. The assignment will focus on one leader and the situation that was either their pinnacle of success or their downfall as you will analyze what influenced that leader to make the decision they did. The leader, situation and decision must be approved by your professor.

Key Assignment

Every day leaders face a multitude of decisions. In a leader’s career, there are far fewer decisions that will affect their organization, their environment, their followers and themselves. For your project, you will select a leader and a specific situation that was their defining moment, either in a positive or negative sense. For example, consider the decision Custer made to not wait for backup in his final battle; Chick-Fil-A CEO Cathy’s decision to remain closed on Sundays; Ford CEO Mulally’s decision to not take the government bail-out money; or President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb. The capstone project is a chance for you to demonstrate your understanding of Organizational systems and organizational leadership that created the challenge or provided this ability to capitalize upon. During the first week’s class, you will share your leader, their defining situation and the decision you will analyze. This analysis will rely heavily on your critical thinking abilities and the communication of your thought process to arrive at your conclusions. You will also assess if your leader was effective or ineffective in that decision. The selection of your leader must be approved by the faculty. (One leader per student.)

Research Paper:

This research is used to describe a turning event and the real-life context in which it occurred. Your paper should use the outline provided as the table of contents for the paper. Using public data sources and your understanding of organizational leadership, identify the leader/situation and decision, the traits that made your leader effective and ineffective in this situation (their strengths and weaknesses), and their ethical stances, ending with answering several specific questions that can shape future behaviors.

It is important to note that this assignment is an analysis of your research to understand the influences of your leader’s decision. Your research seeks to determine what happened and why. This analysis is more than just reporting of the activity or a biography of your leader; in fact, you probably will not find the ‘answers’ you are looking for written in black-and-white. It is your analysis, and your walking us through your thinking, that is the crux of this assignment.

The paper should be 10-12 pages in length, double-spaced, excluding title page and reference list, and conform to APA 7th Edition style and formatting. This paper is the Key Assignment and must be submitted to Turnitin.com.