Application Memo
Leadership & Power

This is an optional team paper. If you do the paper, then your grade (good or bad) will be averaged in with your other grades, using the same weight as all the other application memo papers. This means that the weight of every other assignment will decline proportionally so that everything adds to 100%. If you don't do the paper, nothing changes. In making this decision you must trade-off a sure thing (doing nothing) against an unknown in which you could either win or lose, depending on whether you score above or below your present cumulative grade.

In this 5-page paper, you must analyze the leadership and power dynamics in your team. (If you have a very small team, such as 3 people, you might consider writing about another team in the class). Essentially you want to think about what is happening in your team in terms of the concepts presented in the textbook, the web handouts and the class lectures.

Some helpful questions to ask yourself:

• who has power in the group and who doesn't; why?
• who listens to whom? who has influence
• what are the sources of influence/power in the team? what are the interpersonal dependencies?
• is the team leader a leader or a manager? why?
• does the team leader have the transformational leadership qualities described in the text and in the web handouts?
• is there competition for leadership/power?
• what are the motivations of the individuals involved, and how does this relate to power (e.g., a person can be manipulated because they have certain wants/needs)