Grit – Resilience – Motivation – Change Leadership

A competency called “reframing,” or considering an experience from a different, more positive perspective, is related to grit, resilience, and motivation, as well as to a growth mindset.

Read the article “A Practical Guide to Reframing Your Thoughts and Making Yourself Happier”

Write a brief essay using the following scenario:

You are a project manager for a fundraiser for a non-profit organization.  The venue calls to confirm logistics for the event. During the conversation, you discover that you have been using last year’s menu to plan the meals.  The prices for the food items have increased and not all of the items you selected are still available. As a result, if the venue follows the current order, you will be over budget and there will be a number of attendees who will not have the food accommodations they have selected. The venue says that there is still time to adjust the order, but that any changes need to be received by the end of the day.  Otherwise, the order will be prepared using this year’s menu, with the venue’s discretion at substituting items, and you will be charged the new rates for what has been ordered.

At the same time that you’re dealing with the venue about food, your monthly program report on the fundraiser progress is due.  You receive an email reminder from your director to that effect; the email also states that she needs the projected fundraiser costs for a meeting the next morning. How do you balance working with the venue and completing the report?

Apply what you have learned about grit, resilience, motivation, and reframing to identify at least 3-4 possible actions you can take to resolve both the challenge with the venue and with your director’s request.

Submit: your evaluation in a short (3-4 page) essay, making sure to reference reasons for the possible actions in terms of the competencies of grit, resilience, understanding motivation, and reframing.

Read the article “Student Grit as an Important Ingredient for Academic and Personal Success,” from the journal Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning.

One of the ways the authors assert that student learning can be enhanced, and the competency of grit fostered, is through project-based learning.  View the following video, which introduces problem-based learning.

Do additional research as needed into the concept and practices of problem-based learning so that you have a good sense of what it entails.

Then identify a real problem that you are encountering at work, school, or in your community.  Engage in the thinking to design a project-based learning activity to address this problem.  In your design, make sure to address the following questions:

• What is your problem, and what question results from that problem, a question that you will research through problem-based learning?
• How can you create a rigorous learning experience?  What resources will you need to access, and what processes will you need to engage in?
• With whom will you need to collaborate in order to work through this project?  What roles can you envision for a collaborative team?
• How can you assess results – are there checkpoints along the way, and how will you assess final results?

Submit two items together:

1. A written piece showing the thinking behind a potential problem-based learning activity, including any research and resources you accessed
2. A written assessment of your own approach and actions as you engaged in thinking about the design of a problem-based learning activity.  What motivated you to engage with this particular problem?  What obstacles did you encounter in completing this learning activity, if you experienced obstacles?  What did you do to overcome them?  How did you – or how might you have – approached these obstacles from a different perspective? Assess your experience and actions in terms of grit, resilience, motivation, and reframing.

Consider a personal experience in which you helped make a change (in a job, in your family, with friends, etc.).  What did you learn about how to get changes made? Was there a time when you wanted to help make a change but did not?  What kept you from doing so?

Write a brief essay (3-4 pages) explaining your personal experience and answering the questions above.  Refer to the article and video information as you consider these questions:

• How did you go about (or not go about) the change?
• What happened?
• What characteristics of change-makers did you employ?
• What characteristics did you need to employ?
• In general, which qualities of a change agent do you already have, and which do you need to work on more fully?

Submit: essay

Identify a clear and compelling change you would like to make at work, home, or with a community group.  It can be a small change; it just must be important to you.

Create an “elevator speech,” or language that you could state in 1-3 minutes explaining the change, the reason for the change, and the proposed result.

Then consider the following questions:

• How will others be affected by the change? Who do you think will be receptive, and who won’t be receptive, and why?
• How will you “sell” people on the change and the need for change? What tactics and strategies can you use to convince the people who will be affected that working toward this change will be useful?
• What kinds of resistance do you expect? What will be the obstacles?
• What resources do you have and what resources do you need to enact this change? Do you need specific information to make this change successful?
• Whose support and buy-in do you need in order to enact the change and to make it work?
• How will the change affect the current culture?  (Change agents cannot ignore cultural factors, because the gaps between culture and the change are the root of many failed changes. Consider if your change will affect groups’ cultural practices; will affected groups regard the change as positive?
• How should you communicate the change?  What messages do you need to send, to what audiences and for what purposes?
• How will you reinforce the planned change? Reinforcement is the power behind motivating behavioral changes. Should there be positive rewards or negative consequences?  Do you need buy-in from administration to use the reinforcements you identify?

Use the questions above and your answers to develop a professional proposal detailing your plan and the actions needed.  Your “elevator speech” will become the executive summary.  Then include full proposal information with the following sections:

• Statement of Problem
• Other Possible Solutions—This is not your proposed change yet, but other options to show that you’ve considered many options before deciding on your proposed change.
• Proposed Solution—Describe your change, with full discussion.
• Communication Plan—How and to whom do you need to communicate the proposed change? You may want to include a discussion of buy-in here.
• Action Plan—Include your proposed activities, in a particular order, that are needed to enact your change, and who will be involved in each; what actions you propose to take if encountering resistance?
• Timeline—This may or may not be incorporated with the action plan; it’s your choice.
• Resources—What do you need to enact the change, including reinforcements as well as monetary, personnel, and/or time resources?
• Qualifications—What qualifies you to propose the change?

Submit: the full proposal, including all of the sectins noted in the list