LEAD 4013 Module 5 Personal Leadership Development Plan Example

Becoming the Supervisor My Team Needs: A Twelve-Month Servant Leadership Development Plan

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD4013: Strategic Servant Leadership

Module 5 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 9, 2026

Introduction

Over this course I have compared servant leadership with transformational leadership, assessed a manager I admire against its dimensions, worked through an ethical tension using its principles and applied systems thinking to a decision. The final task is to turn the lens on myself. This plan assesses my own servant leadership as a supervisor of eleven contact center representatives, identifies strengths and gaps, sets goals for the next twelve months and describes how I will practice, get support and measure progress.

How I Assessed Myself

Self-assessment alone is unreliable, so I combined two sources. I rated myself on each of the seven dimensions in the model developed by Liden et al. (2008), using its short descriptions, and I asked my eleven representatives to rate me anonymously on the same dimensions on a 1-to-5 scale, with an optional comment for each. Ten responded. Comparing the two sets of ratings shows both where I am strong and where I see myself differently from how my team sees me.

Strengths

Two dimensions emerged as clear strengths. Conceptual skills scored highest, 4.6 from the team: representatives said I know the systems and policies well and can explain why things work as they do. Helping followers grow and succeed scored 4.3, with comments noting that I make time to explain how to handle difficult call types. Both match my self-ratings. They are a foundation for the plan: I can build on my knowledge and my habit of teaching. Several representatives also mentioned that I am consistent and fair in scheduling, which is not one of the seven dimensions but supports trust.

Gaps

Three gaps stand out. First, emotional healing scored 3.2 from the team, against my self-rating of 4.0, and comments said I am "more focused on the queue than on people after a hard call." Second, empowering scored 3.4; representatives said I step in to take over difficult calls rather than letting them try, the same pattern I noticed in Denise. Third, creating value for the community scored lowest, 2.9; I rarely connect the team's work to members' lives or the community beyond the center. The largest gap, between my view of my emotional support and my team's, is the most important finding, because it is a blind spot I would not have seen alone.

Goals

Three goals address the gaps, each measurable over twelve months. Goal 1: raise the team's rating of my emotional support from 3.2 to at least 4.0. Goal 2: raise the empowering rating from 3.4 to at least 4.0, and increase the share of escalated difficult calls that representatives resolve themselves with coaching rather than handing to me, from about 30% to 60%. Goal 3: raise the community rating from 2.9 to at least 3.5, and lead the team in two community activities during the year.

Practices

Development comes from repeated practice more than from courses. For emotional healing, I will check in with any representative within ten minutes of a call I see was difficult, using a simple question, "How are you doing after that one?", and offer a short break when needed; I will keep a log to make the habit visible to myself. For empowering, I will use a coach-not-take-over rule: when a representative signals for help on a difficult call, I will listen in and offer suggestions through chat rather than taking the call, unless the member is at risk. For community value, I will open each weekly team meeting with one member story, shared with permission, showing how the team's work helped someone, and organize team participation in the credit union's financial literacy evenings and a food drive.

Relationships and Support

Leadership development has been described as building relationships and networks as well as individual skills (Day, 2000). I will ask Denise, now an operations manager, to mentor me, meeting monthly to discuss situations where I struggled to serve the team well. Alongside the mentoring, I will meet with three fellow supervisors who meet every two weeks to share practices, which gives me others to learn from and be accountable to. Reading will support practice: I will reread Greenleaf's essay each quarter, since his test of whether those served grow is the standard I want to apply to myself (Greenleaf, 1977).

Ethics and Foresight

Two commitments carry forward from Modules 3 and 4. On ethics, I will keep my words and actions aligned on the cross-selling goal, continue auditing offers for fit and raise concerns in writing if pressure grows. On foresight, before any major change to my team's work, I will sketch a quick map of what it might affect, including delays, and discuss it with the team. A review of servant leadership research emphasizes that the approach directs concern outward, to the organization and community, not only to followers (Eva et al., 2019); these commitments are part of that outward concern.

What Could Derail the Plan

The plan is most likely to fail during the busiest weeks, which is exactly when the team needs it most. Fraud surges, year-end tax form questions and system outages fill the queue, and under that pressure I fall back on taking calls myself and watching wait times instead of people. To protect the plan, I will set two minimum practices that continue no matter how busy the center is: the check-in after a hard call and the coach-not-take-over rule. Everything else, including the member story at team meetings, can pause for a week if needed. I will also tell the team about the plan at the outset and ask them to point out when I slip, which turns their feedback into a running check rather than a twice-yearly survey. A second risk is discouragement if the six-month ratings barely move; my mentor has agreed to help me read small changes as progress rather than failure.

Measuring Progress

At six months, I will repeat the anonymous team rating and compare it with the baseline, discuss the results with my mentor and the team and adjust practices that are not working. At twelve months, I will repeat the full assessment, including my own ratings, and check the escalation data and community activities against the goals. I will share the results with my team, including where I fell short, because modeling openness to feedback is itself part of servant leadership.

Conclusion

My servant leadership is strongest in knowing the work and teaching it, and weakest in emotional support, empowering and connecting the team to the community, with a notable blind spot about how supportive I appear. Three measurable goals, daily practices, a mentor and peer group, ethical and systems commitments and two formal reassessments make up a plan to close those gaps. Its real test is Greenleaf's: whether my team, a year from now, is growing and better able to serve. The plan will be shared with my manager as well, so that it is part of my formal development goals.

References

Day, D. V. (2000). Leadership development: A review in context. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 581-613. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00061-8

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004

Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Paulist Press.

Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(2), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.01.006