ORG 5091 Module 5 Capstone Competency Portfolio and Reflection Example

What the Night Shift Taught Me: A Competency Portfolio and Reflection to Close an Organizational Leadership Master's

Student Name

American College of Education

ORG5091: Organizational Leadership Capstone

Module 5 Assignment

Instructor Name

September 4, 2028

Introduction

This paper closes my capstone in the M.S. in Organizational Leadership. Over the previous four papers, I proposed, diagnosed, decided on and planned a response to early turnover on the evening shift I manage at a composite Columbus distribution center, where most departing associates left within four months. The program asks graduates to document the competencies they have built. Rather than list courses, this portfolio takes five competencies, links each to specific artifacts, judges honestly how strong the evidence is and reflects on how my thinking and practice have changed. It ends with a plan for the next two years.

How the Portfolio Is Organized

Each competency section names the artifacts that show it, drawn from the capstone and from earlier courses, and then rates the evidence as strong, adequate or developing. The ratings matter because a portfolio that claims mastery of everything is not credible. Day et al. (2014), reviewing a quarter century of research on leader development, concluded that leadership grows over long periods through experience, reflection and feedback rather than from a single program. A master's degree is one stage in that process, and the portfolio should show where the stage left me.

Competency One: Diagnosing Organizational Problems

Artifacts include the capstone diagnosis, which combined two years of HR records, 31 exit calls, four bilingual listening sessions, a supervisor session and a survey, and an organizational behavior paper from an earlier course that applied a systems model to a staffing problem. The diagnosis shows a skill I lacked when I began the program: testing explanations against evidence. I had assumed pay was the main reason associates left; the data did not support that, and I changed my view. I rate this evidence as strong, because the diagnosis used several sources, ruled out alternatives and reached conclusions that surprised me.

Competency Two: Making Sound Decisions

Artifacts include the capstone decision paper, which compared five options on weighted criteria with an independent rescoring, and a finance course assignment that built a cost and benefit model. These show that I can structure a decision and quantify tradeoffs. The evidence is adequate rather than strong, because the decision has not yet been tested by results; the evaluation will run for a year. I also notice that my first instinct in workshops is still to argue for my own idea, which the rescoring process helped to check. That habit remains something to watch.

Competency Three: Leading Change

Artifacts include the implementation plan with its readiness assessment and phased rollout and a change management course paper on a failed software rollout at my site. Comparing the two shows growth: the earlier paper described resistance as a problem with people, while the capstone plan treats it as information about fairness and design. The evidence is adequate, because a plan is not the same as leading the change. The first 30 days of the rollout, now under way, will be the real test, and I have asked the site director for feedback at the 90-day review.

Competency Four: Ethical and Inclusive Leadership

Artifacts include the safeguards I built into the capstone, such as having an HR partner conduct exit calls and holding listening sessions in Spanish, and a paper from the ethics course on fairness in scheduling. Before the program, I rarely thought about how my position affected what associates were willing to tell me. The sessions held in Spanish surfaced a barrier I had never noticed, onboarding documents and handheld screens available in one language only, which would have been missed otherwise. I rate this evidence as strong for awareness and adequate for practice, because inclusion in daily decisions is harder than in a project.

Competency Five: Communicating With Evidence

Artifacts include the capstone proposal, which turned turnover into cost and service figures, and a presentation to my site director that secured funding for the package. Translating a people problem into the measures leaders already track was the most practical skill I gained. My writing has also changed: early course papers were long on description and short on argument, while the capstone papers state a claim and support it. I rate this evidence as strong. A weakness is that I communicate better upward than with associates, which the bilingual updates in the rollout are meant to improve.

Reflecting on How I Learned

Reflective practice separates the adjustments a professional makes in the middle of the work from the slower review that comes once the work is done, when the practitioner asks what happened and why (Schön, 1983). The program strengthened the second for me. Writing each capstone paper made me look back at decisions I had made on the floor, such as announcing overtime late, and to see their effects on people. Kolb (1984) pictured learning as a loop: something is experienced, the learner watches and thinks about it, forms general ideas from it and then tries those ideas out, which creates new experience. The capstone followed that cycle: the experience of losing associates, reflection through the diagnosis, concepts from turnover and change research and an experiment now being tested.

How My Leadership Identity Changed

DeRue and Ashford (2010) argued that leadership identity is constructed socially, as people claim leadership and others grant it or not. When I started the program, I saw my role as keeping the shift running; supervisors and associates saw me mainly as the person who announced overtime. Through the capstone, I began to claim a different role, as someone who asks associates what is wrong and acts on it, and some of them have begun to grant it, coming to me with ideas rather than complaints. This change is early and fragile, and it will depend on whether the package delivers what associates were promised.

Gaps That Remain

Three gaps stand out. I have little experience leading change beyond my own shift, and the expansion planned for 2029 will require working across departments and with corporate. My financial analysis is sound for operating decisions but limited for capital decisions, such as automation, that will shape the new line. And I still default to solving problems myself rather than developing supervisors to solve them, which limits how much the shift can improve when I am not present.

Development Plan

My plan for the next two years addresses each gap. I will ask to join the planning team for the new distribution line, which will give me cross-department experience with a sponsor who can give feedback. I will complete a short course in capital budgeting through the company's tuition program. And I will set a goal of each supervisor leading one improvement project a year, with coaching from me rather than direction. Progress will be reviewed with my director every six months, and I will repeat this portfolio's ratings at the end of 2030 to see whether the evidence has changed.

Conclusion

This portfolio documents five competencies with specific evidence from the capstone and earlier courses: diagnosing problems and communicating with evidence are strong, while decision making, leading change and inclusive practice are adequate and still developing. The program changed how I learn, through deliberate reflection on action, and began to change how I see my role. The capstone's real result will be known in a year. Until then, the development plan keeps me working on the gaps the portfolio revealed.

References

Day, D. V., Fleenor, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Sturm, R. E., & McKee, R. A. (2014). Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 63-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.004

DeRue, D. S., & Ashford, S. J. (2010). Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 35(4), 627-647. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.35.4.zok627

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice Hall.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.