Abraham Lincoln Leader Profile
The leader profile is a written submission where students introduce a leader by describing pivotal events in the life of this leader. Your focus should be on the life events that are the most relevant to your specific focus with this paper (you do not need to describe everything this leader has done). You also need to identify key successes and failures in the life of the leader. You will draw on course concepts and empirical data to explain the successes and failures. This is far more than just an opinion essay—this is a rigorous research paper that will require extensive research and thoughtful writing on your part. Note that there are some controversial leaders on the list: what the leaders on this list have in common is that they have influenced people (for better or worse). You may select a leader whom you believe has had a positive influence, negative influence, or mixed (positive and negative) influence on the world. Your leader profile should follow APA style formatting (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelinesLinks to an external site.). You should use 12-point Times New Roman font and include a title page, abstract, and references section. You will also want to make sure you include in-text citations, list all references you cite, and use quotations when citing directly from another source. The text of the leader profile (this is content of the paper and excludes the title page, abstract, and references) should be up to five double-spaced pages (no more than five pages). The text can be fewer than five pages if you can meet all of the requirements in fewer pages. I recommend organizing the text of your leader profile into the following sections: scholarship, relevance, and personalization (see details below). This will help you clearly demonstrate how you are meeting all of the requirements of the paper. Your leader profile will be graded based on the following criteria:
Communication (25%): The student communicated effectively by using appropriate grammar, punctuation, and APA style formatting (including in-text citations) while writing clearly and concisely. The student also wrote an effective abstract to summarize the leader profile while keeping the text of the leader profile to no more than five pages.
Scholarship (25%): The student accurately described relevant historical events and course concepts related to the leader’s behavior (both the leader’s successes and failures) while citing approved sources related to historical events and to course concepts (see attached documents for the list of course concepts and for the list of approved sources).
In writing this section, you will introduce the leader, identify key successes, and identify key failures. With this paper, you are expected to cite at least three approved sources related to historical events and at least three approved external sources related to course concepts. You are encouraged to cite the course material as well, but the course material is not considered an external source and does not count toward the three required external sources related to course concepts. You are also expected to define course concepts using scholarly definitions while citing the source of those definitions. For example, if you are writing about self-awareness, you might define it as “having a deep understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful.” (Goleman, 1998. p. 84) or as “knowing yourself and having knowledge of your own skills, abilities, weaknesses, strengths, and preferences—without becoming crippled by your shortcomings.” (Thompson, 2021)
Relevance (25%): The student established the relevance of the leader profile by linking the relevant course concepts to empirical research outcomes.
In this section, you are expected to link the course concepts you used to relevant empirical evidence. Empirical evidence refers to scientific studies that show a relationship between two concepts. For example, if you were writing a paper about Abraham Lincoln having self-awareness, you might note how empirical evidence suggests that self-awareness leads to better persistence, learning, performance, relational connection, and well-being (Thompson, 2021). The empirical evidence, in this case, is that self-awareness has a positive correlation with these outcomes. This shows that developing self-awareness is practical because it helps us persist, learn, perform, connect, and experience well-being. Therefore, not only is it important for Abraham Lincoln to have self-awareness, it is important for all of us to have self-awareness. This is how you link your leader’s behaviors to key course concepts and empirical evidence.
Personalization (25%): The student personalized the lessons learned from the leader profile by identifying their own key strengths and weaknesses related to the relevant course concepts while writing about how they plan to improve, grow, and learn in these areas going forward.
In this section, you are expected to personalize this leader profile to your own life. For example, if you wrote about Abraham Lincoln because you admired his self-awareness, you might elaborate on a time where you demonstrated self-awareness, where you failed to demonstrate self-awareness, and how you plan to develop increased levels of self-awareness in the future.