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Chapter 1 – What Is Leadership Communication?
Teaching Notes
The introduction to leadership communication establishes the foundation for the rest of the
book and, thus, is essential for the students to read and understand. The primary objectives
of Chapter 1 are to teach students to do the following:
• Identify leadership with an emphasis on transformational leaders.
• Recognize and manage ethical issues.
Communication self-assessments and development plans are important for all students to
complete. The self-assessment helps them to determine what skills they need to develop,
and the plan helps them to establish an approach to developing the needed skills; therefore,
Chapter 1 teaching notes include the following:
1. Questions to guide the discussion of key concepts from the chapter
Key Concepts
The instructor will probably want to begin the class by delivering the PowerPoint lecture
slides. The slides capture most of the major content from the chapter, but the instructor will
also want to draw on his or her own experiences and work in questions for the students to
create an interactive environment. Asking the students to draw on their own experiences,
the instructor might want to pose the following questions to encourage some discussion of
the content while moving through the slides:
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1. What does it take to be a leader today?
2. Who are some individuals they see as exemplifying transformational leadership?
3. What role does communication play in transformational leadership?
4. How does leadership depend on communication?
When moving through the PowerPoint lecture, the instructor should anticipate questions on
the ethos slides in particular and should be careful in explaining the relationship between
ethos and ethics. The ethos topic also provides an opportunity to bring communication
ethics into the discussion. In fact, it is important to do so since students can easily leave the
discussion thinking image is all that matters. The text points out that the ethics beneath the
Application 1.1 – Assessing Leadership Communication Abilities and
Establishing an Improvement Plan
The discussion in the text provides the students information on assessing their skills and
creating a plan to improve their skills, called here a Communication Development Plan
(CDP). This section of the Instructor’s Manual discusses an approach to assigning the CDP
and managing the discussion around it.
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First, the students should complete the self-assessment form in the appendix or complete
the online Excel version. They should also be encouraged to have someone else assess
Information for CDP Meeting
Name: Date:
Oral Assessment: Rating:
PowerPoint: Rating:
Scale: 5 = Very good 4 = Good 3 = Acceptable 2 = Needs work 1 = Needs lots of work
During the session, the instructor could review each assessment with the student and watch
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With the information from the feedback session, students have what they need to
create a CDP.
The following could then be given to the students to explain how they should create
their CDPs.
Instructions for CDP
The CDP is designed to provide students an opportunity to focus on their specific areas of
Objectives
This assignment allows you to accomplish the following objectives:
• Identify targeted improvement areas in oral or written communication
CDP Contents
The CDP should contain the following sections:
1. Current assessment – Strengths and weaknesses in leadership communication
a. Go back to your self-assessment forms provided in LC.
b. Include what you need to improve in written, oral, interpersonal, group, and
organizational communication. (If you are very strong in areas, you may elect to
2. Communication improvement goals – What you would like to achieve
a. Be very specific and make the goals measurable. For instance, just saying,
“improve in oral presentations” is too broad. Instead, you would want to say,
3. Actions to achieve goals – Clear and specific activities to reach each goal
4. Timetable – Deadlines for reaching your goals
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Instructions for CDP (continued)
5. Measurement – Methods to determine your progress, even on less tangible
objectives, such as improving confidence in presenting.
6. Your CDP Partner’s Name and Role – Your classmate who will serve as your
improvement partner and a description of how you see her or him supporting your
improvement efforts.
a. You should select someone in your section to review your plan, discuss it with
you, and serve as a source of support and feedback throughout the semester.
c. This person should provide feedback to you throughout the semester in the
improvement areas you have selected. For instance, if you need to remove the
fillers from your presentations, the partner could count them for you when you
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Submit a hard copy of your plan to your communication faculty with the following
attachments:
1. Completed Self-Assessment at the end of the introduction to LC
2. Oral presentation self evaluation
The following is an example of the improvement areas and actions a student might submit:
Improvement areas
Example actions/activities
Oral
• Attend Toastmasters meeting
• Give Toastmasters talk
• Attend oral comm. workshop
• Work with speech therapist
• Speak in a business setting
PowerPoint
• Attend PowerPoint workshops
• Create a PPT presentation for my team
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Approaches to Assessments
If possible, the instructor will find it helpful to assess the student’s usage, writing, oral
presentation, and PowerPoint skills very early in the course. The following section provides
sample assessments and approaches.
Usage Assessment
The following usage assessment includes the top 20 mistakes briefly discussed in Chapter 3.
The instructor may want to use it to determine how much review of usage and grammar the
students need. It could be administered on-line or in the first class meeting if appropriate.
Name _______________________________________Date ____________________
Usage Assessment
Note to the student: The communication assessments are designed to provide a baseline of
your communication skills and experiences as you enter this course. You and your
communication instructor will use the results to establish an individual communication
development plan (CDP). The assessments are completely confidential; no one but your
communication instructor and you will see the results. Also, the assessments do not
influence your grade in communication.
You should not obtain any form of help on this assessment; do not ask others and do not use
any form of reference material (e.g., dictionaries, usage handbooks, etc.). Please note that
you should follow standard U.S. spelling and punctuation guidelines.
1. The leaders of the European division of the organization were Gini Puccini, Rome Italy,
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2. Used as a command and control device the new performance review process could have
a negative affect on ABCs culture and could result in its loosing their best employees.
5. Leadership is when one stands up for what he believes.
6. Frightened by the absence of the money, the accounts were juggled to obscure the loss.
Usage Assessment (continued)
9. Review meetings should allow two way dialogue so problems can be addressed and
assistance will be provided as necessary.
12. Everyone must submit their report to the president by 5:00 pm April 1.
13. The new associate disliked poster board presentations, he preferred PowerPoint
slides.
14. In Dr. Smiths book Always Winning, I enjoyed the chapter entitled “Winning is not
all there is”. (Remember: use U.S. standard punctuation.)
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17. The four largest PC companies, HP, Dell, and Toshiba all carry a full line of
computers.
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Using the Answer Key
One approach to determining the student’s ability level is to subtract points in each sentence
if the student failed to correct the error or added a mistake in attempting a correction. You
would probably also want to subtract points if the student rewrote the sentence in such a way
that he or she avoided correcting the mistake highlighted in the key. These minus numbers
should indicate the number of points lost for the sentence, not the number of mistakes the
student made, since you would probably want to count the same kind of mistake in a
Answer Key – Usage and Grammar Assessment
For Instructor’s Use Only
1. The leaders of the European division of the organization were President Gini Puccini,
Rome, Italy; Secretary Will Payton, London, England; and Treasurer Pierre La Fluer,
Paris, France. (2)
Variation: The leaders of the European division of the organization were as follows:
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“Each” is singular and requires a singular verb and a singular pronoun in reference
to it. To avoid having to use the rather awkward “his or her” construction, you could
An adverb is required to modify a verb. The objective case of the pronoun must
Usage Assessment Answer Key (continued)
“Myself” is the reflexive form of the pronoun, which is rarely used in English. In fact,
5. Leadership is standing up for what you believe. (1)
Other variations are acceptable. The goal is to correct the “is when” construction
since it is illogical.
or pronoun. Another way to think about it is that the subject of the main clause cannot
logically perform the action described in the introductory phrase. Thus, “accounts”
cannot juggle, but accountants or some other person can.
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7. The complexity of the problem and the need to keep pace with technology present
ABC with many difficult choices. (1)
A conjunctive adverb requires a semicolon before it and comma after it when joining
two independent clauses (complete sentences; and you should usually avoid splitting
You usually need to use a hyphen between two words used as a combined modifier.
“So” and “so that” have different meanings. “So” equals “therefore,” which is not
the intended meaning in this sentence. You usually need to keep the main verbs and all
helping verbs in the same tense.
Usage Assessment Answer Key (continued)
10. From a humble beginning, Marion Manufacturing Company has grown to be an
11. The techniques can usually be classified into three categories: setting high value goals,
establishing various structural approaches, and using different conflict–resolving
behaviors. (3)
Some “ing” word is needed before the second phase to make all of the phrases
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12. Everyone must submit his or her report to the president by 5:00 p.m., April 1. (3)
13. The new associate disliked poster board presentations; he preferred PowerPoint slides.
(1)
all there is.” (Remember: Use U.S. standard punctuation.) (4)
the “several” in the sentence). Also, you would want to keep the verb tense consistent,
thus the “have enjoyed.” “Led” is the correct spelling for the past tense of “lead” not
“lead.”
Usage Assessment Answer Key (continued)
16. The progress review that I wrote and sent to you today should help with the
discussion; its content lays out all the data to support our point of view. (2)
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“Compaq, Dell, and Toshiba” is an appositive that must be set off in some way,
either commas, dashes, or parentheses: using dashes calls attention to it, which you
may want to do in this instance.
42 total errors
Scale (number missed):
0 – 4 = In great shape
4 – 10 = In pretty good shape
Writing Assessment
In addition to testing the students’ usage ability, the instructor will probably want to collect
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Writing Assessment Instructions
Read the case below, and then write a response to Mr. Scalpel’s letter using your natural
tone and style and the standard format for formal business letters.
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The Case
Assume that you are an executive in a very large information-processing company, and you
receive the following letter:
Mr. (Ms.) Leslie J. Cash
President
XYZ Corporation
1111 Main Street
Anytown, U.S.A.
Dear Leslie:
I have suggested your name to my committee. I know you could get real
satisfaction from helping your community as a member of this evaluation team.
Please say yes. I look forward to being able to count on your advice. Let me hear
from you soon.
Sincerely,
.
Source: Adapted from Harvard Business Review Case Reprint, “What do you mean you don’t like my
style?” which will be used for discussion in class following the evaluation of this assessment.
Background Information
Mr. Scalpel is the vice president of finance at ABC Corp., a very good customer of