MSOL DEVELOPMENTAL CASE STUDY WRITING TIPS
By Kathy Szaj

PRE-WRITING:

❖ Make sure that your three selected concepts for your current paper are manageable for your paper. Specify one aspect of a broad concept when necessary.

❖ Brainstorm/diagram the relationships you see among your key course words, i.e., course focus (transformational leadership) and your three specific concepts chosen for this course. Clearly identify the interrelationships before you begin to write.

❖ Create an orderly sequence of your main ideas before you write.

❖ Suggestion: write an entire first draft as quickly as possible, then revise at least two times, followed by a final edit in which you “clean up” any grammatical or punctuation glitches. (Yes, this really works, moving past any anxiety about writing or the DCS. After all, a first rough draft doesn’t have to be good…it just has to be, so you can revise until it becomes good.)

USING THE MSOL DCS FORMAT:

❖ Your paper subtitles will be: Statement of Case, (First Concept),** (Second Concept),** (Third Concept),** Action Plan, My Role as a Leader, and Bibliography. Use the sample DCS (uploaded) as a model. (Be consistent with your subtitles in capitalization, bold font, underlining and upper/lower case letters.)

❖ Make sure you incorporate at least one other outside organization that positively incorporates or demonstrates each of your three concepts.

❖ Develop each concept: define, describe, and apply. “Define” means use an expert, credible source (not Wikipedia or a dictionary). “Describe” answers the questions: What does this look like in action? How is this expressed in the world? “Apply” answers who or what is exemplifying/demonstrating your concept and how.

❖ Make sure you apply each concept to your organization.

❖ Use correct visual academic format: no decorations, quotes on the cover page. Create a cover page with these elements: course number and name, your name, date, instructor name (correct spelling, please).

** Change these words in parentheses to your specific concept(s). Do not use the parentheses or the words between them, but do type in bold and underline.

DEVELOPING YOUR STATEMENT OF CASE:

❖ The Statement of Case is your introduction to the reader of the transformational leadership situation that you are exploring in your DCS. Your first sentences should engage and invite your reader into your case study and introduce your paper’s focus.

❖ Identify your situation: giving relevant information about your particular organization, and assessing the transformational leadership “gap” (“problem”) that you are identifying. (Important: your perspective here is that of an objective outside consultant, brought in to make helpful recommendations. Therefore, you will not use any 1st or 2nd person pronouns, with one notable exception: your role in your organization. See next bullet point. )

❖ Identify your role in the organization. (This is one of only two times you can use personal pronouns, in this case, “I.” The other is when you write about your own emerging leadership in My Role as a Leader.)

CREATING YOUR ACTION PLAN:

❖ In general, write your plan as if it can be/will be implemented. Make the plan compelling and entirely doable. Use language of “will” rather than verbs that indicate your doubt (e.g., “would”) about whether or not your organization will implement your action plan.

❖ Goal: identify in clear terms a goal that is specific, actionable, and contains built-in measurements or assessments of achievement. Thus, “improving the leadership at XYZ organization ” does not work as a goal, because it does not contain within it any way of assessing whether the leadership at this organization is actually improving. However, “working with my department’s managers to assess and strengthen through awareness exercises the emotional intelligence (EI) of team leaders” is an actionable goal.

Check : is your goal S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bounded)? If not, revise until it is. (Note: in the above example goal, you would need to define exact criteria for “strengthening” that would produce measurable and/or observable results. For instance, taking a EI pre-test at the beginning of a program and then an EI post-test at the end. See “Definition of Success” below.)

❖ Justification: What is this goal’s connection with transformational leadership—and why have you selected this one?

❖ Definition of success: This item is a continuation of the first Action Plan step, identifying a goal. This item asks you: How do you specifically know—through direct observation, testing, or some other method of verification—that your goal has been met? For example, see the wording of the second goal sample above. Success could be assessed or measured by taking EI before and after tests; by monitoring and logging in observations of specific EI behaviors that you identify; by asking participants do keep an EI learning journal, submitting summaries to supervisors; by implanting EI growth self-monitoring charts, etc.

❖ Information needed to achieve goal: Identify the specific people, place and object resources that could help move your organization in the achievement of your selected goal.

❖ Obstacles preventing the achievement of the goal: Be more specific than merely stating “resistance of leaders/staff/employees.” (This is a truism: all human obstacles to change are based on some kind of resistance. “Not enough money” or “not enough time,” although they seem to be unrelated to human resistance, are actually surface “explanations” we give when we don’t want to figure out how to move forward anyway.)

❖ Who should be responsible…: Identify a specific person who would oversee your Action Plan.

❖ Desirable first step: Again, choose a specific, single observable/assessable action towards achievement of your goal.

❖ Note: Do include each question given in the Action Plan template (p. 7 of syllabus)

APPLYING RELEVANT RESOURCES

❖ Use your text book PLUS at least six credible sources that you cite correctly within the body of your case study text, and more fully in your bibliography. (See Research Project Handbook for citation and bibliography format guidelines and follow these exactly.)

USING EXPERT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT YOUR IDEAS

❖ Use a credible source to support any important arguable idea (opinion) that you present. (Hint: if you can ask, how do I know this? Who says so? you probably need a source citation.)

❖ Here are several ways to incorporate credible sources:

o Express your idea in your own words; then correctly cite the source that supports your idea.

o Paraphrase the words of an expert: e.g., According to Dubrin, who cites Czikszentmihaly’s research on creative flow, ….etc. Correctly cite the specific source either after the author’s name, or after your paraphrase. (Note: paraphrasing does not mean simply mixing someone else’s words and presenting these in a different order. Paraphrasing requires using different words than used in the referred source.)

o Direct quotation: this is exact quoting of more than two words from another person’s writing or speech. Use ellipses (… or ….) to leave out unimportant words. If a direct quote contains forty or fewer words, place your direct quotation within quotation marks (“ “). If quoted material has more than forty words, use the fully indented block quotation format without enclosing quotation marks.

EDITING

❖ Revision Read and revise your entire DCS at least twice. Excellent writers revise even more.

❖ Grammar and punctuation

Be impeccable with punctuation and grammar. (Transformational leadership and powerful, correct writing are inseparable companions.) Use a book like Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Connor (well worth purchasing, about $14) to do your final editing check. Another excellent resource is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL): http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/

Pay special attention to:

o Plurals: a regular noun plural is formed by adding either s or es at the end of the singular form, e.g., the leaders, not the leader’s. (The leader’s is either a contraction of the leader is or indicates a possessive—something that belongs to the leader, such as the leader’s vision.)

o Commas and periods: place end-of-sentence periods and end-of-phrase commas inside the final quotation mark

o Commas vs. semi-colons: see Woe Is I for a concise, cogent explanation of when to use which

o Quotation marks: do not place these around a block quotation

o Period: place a period outside of an in-text source citation.

o Subjects and verbs: watch that these agree in number: a singular subject with a singular verb; a plural subject with a plural verb

o Nouns and pronouns:

❖ Make sure that these agree in number: a singular noun needs a singular pronoun, e.g., A leader exhibits courage in demonstrating his or her core values through words and actions. (Also, see “language inclusivity” below.)

❖ Do not use apostrophes with possessive pronouns—his, her, its and their.

❖ Use who to refer to people, instead of that: Does anyone know the person who left glasses on my desk? (Note: using his or her is not necessary before the word glasses.)

❖ That vs. which: See Woe Is I for a clear usage explanation. Place a comma before which, but (usually) not before that.

o There is/There are: There is is followed by a singular word, e.g., There is a group….

❖ There are is followed by a plural word, e.g., “There are people who…” ❖ There’s means There is—a singular construction. There’s people…. is an incorrect grammatical construction—should be There’re people….

o Language inclusivity: use nouns and pronouns that include both genders whenever you are referring to both men and women, e.g., humankind instead of mankind; his or her instead of his. Or rewrite the sentence, using a plural noun with a plural pronoun whenever it makes sense, e.g., Change: A transformational leader aligns his actions with building trust among his constituents to Transformational leaders align their actions with building trust among their constituents.

o Complete sentences: check to ensure that each of your sentences is complete, and not just a sentence fragment. (Again, check Woe Is I or another source for helpful guidance.)

❖ Word usage

o Remove excess wording that weighs down and weakens your writing—especially prepositional phrases and weak verbs. (Hint: verb combinations with forms of “to be” are often weak. Ask yourself, do your sentences create pictures in the mind of your reader as she/he reads? If not, you may need to replace your verbs with more powerful words.) Use clear, clean, and powerful combinations of subjects and verbs.

o Use third person voice (he, she, it, they), rather than first or second; i.e., do not use I, we, you, us. Notable exceptions: use I when mentioning your role in your organization, whenever appropriate in the action plan, and in the “My Role as a Leader” section.

o Substitute clichés for clear, original thought (e.g., thinking that is “outside of the box”—replace, please!)

o Avoid truisms—those statements which are generally held as true (shared opinion) but do not add any value to developing your ideas, e.g., Leaders should be ethical.

o Change passive voice sentences—e.g., Core values are practiced by leaders through thought, words and actions—to active voice sentences, e.g., Leaders practice core values through their thoughts, words and actions.

o Avoid using these words and phrases that clutter your sentences and clog your meaning: “actually,” “extremely,” “in fact,” “in order to,” “more importantly,” “most importantly,” “myriad of,” “needless to say,” “really,” and “very.” (Note: more importantly and most importantly are grammatically incorrect. They should be more important and most important. Myriad of is also incorrect grammar; myriad means many, not group.)

❖ Tone: Check for consistency of voice, which should reflect an academic, research-based paper—yet at the same time, be interesting (compelling, even!) and relevant to a reader interested in leadership development. (Through doing these DCS papers—and your entire Research Project, which is the name we give to your Master’s thesis—you are contributing to a “leadership conversation” that many are engaged in. At some point, others outside of the Mercy community may read your work!) o Again, your overall tone should be that of a hypothetical impartial consultant who has been brought into an organization to observe, identify, address, and propose solutions to leadership gaps in the organization where you are employed. o Stay away from over-identifying with your organization the discussion of the concepts (the main portion of the paper), which will compromise your ability to see your organization through objective eyes. (That is why you refrain from using I/my/we/our language in this section of the paper.) o Also, stay away from “sermonizing” to your reader, which happens automatically if you use direct address—“you/your” language –to your reader.

❖ FINISHING YOUR DCS: do a final line-by-line edit at least two hours after your last reading of your paper by READING ALOUD EVERY WORD. (You will find errors this way that “reading in your head” will not spot.) Correct all grammar, punctuation, spelling and “typo” errors.

o Compare your version with the sample DCS to check for correct formatting, subtitle placement and capitalization, etc.

o Compare your bibliography with the bibliography guidelines given in the Research Project Handbook. (Many errors are commonly made here.)

o Finally, make sure your document file label meets requested naming standards; attach file to an e-mail with correct subject header…and click “send.”