| Course | GM502 Leadership Theory and Practice I |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 10 |
| Paper type | Leadership development plan |
| Length | About 1,190 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GM502 Unit 10
Five Frameworks, Five Commitments: A Unit 10 Leadership Development Plan for a Field Audit Supervisor
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GM502: Leadership Theory and Practice I
Unit 10 Leadership Development Plan
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The revenue department, the writer's team and every figure are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and studies cited are real.
Leader Development and Leadership Development
David Day separated two things that are often blurred. Leader development grows one person's abilities, such as self-awareness and specific skills. Leadership development grows what a group can do together, through the ties, trust and shared routines that let many people lead at once (Day, 2000). This plan is mainly about the first: my own skills as a supervisor. Where a commitment depends on relationships with my team or my peers, I note it, since those parts would need the team's participation to succeed.
My Situation
I supervise nine field auditors in a state department of revenue. We audit sales and use tax returns for businesses with annual sales between $1 million and $50 million, visiting their offices to review records. Four auditors have more than eight years of experience; five have been with the department less than two years. Our team closed 112 audits last year, below the regional target of 130, and the department's annual survey placed my team's engagement score slightly below the regional average. I was promoted to supervisor eighteen months ago from among the auditors.
Commitment 1: Trait Approach
Finding. On a Big Five inventory I scored at the 30th percentile in extraversion and the 85th in conscientiousness. Research finds extraversion relates more strongly to being chosen as a leader than to leading effectively (Judge et al., 2002).
Commitment. I will stop trying to lead through spoken presence at meetings and instead lead through written proposals: for each recurring problem, such as audit scheduling, I will circulate a one-page proposal before discussing it. Start date: the first week of next quarter.
Prediction. If my lower extraversion matters mainly for visibility, written proposals should raise my team's and my manager's sense that I lead decisions. On the next engagement survey, the item "my supervisor provides clear direction" should rise from 3.2 to at least 3.6.
What would show it wrong. No change, or a decline, would suggest that the problem is not my visibility but the direction itself.
Commitment 2: Behavioral Approach
Finding. A colleague observed two of my team meetings and coded my behavior using Yukl's categories. Task behaviors made up about 70 percent of my acts, and relations behaviors about 15 percent, mostly in response to problems rather than initiated.
Commitment. I will hold a twenty-minute individual check-in with each auditor every two weeks, focused on their workload and development rather than case status. Start date: next month.
Prediction. Research links consideration more strongly to satisfaction than to performance, so this should raise the engagement score more than audit counts.
What would show it wrong. If engagement does not improve within two survey cycles, the gap lies elsewhere.
Each commitment states the change the framework predicts and the result that would prove the framework wrong for me, so the plan can fail in an informative way.
Commitment 3: Path-Goal Theory
Finding. Path-goal theory holds that directive leadership helps inexperienced followers with ambiguous tasks and helps less with experienced followers on clear ones (House, 1996). My five newer auditors face genuinely ambiguous work: complex use-tax cases, unfamiliar industries and difficult taxpayers. My four veterans do not.
Commitment. I will give new auditors a written planning template for each audit and review it with them before the first field visit. I will stop reviewing the veterans' plans and instead ask them to flag cases where they want a second opinion. Start date: next quarter.
Prediction. New auditors' average days per audit should fall by at least 10 percent within two quarters, and veterans' should not rise.
What would show it wrong. If new auditors' time does not fall, the template is not supplying what they lack.
Commitment 4: Situational Leadership
Finding. Development level is task-specific. Two of my veterans are highly developed on sales tax audits but have never audited the new marketplace facilitator provisions that took effect this year.
Commitment. For marketplace facilitator audits only, I will pair each veteran with the department's specialist for their first two cases, rather than delegating as I do on their other work. Start date: as cases arrive.
Prediction. Error rates on these audits, measured by supervisory review findings, should match the veterans' error rates on familiar audits by their third case.
What would show it wrong. Continued errors after three cases would suggest the pairing is not transferring the knowledge.
Commitment 5: Power and Influence
Finding. My formal power is limited by civil service rules. My strongest base with the team is expert power from my years as an auditor, but with my peers, other supervisors, I have little influence, which matters because scheduling conflicts with other teams slow our audits. Rational persuasion and consultation are the tactics most likely to produce commitment rather than mere compliance (Yukl & Tracey, 1992).
Commitment. I will prepare a short analysis of the scheduling conflicts, with data on delays, and bring it to the monthly supervisors' meeting, asking peers for their solutions before proposing mine. This is a leadership development commitment in Day's sense, because it depends on a shared process. Start date: the next monthly meeting.
Prediction. Within two months, at least one scheduling change should be agreed.
What would show it wrong. If peers agree in the meeting but nothing changes, consultation produced compliance without commitment.
Why These Five and Not Others
The course covered more than five frameworks, and I chose these because each points to a different part of my job. The trait finding concerns how I am seen. The behavioral finding concerns how I spend my time with the team. Path-goal theory and the situational model concern how I treat auditors at different stages, and they could easily blur together; I kept both because path-goal theory speaks to the newer auditors as a group, while the situational model speaks to the veterans on one unfamiliar kind of case. The power framework concerns my peers rather than my team. I left out Fiedler's contingency model because it asks me to change my situation rather than my behavior, and my situation, a civil service team with fixed staffing, is the part I can least change this year.
Review
I will review all five commitments with my manager at the end of each quarter, recording the result for each prediction. Where a prediction fails, I will keep the commitment only if I can explain why the framework did not fit my situation and what I will try instead.
Conclusion
Each GM502 framework produced one concrete commitment for my work as a field audit supervisor, with a date, a prediction and a disconfirming result. Most commitments concern my own skills, but the last depends on my peers and is closer to leadership development in Day's sense. The plan will be judged by its results, not by how sensible it sounds.
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
House, R. J. (1996). Path-goal theory of leadership: Lessons, legacy, and a reformulated theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 7(3), 323-352. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(96)90024-7
Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. (2002). Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(4), 765-780. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.765
Yukl, G., & Tracey, J. B. (1992). Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(4), 525-535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.4.525
GM502 Unit 10 instructions, in plain terms
The final GM502 paper asks you to build a development plan for your own leadership from the frameworks covered in the course. Distinguish leader development, your individual capacities, from leadership development, the shared capacities of a group, and say which your plan addresses. Describe your role, team and current results briefly. Then, for each framework you use, state what it found about you, the commitment it leads to and when you will start. The strongest plans add a prediction for each commitment and the result that would show it is not working, so the plan can be tested. Explain why you chose the frameworks you did and left others out. Describe how and when you will review progress. Write about six pages, ideally with a commitment table, citing Day and the research behind each framework in APA 7. The plan should read as a set of experiments, not a list of intentions.
How this GM502 Unit 10 example is built
The plan opens with Day's distinction and states that it addresses mainly the writer's own capacities. A short section describes nine auditors, 112 closed audits and an engagement score below the regional average. Five commitments follow, each with a finding, commitment, start date, prediction and disconfirming result: written proposals for a low extraversion score, citing Judge and colleagues; biweekly check-ins after a colleague's coding of meetings; planning templates for new auditors under House's path-goal theory; specialist pairing for veterans on new marketplace facilitator audits; and a data-based proposal to peers, citing Yukl and Tracey on consultation. The highlighted sentence states the plan's design. A section explains why Fiedler was left out. A quarterly review with the writer's manager and a conclusion about judging the plan by results close it.
Reading the GM502 Unit 10 grading rubric
The GM502 rubric for this plan rewards commitments that follow from evidence and can be tested. Instructors check that each framework produces a specific finding about the writer and that each commitment follows from that finding. Predictions and disconfirming results carry significant weight, because they turn intentions into experiments. Accurate use of each framework matters, including path-goal theory's contingencies and the situational model's task-specific development levels. Day's distinction between leader and leadership development should be applied, not only cited. Explaining the choice of frameworks shows judgment. A review schedule with a clear rule for keeping or dropping commitments completes the plan. Day in The Leadership Quarterly, House's reformulated path-goal theory, Judge and colleagues' meta-analysis and Yukl and Tracey's influence tactics study supply the sources in APA 7.
GM502 Unit 10 help from the desk
GM502 Unit 10 plans often list good intentions, such as communicating better, without connecting them to any framework or evidence. Others summarize each theory and then add a generic commitment. A frequent gap is the absence of predictions, so there is no way to tell whether a commitment worked. Some writers include every framework from the term even when one does not apply to their situation. Day's distinction is often cited and then ignored. Review plans are commonly missing. For each framework you use, write one finding about yourself from evidence, one commitment, a start date, the change you expect and the result that would show you were wrong. Explain why you left any framework out, say who will review the plan with you and when, and treat a failed prediction as information rather than a reason to abandon the plan.
Get a GM502 Unit 10 example written to your instructions
Collect what your earlier GM502 papers found, or summarize what each framework revealed about your leadership, and forward it with the Unit 10 prompt and rubric. The plan converts those findings into commitments with predictions attached, leaving blanks for dates that are yours to set; a first plan costs nothing and is ready in 24-48h. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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GM502 Unit 10 questions, answered
What does it mean to change the situation instead of the style?
Contingency research, especially Fiedler's, treats leadership style as fairly stable and argues that effectiveness improves when the situation is adjusted to fit it. In a plan, that might mean restructuring a task, clarifying authority or choosing assignments differently. Including one commitment of that kind shows you have absorbed what the frameworks imply, rather than promising a personality change.
How can a development plan be falsifiable?
By stating in advance what result would show a commitment is not working. If a commitment to scope audits more tightly should reduce reassignments, the plan names the reassignment figure and the date by which it should fall. If it does not, the row gets rewritten. That discipline separates a plan from a list of intentions and tends to satisfy evaluation criteria.
Should the plan cover all five frameworks from the course?
Where the findings support it, one commitment per framework gives the plan a clear structure and shows command of the term's material. If a framework produced no useful finding about you, saying so honestly is better than forcing a row. Four strong commitments usually earn more than five with one invented to complete the pattern.
Where can I find a free GM502 Unit 10 sample paper?
This page carries a full GM502 Unit 10 leadership development plan for a field audit supervisor, with five framework-based commitments, predictions, disconfirming results, a review schedule and APA 7 references.
How does Day separate leader and leadership development?
David Day described leader development as building one person's capacities, such as self-awareness and skills, and leadership development as building a group's shared capacity to lead through relationships and trust. The plan mainly addresses the first.