Assessment 1 of MBA-FPX5002, the MBA's opening leadership course, turns a self-assessment instrument into an argument about your own leadership. You report your results, read them through a leadership model, and test that reading against a real workplace episode. It is graded the FlexPath way, criterion by criterion against a scoring guide, and the register it pays for is candor with structure. Below is the method our tutors run on it, a structure that maps to the criteria, and an annotated sample excerpt. Want it handled instead? A premium original sample for this exact assessment returns in 24 to 48 hours, revised free until it meets the guide.
One honesty note before the manual: Capella revises courses and scoring guides over time, so always write to the exact scoring guide attached to your assessment in the courseroom. The course identity above is verified on capella.edu; the method and structure below are our tutors' approach to it, not Capella's official rubric text.
How Assessment 1 is scored
FlexPath grades this paper criterion by criterion, no letters and no points, only four levels per criterion. Treat the level descriptions as the spec:
| Level | What it means on an instrument-based self-assessment |
|---|---|
| Distinguished | Instrument scores are interpreted, not reported: each result is read through a model component, tied to a workplace consequence, and priced in business terms. The specific extra move is written into each criterion; your scoring guide names it. |
| Proficient | Results connect to the model and to the scenario competently. Complete, defensible, and one interpretive move short of the top column. |
| Basic | A polished self-portrait with the numbers listed somewhere inside it. Strengths celebrated, weaknesses softened, nothing costed. |
| Non-performance | A required input is absent, usually the instrument evidence or the model itself. Criteria fall to the floor for what is missing, not for what is argued badly. |
This is the first paper of the MBA, and it quietly sets your register for the whole core. The candor-with-structure voice the guide rewards here is the same voice the strategy and analytics courses will grade later, so the habits are worth building now, on the assessment designed to teach them.
The method, step by step
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Pull the criteria out of the scoring guide first
Download the guide from your courseroom and rebuild it as an outline, one heading per criterion, the Distinguished description pasted underneath each. How many criteria there are and what they weigh is the guide's call, not this page's. Nothing outside that outline earns a level, so nothing outside it belongs in the draft.
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Turn your instrument results into a data table
Before writing a sentence, extract every score, percentile, and subscale from your instrument report into a two-column table: component, result. You are about to analyze a dataset that happens to be you, and analysts do not work from impressions. The table also exposes the spread between your highest and lowest components, which is usually where the paper's thesis lives.
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Pick the workplace episode your scores can explain
Choose one situation from your own working life where the low scores showed up in behavior: a project that slipped, a team member who left, a decision you sat on. The instrument predicts, the episode confirms, and the pairing of the two is the evidence structure the whole paper stands on. An episode with a countable consequence outworks a vivid one.
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Run the model component by component
Take the leadership model your courseroom features and score yourself against each named component, using the table from step two and the episode from step three. Describing what the model says is background; applying it to your own data is analysis, and the criteria pay for analysis. One component per paragraph, evidence first, conclusion second.
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Cost every gap in business terms
A weakness is not finished until it has a price: a decision delayed by weeks, an operator who resigned, a deadline bought with overtime dollars. Costing your own gaps feels unnatural and reads as command. It is also what separates a development case from a diary, and the top column consistently sits on the far side of that line.
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Grade your own draft before the evaluator does
Read the finished draft against the guide one criterion at a time and assign each a level yourself, honestly. Anything you cannot defend as Distinguished gets another pass. Then submit early in the week; evaluations can take two business days, and in FlexPath the clock you are racing is your own.
A structure that maps to the criteria
The word targets are how our tutors budget a typical 5002 self-assessment. They are planning figures, and your scoring guide outranks them everywhere.
| Section | What it must do | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Name the model you are using, sketch your role, and state a one-sentence claim about your own leadership profile. | ~150 words |
| Instrument results | Scores and percentiles tabled against the model's components, with the spread between highest and lowest named. | ~250 words |
| The model, applied | Each component run against your results and your workplace episode, one at a time, evidence before conclusion. | ~400 words |
| Strengths and gaps | Both argued from the same evidence base, every gap carrying a cost stated in business terms. | ~300 words |
| Development priorities | The two or three gaps the next assessment's plan will answer, ranked by what they cost. | ~150 words |
| References | Instrument, model source text, and current peer-reviewed leadership literature in clean APA. | as needed |
Annotated sample excerpt
An original excerpt from our team showing the register that reaches the top of the guide. Study material only: take the moves, then make your own.
My instrument results place me in the 84th percentile on task structure and the 31st on individualized consideration, a spread the model treats as a warning rather than a tradeoff.1 The gap showed up on the floor at Harlan Packaging in March, when I rebuilt the shift schedule to hit a quality deadline and lost two senior operators in the same month, both citing the same reason in exit interviews: decisions made about them, never with them.2 This paper reads that episode through the model's components and argues that my leadership profile is currently optimized for output at the direct expense of retention, a cost the development plan in this course will have to price.3
- 1Leads with the numbers and lets the instrument frame the problem. Reporting the spread as a warning is interpretation, and interpretation is where the levels separate.
- 2One named episode with a countable cost, two operators gone. The scenario is doing evidentiary work here, not adding color.
- 3The claim about the writer's own profile is stated like a thesis and handed forward to the next assessment. Candor with a structure around it is what the guide pays.
The full premium sample for your exact assessment, written fresh to your scoring guide and issue, is free to request. Study it, revise it into your own voice, and submit work you understand.
The five mistakes that cost Distinguished
- The airbrushed profile. A resume is the wrong genre here; a paper that finds nothing worth developing leaves the development criteria with nothing to score.
- Numbers reported, never read. An instrument score sitting in a sentence without an interpretation is description, and description caps at Basic.
- An episode that proves nothing. If the workplace situation could belong to any manager anywhere, it cannot confirm or contradict your scores.
- The model as wallpaper. A background section explaining the framework, followed by sections that ignore it, reads as never having run it.
- Thin sourcing on a reflective paper. Reflection does not waive the evidence criterion; the model's source text, the instrument, and current peer-reviewed leadership studies all belong in the references.
Pre-submission checklist
- One clearly labeled section per scoring-guide criterion
- Instrument results tabled against the model's named components
- One workplace episode with a countable consequence attached
- Every named gap carries a cost stated in business terms
- Instrument, model source, and current leadership literature cited both ways in APA
- Each criterion self-scored Distinguished before submission
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