D218 Intrapersonal Leadership and Professional Growth sample papers, task by task

Reviewed by Signe Hallberg, MSN, RN Intrapersonal Leadership and Professional Growth Western Governors University Free custom samples in 24–48h

D218 asks you to look at your own practice and write what you actually did with it, not what you believe about yourself. The samples show self-analysis and development planning that survive a rubric read.

How this shelf works

Send the exact assignment or rubric from your course of study and a custom sample written to it lands in 24 to 48 hours, the first one free. D218 is WGU’s Intrapersonal Leadership and Professional Growth course. It centers on the leader you already are, examined with an instrument and evidence, and the professional growth plan that comes out of that examination. Searches like "d218 task 2 assignment example", "D218 sample paper", and "D218 task samples" land on this page.

What D218 is really about

D218 is the reflective course in the RN-to-BSN sequence, and reflective is exactly where writing goes soft if nobody stops it. In current versions the written work comes in two tasks. The first is a personal development plan: ways to build resilience and self-care that change how you practice, and goals written in SMART form. The second is a leadership skills and mindset reflection that separates leading from managing in your own practice and ends with how you would lead with equity and inclusion. Some versions add a self-assessment, such as a leadership skills inventory, whose results feed the reflection. In the versions this shelf covers, the work is written and read by an evaluator rather than sat as an exam.

The trap in a reflective submission is that it can be entirely sincere and still score badly. Evaluators are reading for evidence, and in this course the evidence is your own behavior: a shift where you held a position, a handover you handled badly, a conversation you avoided and what it cost. Names come out, identifying detail comes out, and the situation gets described only as far as the lesson requires. A development plan has to be checkable, which means goals with a measure and a date rather than intentions. If an aspect comes back not met, that is a normal turn in the process; you sharpen the section it names and send it back.

What D218’s tasks ask for

Task 1, the personal development plan, usually asks for three things in sequence, each scored on its own: two ways you will apply resilience and self-care strategies that influence your professional practice, three goals written so each SMART element can be found in the sentence, and a short case for why a written plan supports your growth as a leader. Task 2, the leadership skills and mindset reflection, asks you to differentiate three leadership skills from three management skills you have and three of each you lack, explain how you will improve the leadership skills, show how a leadership mindset supports personal and professional growth, and describe how you would ensure equity and inclusivity as a leader, with examples throughout. Cite leadership and well-being sources where they do work, once each.

Why D218 tasks come back for revision

Here is the sentence that costs more aspects than any other in this course: I am a strong communicator. It is a trait claim, and a trait claim is unscorable. The evaluator cannot mark it met, cannot mark it unmet, and has to go looking elsewhere in the paper for something that happened. Replace it and the aspect resolves itself: name the shift, the moment the escalation stalled, the words you chose, the outcome, and what you would say differently. One paragraph of that carries more weight than a page of adjectives about yourself. Reflective writing is not scored on how well you think of your practice; it is scored on how precisely you can describe it.

D218 grading scale at WGU: how the work is graded, from WGU Assignments
How WGU grades D218, visualized by WGU Assignments.

The D218 drawers

Task 1

D218 Task 1 example

The personal development plan: two resilience and self-care strategies tied to practice and three SMART goals. Full sample paper, annotated.

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Task 2

D218 Task 2 example

The leadership skills and mindset reflection: skills present and absent, growth, and equity and inclusion as a leader. Full sample paper, annotated.

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Your course of study shows something else?

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Using a D218 sample the right way

A sample in a reflective course is a demonstration of register. You are looking at how far a writer goes into a personal example before pulling back to the analysis, how they keep a colleague unidentifiable while keeping the story usable, how a growth plan reads when it has real dates in it. Copy the moves, never the content, because the content has to be yours or the paper has nothing to stand on. Send the task instructions and rubric and the first custom sample comes back free inside 24-48h, shaped to your version's sections rather than a generic reflection.

How these samples are written

The discipline behind every task here: aspects are the outline, each gets its section, artifacts match their narratives, and OA courses get prep-note treatment instead, because the sit is always yours. Send your portal's rubric with a request and the sample matches it, revisions included.

D218 questions, answered

My reflection was honest and it still came back for revision. What was missing?

Probably an action. Honesty about a tendency is not the same as an account of something you did, and only the second can be scored. Take each claim about yourself and attach one specific occasion to it, with what you chose, what followed, and what you would change. The aspect usually resolves on that alone.

My development plan reads like a list of intentions. How do I fix it?

Give every item a verb, a measure and a date. Improve my confidence is a wish; lead two handovers a month and ask the charge nurse for one correction each time is an action a reader can check. Aspects on plan sections are usually scored on whether progress could be verified by someone other than you.

Why do sections I thought were optional turn into unmet aspects?

Because almost nothing in a task prompt is optional. A phrase like also consider is usually an aspect wearing casual clothes, and an evaluator who has a line for it needs a paragraph for it. Break the prompt into its verbs, give each verb a heading in your draft, and the optional problem disappears.