Introduction
The following summarizes the insights gained while completing courses within the Organizational Leadership program at Gonzaga University. My path of study focused on servant leadership and included four courses from that concentration. The eight course descriptions below highlight course objectives as well as the impactful concepts and transformational shifts in thinking that occurred for me during each class. The courses are listed in the order completed during the program.
ORGL 600 – Foundations of Leadership
What do we want in leaders? How do we as leaders want to lead? What attributes and characteristics do I as a leader need to strengthen or develop? This course provided insight into the positive and negative ways leaders engage within communities and organizations. I witnessed the real-life dysfunction that unmanaged power, control and conflict can cause through the films The Iron Lady (Lloyd, 2011) and Thirteen Days (Donaldson, 2000. I learned that seeing through the five frames e.g. systems, political, human, rational, and cultural, as outlined in “Heraclitean Fire: Journeying on the Path of Leadership” (Carey, 1999) provides the ability to see a situation differently, find common ground, and transcend towards logos. This was reinforced within my study of leadership styles where I learned that “transformational leaders set out to empower followers and nurture them in change. They attempt to raise the consciousness in individuals and to get them to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of others” (Northouse, 2016, p.175).
Parker Palmer, in the book “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life,” inspired me to intentionally make “a choice on what [I am] going to project, and in that choice [will] help create the world that is” (Palmer, 1998, p. 200). Another critical aspect of the class was focused on knowing “who we are, our patterns of behavior, our values, our intentions” (Wheatley, 2006, p.154). To this point, I gathered leadership feedback from peers and analyzed it through the lens of the “The Leadership Challenge” assessment (Kouzes, 2012). Better understanding who I am and who I want to be really took hold during this first 8 weeks of the program. Finally, this course opened the door for me to see that “the dance of this universe requires that we open ourselves to the unknown” (Wheatley, 2006, p. 162) and embrace the leadership journey ahead.
ORGL 530 – Servant Leadership
What is servant leadership? How does servant leadership differ from other leadership styles? What capacities, values and skills might servant leaders inherently possess? This course explored the writings of Greenleaf, Spears, Ferch, Horsman, and others as I discovered that “there is much more to Servant-leadership than they first perceived” (Horsman, 2017, p. 12). Through reading and contemplation, the concepts of serving first and embodying the key characteristics of “listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to people, and community building.” (Spears, 1995, pp. 5-7) took hold. I pondered how would continue to consciously develop and sustain a “profoundly relational, creative, holistic, and integrated worldview” (Horsman, 2017. Ch. 1, p. 10) during this journey.
The films “Something the Lord has Made” (Sargent, 2005) and “The Mission” (Joffe, 1986) provided deeper context and an opportunity to challenge my assumptions of servant-leadership. Where do authenticity, values, and true servant-leadership come into play? Servant leadership is not about servitude nor does it promote itself in grandiose ways. Through this course I gained a deeper understanding of servant leadership as well as assessed the values, skills, and capabilities against my own. Servant leadership concepts deeply resonated with me and I made a commitment to complete the servant leadership concentration as I continued my leadership studies.
Moana as a Servant-Leader-In-Training – an academic paper written for this course.
ORGL 605 – Imagine Create Lead
How do we as leaders expand our awareness, experience and perspective in a way that we can “see and see again”? How do we release the creativity in ourselves and others? This course introduced a different dimension of leadership; one that brings the holistic self to the forefront. Starting from the center using the Four Breath Presencing Practice (Horsmann, 2017), I learned the importance of staying grounded in who I am and who I want to be. I began to appreciate the Ignatian pedagogy of learning which promotes reflection and discernment.
I recognized the voices of judgement, cynicism and fear as I studied Theory U (Scharmer, 2013) and recognized the need to go beyond thinking my way through life and instead engage more of my heart and soul into who I am and how I engage with others. Metanoia provided a way for me to process the fundamental change in thinking and transformative change of heart that one has during leadership transformation. I also embraced the need to be more artistic, theatrical, and musical in order to deepen the meaning of outcomes and relationships in everything I do.
ORGL 615 – Organizational Theory & Behavior
Why are structure and strategy important to the success of an organization? How do we as leaders provide an environment of systems, networks, and relationships that make teams, and thus the organization, capable of meeting their goals and objectives? When is it important to introduce change and determine the best way for that change to be implemented?
This course focused on the five key themes within Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline” (Senge, 2006): personal mastery, team learning, systems thinking, mental models, and shared vision. I gained an enhanced understanding of shared vision which drives commitment and enrollment leading to authentic personal and team engagement. True team learning breaks down mental models, is based on a shared vision, and allows for systems thinking both at the macro and micro levels.
The case studies leveraged in the class focused on the importance of leadership personal mastery including reflection, humility, and diligence. The choices that my team and I made during our simulated Mt. Everest climb 
forever changed the way I think about leadership confidence, optimism, and risk-tasking given the impact it may have to myself and others around me. The two organizational assessments completed strengthened my ability to synthesize complex organizational issues, identify root causes, and more accurately propose recommendations and solutions.
ORGL 610 – Communication and Leadership Ethics
As leaders we inherently make decisions, take action, and influence others based on our personal ethics and values. How well do our values line up with those we work with and those of the organization we are aligned to? How do we incorporate our perspective of social justice into who we are as leaders? ? This course provided mind-expanding dilemmas and complex questions through which more than one perspective was considered right. How might I better understand my values from a personal, organizational and worldview perspective? How do I want to lead with an open mind and steady heart? How might I deepen my ability to stay authentically who I am as a leader while also acknowledging and appreciating the perspectives of others?
Julia Wood points out, “We…have the responsibility to sustain the tension inherent in opening ourselves to multiple perspectives and in recognizing diversity and commonality as an intertwined dialectic” (Wood, 1997). Without this tension, as well as the awareness of the good it brings, we may become stale, self-centered, and perhaps part of the problem, not the solutions we need in the world today.
This course surfaced the need for all leaders to allow “each person speaks from his or her center to the center of the circle, where our exploration can take us to a deeper level as we hold the tension involved in weaving a ‘tapestry of truth’” (Palmer, 2009). Through the course materials I was encouraged to find my voice (Gentile, 2010), speak candidly yet gracefully, and engage in the complex yet sometimes conflict-based conversations that need to take place.
ORGL 535 – Listen, Discern and Decide
How well do we as leaders really listen to those around us? How much personal reflection space do we give ourselves on a daily basis? Are we drawn to conclusions through a rational lens or can we embrace the intuitive insights, God’s presence, and fortuitous encounters into the decision-making mix? These and other questions were the focus of this course which heightened my awareness and understanding of listening, discerning and decision-making.
I developed my ability to listen intently from external, internal and spiritual angles which when woven together provide more powerful and meaningful outcomes. I practiced transcending to a place where “problems take their place within a large context, where they are held in balance with their inherent possibilities and a deep centering sense of spiritual nature of our actions” (Sardello, 2006).
As a servant-leader-in-training, I developed capacity for empathic listening and generative dialog. “Deep listening is inherently transformational and choosing to listen for its transformational effect involves a quality of presence that allows us to intuitively and empathetically hear and discern what is emerging before us” (Horsman, 2018). This is true as we listen to others as well as ourselves. The awareness and presencing servant-leader characteristics studied in this course provided the spiritual underpinnings for discerning and decision-making where we find a “spiral into deeper awareness of ourselves and greater love for God” (Sparough, 2010).
ORGL 522 – Leadership and Community
What can we do as leaders to create community experiences that promote a sense of belonging and benefit for others? What would the world around us be like if we could create more communities that allow for collective flourishing and release of creative synergy for the greater good? How might we provide environments that enable individuals to find meaning and purpose in creating outcomes focused on a shared vision?
During this course I gained a deeper appreciation for a leader’s involvement and commitment to building and sustaining meaningful and purposeful communities. The “search for deep personal fulfillment and authentic self-actualization always leads to relationship and community. In the same way that the individual cannot find his or her true self except through relationship with others, the group cannot become productive except through meaning, dignity, and community” (Tran, 2018).
This course included a leadership retreat at St. Andrews Abbey in California which reinforced that “humility is grounded in the realization that without the acknowledgement and commitment to something greater than ourselves, we are not likely to rise above ourselves” (Horsman, n.d., Chapter 4). Humility attributes and characteristics, whether framed from a Benedictine or a corporate perspective, improve relationships and thus community while deepening interdependency possibilities and outcomes. This Greenleaf quote sums the course up nicely: “Interconnectedness with other people moves us to greater service, to a more profound understanding, appreciation, and tolerance of one another; to an honest self-examination of our own attitudes, and behavior; and to the building of community” (Greenleaf, 2003, p. 5).
Creating Harmony Within Communities – an academic paper submitted for this course.
ORGL 537 – Foresight and Strategy
How do we become leaders who can frame the emerging future through foresight and strategy creating the innovative insight needed to heal and sustain our communities and ultimately our world? Where does the impetus come from that drives an individual to forego the desires of self and work collectively for the whole? The course workshop solidified the need to engage in the world from a very different perspective to fully sense and co-create the emerging future. Thinking through the story of the Yellowstone wolves and
the known and unknown consequences of adjusting a system – how do we bring that balance and beauty to the systems we are a part of today? How might we influence other communities that we are not a part of yet care deeply about?
I concur that “Stage IV leaders hold the conviction that there is an underlying intelligence within the universe that is capable of guiding us and preparing us for the futures we must create. They combine their cognitive understanding of the world around them with a strong interior knowledge of the hidden potentials lying dormant in the universe – a view that carries with it the power to change the world as we know it” (Jaworski, 2012). Without that power and knowledge of how to live it out, we collectively suffer as a society. The future is often strategic at many levels and can drive 4.0 systemic transformations. “Pathfinding-foresight is a leadership capacity that can generate hope and courage and provides direction when it is time to lead” (Horsman, 2017). This is a course I could take several times and still have more to comprehend in terms of engaging the intuitive, framing what might be, and embracing the hidden potential.
Summary
Gonzaga’s Organizational Leadership graduate program is structured in a way that allows for students to complete four core courses (leadership, organizational theory, creativity and innovation, and ethics), and select five electives which can be focused on a concentration such as servant leadership. I chose to complete four courses within the servant leadership concentration along with the “Psychology of Leadership” elective which is underway at this writing. The tenth and final course, the capstone, provides assignments enabling review, reflection, synthesis and action as shared through this leadership portfolio.
Each course builds on each other providing a deeper and more profound experience as the journey continues. The references link contains some but not all of the materials studied during the courses I took. An amazing amount of information has been absorbed, synthesized and acted upon, yet I have an even greater appreciation that there is always more to learn.