ORGL 600: Foundations of Leadership
The four key questions explored in Foundations of Leadership were fundamental to not only my development in the ORGL program, but my insights into the leadership around me and myself as a leader. The four questions are: “What I don’t want to be as a leader”, “What I do want as a leader”, “What does this require of me as a leader” and “How does this shape who I am becoming”. When these questions are put together with the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (SLPI), I was able to begin to piece together what was working for me in my current environment and what was not. I was also able to see that I wouldn’t be able to grow my leadership practice at my current organization, and Foundations of Leadership helped me make a life changing decision to leave my job.
ORGL 605: Imagine, Create, Lead
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and I realized that I would not get the benefit of coming to Gonzaga to experience ORGL 605: Imagine, Create, Lead, I felt a sense of loss. I had expected to finally see the beautiful campus and to meet some of my professors and classmates and had anticipated a brief visit home from Europe. Alas, it was not meant to be. But what was meant to be was that I would have my creative thinking tied to leadership expanded and challenged. These learnings showed up most clearly for me in the final project where I wrote a “slightly” autobiographical children’s book where a little girl is able to “see, and see again” as she learns to hold space and build relationships.
ORGL 610: Communication and Leadership Ethics
As leaders we will always be faced with tough decisions that have ethical implications for our employees, our customers, and even the world. In this course, we spent time building an ethical framework for ourselves through a dialogic approach. Having never done this before, it was challenging to take a deep look at how I process right from wrong, and where shades of grey had snuck into my thinking. I believe that the ability to lay out a logical and ethical discussion on the gender pay gap, the predatory nature of credit lending, and climate change in Tourism gave me a solid foundation from which to think about future ethical dilemmas I may face in leadership settings.
ORGL 615: Organizational Behavior and Theory
The most unpredictable element of teamwork is humans. In ORGL 615, humans and their interactions played a key role in learning and practice. This course has a reputation for being overwhelming in terms of workload and in its mental demands on each student. For me the Everest Summit and Group Case Study were made extra challenging by being on the other side of the world with a 9 hour time zone difference. Despite the challenges, this is one of the courses that changed my ways of thinking through the learnings on system dynamics and the ways that they shape organizations and their leaders.