Courses
This was my Journey
Leadership & Human Potential
Dr Hedderly
As leaders, we need to learn to unlock the human potential of every person we have contact with in our personal and professional lives. This course gave me more tools to do that in the form of Dialogical Organizational Development (OD), Action Research, Design Thinking, Growth Mindset and Appreciative Inquiry (AI). The most impactful piece for me was to reframe situations, ask more questions and be truly curious.
Teambuilding & Leadership
Dr Armstrong
Teambuilding seems to be the biggest challenge and one of the most misunderstood behaviors of leadership. This course broke it down into understandable and applicable concepts. Teambuilding starts with creating trust. How do you create trust? Create a safe environment to have many activities that feature both low trust and high trust in many different circumstances. This will mean asking questions, taking feedback, and giving grace even when you don’t want to.
Advanced Teambuilding & Leadership
Dr Armstrong
After learning about teambuilding, it was finally time to put our learning to work. This immersion was our opportunity to create high and low trust activities and then to demonstrate these activities to the rest of the class.
Psychology of Leadership
Dr Albert
During this course leaning into self-reflection about who you are and who you want to be was paramount. This class reminded me that I need to continue to challenge and use my influence to continue to help others grow. Continue to extend the conversations, have empathy, and feel the emotion. I have a lot of quick notes from this immersion course, many are continuing to influence my path as I go forward.
“Our best work happens when we don’t know what we’re doing” has become the equivalent of I do not need all the answers to get started. I find that to be true as I work to continue the conversation into future growth.
Women, Communication, & Leadership
Dr Elie-Martin
The course highlighted gender and cultural stereotypes. Exploring how men and women communicate differently, how to recognize that and how to adjust or overcome was just one of the skills that I will take away from my time in this course. We don’t all come from the same place however many of us want the same thing, to be seen, valued, and heard.
Foundations of Leadership
Dr Armstrong
As an Organizational Leadership Master’s student, this course was my first exposure to the road I have chosen to take. There was time spent evaluating the type of leadership I want to practice vs. some examples of bad leadership. We also completed the Skills Leadership Inventory; it was enlightening to see how others saw me lead vs how I saw myself.
What I didn’t know then was how all of the steps in this journey would tie back to one quote from The Leadership Challenge, “True leaders create a culture of great performance and meaningful work.” (p 112)
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Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge (5th ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Imagine, Create, Lead
Dr Armstrong, Dr Hoover, Dr Popa,
Dr Tran
There are three big items that stood out to me during this immersion. The first memory that hits me is the concept of getting above the stage and seeing the whole scene. Seeing and seeing again, being able to remove myself from the situation and look with clear eyes. The next was the Jahori Box, which is about identifying what is known to self vs others. I find that I use this concept frequently when looking at situations. Finally, was the need to thrive activity, what are the items that we hold most sacred in our lives, and what are the things that make us who we are.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
-Viktor E Frankl
Communication & Leadership Ethics
Dr Hoover
This is the line we must all learn. How do we maintain really good communication and be ethical in all of our actions, those seen and unseen by others? This course highlighted the internal conflict that each of us faces as we make decisions. Thinking about what the bigger implications can be from a personal, organizational, and world view is part of our responsibility.
Organizational Theory & Behavior
Dr Marquis
This course challenged my patience. It is when you are learning something new; you want all the information immediately and systems design is not something you can instantly learn and implement. This class also forced you to be reliant on team members that you didn’t know and would likely never meet in person. This was a great experience in virtual team building even though you will not find that on the syllabus.