Courses in Organizational Leadership
The Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership at Gonzaga University includes a core set of courses, and the option of a concentration. I chose to focus on the Change Leadership Concentration. Below is a listing of the courses from my program, a description of my learning and/or impact, and chosen artifacts from each of the courses.
ORGL 600: Foundations in Leadership
Through course materials and engagement, I explored leadership theories and dysfunctions, leadership in social justice, and leadership from a wholistic rather than a segmented approach. I was able to dive into shared meaning making, inclusion, dialogic engagement, and a common purpose with others in this first course of my program. The series of journal reflections helped me begin to reflect on and develop my own leadership values and path by answering the questions:
- “What are my deepest desires as a leader? What don’t I want as a leader? What do I want as a leader?
- What does this require of me as a leader?
- How does this shape who I am becoming?”
One of the themes that popped for me was embracing vulnerability as a leader and whole-hearted living. These concepts stayed with me, creating a thread throughout my program, leading me to recognize that leaders who embrace and share their vulnerability (among other things) are viewed as more authentic.
ORGL 605: Leadership & Imagination - Imagine, Create, Lead
Leadership & Imagination was an on-campus immersion over three days that enabled me to connect with other students in the program and various professors. It opened my eyes to understand how leadership can be a creative process and demonstrated how to pull in visual and creative arts into the process by providing real experiences with music, movement, personality styles, communication and more. As my artifact demonstrates, this course invited me to “see and see again” in so many ways how we can reach others through creative leadership and learn more about ourselves in the process.
ORGL 515: Leadership & Human Potential
Leadership & Human Potential helped me explore and discover various methods for organizational interventions, that not only support organizational growth but also individual growth. I chose one work project to experiment with multiple interventions. In doing so I was able to explore the best individual, situational, and organizational fit for interventions. Moreover, the materials in this course allowed me to examine creating the most effective spaces for dialogic engagement and how the elements were important for individual psychological safety, inclusion, and engagement. In choosing to return for my Master of Arts degree, these are the types of theories and tools I was hoping to pair with my professional experience to develop my skills sets and professional career further. The attached mindmap artifact is an example of one tool I have since used many times.
ORGL 516: Relational Dynamics & Organizational Development
For me, Relational Dynamics & Organizational Development helped me explore deeper who I am as a leader in organizational change and as an immediate team leader through human-centric approaches. The texts and literature research in this course helped me grow my leadership library. Specifically, this course gave me tools and personal insights into engaging with my individual team members, engaging resistance to change rather than blaming it, and tools and personal insights into being a better change agent. My artifacts include a PC Screen Background created from the book The Coaching Habit to keep these questions at the front of my mind, as well as a mind-map for my learnings from this course.
ORGL 517: Organizational Change & Transformation
Organizational Change & Transformation explored various theories and models of change in organizations. In learning about various models, I was able to understand where the models overlapped and where they placed differential focus. In learning about change management strategies, I was able to identify consistent variables required including understanding the need for the change or transformation, identifying, and engaging stakeholders, developing strategies for systemic alignment of the stakeholders, and creating a plan of action. In this, and so many of my courses, I was then able to use those skills to create a plan of action around a project in my professional life. This not only helped me practice the skills, but it gave me a foundation for a work-related project. ADKAR model image reminds me yet again to connect with the people-side of change projects.
ORGL 518: Transforming Leadership
The Transforming Leadership course moved us, as students, back into self-reflection. I particularly grappled with understanding of the difference between various leadership styles against true transforming leadership. In that exploration, I first had to understand the difference between change and transformation. This class brought the topic of leadership and social justice back into close alignment for me, as did my literature review, especially during a global pandemic.
ORGL 550: Team Building
This team building course would have been a great on-campus, immersion class, as it has been historically taught. But as it came a few months after the start of the global COVID pandemic, the professor reimagined the course to help us build teams virtually. He not only kept the foundations of learning about building teams, but he transformed those lessons into effective virtual spaces that allowed us to increase our knowledge and understanding of team formation and group development, but to also practice doing that in a virtual space by introducing new tools and adapted team building exercises. This transformed course was so well done, I immediately began using many of the tools and concepts with my team in our current virtual environment under the pandemic. I am forever grateful for the time the professor and his graduate assistants took to ensure this class addressed current issues facing us as leaders. So my artifact is actually a virtual tool we learned to use, and I used extensively in my department and work in the year since: MiroBoard.com.
ORGL 551: Advanced Team Building
Advanced Team Building enabled the smaller-sized class to practice virtual team building skills and group dynamics by each facilitating various exercises. We were able to more deeply explore effective virtual team building sequencing, engagement, and problem solving. My professor pushed me out of my comfort zone with leading a virtual activity I wasn’t very comfortable with, and it was a success. As the capstone project for this course, I designed a virtual team building opportunity, and held a virtual retreat (again during the pandemic) for my own team that I implemented within the month. My team had been formed for less than a year, and it was a huge success. This course and the successful retreat gave me confidence and greater skills in facilitating large group events. The artifacts, to the left, are from my 2020 team retreat.
ORGL 610: Communication & Leadership Ethics
The Communication & Leadership Ethics course took us deep into ethical communications and issues, once again connecting us as leadership to social justice issues and decision making. I took this course simultaneously with Transforming Leadership (ORGL 518) and found incredible connections between the two courses. I repeatedly used articles and materials from one class in posts and papers for the other. Not only did we explore numerous social justice case studies as they coincided with ethical discernment and decision making in society, non-profit, and governmental services, but we also dove deep into our own personal ethics and values through four modules on (1) foundations for communication and leadership ethics, (2) being and becoming, (3) caring and doing, (4) leading with communication and organizational ethics. I’ve chosen my Personal Ethics video introduction as my artifact.
ORGL 615: Organizational Theory & Behavior
Organizational Theory and Behavior explores true learning organizations, the obstacles to becoming a learning organization, and a systems thinking approach to leading teams and/or organizations. Exercises, tools, diagramming, and a simulation helped us learn, become familiar with, and use diagramming tools, mental models, and dialogic communication. The structure of the course placed me in a course-long, smaller group of students. I found my group to be very enriching. We actively practiced theories and tools we had learned to develop our group into an inclusive team, practiced listening, advocating and inquiry to discern the best paths forward. Not only did we explore team development and problem solving using mental models, advocacy and inquiry, and dialogic communications, we were able to be very successful because of our active practices of these concepts throughout the semester. As a group, we learned the impact a leaders’ styles can have on team outcomes by understanding the multiple factors that shape the design, dynamics, and effectiveness of groups. As a representation of this success, I chose the visual artifact, to the left, adapted from Senge (2006) The Fifth Discipline, which I also have used with my team.
ORGL 620: Leadership Seminar
This course allowed me to formally reflect on all the learnings throughout my change leadership concentration within the organizational leadership master’s program. This directed reflection demonstrated once again the importance of taking the time to reflect on one’s journey, which helps to inform the future path, and brings forth gratitude for my path. The course also required a capstone project that enabled me to intentionally pull together different courses into a final project connected to my profession. This website is a result of both the directed reflection and capstone project. I am forever grateful to the Gonzaga School of Leadership Studies professors, staff, and my peer students who made this journey of development possible.