Masters in Organizational Leadership: Reflections

 Core Coursework
Classes taken as part of the MOL core helped shape my foundational ideas about leadership, examine my unique leadership strengths and weaknesses, and contemplate capabilities that, across varying professions, backgrounds and personalities, enable leaders to succeed.

 ORGL 600: Foundations of Leadership
Foundations of Leadership helped ground me personally, professionally and academically in leadership studies. Through exposure to diverse perspectives and current research on leadership, I gained an understanding of the complexity and diversity of leadership perspectives. In this course I engaged in the Student Leadership Practices Inventory, which helped identify some of my most significant strengths, as well as areas for improvement in my own leadership. Specifically, it confirmed that I am a leader who tends to “Lead from the Heart”, but that I needed to understand and speak my leadership values (kindness and integrity) more explicitly.  My greatest take-aways from the course came from reading Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatly, which helped me understand a leader’s role as a source of information sharing and sense making in an ever-more chaotic world. I have continued to revisit the ideas contained in this book throughout my academic journey and will continue to do so throughout my career.

 ORGL 605: Imagine, Create, Lead

Imagine, Create, Lead was my first on-campus immersion class as an organizational leadership student. I walked away from the course energized and inspired from connecting with a diverse group of people with a shared passion for servant leadership. While I have to admit I felt emotion bordering on terror when I walked into the dance studio for our creativity session, those two hours completely re-energized me and left me with a much greater understanding of the connection between intuitive creative expression and intuitive leadership. This course helped ingrain in my thinking the connection between creativity, innovation, and maintaining optimism and open-mindedness as a leader.

 ORGL 610: Communications and Leadership Ethics

Communications and Leadership Ethics was an intensively academic course that helped me define and articulate personal and organizational ethical values. It also increased my awareness that while there are some baseline ethical values consistent among various individual and organizations, ethical values are also uniquely shaped by culture and world view.  Viewing the documentary film “Go Back to Where You Came From” left a significant impact on me and helped me see how dramatically ethical values can change when we are forced to step outside our biases and social constructs and stare humanity directly in the eye. One of my key take-aways came from the ethical inventory we took which rates our values based on ethics of care, ethics of justice, ethics of purity and ethics of authority. My values skewed very clearly towards ethics of care primarily and ethics of justice secondarily. My scores for ethics of purity and authority were very low, which is something that is important for me to recognize as I engage with other leaders.

 ORGL 615: Organizational Theory and Behavior

Organizational Theory and Behavior increased my appreciation for the complexity and interconnectedness of organizations. The greatest skill I gained through course was systems thinking – that is seeing how problems and dysfunction in one part of an organization relate to the organization as a whole. Through this course I learned how to better diagnose, understand and remedy issues within a system to lead to organizational transformation. I have already used many of the practical tools presented in this course to identify areas of opportunity within my current team.

Elective Classes Organizational Leadership Coursework
The elective coursework I took in both organizational leadership and communication leadership helped broaden my views on how leaders navigate change and conflict, and the critical role of communication in effective leadership.

 ORGL 517: Organizational Change and Transformation
Organizational Change and Transformation was a hybrid online/on-campus immersion course that was truly the highlight of my time in the program. The course began by examining, with an academic lens, the concepts of organizational change, health and transformation. While on campus we dove deeper into different change models and theories and how they complement each other. I left with practical “tools in my tool box” for how to help teams face change effectively, and see change as an impetus for growth and innovation versus something to be feared. One of my biggest take-aways was “go slow to go fast”, that is, take the time to approach change thoughtfully and strategically so that teams are well positioned to succeed.

 ORGL 520: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

Negotiation and Conflict Resolution shifted my views on negotiation from an exercise in one party “winning” or two parties compromising, to an opportunity to bring parties together to find innovative, win-win solutions. The class was one of my first introductions to the concept of restorative justice, whose core tenants can be applied interpersonally, within an organization and globally. By helping individuals acknowledge and atone for wrongdoing, versus merely punishing, there is a chance to transform conflict in a way that brings deeper healing for all parties involved.

 COML 512: Seminar in Strategic and Corporate Communication

The Seminar in Strategic and Corporate Communication helped deepen my understanding of how the choices we make about communication in the work place can shape our organization’s culture and dramatically influence internal and external perceptions. It also helped broaden my ability to develop, implement and evaluate effective integrated communication plans.

 COML 595: Theorizing Communication

Theorizing Communication grounded me in communications theory and current academic research on communication, while also helping me gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of communication as an ethical activity. My greatest insight from the course was that as a leader it is not only what decisions we make but how we can communicate those decisions that makes a significant impact on our effectiveness.

Elective Classes Business Administration:

The courses I took in the Masters in Business Administration program helped bridge the gap between more theoretical aspects of leadership studies and the pragmatic realities of working as a business leader.

 MBUS 614: Business Ethics

Business Ethics was a foundational course in helping me understand the inherent ethical issues and complexities present in all organizations. The readings, lectures and class discussion fostered my belief that businesses have ethical obligations far beyond generating profits, and that business leaders must consider not only shareholders but seek to understand how activities and decisions impact ALL stakeholders –  including customers, employees, communities and the environment.

 MBUS 627: Marketing Theory and Practice
Marketing Theory and Practice provided a practical overview into the various aspects of a robust communications program including advertising, design, public relations, earned media, promotions and digital media. Through working collaboratively with a team to develop an integrated marketing and communications plan, I was able to experience both how various communications activities work together to accomplish a strategic vision, and how team members with different backgrounds and skill profiles could come together to create something stronger than any one team member could create individually.

 MBUS 612: Managing People and Performance

Managing People and Performance exposed me to the more practical aspects of leading within an organization including current issues in human resources, employee conflict resolution techniques, and performance management best practices.

 MBUS 626: Information Systems Theory and Practice

Information Systems Theory and Practice was a great introduction to how to use databases and other information systems in order to accomplish organizational objectives. The course helped me think about processes, training and strategy to be able to better use technology. It also deepened my understanding of how to lead people through technological changes.

 MBUS 694: Team Building Intensive

The Team Building Intensive course helped dispel notions that team building is merely trust falls and expensive retreats dysfunctional teams invest in as a last resort. Instead, it introduced team building as a proactive approach to increasing trust and productivity among diverse teams. One of the most meaningful aspects of the course was reading Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, and considering how absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results can derail even the most competent teams.