“We shape ourselves to fit this world, and by the world we are shaped again.” (David White). Imagine, Create, Lead encouraged us to envision ourselves as our best leader, and begin to define how we see ourselves and want to be seen as leaders. One of the most influential learnings centered around honing our skill and ability to “see and see again”. Leaders bear direct responsibility to be able to see what is in front of them and what lies ahead of them. It is this ability that allows leaders to determine strategy, establish a shared mission and vision and develop people as they work toward a common goal.  Encouraged to envision ourselves as our best leader, I explored the importance of self-awareness and reflection, intention, the power of storytelling, influence, and symbolism. To illustrate my symbol of leadership I created a watercolor drawing to show the connection I see between the beauty and strength of trees and leaders.

Skills Developed:

• Defining Mission and Vision Statements

• Storytelling

Through Leadership & Human Potential I developed an understanding of the role of the leader as a change agent and cultivated an understanding of the process to identify organizational development opportunities and develop intervention strategies to support change initiatives with a focus on maintaining or improving organizational health and human potential. The most impactful work in this course was around the concepts and theory of Dialogic Organizational Development and Growth Mindset, Design Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry and Action Research.

Skills Developed:

• Appreciative Inquiry Approach

• Action Research Planning

Organizations and the people and systems within them are complicated entities that require care and attention to ensure that organizations can be successful. Even the smallest of organizations can have complex systems and processes that can impact the people in the organization in both positive and negative ways. As part of Organizational Theory & Behavior, I learned to use systems thinking principles, (like the Casual Loop diagrams) to identify what has occurred (events), what happened (patterns and trends), what is contributing to these patterns (systemic structures) and to consider how our mental models enable situations to persist. Which lead to developing the skills and abilities to plan and diagnose situations to identify root cause issues that point to opportunities to correct or improve an organizations health.

Skills developed:

• Systems Thinking Design

• Root Cause Analysis

• Action Planning

Change is a given. How we plan for and react to change is not. Relational Dynamics & Organizational Development guided me in my understanding and application of human centric change as the process of empowering people to be leaders and change agents with a focus on bringing people together to impact change in ways that are concentrated on solving issues through collaborative efforts.  The human centric approach leads to change based on understanding the issues people are facing and how the tools, systems, and processes are either helping or hindering progress. This can occur through Organizational Development interventions led by a change agent at the individual, team, or whole system/organization level.  As I have developed as a change agent, I see my responsibilities for communicating my commitment to see the change through with a focus on positive outcomes for both the individuals and the organization and be able to effectively build relationships, develop trust, organize people, information and data and be an effective and influential communicator who can employ various methods of consultation and inquiry to implement change.

Skills developed:

• Change Agent

• Communication

• Consultation