Join us in Leadership & Hardiness 2015

Dear Friends and Colleagues - I thought I would share a beautiful spotlight on one of our Leadership and Hardiness climbers from 2014. Marcy has a touching story and the Spokesman Review captured it with great dignity and beauty. Enjoy...

Woman Reaches high point through GU program
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To learn more about this course and the Organizational Leadership Program at Gonzaga University, please visit:

GU-ORGL 

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2014 Class Returns from Mt. Adams

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Dear friends and colleagues - Leadership and Hardiness 2014 recently returned from Mt. Adams with many memorable moments and epic experiences. It was a long awaited journey with tremendous introspective work and much growth. Many of the lessons gained on the mountain still need time for the introspective reflection that leads to self discovery. These courageous individuals made a choice to literally take their graduate studies to new heights and provocatively test leadership and resilience principles they have been studying not only in the class, but throughout the Organizational Leadership Program at Gonzaga University. Our class embraced the Aristotelian tradition that "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them". 

Theoretically, the course integrated a blend of didactic but mostly experiential learning captured from learning about hardiness through Frankl's narrative account, film on stress/adversity, an intentional plan for self care and lifestyle change, a personal reflection on resilience, a team case study of a resilient organization, and weekly discussions. The growth was developmentally strategic, providing opportunities for scaffolding knowledge and experiences. Kolb, largely influenced by Dewey, Lewin, Piaget, and others deconstructed experiential learning as involving: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. We are interested in learning through reflection on doing given that we have been actively involved in the experience throughout the course and certainly on Mt. Adams.It is following the experience on Mt. Adams and ongoing reflection that we will begin to use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience of the past 10 weeks. Finally, it is experiential learning and reflection that may contribute to a more complex and higher order understanding of leadership and resilience and how it was gained from this experience.

Students from our course will now take time to soak up and share the experience of the course with all of you. Their reflections are simply a subjective story - a narrative on how the course content, teammates, and experiential exercise on Mt. Adams impacted learning, growth, search for meaning, will to meaning, '(trans)formation', leadership, strength, clarity, and future. They will consider how this course and final experiential exercise, which required a physical, mental and spiritual challenge provided a new context for leadership and/or coping with adversity. Also, their reflections may inspire them to share how they utilized principles of hardiness towards strategic resilience and success of the larger group. Principles of strategic resilience were vividly engaged on the mountain to support three teammates for the success of the larger group. 

Climbers - What did you learn about yourself from the context of this course? What do you plan to do with content gained from this course? What are some implications of these experiences for organizations or your personal life. You have license to be creative in how you capture this reflection and how you share images of your story. These are just some simple thoughts to get you thinking about this final reflection. 

Most importantly - Have FUN and ENJOY the reflection.

Please comment on this blog with your reflective posts when ready.

Leadership & 'Stress'

Robert Sapolsky is a brilliant and highly awarded Neuroendocrinologist at Stanford. He has contributed to our understanding of stress on our bodies and how social standing can make us more or less susceptible.

From baboon troops on the plains of Africa, to neuroscience labs at Stanford University, scientists are revealing just how lethal stress can be. Research tells us that the impact of stress can be found deep within us, shrinking our brains, adding fat to our bellies, even unraveling our chromosomes. Understanding how stress works can help us figure out ways to combat it and how to live a life free of the tyranny of this contemporary plague. In Stress: Portrait of a Killer, scientific discoveries in the field and in the lab proves that stress is not just a state of mind, but something measurable and dangerous.

Please view Stress: Portrait of a Killer (also free on Netflix) and consider the following questions for discussion. As leadership scholars, you may find gaps and strengths in his methodology and interpretation of findings, not to mention implications and generalizations of his work; however, this video also captures some simple principles and unavoidable truths that we experience in daily social and organizational contexts. Enjoy learning about these principles through this scientifically grounded, yet witty documentary. Given this context, consider the following questions for discussion not simply to answer them in order but rather to inform your creative responses:

• What can we learn from this study in the context of human social systems, organizational life, climate, culture, role of hardiness for leadership etc.?
• One of the findings in the study indicated that the amount of control is directly related to where you are at in the hierarchy. What is the prescription for individuals not at the top?
• What is your role in contributing to a work setting that allows for human flourishing from the context of this film and other readings? Discuss struggles and successes and weave in hardiness principles, coping & self-care.
• How might connection and human relationships buffer the impact of perceived stress?
• What is the role and/or responsibility of leadership in understanding indicators of stress & adversity?
• As leaders, how can we contribute to or mitigate 'healthy' versus 'chronic' stress?
• How do we create 'opportunities' for stress, adversity, and failure in order to grow?

• Anything else?

Gonzaga University, Organizational Leadership

What is the meaning of your existence?

Dear Visitors,

We are off to another great adventure this summer to learn about leadership practices that contribute to personal and organizational resilience. Students in this course accepted the challenge to learn not only in the traditional classroom context, but also to practice self care and a philosophy on life in preparation towards climbing Mt. Adams, WA. This climb represents the final simulation and capstone experience of the course. They are beginning this journey by studying Victor Frankl's story - Man's Search for Meaning and clarifying their personal search for meaning. 

Flrankl's gripping account of "life in a concentration camp as reflected in the mind of a prisoner" brings to life a story filled with realistic depictions of the experiences of camp life and how these experiences show that man does have a choice of action and in finding meaning in all forms of existence, even in the most dyer of circumstances, and thus a reason to continue living. Through readings and classroom discussions, students learn about existential analysis in the context of their life, families, organizations, and community. 

The following are ideas to keep in mind when reading Frankl's account:

Interact with the text while reading and make notes, ask questions, define terms, and mark key passages. Keep a journal while reading in order to record your reactions and responses. Make this book your singular focus to allow for deep reflection and contemplation. Ask yourself: What did I learn from Frankl's story and his life at a concentration camp that has implications for leadership, personal, and organizational resilience? What is the relevance of understanding existential analysis to explore meaning and growth in adversity? These are some pragmatic yet important questions to ask in authentic living, let alone in preparing for a class simulation that will stretch the mind, body, and spirit. Explain Frankl's theory of success. Do you agree or disagree with him? What is the "ultimate freedom" according to Frankl? According to Frankl, how do suffering and death complete life and give it meaning? According to Frankl, there are three main avenues for reaching meaning in life; what are they? Analyze and discuss these with regard to your own life.

These are questions and thoughts to stimulate but not isolate your thinking and posting.

As visitors we invite you to join our discussions or simply follow our journey throughout this summer.

(read student comments below)

We invite you to register for Leadership & Hardiness.

"The last lesson the mountain taught me was that leadership is more of a whisper than a shout. I thought this would be the best metaphor to describe what I saw from out Gonzaga crew on the mountain. Over and over again, there were incredibly subtle and un-announcing opportunities to become a leader. We all shared our final liters of water, split pack weights, carried each other's packs, shared food, sent a train of packs down a steep slope, others escorted sick climbers down to lower elevations. These are all examples of subtle opportunities to help another person - but they weren't written in neon lettering in Times Square, if you know what I mean. No one demanded help, no one said, "This is a great time to be a leader." It was simply an individual choice at a specific moment. Sometimes, it would even go unnoticed. And when those individuals stepped forward to be a leader, there was no fanfare or gloating. It simply happened."

Student Climber - Class of 2013

(for more student impressions click here)

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