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CAPSTONE PROJECT

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THE IDEA

The Idea 
My capstone project is the creation of a podcast, in which a partner and I discuss aspects of self-care, self-love, and self-leadership. In each conversation, we choose a word we have identified as powerful towards the development of self-care, self-love, and self-leadership. We dissect that word and identify how it can help and hurt our journey towards our best selves.

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The Inspiration 
In our introductory text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire writes on the importance of reflection and action. Borrowing that practice, our approach has been to examine texts, lectures, essays, and articles surrounding a word that we find critical to our personal self-growth. After reading, studying, and reflecting, we come together for dialogue to examine together how we believe the subject impacts our life. Our conversation finishes by again folding in the action-reflection-action loop. Having had the discussion and reflection together, we examine what actions we might take in order to advance our own growth and leadership and challenge ourselves to glean a new practice. 
 

Measurements: 

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  • Develop an ongoing dialogue around self-care, self-love, and self-leadership.

  • Develop a deeper understanding of my own personal leadership philosophy.

  • Stay connected to the subjects studied at Gonzaga through my own continuing education.

  • Invite others to listen, think, and participate in conversations that encourage self-care, self-love, and self-leadership. 

  • Create a space where people can think about how to empower themselves to better leaders in small chunks. 

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Our process starts by strategizing on words that we think are important tools to develop our goals. We then develop questions to guide our conversation and set up an outline. Next, we record our dialogue. We work on respecting each other and creating shared understanding, even though we don’t always agree. 

 

Outcomes: 

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  • Production of content. Our original goal was to record 1 hour of content per week, analyze it, break it up into smaller chunks and produce it within two weeks. Not understanding the nature of building a podcast, we have revised our goal to be two episodes produced each month. 

  • Monthly self-assessments and surveys have helped us to adjust our goal to a smaller shortened messaging to deliver more digestible content

  • Incorporating more storytelling in our episodes 

  • Eliminating reading the script and engaging in dialogue ‘live’

  • Hiring a professional editor 

 

Having never done this before, and having reverence for material learned from Leonard’s Mastery, my goal has been to enjoy the learning process more than to be strict about the outcome. This doesn’t apply to a short-term sense; our goal is to produce content on a regular basis. This does apply to the rigidity of our format. In these initial phases, we have changed formats a few times. We want to keep allowing ourselves to evolve until we figure out our groove. That means inviting the Ignatian tool of allowing reflection to be an intentional part of our process.

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THE PLAN 

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MANIFESTED 

COMPETENCIES

Through the courses at Gonzaga, I have developed a strong guide of what our topics are. conflict (ORGL 520), forgiveness (ORGL 532), and creativity (ORGL 605) are all keywords based on courses from Gonzaga that will be subjects of our podcasts. Ethics (ORGL 610) books and readings will further conversations. Additionally, Communication Consulting and Training (COML 511) will influence how we deliver our message to our audience. 

 

The content learned in Leadership and Mindfulness (ORGL 689) plays a recurring theme throughout the website, in the podcasts, and will continue in my life. Continually, we find our answers in giving ourselves space, meditating, and practicing mindfulness. The overarching theme of self-love and self-care are priorities identified throughout ORGL 689. In looking at the recommendations page, we can see meditation apps that were initially recommended in ORGL 689. Through both the capstone and life, I can see the manifestation of the skills and information obtained from this course. 

 

Through Leadership and Storytelling (ORGL 682), I have obtained a goal of taking content and making it relatable. Through looking inwardly, we hope to speak with our own voice instead of echoing others. In our podcast and in life, this will help us to be authentic. This course really showed the power of opening up and telling who you are. For a meaningful connected life, the skill of storytelling mixed with vulnerability must exist. 

 

Through Imagine, Create, Lead (ORGL 605) I first and foremost learned the value of community and the value of learning from the people around me. The people that I was immersed with helped to breed the creativity within me, and their positivity gave me life. The second most important thing I learned that I carry with me in life is to rest in between the space of stimulus and response. In a fast-paced work environment, the culture is often to encourage people to react swiftly, regardless of the wisdom and discernment in a response. Taking time prevents me from making critical errors. In the initial phases of our podcast, our goal was once a week. Through the adoption of this life lesson, we’ve been able to drop our production goals to twice a month and give our self more space to study material and reflect.

 

If I was to continue to study further, it would no doubt be with an intention to understand Leadership, Justice, and Forgiveness (ORGL 689)more. We are currently working on an episode focused on forgiveness and the literature and discussions from this course are what made me realize how important the topic of forgiveness is. 

FUTURE PLANS 

Approximately one year ago, I began to have a seizing panic of when my coursework would end. The knowledge I’ve obtained has been fascinating, thought-provoking, and life-altering for myself and those around me. 

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This podcast was designed as a version to meet my needs to continue the learning of organizational leadership. Working on this project helps me to continue to be my best self and helps me continue to fine-tune my leadership philosophy and to continue to practice developing the skills I want to see in myself as a leader. 

 

The goal is to continue to enjoy the process. And also, to keep up with the powerful, beautiful, absolutely insane people in this photo. 

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