Role Modelling and Final Analysis of Personal and Organizational Spirituality

I totally forgot about my initial post on my ethical and spiritual role models when I wrote my final paper.  Ironically, or not, two of the individuals I mention in my final paper are the exact two I mention in my initial blog post, my dad and my boss.

This course has allowed for me to think long and hard about ethics and spirituality and how these two individuals have helped guide me along life's journey.

My daily intentions will be filled with "thank you" moments to thank everyone for what they have taught me along the road to self-discovery and transcendence to a higher spiritual self; one who centers myself and awakens my inner -consciousness before I react or address a situation that gives me a reason to pause and ask myself questions to help me respond in an ethical and moral manner.

Thank you to everyone who has helped develop me as a spiritual human being.  I bring you with me everyday no matter where I go. 

Below, is a video of my final presentation that outlines my analysis of personal and organizational spirituality.  I

Personal Spirituality at Work

I am very lucky.

Everyday, I go to work in an environment that allows for personal spirituality and an integrated approach to organizational spirituality.

I bring my whole self.

I grow.

I learn.

I mature.

I teach.

I experience connectedness with others at work.

My self-esteem rises.

My ability to contribute is honored.

I work in a positive environment.

We are an other-centered organization.

I experience total work rewards satisfaction.

We experience the "spillover theory."

We have spiritual congruence.

We are Catholic.

I am Catholic.

We are socially responsible; what we do on the inside also impacts what takes place on the outside

Spirituality is a positive motivator and predictor.

We feel connected - all the time.

I am lucky.

Integrating Spirituality at Work through Ethical and Servant Leadership

How lucky am I to work in an environment where spirituality is an everyday occurrence.  All of us, as employees and students, have ample opportunities to not only share our spirituality but live it through various ways.  We have daily mass, opportunities for meditation, service projects, including feeding the homeless and countless other options.  We also have a mission statement and values system that all of us reflect upon in our daily work.  We also have a president who is a servant-leader and walks the talk.  He models the behavior he expects from all of us, from ethical and moral decision-making to holding the door for anyone who is in our path. I have been working in Catholic higher education for 22 years and plan on doing so for another 10 years.

Universal Principles

After reflection on the spiritual (and ethical) principles that guide me most days, I am offering you to consider these as universally possible for all to follow:

1. I see my work as a call to help others
2. I try to think before I speak
3. I try to make sound, moral and ethical decisions
4. I try to treat all people with fairness
5. I try to be nice to people

These are my top five principles that I dutifully try to exhibit in  my daily life.  My spirituality defines me as a loving individual who deeply cares for others.  Trusting relationships are critical to not only human happiness but universal happiness.

Persuasive Spirituality

Since I was given the opportunity to express my opinion on whom I would like to emulate as a spiritual role model, I am happy to say, my friend, Dr. Maureen Carey.

Dr. Carey is a professor of social work at Molloy College and possesses many of the qualities I aspire to be when considering my own spirituality.  Dr. Carey is also an artist and shares her talents with everyone at the College by holding artful meditation workshops on campus several times a year.  She invites all constituents to these workshops that offer contemplation of spirit and opportunity for expression through a practice called "dropping color" with watercolors, allowing the paint to dry and then doodling or creating artful images over the watercolors to create a pen and ink overlay.  It's an amazing spiritual and meditative practice that centers my soul and my mind.  This is especially helpful during times of stress at work. Dr. Carey has been a continual spiritual mentor for me of which I am forever grateful

Dr. Carey, a former Dominican Sister, meditates through prayer every single morning before beginning her day's journey. She has also published a book entitled "The Artful Journal:  A Spiritual Quest," available on Amazon.com.  It was written "for artists seeking their inner spirit...promotes the relationship between spirituality and creativity by using several methods of meditation, painting and writing." 

I wish I was more attentive to my own needs and practiced some form of active contemplation everyday.  I do pray every morning and every evening but it is not as deliberate or as purposeful as I would like it to be.  It comes naturally, which is great but something is missing.  I keep distracting myself with work, volunteer, home or family obligations (in no particular order) and feel like I am cheating myself from something extremely valuable to my spirit.  I will work on this and more exercise, which is also contemplative to me when I swim 70-80 laps at a time - I become one with the water during that exercise - it is truly amazing!  Perhaps when I finish this degree, but that is an excuse - I have to do it.

By practicing this and other forms of meditation, I can greatly enhance my own spirituality, which has a direct connection to my leadership.  These are the things that center me as a human being and provide the necessary balance to model the person that only I can portray.

When I heard Toys R Us was closing, I assumed, immediately, that they were closing due to online shopping at Amazon.com or at Walmart.  I was mistaken.

The shame of it all is that my grandson and I will no longer be able to take trips to Toys R Us to choose a toy just for the fun of it.  Part of the fun was the hunt.  He would enter the store with big wide eyes and go down each and every aisle looking for the perfect toy.  He would examine every car, crayon, book, game, or Lego set with the unbridled attention of a child who receives his favorite toy for Christmas.

So, why am I so sad?  I am sad because this might have been prevented.  From what I have read so far, it seems that upper management mismanaged their assets and are in debt way above their eyeballs.  No one just enters into junk bond status in the bond market for no reason.  The investors no longer trusted the executive leadership of the company and downgraded their status.

Trust is a big word and Toys R Us and trust always went hand in hand for me as a consumer.  I always trusted that the experience they provided for our children and grandchildren was carefully thought out and strategically planned.  Shame on them!  The shareholders and the employees are out of luck and so are the debtors as if there is any money left after the liquidation, they will get paid first.

So, what do these executives have to say to the 31,000 employees who will now be out of work?

From what I have read, they tried to do too little, too late.  If these corporate leaders were good leaders and good at fiscal management, they would have put together  a strategic plan that makes sense and tied it into a 5-year financial plan.  They had a moral and an ethical obligation to their employees and their stockholders to run the company in a conservative fashion, ensuring a positive bottom line at all costs.  I am sure if given the chance 5 years ago, the employees would have considered keeping their jobs in place of a raise, or a benefit or some other factor.  It just upsets me when I see people mismanage their assets.

If you ask me, these executives need to be held accountable in some way.  The future leaders of our world need to witness that so they can make better decisions and learn from these mistakes and perhaps add some of the basic moral principles and theories, whether utilitarian, rights, justice, common good or virtue approaches, to their strategic plan, mission and values statement.  Perhaps they could have also asked themselves the thoughtful questions in determining an ethical decision when contemplating some of their decision making.

References

Ethical Framework

Toys R Us

Whom Do I Emulate and Base My Ethical Behavior On

Whom Do I Emulate and Base My Ethical Behavior On

I have to say that I cannot choose just one individual but two.  

My Dad

The first person whom I give credit to for my ethics would be my father.  From a very young age, my dad instilled in our entire family the importance of following God, telling the truth and portraying ourselves as individuals we would want to emulate. We were taught to be good human beings and to serve others.  This leads me to my earliest example of what it means to be a servant leader.  That was my dad.

My Boss

37 years later, I met my boss, whom I speak about often.  We have worked together for 14 years and his ethics are above-board.  I have been able to witness his behavior everyday for 14 years during times of crisis, challenge, success and change.  And his ethics and demeanor have not wavered over time.  I watch him listen, think and then act.  These three actions have taught me that listening, thinking and then acting are vital to appropriate ethical behavioral responses.

I am very grateful to my personal and professional ethics mentors.  Both of these intelligent and thoughtful men have helped form the person I am today.

My boss

Final Project

I am very grateful to Manhattan College for including Project Management coursework within the MSOL degree.  I now have much more experience in using Microsoft Project and the concepts behind effective project management.  I hope to have more opportunities to put this critical tool into action at my workplace.  My final project encompassed everything we did during this course and I am happy to publish it here.  I look forward to implementing the project over the next 8 months.

Full Circle

I feel I have come full circle in six short weeks.  Having had some prior coursework in project management helped prepare me for this week's assignments.  I was thrilled to finally put most of my previous and newly learned knowledge in action.

This week I prioritized work to be done for the St. Dismas project and outlined these priorities in the WBC, the Gantt chart and the precedence diagrams I created.  I also outlined a budget for each task and what significant items I would outlined for the senior leadership at St. Dismas to prepare them for the unexpected.  It was nice to go back to Excel basics and plug in formulas for the percentages for the optimistic and pessimistic budget options.

I look forward to finishing my final project and hope I can explain, in detail, every step of the way.  One of the weaknesses is my ability to explain in spoken word and in a presentation exactly what I am trying to say.  I am much better at writing papers and outlining things in print.

Wish me luck.

Diane

Here are the Excel sheets I created:

without formulas:

with formulas:

Precedence Diagrams

I really enjoyed this week's topic of precedence diagramming.  I learned how to do a forward pass and a backward pass to determine the slack/float of a project and how to determine the critical path of a project in an optimistic, most likely, or least likely time frame.  I used Microsoft Project to assist me with the WBS, AON and Gantt charts.  However, I did the precedence diagrams by hand as you can see, below.  I look forward to hearing from the professor to see if I arrived at the critical path and end dates correctly.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Task 1	2 days	Sun 2/4/18	Mon 2/5/18
Task 2	5 days	Sun 2/4/18	Thu 2/8/18
Task 3	3 days	Fri 2/9/18	Tue 2/13/18	2
Task 4	7 days	Tue 2/6/18	Wed 2/14/18	1
Task 5	11 days	Tue 2/6/18	Tue 2/20/18	1
Task 6	5 days	Thu 2/15/18	Wed 2/21/18	2,4
Task 7	9 days	Wed 2/14/18	Mon 2/26/18	3
Task 8	5 days	Thu 2/22/18	Wed 2/28/18	3,6
Task 9	7 days	Thu 2/15/18	Fri 2/23/18	4
Task 10	3 days	Wed 2/21/18	Fri 2/23/18	5
Task 11	15 days	Tue 2/27/18	Mon 3/19/18	7
Task 12	6 days	Thu 3/1/18	Thu 3/8/18	8
Task 13	7 days	Mon 2/26/18	Tue 3/6/18	9,10
Task 14	12 days	Tue 2/27/18	Wed 3/14/18	7
Task 15	16 days	Fri 3/9/18	Fri 3/30/18	12,13

Budgeting and Scheduling

This week was an incredible week as I learned how to estimate costs by understanding how the accounting department, the comptroller's office and the project manager view and manage the costs of a project.  I also learned how to estimate and schedule a project using the WBS, a precedence list, the critical path method (CPM), and an AON Diagram, which help to determine not only the critical path the project must follow but also those tasks that allow for flexibility (float) without causing delays in the delivery of a project.

Here is an example of a critical path diagram:

An example of an AON Diagram is below:

How My MSOL Degree and the Project Management Course are Helping My Career

Good morning,

About a year ago, I began my journey towards a master's degree in organizational leadership.  When I applied to the program, I knew it was the right degree for me and the coursework I have taken since then has continually solidified my reasons for selecting this degree.

The timing of each course has fit in so nicely with my actual workload and has enhanced my performance at work tenfold.  I am looking forward to completing my degree and spending the extra time on implementing more of the concepts learned form this program into my everyday workday.

Along the way, however, I have used much of what I had learned but at this present time, project management, has been the most timely and most effective tool.  I am in the middle of hiring a senior director of strategic and digital communications while drafting a digital communications plan and I am using everything I am learning in this course to help me not only manage the hiring process but also draft the digital communications plan. Project planning concepts have helped me to focus on exactly what the scope of these projects need to be and the application of the WBS, RACI and mind-mapping techniques have been invaluable.

Diane

Project Management Office, SMART Goals, Project Charter, Product Requirements Document

I learned a great deal this week. Here are some of the key concepts:

• Conflict and Negotiation
• Project Management Office
• Projectized Organization
• Functionally Organized Projects
• Matrixed Organization
• Enterprise Project Management
• Communication Requirements in all Phases of any Projects
• SMART Goals
• Creating Smart Goals through Tree Diagrams
• Project Charter
• Product Requirements
• Product Requirements Document
• Objective 
• Purpose
• Profiles, Goals and Tasks
• Product Principles
• Prototypes and Testing
• Identify and Question Assumptions
• Write it Down
• Prioritize and Rank
• Test Completeness
• Manage the Product

Project Management

Project Management is the one course that I have been looking forward to taking.  I feel as though my career has brought me to this point and I have so many examples of projects I have participated in, led and want to start.  However, what I really want at this point in my career, is to assign individuals to be the project managers on specific projects.

So far, I have worked on a massive college-wide initiative called Molloy 2020: A Vision for the Future that began with a listening tour in Fall of 2014.  The president and I listened to over 500 employees and created 25 task forces to find out how to best move forward with the 25 themes identified by the employees of the College as priorities for the College going forward.

This process opened up new relationships as well as trust among employees.  It also began our strategic planning process for our 2020 Strategic Plan.  Five years later, we are still working on priorities that were suggested by our employees.  However, what we need now is better planning and processes to bring things to implementation.

I am looking forward to taking this course so I can chart the path for how we will move forward with some of these key priorities for the College.

Here, take a look:  Molloy 2020

Effective Team Learning

This course has been very beneficial to me and my professional life will improve greatly as a result.  One of the most important take-aways for me is the art of active listening.  I constantly find myself listening and self-correcting during conversations when I wander off in my thoughts.  If I think of something during the conversation, I let it go - this is a hard thing for me to do - but I do it - it does not matter if I remember what it was or not.  What matters most is that I listen.

However, now I am more aware of leaders who don’t learn or want to learn thinking they have nothing else to learn. This is very distracting to me.  Knowing I cannot change people’s leadership styles, I will keep my interactions with them as objective as possible and not criticize their weaknesses.  There is only one person that comes to mind in this regard but I am working through it.

Through the many case studies we evaluated (Costa Concordia, Xerox, GE, LL Bean), I have also learned that learning together as a team, double-loop learning, probe and learn and after action reviews are critical components to exploring what could be better for the future and how to plan, adjust my sails during the process, implement to the best of my (and team’s) knowledge, assess and institute change whenever needed.

This was one of the best courses during this degree program.

ORID 3

How to build an organization’s capacity for learning, according to Garvin, can be accomplished through executives shifting their focus from content to process.  “Leaders and manager must:

1. Create opportunities for learning by designing settings and events that prompt the necessary activities
2. Cultivate the proper tone, fostering desirable norms, behaviors and rules of engagement
3. Lead the process of discussion, framing the debate, posing questions, listening attentively and providing feedback (Garvin pg. 190).”

When a manager offers opportunities for employees to learn, it not only opens up a plethora of knowledge for them but also allows them to grow in their roles at the organization.  And when they provide the time for the employees to do this outside their daily workload, all the better.

Interestingly, in this week’s chapter, I learned about the two orientations employees tend to display.  This knowledge has helped me to understand why my assistant and I sometimes disagree.

MY ASSISTANT:  “focuses primarily on performance to gain favorable evaluations from supervisors and perform well to peers (Garvin pg. 192).”  She does not like risk and avoids learning opportunities.

ME:  “focuses primarily on learning - to increase competence and skills and develop increased mastery. Over time gain confidence and competence and improved results (Garvin pg. 192).”  I work smart to perform better.

Problem?  My assistant and I have differences of opinions on how work should get done.  Some might think this is insubordination on her part but I look at it as learning opportunities for both of us.

O R I D

Objective Questions:

What is the problem?

My assistant is very opinionated and difficult to manage at times due to her preconceived perceptions of what a work environment should be.  She came from a union environment (9-5 do as I want as long as I get my job done attitude).  I mean no disrespect to unions here.

What behaviors do I observe?

My assistant pushes back when extra work is given to her or if she is asked to work (or expected) to work beyond 9-5.  This was clearly expressed in her interview and written on her job description.  Providing me oxygen in times of need is the one thing that we keep coming back to as an issue with her performance.

Reflective Questions:

How do I feel during these exchanges?

At first I feel shock that anyone would tell their boss “no.” Then I move to anger and then I listen.  I keep my feelings to myself for the most part.  She knows she is a darn good worker (she is) and pushes back because she does not want to feel she is being taken advantage of.  On the other hand, I feel she is taking advantage of me by not being willing to take on more responsibility and/or work extra hours (paid) when needed.  She eventually gives in but it is not without hard work on my part.

What is hardest?

The hardest part for me is getting her to learn more skills, getting her to be more intuitive, and backing me up when needed.  She is not used to being in a support position and wants to just do her job and go home.  I am determined to make this work and have her grow.

Interpretive Questions:

What have I learned about me in the process?

I am a softy, a pushover but also tough as nails when it comes to details and hard work because that is my work ethic.  I expect the same from those who work for me. However, I have also learned to listen and become a better listener.  Some of what my assistant says during our exchanges is valuable feedback to me as her supervisor.

What things have I done to extinguish undesirable behaviors?

Not enough but still working on this. I immediately speak with my assistant when issues arise so we can talk about them, allowing me to speak to speak my position on things and explain why the request is important.  

Decisional Questions:

What will I do the same in the future?  What will I do differently?

I will continue to have open and frank conversations with my asssitant and will continue to figure out better ways to manage the behaviors while getting my needs met.

What skills do I want to develop?

I am not sure what skills I need to develop but attending a leadership workshop where I can role play would be beneficial to me.