Two threads run through the coursework and the fieldwork behind this capstone — self-examination as the starting point, and environment as the thing that actually teaches it.
ORGL 600 gave me the academic foundation — Northouse's relational view of leadership, and Dr. Carey's concept of self-embeddedness versus self-transcendence, which became a lens for examining my own leadership practice. ORGL 522, Leadership and Community, took that theory into a monastery: a week at St. Andrew's Abbey in Valyermo, California, studying how rhythm, shared meals, and communal silence build belonging without ever calling itself a program.
A week embedded in monastic rhythm — work, rest, and silence in deliberate balance. I compared it directly to the culture of a working firehouse, finding more overlap than I expected. Block's (2018) framework for authentic community became the language for what I was watching happen without any formal curriculum behind it.
Two days co-facilitating introspective work at my department's next-generation leadership retreat. Junior and senior personnel in the same room, surfacing the same recurring themes — uneven accountability, unclear expectations, growth outpacing resources. This retreat is where the seed for this capstone was actually planted.
ORGL 689. Revealed strong hardiness in control and commitment, weaker in optimism and conflict navigation — a structured mirror for tendencies I'd sensed but never named.
A bridge between the academic and the everyday. Brooks' shift from self-centered achievement toward relational commitment gave me language for inviting mid-career firefighters beyond rank advancement and tactical proficiency — their "first mountain" — toward something larger.
Validation, found after the fact. I designed the capstone's quarterly gathering model from organizational diagnosis alone — and later found Wenger's research on social learning systems describing almost exactly what I'd built: a shared domain, a community, a practice deepened over time.
Systems thinking gave me the lens to see three separate departmental efforts — probationary mentorship, gap-year guidance, and mid-career development — as one interconnected continuum rather than three competing initiatives.
Full reading list includes Northouse (2022), Carey (1999), Block (2018), Frankl (2006), Palmer (1993, 2017), Senge (2010), Brooks (2020), and Wenger (1998).
A consistent theme surfaces across both internal and external sources: the most effective leadership development efforts go beyond theory to the experiential and relational, rooted in honest examination that starts with self. Northouse provides the academic framing, Carey calls for leaders to transcend their own frameworks, and Block asks us to construct environments where belonging is felt rather than performed. These aren't separate ideas — they compound into one integrated vision.
The monastery didn't teach community through curriculum. It modeled it. Mt. Adams didn't lecture leadership. It revealed it through shared purpose and challenge. That pattern — environment over instruction — is the throughline connecting this philosophy to the capstone project itself.