Course Description:

For this course, we started by looking at the topics and ideas that surround servant-leadership, restorative justice, and forgiveness. This required a true understanding of the elements of servant-leadership and how forgiveness can be done in ways of giving forgiveness, but also through the courage of asking for forgiveness. We looked at this on a personal, communal, and global level. Next we examined the ideas of how our leadership is a choice in how we approach our leadership mindsets, highlighted by the experiences that we face and the understandings that we then create. We fully evaluated our own perspectives and related to the human experience with the understanding that everyone faces different hardships and challenges that affect the way that we lead with the ideas of restorative justice and forgiveness in mind. We attempted to better understand the philosophies behind how to best serve those that we lead and look toward reconciliation in our efforts of restorative justice and conflict management. Through these modules, we focused in on different issues of tolerance, respect, patience, and working on seeing through perspectives that we hadn’t previously understood as leaders and as people. All in all, this helped with the reflection process of effective leadership and how to help promote growth of those around you to support positive change in how we lead ourselves.

Course Artifact:

I’ve included my final paper for this class, as I feel it exemplifies a full perspective of learning and reflection that fully takes into account what I gained from the course regarding restorative justice, the balance between giving forgiveness and asking for forgiveness, and then how this ties in with personal forms of servant leadership. Ultimately, this gave me a chance to reflect on my own leadership and find the different pathways that I could use to improve my leadership.

Course Materials:

Books:

Bunker, K. (1997). The power of vulnerability in contemporary leadership. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research, 49(2), 122-136.

Ferch, S. (2012). Forgiveness and power in the age of atrocity: Servant leadership as a way of life. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Frankl, V. (1997). Man's search for ultimate meaning. New York, NY: Insight Books.

Richards, N. (1988). Forgiveness. Ethics, 99(1), 77-97.

Thakore, D. (2013). Servant Leadership. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 1(7), 23-32.

Tutu, Desmond (1999). No future without forgiveness. New York, NY: Doubleday

Wiesel, E. (1960). Night. New York, NY: Bantam Books

Wiesenthal, S. (1969) The sunflower. New York, NY: Schoken Books

ATTACHMENT: Reflections on Leadership, Justice, & Forgiveness