Leadership Project

This page highlights my leadership capstone project for the Organizational & Change Leadership master’s program at Gonzaga University. Designed to strengthen customer understanding and connection, this framework can be adapted by any organization seeking to enhance relationships and deliver exceptional service.

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The Opportunity

A staff team expressed a desire to better understand their customers in order to serve them more effectively. Through the immersion experience, staff aimed to uncover what drives customers—their motivations, values, and what they enjoy most about their work.

Quotes from the staff when asked what they hope to learn through the immersion experience:

"I'm hoping to learn more about our customers so I can better assist them."
"I would like to better understand why our customers selected this profession and what is the thing they enjoy most about the work."
"I'm hoping to gain some new insights about the profession and individual traits that make one successful."

The Goals

To address the opportunity, the below goals were developed.

Use team learning and customer interviews to strengthen understanding of customers and their industry. The staff will benefit by…

•Better understanding customers –strengths, values, motivations, and vision for the future

•Exhibiting increased confidence in industry knowledge

•Participating in team learning to build connection among team members.

The Inspiration

Lessons from the monastery guided my leadership approach and the design of this project.

During my master’s program at Gonzaga University, I spent a week living with monks in a monastery in an immersive learning experience. Initially, I didn’t fully understand their commitment to a life of service, but through interactive team discussions, individual reading and reflections, interviews with monks, and shared meals and services, I gained meaningful insight into their values and purpose. This experience deepened my understanding of dedication, community, and intentional living—principles that continue to influence my leadership approach today.

The Design

Taking inspiration from the monastery immersion, a program was designed in alignment with that experience to improve understanding of the customers.

Preparation: Pre-Immersion Survey & Reading (Industry Foundations)
Workshop #1- Foundational Learning
Appreciative Interviews with Customers
Workshop #2- Shared Learning
Conclusion: Post-Immersion Survey

The Foundations

The focus of Workshop #1 is to establish a foundational understanding of industry best practices through interactive learning and collaboration.

1. Foundational Industry Instruction with Guest Speaker

2. Small Group Collaboration: Reflect on industry reading & prepare a short presentation to teach the team on why industry best practices matter.

3. Group Reflection: Small groups present and team reflects on the strengths customers may need to implement the best practices shared.

The Interviews

Uncovering customer strengths, motivations, and values through Appreciative Inquiry.

Purpose: Interview a customer to understand their motivations, strengths, values, visions for the future, and stories that reflect positive experiences.
What is Appreciative Inquiry? Appreciative Inquiry focuses on leveraging strengths and successes to inspire positive change and growth. It’s a positive approach that focuses on what’s working well, instead of the challenges.
What is an Appreciative Interview? Interviews designed to collect rich qualitative information in the form of stories which carry a wealth of meaning, and sometimes a powerful emotional charge, rather than dry quantitative data consisting of figures and statistics.
Examples of Appreciative Questions:
- Values: Which values are important to you in your role? Why? Tell me about a time when your values helped in your role.
- Peak Experience: Which work experience has made you most proud? What happened? What made you feel proud?

The Reflections

The focus of Workshop #2 is to deepen customer understanding and strengthen service strategies through collaborative learning. Through group dialogue and reflection, the team will uncover shared themes and develop actionable ideas to better serve customers and enhance relationships.

1. Small Group Collaboration:

Individually, share learnings from the appreciative interviews.
Using an online collaboration tool, add strengths, values, motivations, and visions for the future to the shared space.

2. Group Dialogue: Review groups' learnings. Discuss the following questions:

What do our customers have in common?
Now that we better understand our customers, how can we better serve them?

The Impact

From insight to impact: Measurable growth in knowledge, confidence, and customer connection

100% have a basic, moderate or strong understanding of the industry. An increase of 18% from the pre-immersion survey.
88% Agree or Strongly Agree with the statement, “The Immersion experience helped me learn more about our customers.”
88% have a moderate or strong understanding of customers’ motivations, values and strengths. An increase of 53% from pre-immersion survey.
100% are moderately confident, confident or very confident interacting with customers. An increase of 18% from the pre-immersion survey.
89% Agree or Strongly Agree that “Because I better understand our customers, I can better serve them.” An increase of 34% from the pre-immersion survey.
89% Agree or Strongly Agree with the statement “Team learning is helpful to build connections among team members.”

“I enjoyed meeting and learning as a team and sharing insights."

"This workshop style experience helps us bond with our colleagues and better understand the customers we collectively serve, even though we might be in different departments."

“Team members look at things from different lenses and that's helpful.”