CAPSTONE: Your Leadership Challenge

Welcome to the capstone project course in the Coursera Inspirational Leadership Specialization! In the next 6 weeks you'll apply the skills you learned in the Specialization to tackle a real world leadership challenge. To better meet your own goals of taking this Specialization, we will provide one capstone project: -Personal leadership challenge; You'll select one project to implement and will receive assessments from your Capstone peers. No matter which option you choose, the capstone project will examine your skills, including self-awareness, developing quality relationships and trust, resilience, and how making decisions entails a strong sense of responsibility. For the personal challenge, you will work on your own question addressing your capacity to grow as a leader. A challenge can be a target objective (starting a company, running a project, designing a product, winning a competition, running a marathon…) you have for yourself which puts into question what you want to achieve and how. The Capstone will help you measure the challenge, establish a process and build the steps to meet your goals. Whatever personal challenge you choose, specific questions will attest to your capacity to analyze and criticize the the problem which is faced by by yourself. The process that will drive the Business plan will follow step by step the relational circuit model developed in MOOC2 “Giving Sense to your Leadership Experience” and MOOC3 “Leading Organizations” with its two phases of Exploration and Projection. In the EXPLORATION, you will engage in a first step of holistic perception of the problem using your sensible skills to give a sense of perspective and give voice to you subjective apprehension of the situation as a whole. The second stage of exploration will involve your analytical skills to understand each and every component (elements of data relevant to the challenge) that plays a role in defining the situation. And the third stage of exploration will apply your relational skills where you will make sense and connect your subjective perception with your analysis. You will share the exploration results with peers to receive feedback before your can move on. The second phase, the PROJECTION part of your business plan leading to recommendations for the personal challenge at stake. In the projection phase you will first look at what the situation might be when you decenter the problem in time and space. Using benchmark and competitive analysis, you will work on different scenarios for the projected outcomes. Finally, with a view to build sense out of the challenge you will come up with recommendations arguing for a preferred scenario.

• CAPSTONE: Introduction to the Capstone - Holistic Perception
• In this module, we will go through the 5 key steps of the Relational Circuit and see how each of them applies to your Personal challenge. We will describe specifically what personal is And by the end of this module you will have shared your perception of what the challenge entails, how YOU, and only YOU see it so you can narrow the scope of your challenge on the basis of your perspective.
• CAPSTONE: Disjunctive Analysis
• At the end of this module, you will understand the importance of gathering relevant data and how to avoid judgment so to keep the data intact for future exploitation.
• CAPSTONE: Relational Assimilation
• In this module, we will explore the process of connecting the dots that leads to sense making. We will see how management innovation research can help guide and structure this sense making process. We will see how the use of narrative can also help to develop a clear understanding of the situation, so it makes complete sense.
• CAPSTONE: Decentering
• With this module, we will explore how possible solutions emerge. You will prepare for the emergence of new solutions by using the "what if" approach and validate these new solutions through the use of a narrative in the timeframe your decide for your challenge. Your video will also be a chance for you to prove your leadership skills through the quality of your communication, your posture, your presence and your persuasive arguments and recommendations.
• CAPSTONE: Building Sense - part 1
• This is the first part of the last step toward completing your capstone. You will resolve your challenge by building sense and creating value. In this part, you will answer few questions about your ideas to resolve your Capstone challenge. In the second part (in next module), you will pull everything together in the form of a 5 minutes video.
• CAPSTONE: Building Sense - part 2 (video pitch)
• This is your last step toward completing your capstone where you will pull everything together in the form of a video presenting your ideas and sharing how by resolving your challenge you are building sense and creating value.