Empower the Future

Gonzaga University Students
Get Down & Dirty with Local Master Gardeners

U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within introduces the Leadership Garden™ metaphor to represent a fresh perspective of leadership principles and practices.

In the summer of 2007, a newly created service-learning course at Gonzaga University, entitled the Leadership Garden, adopted my book as the required text. The course brought to life the Leadership Garden metaphor in a community garden in Otis Orchards, Washington where the produce was grown for the Spokane Valley Food Bank.

Course creator, Mark Beattie combined his passion for gardening and servant leadership. He used planting and tending of an actual garden and the personal leadership journaling exercises from the book, to help the students think globally and act locally while studying worldwide food and water issues.

Students involved in the course were nontraditional students over 25, most with families and working full-time while attaining degrees. One student remarked that “The text has been great. It gives you the opportunity for self-reflection to get rid of the weeds in your life . . . . It's neat to get out of the classroom, and do something.”

You can read the full article, A course in growing: GU Leadership Garden students get down and dirty in the Spokane-Review newspaper.

I had the pleasure of visiting the garden on June 23rd to share my vision and goal and present the students and Mark with Inaugural Leadership Gardener certificates and the official Leadership Garden sculpture pictured above. The book topic of the day was the Nurturing Meadow emphasizing the six-leader friendly gardening practices and the garden topic was to create and learn how to build compost with fresh manure from the horse pasture next door. We laughed about the connection to the two since I am out to prune gossip, eliminate blame, and eradicate victimization which you could say is the manure in the world’s Leadership Garden.

". . . I highly recommend [this] book because of its readability and its multiple applications both within and outside the classroom." – Mark A. Beattie, MBA, Director of Distance Learning, Gonzaga University

You Can Help

Writing and publishing U.N.I.Q.U.E: Growing the Leader Within has afforded me the opportunity support the work of Hands to Heart International (HHI); a nonprofit started by my former staff member Laura Peterson. Through her extraordinary vision and leadership she is sprouting the seeds of greatness in woman and orphaned children globally. Below is a brief description of her mission.

HHI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of orphaned children and economically disadvantaged women around the globe. HHI transforms orphanage care by training and then employing local women in the language, social, cognitive, and physical skills necessary for healthy early childhood development. Trainees learn how they can promote a child's growth in each area as well as the vital importance of attachment and bonding. Women hired by HHI provide individualized nanny-like care to two to four babies/children awaiting their adoptive families.

Please visit Laura’s web site: www.handstohearts.org. I promise it will warm your heart.