The Center for Leadership Development recently hosted the second BEAR Talk of the semester, featuring a presentation on leadership and perspective-taking from professor Leslie Zorwick of Hendrix College.
Professor Zorwick’s presentation, entitled “Developing Inclusive Communities and Better Leaders Through Perspective Taking,” argued the importance and usefulness of diversity and inclusion in the context of leadership.
“When I got asked to give this talk and think about what I might have to say from psychology that talks about leadership, the first thing I thought of is perspective taking and how important it is to try to think about things from other people’s perspectives,” Zorwick said. “We don’t recognize the things that don’t stick out to us, right? That’s why we need other people.”
Zorwick is a professor of psychology at Hendrix College where she conducts research in various topics relating to stereotypes, diversity and identity.
“What we don’t talk about enough is that, y’all, diversity makes us make way better decisions, like, measured in so many different ways in so many different situations because diversity is how we get new perspectives to fill in our blind spots,” Zorwick said.
After Zorwick’s presentation ended, Steven Shook, director for student leadership and one of the organizers of the workshop, instructed audience members to pair off and talk about what they learned from the presentation.
“I love this topic just because it can be applied in so many areas,” junior Courtney Clawson said. “Just being more aware of [perspectives] and being like ‘What’s your perspective on that? What do you think about this?’”
Clawson is a member of LEAD Team, a program run by the Center for Leadership Development made up of students that run the BEAR Talks as well as provide leadership training for registered student organizations, faculty and staff.
The event concluded with a quick question and answer session with Zorwick after which everyone was welcome to stay and network and enjoy the refreshments provided by the LEAD Team.
The BEAR Talks Workshop Series consists of several workshops or presentations held every semester with the goal of developing students’ leadership skills. This BEAR Talk, the second of the semester, was held at UCA Downtown and saw several Hendrix students in the audience in addition to the UCA students in attendance.
Professor Zorwick’s presentation is available to view on YouTube via a link on the BEAR Talks page on uca.edu.
The previous BEAR Talk, which featured UCA Director of Professional Development and Training Charlotte Strickland, is also available via the same uca.edu page.
Students interested in attending a BEAR Talk in the future can catch the next and final talk of the semester on Monday, April 4 at noon in the Ronnie Williams Student Center. UCA student success coordinator Marvin Williams will be giving a presentation entitled “Procrastination Problem? Grin and Bear It! Leaders Get It Done!”