At a well-attended MBA Workshop Friday night August 10, 2018, Eric Zackrison spoke to a captivated group of MBA students, faculty, and community members about the importance of knowing who we are. If we are able to understand our assets and our natural behavioral, we are better able to interact with others and form meaningful relationships, both in and outside of the workplace.
“People do things differently not because they are wrong, but because they see things differently,” Zackrison emphasized. “This is not a liability, but an asset.”
He went on to describe the three key assumptions of effective leaders:
1) We all have natural behavior styles (personality)
2) Much of our behavior is natural (unconscious)
3) People interact with our behavior, not our intentions
He explained that even if we have good intentions, our behavior is what communicates our intentions to others. He prompted the audience to engage in hands-on learning exercises in which they explored their own behavior styles, including their communication directivity and interpersonal affiliation.
Zackrison has been teaching, training, and consulting in Santa Barbara for the last five years after a 25-year career as a restaurateur and manager in Missouri. His work focuses on team building and leadership with an emphasis on managing relationships positively. His published research indicates that workplace relationships are at the core of coordinated teams and organizations. His work embraces the understanding that we have diverse ways of interacting and empowers people to manage those differences to be more effective.
Watch a quick interview with Zackrison before the workshop began about his presentation.
Karen Hamilton ’17 (Antioch Los Angeles, MA) is Antioch's Director of Marketing for Content and Communications. She has used her storytelling and copywriting skills for more than twenty years, crafting articles and creating publications. She believes that communication is a powerful driver for social change.
