Understanding & Managing Motivations: Uncovering Potentials

Explore how ethical decisions are made and the motivations of the people you work with through the lens of fine arts. Analyze the motivations at play in selected works to develop strategies for asking yourself productive questions.
Upcoming Start Date: Spring 2025
Location: UT Austin

This certificate program consists of three required courses (listed below) and one elective course option.

This certificate is comprised of four single-day courses.

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Description

How can the subject of moral and ethical behavior be taught and understood?

How can leaders better understand the competing motivations their colleagues are balancing?

Art provides concrete but fictional scenarios that help us to understand how ethical decisions are made and to see how ethics and leadership intersect in the real world. Participants in this course will use human expressive works (drama, painting, and film) to ask the questions: “What is the nature of an ethical challenge?” “How can people reason ethically?” and “How is ethical leadership different from any other kind?”

Drawing upon specific examples, participants will examine their own emotional and personal responses as they face difficult decisions. Through a systematic approach to assessing competing motivations in context, participants will also develop workable definitions of ethical leadership. The course will focus on intersectionality, empathy, and vulnerability.

Learning Objectives

Gaining a business advantage is one good reason to reflect on artistic works, but understanding the motivations of the people you work with is equally as important. Through careful analysis of the motivations and identities at play in the selected works, participants will develop strategies for asking themselves productive questions. These questions will generate positive outcomes from conflictual situations in which misunderstood and competing ethical and personal agendas might otherwise lead to negative, or even tragic, consequences.

The goal is to develop an attentiveness to those patterns of motivational conflict which might jeopardize the health and productivity of the organization and/or community in question. Hands-on experience with analyzing fictional conflicts allows participants to develop their own strategies for responding to real-life tensions and pressures in a self-aware and constructive manner.

Certificate Requirements

Information

Details & Registration

Time: 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 0.6 CEUs will be awarded upon completion of this program (six hours of instruction)

One-Day Seminar Pricing:

Registration fee includes all course materials, catering (lunch and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.

  • Standard Registration: $1,000
  • UT System Staff/Alumni Registration: $750
  • Educator, Nonprofit, Government, Military Registration: $750

Get employer support! We’ve gathered resources to help you make the case for your employer to support your HDO education.

If you have questions prior to registering, please see our Professional Training FAQ or contact Andrew M. Vasquez, HDO’s Enrollment & Success Coordinator at hdo-pro@austin.utexas.edu.

Course Leader(s)

Photo of Elizabeth Richmond-Garza

Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Ph.D.

Elizabeth Richmond-Garza is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching theatre, aesthetics, and fine arts at UT Austin. She also teaches the “Organizational Diversity” course in the HDO Master’s Program. She is the Director of the Program in Comparative Literature and was previously chief administrative and financial officer of the American Comparative Literature Association.

Dr. Richmond-Garza holds degrees from U. C. Berkeley, Oxford University, and Columbia University and has held both Mellon and Fulbright Fellowships. She works actively in eight foreign languages and is renowned for her creative, multi-media approach to teaching. Among other honors, she has been awarded the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award, the 16th annual Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship, and the Minnie Piper Stevens Teaching Award. She was elected to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2004 and was awarded the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2009. She has also offered a series of lectures at the Menil Art Gallery and is regularly invited as a speaker in Dallas, Austin, and Houston.


Who Should Participate

 

  • Senior/Executive Leadership
  • Middle Management
  • Team Leaders & Supervisors
  • Human Resources/Recruiting Directors & Managers
  • Consultants tasked with identifying organizational and/or leadership challenges
  • Any individual or team that faces daily decisions about personnel and information management, decisions that rely upon balancing personal convictions, identity politics, and institutional demands
Testimonial

Dr. Richmond-Garza was highly engaging and able to transmit an incredible amount of material to us in only a day’s time. The organization of the material and use of theater techniques was very interesting and useful. This seminar will enable me to pursue a more cognizant and consistent approach to understanding motivation.

Francis Tsang

Lead Clinical Informaticist, Ascension Health

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