In a recent piece for the Harvard Business Review, Pat Wadors, Senior Vice President of Global Talent Organization at LinkedIn, argues that storytelling is key to belonging at work. Learn more about the case she makes for belonging. We also include stories on the key to listening well, employee-led learning, a poet-turned CEO, hope and living wisely.
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In May of this year, Cyrus Copeland won the Chautauqua Literary Prize for his book, Off the Radar: A Father’s Secret, A Mother’s Heroism, and a Son’s Quest. Part memoir, part history, part cultural exploration, Copeland recounts his father’s quiet 1979 imprisonment in Iran in the lee of the American Embassy hostage crisis. An American academic and Westinghouse contractor accused of smuggling and spying, Max Copeland’s life was skillfully saved by his brilliant Iranian wife, the first female “lawyer” in an Islamic court. Alternatively told through four sets of eyes – mother Shahin, father Max, contemporary Cyrus and adolescent Cyrus – this unassuming search to understand whether his late father was a CIA agent, and to better know the man whose full persona had eluded him, is gripping and entertaining. And strangely familiar.
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Noted Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner died this year in June at 100 years of age, in the same year that the world commemorates the centennial of the publication of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education. These two great educational thinkers have provided bookends for the vast change – and disturbing lack of change – that marks a century of thought on how people learn and develop. In Bruner’s obituary in the New York Times, Howard Gardner said, “He was the most important contributor to educational thinking since John Dewey – and there is no one like him today.”
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Books@Work participants tell us over and over that the sessions are a “great way to get to know your colleagues, your peers, on a totally different level” as well as “de-stress.” They highlight that the program “brings us all together in a different way.” Because I have such a varied work history – in food service, office jobs, caring for handicapped adults – I resonate with our participants when they tell us how valuable getting to know your colleagues is and how they look forward to moments of refreshment in the midst of a busy and demanding day.
Because of this, it has been a special pleasure to participate in Books@Work myself.
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Should companies help their employees learn? A recent article for the Harvard Business Review argues for lifelong learning in the workplace and offers three tips for cultivating it. We have this, as well as essays on meaningful work, book deserts, storytelling and literary quizzes in our most recent Weekend Reading.
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At Books@Work, we enjoy a great deal of exposure to wonderful books—and to the conversations and insights those books inspire.
In the spirit of summer reading, here are a few we and our participants have been enjoying recently. Why not try one and start a conversation yourself?
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The current issue of Harvard Business Review (July/August 2016) contains several articles explaining the reasons why workplace diversity programs simply don’t work. “Diversity training programs largely don’t change attitudes, let alone behavior,” writes Iris Bohnet, Director of the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and co-chair of its Behavioral Insights Group. “Start by accepting that our minds are stubborn beasts,” she explains. “It’s hard to eliminate our biases, but we can design organizations that make it easier for our biased minds to get things right.”
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Metaphors matter. They are not simply the stuff of Shakespearean drama or poetry or the SAT. We all use metaphors every day in an endless variety of ways. Metaphors are an essential element of how we think and engage with others at home, in our work and in all of our social interactions. But too often, we are unconscious of the metaphors we choose and the impact they may have on the quality of our life.
As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson observe, one powerful example is the way that many people describe argument as war and embellish that metaphor in extended metaphors.
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The past few weeks have offered us a lot to think about, including essays on how supporting parents helps foster noncognitive skills in young children, what makes work meaningful, and the power of poetry and listening. We’ve also included an essay on LeBron James and Homeric epic and a few unusual facts about reading.
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For most of my life I have believed in the power of literature to affect the human heart, but sometimes, a discussion of good literature provides an unexpected flash of understanding into the profound impact that stories can have. This week I had such an experience as each person in a room became a teacher and each person became a learner.
This flash occurred at the Veterans Domiciliary, a residential program that is jointly run by the Veteran’s Administration and the Volunteers of America, and that serves Veterans facing a variety of serious issues, including homelessness, trauma, addiction and other life-challenging hurdles.
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