Happy Friday! We’ve scoured the web for thought-provoking articles and essays for you to enjoy over the weekend.
In The Atlantic, Bouree Lam interviews Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of the book Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life which looks at “how companies and employees can acknowledge uncomfortable experiences and react appropriately.” How can negative emotions like grief, fear or resentment actually benefit our workplaces?
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Happy Friday! We’ve scoured the web for thought-provoking articles and essays for you to enjoy over the weekend.
In the Paris Review, Benjamin Ehrlich writes about neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal and his early and fervent predilection for reading fiction. Cajal’s father earned a medical degree after a “grueling life” as the son of peasant farmers. He later despised all literary culture, allowing only medical books in the house. Cajal, however, had other ideas. How did reading fiction shape the mind of “the father of modern neuroscience”?
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The interrogative is a dying form – not only of grammatical expression but of life. At a time when efficiency and productivity seem the driving forces of culture, it makes sense that emphasis should lie on the generation of answers rather than the formulation of questions. Answers, after all, mean closure – answers grant one permission to put one thing to rest and move on to the next, and that seems the very definition of progress. Questions, on the other hand, are messy, imprecise things that tend toward the propagation of their own kind, leading ad-infinitum to heaven knows where.
How do we get a group of strangers during a Books@Work session- many of whom do not consider themselves “readers” and for whom being in a room with an English professor evokes unpleasant classroom memories – to embrace their vulnerabilities and enter into an interrogative mindset?
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We recently had the chance to speak with Professor Robin Zebrowski, an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at Beloit College. Among other things, she studies artificial intelligence and embodiment. Robin recently read and discussed science fiction as the facilitator of a Books@Work session with a group of engineers. We asked her to share her experience: What in particular does science fiction bring to discussions in the workplace?
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Forbes outline nine leadership lessons about workplace diversity and inclusion that we can learn from this year’s top-grossing Oscar nominee “Hidden Figures.” One tip from the movie that leaders can put into action? Removing obstacles for your workers:
“After realizing that Katherine Goble (played by Taraji P. Henson) had to spend half an hour walking across Langley each time she needed to use the bathroom, Al Harrison (played by Kevin Costner) uses a crowbar to smash down the sign that identifies the only bathroom at Langley reserved for women of color. In so doing, he effectively removes a significant obstacle to make Goble’s work easier. And, as is often the case, by identifying and fixing the problem for one person, he removed an obstacle that was impacting a large number of talented people.”
What other obstacles can we remove to foster a more diverse and inclusive workplace?
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I recently had the chance to speak with Professor Sabine Ferran Gerhardt about her experience leading several programs with Books@Work. Sabine is an Associate Professor at the University of Akron, where she specializes in Criminology and Justice Studies, with an emphasis on the children of incarcerated parents and school shooter prevention. Sabine found that reading and discussing texts in the workplace – even texts we don’t like – can be a transformative experience. How can a book we’re not sure about bring us closer to our colleagues?
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In the maelstrom of New Year’s media activity, the pervasive hand wringing about the past year and angst about the future seem unavoidable. At a recent holiday gathering, a family member suggested that as an antidote, we might each try to think of a word or two – a mantra of sorts – that might guide each of us in the coming year. After playing with that idea for the past week, I keep coming back to the art of critical thinking as my mantra for 2017.
“Critical thinking” is one of those phrases that gets used often, but that seems to defy definition. Why do we struggle to both define and implement critical thinking in our daily lives?
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I recently spoke with Professor Homero Galicia about his experience leading the first bilingual Books@Work program in a Texas manufacturing plant – he and the participants read and discussed literature in both Spanish and English. A native of Texas and a graduate of Stanford University, Homero has worked to promote dialogue in a number of settings – and he found that using literature as a platform for a bilingual discussion provided a unique experience. How can a bilingual Books@Work program help colleagues share their personal experiences and ideas?
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This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of John Dewey’s classic book, Democracy and Education. While much has changed in the last century, much has not: his voice continues to inspire us today as we think about the role that adult learning can play in shaping democracy. Dewey’s lesser-known friend and colleague, Jane Addams, provides important practical perspectives as she combined theory and practice in work that shaped the lives of individual people in Chicago and far beyond for many decades.
Dewey and Addams believed that democracy depends on providing opportunities and resources for every person to build his/her own capacity to contribute to the work at hand in their families, in the workplace and in the larger community.
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