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Podcast

Learning through Experience

How can we learn from the experience we have to create a future that we want? This is the realm that much of Dr. Heidi Brooks’s work explores. As we navigate through life, she invites us to cultivate the capacity to learn through experience, and to apply the wisdom gained to co-create a future that is worth fighting for.

In season one of the Learning through Experience Podcast, Dr. Heidi Brooks focused on one of the most impactful ways to learn through experience: learning with mentors. She spoke with some of her mentors and they reflected on what brought them to where they are today in their own work, life, and play.

But in a podcast that proposes that learning can not only happen through conventional exposure to concepts and theories but also through what we experience in life, this second season is all about the HOW.
How do we learn through our own experience?

Dr. Heidi Brooks talks to artists, authors, professors, and even yoga instructors about four practices you can lean on to learn through experience. These four practices are: How to challenge your perspective, how to stretch yourself and build range, how to direct your own learning, and finally, the importance of reflection.

I hope you follow along and join us for season two of Learning Through Experience.

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Heidi Brooks

Heidi Brooks

Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behavior

Heidi Brooks teaches and advises on the subject of everyday leadership: the everyday micro-moments of impact that shape our lived experiences. Creating more courageous communities—especially within organizations—is a particular passion of hers. Dr. Brooks specializes in large-scale culture change projects focused on individual and collective leadership effectiveness in organizations.

Interpersonal Dynamics, the MBA elective she has taught for 15 years, is one of the courses most in demand at Yale School of Management. Dr. Brooks pioneered the Everyday Leadership course at SOM, where she first taught the Principles of Everyday Leadership. She has also taught Emotional Intelligence, Power & Politics, Managing Teams and Groups, and Coaching Skills for Managers. Dr. Brooks received her doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University. She is a lifelong experiential learner; you can find her as a student in classrooms as far-ranging as improvisational theater and immersion language lessons.

Episodes

Movement, Not Stasis: The Art and Journey of Kim Weston

Movement, Not Stasis: The Art and Journey of Kim Weston

Learning through experience is dynamic, not static. As you’ll hear in this episode with artist Kim Weston, her photography is a way of deepening understanding of ourselves and the world around us, seen and unseen. 

What If Art Could Transform How You Learn and Experience Life?

What If Art Could Transform How You Learn and Experience Life?

Learning through experience requires us to shift from the purely intellectual to a more holistic engagement. I try to create that shift by opening each of my leadership classes with some form of art—a poem, a piece of music or a visual work. It’s a way of helping my students, many of whom are management or law students, executives, or leaders in their fields, step out of their typical "brain-bound" mindset and into a space where they can let their thoughts, emotions and values guide their learning. For many, it’s an inconvenient and unfamiliar approach, but it’s exactly what I believe opens their minds and hearts to walking an unconventional path toward growth. 

Emotional Wisdom and the Permission to Feel
Learning to Learn

Learning to Learn

How can we overcome change and learn to create a better experience at work—for ourselves and our teams? To launch us into Season Three of Learning Through Experience, my first guest explores with me the pedagogy of hope and transformation, focusing on interpersonal and group dynamics.

Introducing Season 3 of Learning Through Experience

Introducing Season 3 of Learning Through Experience

Welcome to a new season of Learning Through Experience! This season will echo the cadence of one of my popular courses here at Yale since it is a learning through experience pedagogy. My conversations are with brilliant guests who help us think about how we learn through interpersonal and group experience from their area of expertise. This podcast is not just for students though—it’s for everyone who wants to co-create a future of work that is compelling, enlivening and worth fighting for. I’m glad you’re here!

The Need for Mindfulness, Reflection, and Inquiry in Our Busy World

The Need for Mindfulness, Reflection, and Inquiry in Our Busy World

Can a mindfulness practice help us at work? In a season focusing on how we learn through experience, I wanted to make sure that we heard about some of the social science that supports the practices. My guest on this episode has lived a fascinating life and has so much wisdom to share on this topic. 

Learning Is A Superpower When Change Is Constant

Learning Is A Superpower When Change Is Constant

How can we change and transform the education system through leadership? The Broad Center at the Yale School of Management fosters the ideas, policies, and leadership to help all students in K-12 public schools — particularly those from underserved communities — to learn and thrive. 

Reflective Practice Through Writing

Reflective Practice Through Writing

This podcast season is all about the HOW of learning through experience. We learn through experience using four core practices: challenging your perspective, stretching and building range, directing your learning, reflection and inquiry. The core practice that we are paying attention to in this episode of Learning Through Experience is reflection and inquiry

Find A Way… Letting Life Experience Call You in

Find A Way… Letting Life Experience Call You in

This season we've been taking on HOW to learn through experience which fundamentally challenges the brain-bound assumption that learning starts and stays in the brain. We aren't so great at honoring the wisdom, expertise, and leadership that emerges from lived experience, but our own life may guide us – especially if we tap into learning practices, like reflection and challenging our perspective.

Learning through The Extended Mind

Learning through The Extended Mind

Since this season of the podcast is all about the HOW of learning through experience, I wanted to talk to Annie Murphy Paul who basically wrote the book on learning outside the brain.