New Podcast from Prof. Heidi Brooks Focuses on ‘Learning through Experience’
In the new series, Brooks offers insights and encouragement and talks with guests about how they have learned their way through the many experiences of life.
Heidi Brooks, senior lecturer in organizational behavior at Yale SOM and the much-beloved teacher of courses like Interpersonal Dynamics and Everyday Leadership, has created a new podcast designed to help listeners “learn from the experience we have to create a future that we want.”
Brooks is the host of Learning through Experience, in which she offers insights and encouragement and talks with guests about how they have learned their way through the many experiences of life.
“When I think about one of the major challenges of our times, it’s being full of ideas and not being able to act on them. We can’t run a life by syllabus and read our way through life. I hope this podcast is itself a fun way of learning through experience,” she says. “It gives people ways to take on learning that goes beyond the conceptual and brain-bound and book-focused approach.”
In a society facing social, environmental, and political upheaval, she adds, a sense of curiosity and an openness to learning are valuable. “There are so many things that we’re facing now that can only be learned by going through them. This podcast will be a way to see how others are learning their way through experience, in the micro of every day and the macro across decades.”
In the podcast, she says, “I’ll talk with people about how they are engaging some of the tricks and tools that help us to enjoy productive learning through experience: Stretching ourselves and nudging towards possibility. Anchoring around purpose and values. Failing well. Getting some feedback from the world. And reflecting on what matters.”
The first season of Learning through Experience will focus on learning from mentors and on conversations with some of Brooks’s own mentors.