Two prominent leaders call for cooperation to confront the challenge of both the coronavirus pandemic and the climate emergency. But to work together in harmony, we have to face up to the brute facts of our need to belong, our tendency to create “them” over against “us”, and our habit of allowing disagreement to escalate into conflict.
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Business studies have long emphasised the importance of ‘people management’ to business success. And EQ and so-called ‘soft skills’ are widely recognised as important attributes for managers and leaders.
But recent claims by evolutionary psychologists challenge the unspoken assumption that the human ability to reason is a superior capability of individuals, enabling them to think better on their own. If that were true, the argument goes, how strange it is flawed and keeps leading people astray through a long and growing list of inherent biases. Instead, they propose that reason is a social attribute that permits groups to arrive collectively at higher-quality decisions.
If this is true, then surely then the art and craft of thinking together is essential to effective performance whether led by a skilled external facilitator, or as a communally developed skill shared by a group, family, organization or community. The implications for management practice are extensive.
How six books on cosmology, human nature, consciousness, stories and thermodynamics challenge the faith of a progressive Christian.
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A groundbreaking, comprehensive program for designing effective and socially equitable groups of all sizes—from businesses and social justice groups to global organizations.
Whether you work in business or schools, volunteer in neighborhoods or church organizations, or are involved in social justice and activism, you understand the enormous power of groups to enact powerful and lasting change in the world. But how exactly do you design, build, and sustain effective groups?
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Learning is the soul of our species. From our first steps to our last words, we are what we learn. But for all its obvious importance, learning has lost touch with human progress. We live in an information age, work in a knowledge economy, yet our schools are relics of an industrial era. Education insider Alex Beard takes us on a dazzling tour of the future of learning to show how we can – and why we must – do better. Tackling everything from artificial intelligence to our growing understanding of the infant brain, Natural Born Learners is a user’s guide to transforming learning in the twenty-first century and roadmap to accessing our better future selves.
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