The School of Life

Most businesses run into trouble not through a lack of technical skills, but because they fail to appreciate the role that emotions play in determining whether or not a group of humans can work together effectively. That’s why we set up The School of Life at Work: a place for learning about and developing those critical human skills that define the success of individuals and teams. Watch our film to learn more about what we do – and discover all the different ways we can help to upskill your business. https://lnkd.in/eVU5jG56

Many of the problems we face at work stem from a failure to appreciate how others see us. The skill of self-awareness therefore plays a vital role in allowing us to play to our perceived strengths – and compensate for our weaknesses. Self-awareness is just one of the 60+ emotional skills we teach at The School of Life at Work. Follow the link to explore our curriculum and book one of our workshops today. https://lnkd.in/eVU5jG56

Today, businesses – and their people – have to learn continually, responding to change and innovation by staying agile. In a study involving over 1,100 enterprises and educators, adaptability was ranked as a crucial skill by more than 60% of employers. Fortunately, adaptability is a skill that we can all learn, to help us embrace change and grow our organisations. The School of Life at Work can support your employees through periods of transformative changes, with workshops and talks on topics including Managing Change, Adaptability, Purpose, Resilience and Curiosity as well as bespoke programmes. Get in touch to find out more: https://lnkd.in/eYgw9Ayi

Difficult Conversations is one of the 60 emotional skills that The School of Life at Work offers as a workshop or talk for your employees. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/ePEDV4E6

In the modern economy, some of the fundamental obstacles to the growth of businesses are related to the mindsets of employees. Enterprise is hampered by a number of psychological quirks that undermine efficiency, energy and harmony. The most hard-headed capitalist therefore has good incentives to address the psychological needs of those they have hired. The obstacles to a productive workplace are, in various ways, all versions of emotional immaturity. This means that knowing how to run a business at heart involves the challenge of helping employees to be more mature. To learn more about each of these obstacles, and ways of overcoming them, follow the link: https://lnkd.in/dC7yxnUB

Many of us begin the working week by making a to-do list: a catalogue of all the many tasks we hope to complete by its end. But there can be enormous benefits in making a different sort of commitment alongside: something to keep us focused on the big picture and the things that really matter in life. Each week, we’ll be suggesting a commitment to carry with you through the days ahead. A little reminder to yourself to keep your larger goals in mind and aid your wellbeing. Find out more about how The School of Life at Work partners with businesses to create better workplaces for all. https://lnkd.in/eVU5jG56

Like teenagers, young companies are prone to identity crises. It might take them a number of years – and involve passing through a few awkward and regrettable ‘phases’ – before they discover their true calling. If your organisation is struggling to align its culture with its values, and settle on a corporate identity, we have a number of learning journeys that might be right for you. Find out more. https://lnkd.in/duERxypC

Although collaboration – the extraordinary business of having to work with other people – is one of the major facts of modern life, it remains strangely unstudied and undiscussed as a formal topic. Our culture does not typically invite us to pay close and admiring attention to successful collaborative efforts, nor to immerse ourselves in learning the lessons from painful, failed joint ventures. We are – without being much aware of it – guided by a strong Romantic prejudice in favour of lone creators. This is where we focus our attention and derive our models of work from. The largest stories we tell ourselves about creating things concern artists, isolated actors who operate without relying on anyone other than themselves. And yet this neglect of collaboration is no inconsequential matter. Some failures around collaboration are due to procedural and practical problems. For example: meetings are scheduled at inconvenient times, the layout of a room doesn’t facilitate interaction, the management architecture of a corporation means that people in different departments find it really hard to understand one another; the email system doesn’t allow for group discussions… At The School of Life, our focus is slightly different. We’re interested in the psychological problems that get in the way of good collaboration. Our goal is to understand how organisations trip up even when the technology is in place, the architecture is pleasing and the staff have all the right qualifications on paper – because everyone is bringing what might be called ‘problems of character’ into the office with them. The root cause of a lot of difficulties in collaboration is nothing less than emotional. Emotional issues are not an incidental aspect of modern business; they are not a vague phenomenon that one might choose to worry about only when all other issues have been solved. No ambitious business can afford to ignore the momentous goal of improving levels of emotional maturity. To learn more, click the link here: https://lnkd.in/efGiNfe9

What makes a good communicator? We might assume it comes down to how gifted we are with language. But the best communicators aren’t usually those with the prettiest phrases. They’re those who grasp a fundamental truth: how difficult it is to make others understand our own thoughts. Good communicators are good teachers: they understand how to patiently convey a complex idea or demand in the simplest terms. By contrast, bad communicators and teachers often have a clear enough picture in their minds of what they want, but lack a corresponding awareness of how hard it is for others to know the contents of their minds. They automatically assume that others know. To shake ourselves from this assumption, we might look closely at an image of a rock. Find a colleague who hasn’t seen it and try to describe it to them in as much detail as we can, detailing shape, texture, formation and so on. After a few moments, we should then show them the image and ask them to rate (on a scale of 1–10) how well we conveyed what the rock looks like. This can be a useful lesson in the challenges of explaining to others what is in our minds even when (or precisely because) the information is clear to us. In the age of hybrid working, now more than ever we need to communicate directly and serenely, as an ideal teacher would. Book a call with our team and find out how The School of Life at work can help build better communication and collaboration in hybrid work environments https://lnkd.in/dJ_aP6Dq

Many of us begin the working week by making a to-do list: a catalogue of all the many tasks we hope to complete by its end. But there can be enormous benefits in making a different sort of commitment alongside: something to keep us focused on the big picture and the things that really matter in life. Each week, we’ll be suggesting a commitment to carry with you through the days ahead. A little reminder to yourself to keep your larger goals in mind and aid your wellbeing. Find out more about how The School of Life at Work partners with businesses to create better workplaces for all. https://lnkd.in/eVU5jG56