Organizational Behavior

Doing What You Love Doesn’t Always Pay for Women

Adriana Germano

New research from Yale SOM’s Adriana Germano shows how the seemingly gender-neutral advice to “follow your passion” helps explain the gender gap in lucrative STEM fields.

A woman following a sign pointing to "passion" at a fork in the road
Learning through Experience show art
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.

All Episodes

  • How Do You Hire When Everything Keeps Changing?

    Laszlo Bock

    How do companies with rapidly evolving business plans and a constantly shifting competitive landscape hire the right people for tomorrow, let alone next year? While education and training still matter, Laszlo Bock, head of people operations at Google, says that the company looks for people with the ability to learn, solve problems, and step in when leadership is needed.

    Illustration of several toolboxes with a focus on one with diverse tools

  • How Do Successful Firms Find the Right People?

    Placing the right people in the right role lets companies innovate and grow. But there’s no surefire way of getting the perfect fit. Some companies are turning to big data to solve this problem; some go with the gut to find creativity and judgment. Beth Axelrod, eBay’s head of human resources, explains how the company goes about finding and retaining the talent it needs.

    Illustration of a large arrow pointed up composed of many person icons

  • Study: Men Seeking Career Advancement Are Favored for Flextime

    Victoria L. Brescoll

    Managers are most likely to grant flextime to men in high-status jobs who request it to pursue career development opportunities, according to a new study by Professor Victoria Brescoll. Women, regardless of their status within a firm or their reason, are less likely than high-status men to be granted a schedule change.

  • Can you lead from the middle of a big corporation?

    Kevin Thompson Britta Rendlen Paul Tepfenhart Anupam Bhargava

    Managers from four global companies talk about how they launched social and environmental innovations within massive organizations.

  • What's the Google approach to human capital?

    Laszlo Bock

    Google's success depends on sustaining both generative chaos and precision output. Laszlo Bock, who heads the internet giant's human resources function—which it calls "People Operations"—talks about how it encourages employees to participate in running the company and builds effective teams.

  • What was Polaroid thinking?

    Polaroid went from ubiquity to obsolescence as digital photography replaced the print. But as early as the 1960s, Polaroid had been doing research into digital imaging. Did mistaken assumptions keep the company from making the transition to the digital world?