Culture and Experiential Learning (with Dr. Soren Kaplan)

The Mark Divine Show

Rapid learning is important, and seeing that there is no such thing as failure. That doesn’t mean you don’t fail. It just means you see failure as an opportunity to learn.

Culture is a buzzword many of us don’t know how to define. Award-winning and best-selling author Dr. Soren Kaplan(@Dr.SorenKaplan) has made it one of his missions to educate individuals and companies on how to be a high-level cooperative culture. Dr. Kaplan is a columnist for Inc Magazine and an affiliate at The Center for Effective Organizations at USC’s Marshall School of Business. He's led strategy and innovation at HP, Hewlett Packard. And advises and delivers leadership programs to thousands of executives around the world.

Best-selling author of the groundbreaking book Experiential Intelligence Dr. Soren Kaplan (@Dr.SorenKaplan) has found that everyone has dormant gifts that can be utilized in the workplace. Soren’s work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, CNBC, NPR, Strategy & Leadership, The International Handbook on Innovation, and many other academic and popular business media. At the age of 13, he won the first-ever video game contest on the Commodore 64 computer.

“ Create mentoring opportunities, create an innovation team. You don't want just the season people on it. You want the young, new, you know, kind of up-and-comers in it. And that diversity of age as well and experience is also important.”

- Dr. Soren Kaplan

Key Takeaways:

• Cross-Generational Mentorship: There is a huge exodus of people in their 60s leaving the workforce that takes a vast amount of skills and knowledge with them. It is important for companies and individuals to rethink the retirement and onboarding of new talent. The wise thing to do is pair the older generations with the younger ones through mentorship and coaching so that the skills and knowledge of those leaving the workforce get passed down.

• Defining Culture: Culture can be an amorphous term. Culture is, at its root, the norms and values that shape behavior. And those norms and values oftentimes fly under the radar. Defining or creating culture is a simple cycle; People have experiences, and those experiences shape their beliefs about right or wrong behavior. These beliefs shape people’s behavior. Leaders can intervene and create new and different experiences for people and allow the art of communication, discovery, and interaction to lead the team to define their culture.

• Going Deep Increases Productivity: Whether we are aware of it or not, we all bring our whole selves to work. In order to increase productivity letting go of the old model of compartmentalizing who you are or have to be at work is liberating and increases productivity. Many people have hidden abilities and talents that are not listed on their resumes. Getting to know the people you work with or work for and their untapped abilities increases creativity and job retention.

• Experiential Learning: In essence, we all have to practice coping while growing up. The street or social smarts we develop as we live build skills that can be applied to that 10,000 Hour Rule, whether we're doing formal or informal stuff. This experiential learning is an opportunity to acknowledge informal skills that get overlooked. And companies can leverage them if they let go of some of the old rules of what an applicant should have on their resume.

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Links for Dr. Soren Kaplan:

Website

Twitter

Experiential Intelligence Book