I’m Dr. Heidi Brooks. Last season of the podcast, Learning Through Experience, I focused on learning through the experience of mentorship and the guests were all my mentors in one way or another.

In a podcast that lifts up that learning can not only happen through conventional exposure to concepts and theories but also through what we experience in life, the second season is all about the HOW.

How do we learn through experience?

I’m talking to artists, authors, professors, and even yoga instructors about four practices I decided to focus on in learning 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 me for season two of Learning Through Experience. 

Ok, Season 1 of Learning Through Experience is a wrap. (Woohoo!) I am learning a ton through the experience of podcasting- it’s much more fun and definitely more work than I expected!    This short episode is a check-in. One of the core practices in learning through experience is reflection, so this short podcast episode is a check-in on my own learning through the experience of podcasting.   It’s a way to share my learning in public, which feels slightly rebellious in a world that seems so committed to presenting finished products and hiding the human process.   In this episode, I talk with a key partner and internal staff member Valerie Belanger about Season 1. We talk about what fun and ease and connection might look like in the podcast production process; learning in public, space-making and impact.   Thanks for listening to the first season—just love your wonderful company and encouraging words. I hope you will stay subscribed and stay with me as we welcome new guests and topics in the next season, which is focused on the how we can learn through experience. Happy new year!

I love this episode with Rhona Weinstein! It’s about coming full circle, working for what you dream about and how all people exist in context. Part of that context can include the experience of inspiring mentorship.

Read an automated transcript of this episode.

I have a very clear memory of chasing Robin Rose down the hallway at college and asking her: “How can I be like you when I grow up?” I was fascinated with the way she invited people to step into learning through personal experience. Since most of my idea of learning involved lectures and assignments, this approach was refreshing and evocative. Discovering the power of learning through reflection on experience was a fundamental shift for me—and I never turned back. In this conversation, we discuss learning laboratories, the need for risk, and how leadership is, at its core, an art form.  

Read an automated transcript of this episode.

Learning through experience is an everyday practice — as Bill Torbert knows well. In this episode, he speaks about the power of surrendering to the part of us that is quite a “numbskull.” 

Read an automated transcript of the episode.

In this episode, family systems experts Phil and Carolyn Cowan talk with grace and wisdom about their process of confronting aspects of family dynamics that they experienced but did not wish to pass on. If there’s one thing you take away from our conversation, let it be this: pay attention to your story.

Read an automated transcript of this episode. 

In order to learn through experience, our doing needs a good pairing with reflective inquiry into what’s working.    Now that we’re halfway through the first season of “Learning through Experience,” I wanted to pause and take time to walk the talk. In this “check-in” episode, I share a bit of my reflection on what I am learning through the experience of podcasting. 

Read an automated transcript.

In this episode, I spoke with Karen Kimsey-House about transformational learning and how to reinvent yourself. When I was coming out of my PhD studies, I was wandering in my own wilderness, trying to find my way. Wondering what else I could do besides clean my house to avoid my dissertation, I enrolled in the Coach Training Institute. And that’s how I met Karen, who eventually became my personal coach, teacher, and dear friend. 

Karen is the co-founder of the Co-Active Training Institute. Today, it’s the largest in-person coach training organization in the world, delivering courses in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.  

Karen has been my personal coach, my teacher in a long-term immersion leadership program, a dear friend, and most importantly for the context of this podcast of Learning Through Experience, a mentor.

Key Topics:

03:19 Co-active coaching: The client-centered coaching process that coaches the person, not the problem, and believes that we all have within us what we need to thrive in this world;

10:48 Reinventing yourself: Difficult times and missed opportunities may be calls to learn through experience and maybe even reinvent yourself;

17:33 Get curious about the process: Discover what works for you on your journey of life, what allows you to quiet the world and hear your own internal voice;

22:01 Redefining leadership: Moving away from a certain kind of leadership that doesn’t harness and unleash our full human potential;

24:03 Transformational learning: Creating a learning system that changes the operating system of people and allows them to see the world in a fundamentally different way;

33:25 Racial justice: Sometimes the best thing you can do for DEI is to be as curious as possible about our differences and be willing to engage in difficult conversations.

Additional Resources from Karen

Book: Co-Active Coaching: The Proven Framework for Transformative Conversations at Work and in Life by Henry Kimsey-House, Karen Kimsey-House, Phillip Sandahl, Laura Whitworth

Website

In this episode, I spoke with Parker Palmer about the connection between teaching and learning, healing the heart of democracy, and following the path of integrity.

I’ve been reading Parker J Palmer’s books for years. He's the author of 10 books about education, community leadership, spirituality, and social change. Three of these particularly resonated with my own experience:  Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. and one of them stood out as the scariest book I had ever read.

Parker J. Palmer is also the founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal.

Key Topics:

03:33 The interplay of aging and vocation: How to keep learning through experience with the limitations that come with age;

09:38 The connection between teaching and learning: Teaching as an expert with relatively static knowledge versus teaching as a more dynamic process;

13:34 The community of truth: How we know what we know and the validity of our knowledge;

19:53 The scariest book I had ever read: Why this book resonated so deeply and prompted a perspective shift around leadership, epistemology, faithfulness, and effectiveness;

29:12 Putting wheels on ideas: Creating a vehicle that will allow other people to ride an idea and reshape it as they go toward destinations of their own choosing;

35:43 Following the path of integrity: Despite our greatest ambitions and clear intentions to live a life of virtue aligned with our values, it can be hard in practice.

Additional Resources from Parker

Website

Facebook

Not everything we learn in college comes from the classroom. When you think about learning and insights that have mattered most to you, you may find that the most powerful associations include people, events, feelings and places.   Barbara Tannenbaum and her living room came easily to mind for me when thinking about when and where I learned through experience. Barbara taught one of the most popular courses on campus. So why the living room image? Barbara would invite some students into her home for gathering circles in her living room — and I feel lucky to have been one of them. Her living room — outside the walls of my college classrooms — is an important marker in my ongoing learning journey. 

I love how we all have the chance to learn outside the classroom (because that’s most of life). In this episode, we discuss power talk, removing linguistic anchors, and why when we have more voice, we welcome more beauty. 

Read an automated transcript of this episode.