“I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am HAL 9000 computer.” A New Year’s Eve day Wall Street Journal article titled “The Tech to Rock Your 2015” caused me to have a flashback to the above quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey because of how much computers are expected to learn this coming year. A section of the article describes how virtual assistants such as Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana will become more intelligent and useful to us in 2015 by acquiring more information from you and me about what we like to do (via calendars), what we seek to study and learn (via Web searches), what music we enjoy listening to when we drive (via cars), where we go (via GPS location) and how we feel (via monitoring our bodies). Such learning about our likes, desires and feelings is called predictive intelligence and … in the words of HAL, “I’m afraid.” I’m not afraid that computers are learning predictive intelligence but I am afraid that our technology will spend more time learning about social and emotional well being than our children will in 2015. Our technology will be better but will we say the same for our schools and communities?
We need a Moore’s Law for humanity as there is for technology, especially with respect to social emotional learning (SEL). Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors in a computer doubles every two years, thereby doubling a computer’s processing speed/power every two years. Instead of having a Moore’s Law in social, emotional and cognitive development, we seem to be following (with some exceptions) a Less Law. While we devote less and less time in school to creative arts, recess, phys-ed and other activities that strengthen SEL as well as cognitive development (see the previous blog entry titled Playing for Academic Success), we have seen a 66% increase in ADHD diagnoses since 2000 according to Northwestern University and a 20.7% increase in reported bullying since 2003 (first year that bullying was statistically tracked) by the National Center for Education Statistics. While America has increased ADHD diagnoses and school bullying incidents, our test scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have flat-lined during the same time period. If we can build technological systems that continually improve upon themselves, we can build an education system that does the same for ourselves.
Technology, despite flashbacks to HAL, can help. As Jeremy Howard discusses in his TEDxBrussels talk (“The Wonderful & Terrifying Implications of Computers that Can Learn”) and Nicholas Carr writes in The Wall Street Journal (“Automation Makes Us Dumb”), computers and humans have and can continue to work together to better humanity. However, we have used technology more to silo and weaken than to interconnect and strengthen ourselves. How many times have you seen a group of people face first into their smart technology when they could be face-to-face with smart people right around them? We have focused, in Carr’s terminology, too much on “technology-centered automation,” which “emphasizes the needs of technology over those of humans,” instead of on “human-centered automation,” which “guides progress onto a more humanistic path.” We are even coining words for when technology interferes with human interactions such as “textruption,” which is “an interruption of a conversation caused by a text message.” When technology is human-centered, however, the results can be life saving (i.e., nanotechnology is being used to help cancer and burn patients) and mind altering (i.e., read any neuroscience article on neuroplasticity). More simply, in classrooms where technology is gamified for learning, I’ve seen students who rarely participate in class use technology as a conduit for generating the courage needed to engage their peers in debates and discussions about difficult concepts.
We may know more about each other because of technology but we are not yet using it to better understand or care for each other in ways that make our communities stronger. In 2014, Harvard’s Graduate School of Education released a study finding that nearly 80% of middle and high school students rank their own achievement and happiness over caring for others. On a more local note, a regional paper in the Newtown, CT area reported on a district-wide school climate survey showing that “Despite the counseling and mental health resources made available after the Sandy Hook tragedy…concerns about physical, social and emotional security were still acute.” Meanwhile, one of the country’s leading newspapers reports that technology is becoming more advanced by learning about our social and emotional well being. If anyone or anything is keeping score of the social emotional learning tally between technology and humanity, we should probably keep the answer behind HAL’s closed “pod-bay doors” until we walk a more humanistic path with technology.
“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use,” stated HAL (a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer created on 12 January 1992 in the movie), “which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.” Can we say the same about ourselves in 2015? Maybe this is the year we learn something human from the technology we created.
Carr, Nicholas, “Automation Makes Us Dumb,” The Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2014).
Fowler, Geoffrey A. and Joanna Stern, “The Tech to Rock Your 2015,” The Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2014).
Howard, Jeremy, “The Wonderful and Terrifying Implications of Computers that Can Learn,” TEDxBrussels (December 2014).
Hutson, Nanci, “Newtown School Survey Suggests Concern for Social/Emotion Security” NewsTimes (September 24, 2014).
National Center for Education Statistics, “Student Reports of Bullying and Cyber-Bullying,” (August 2013).
Weissbound, Rick, Stephanie Jones, Trisha Ross Anderson, Jennifer Kahn and Mark Russell, “The Children We Mean to Raise: The Real Messages Adults are Sending about Values,” Making Caring Common Project (Cambridge, MA: The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2014).
White, Erin, “Diagnosis of ADHD on the Rise,” Northwestern University News Center (March 19, 2012).
Zimmer, Ben, “You Heard ‘Em Here First: Words of 2015,” The Wall Street Journal (January 2, 2015).
‘Work hard, play hard’ and ‘work hard or go home’ are bumper sticker slogans that may help achieve success on the field but not in the classroom. Recent research and books on learning suggest editing the first slogan to ‘work hard, play harder’ if we want to create academic environments that help students succeed. In America’s education system, however, we have focused exclusively on work to such an extent that play is being excluded from school. Most American school districts have either reduced or eliminated recess, phys-ed and other playtime to allocate more time for work focused on studying and taking standardized tests.
The importance of play in successful learning has been highlighted and demonstrated by ancient scholars (i.e., Plato), modern neuroscientists (i.e., William Klemm) and the top test scoring countries in the world (i.e., Finland). American education leaders have ignored the evidence for the play-learning nexus by placing their heads in the proverbial sand when they should be building more sandboxes for students at all academic levels. Learning sandboxes range from wooden sandboxes at recess time for elementary schoolchildren to Makerspaces for middle and high school students to virtual online sandboxes for college students. “Play,” according to Diane Ackerman (the public science writer of The Human Age and 23 other books), “is our brain’s favorite way of learning.”
Our brain’s favorite way of learning is being removed from American schools. “When I was in elementary school,” states Peter Gray (author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Live), “in the 1950s, we had six-hour school days: two hours of outdoors playing per day, half hour in the morning, half hour during lunch, and a full hour in the afternoon.” Today, the national average is twenty-six minutes of recess and Connecticut, my home state, only “recommends” 20 minutes (in addition, my three boys—ages 7, 9 & 11—are given less than 20 minutes for lunch each school day). There are less than a handful of states that even require daily recess. In contrast, Finland—always at the top or near the top of international test scores—provides a 15-minute break every 45 minutes for students during the school day.
The demise of play in American schools has been linked by Peter Gray and others to a decline in cognitive and social skills as well as an increase in mental disorders. William Klemm, professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, recently summarized several studies on the importance of play writing that “When members of a play-oriented species [such as humans] are denied access to juvenile play, they can become dysfunctional adults…Juvenile play sculpts the brain to be more adaptable later in life. In modern human society, juvenile play is often obstructed by such externals as over-scheduling, too much adult supervision, and too many restrictions…In this respect, the ‘good old days’ really were the good old days.” Elementary school students need their play for cognitive and social-emotional learning and we, as a society, need to provide them with the playtime necessary for their development into functional adults. Increasing time for recess is not only healthy for our children but our communities.
“Do not,” Plato said, “keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” Yes, even Plato knew about the importance of play in education. One of the most creative ways to “keep children to their studies by play” is to build time into middle and high school curricula for using a Makerspace (a.k.a. Hackerspace). A Makerspace is an area where students learn through experimental play with technology and ideas under the guidance of teachers and other experts in the community. It is a space where students play with concepts learned in the classroom for the purpose of bringing their ideas to life via a 3D printer, software code, plasma cutter and other tools. In the words of the Makerspace Playbook: “Making is innovative and resourceful. Makers build off the idea of others and choose the best tools for the job…They identify their own challenges and solve new problems. Making provides ample opportunities to deeply understand difficult concepts. Makers seek out STEM content to improve their projects, and they cross disciplines to achieve their goals, rather than staying within one specialty.” A Makerspace is where Einstein’s idea of combinatory play is figuratively and literally brought to life.
If a community or school district does not have the resources to immediately setup a Makerspace, a relatively inexpensive way of incorporating play into the curriculum is by gamifying parts of classes. Game-based learning occurs through low-tech ways such as the collaborative geography game called Galactic Mappers (seen in the video via Edutopia noted below) to high-tech options such as Statecraft.sim, which I used in my International Relations course this past semester. Assessing student learning is not only more enjoyable for the students as compared to standardized tests but my experience shows that their learning is deeper and more enduring.
The U.S. education system is using sand exclusively for building sand timers (for tests) rather than using it to build imaginations and engage students in learning. The system is focused on turning over sand timers rather than turning on students to learning. Since I’m at the tail end of the argument, let’s go back to one of the bumper sticker slogans I started with to sum it all up: ‘go hard or go home.’ School leaders will have to ‘go’ a little harder to work play into their curricula or send their students ‘home’ knowing that they are less cognitively, emotionally and socially prepared for the real world than they could and should be.
Cordell, Sigrid Anderson, “Nixing Recess: The Silly, Alarmingly Popular Way to Punish Kids,” The Atlantic (October, 2013).
Edutopia, “Building Formative Assessment into Game-Based Learning,” YouTube (May 13, 2014).
Klemm, William, “The Neuroscience of Why Children Play,” Psychology Today blog, Memory Medic (December 12, 2014).
Klemm, W.R., Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014).
Korbey, Holly, “Despite Benefits, Recess fro Many Students is Restricted,” MindShift, KQED blog (July 26, 2013).
Makerspace Playbook: School Edition (Spring 2013).
Solomon, Andrew, “Go Play Outside,” New York Times Book Review of A Country Called Childhood by Jay Griffiths (December 14, 2014): p 26-27.
Cartoon © Phil Watson. Used with permission.
An all-or-nothing person; you know the type. Everything is black-or-white and it’s their way or the highway. As coaches, they may rack up a few W’s in the win column but as educators and leaders, they lose sight of how effective learning happens. The all-or-nothing believers and debaters in education are blind to what works in learning because they refuse to see the different shades of gray between their black-or-white ways of thinking. Education is all about the gray matter. The science of learning is in their blind spot. Two of the biggest blind spots in education are testing and memorization.
The two all-or-nothing education camps on testing that garner the most attention in social and traditional media are those who believe standardized tests are important for academic achievement as well as accountability and should be administered every year (i.e., the No Child Left Behind advocates) and those who believe there should be no tests (i.e., the Free School movement). Recent studies on testing, however, demonstrate that frequent low-stakes testing (a.k.a. quizzing) timely spaced so that students begin to forget is the most effective way of making information “stick” in their minds (it is called spaced learning). It is not one big test to prepare for every year and it is not zero testing that help students learn but the counterintuitive idea of “forgetting to learn” with frequently spaced quizzing that advances academic achievement. It is the blind spot in our educational policy debates that can help us paradoxically see the most effective learning strategies for our children, if we would only turn around or turn a few research pages to see them.
When it comes to memorization or knowing facts, the blind spot of the all-or-nothing schools of thought should be called the Goldilocks Effect: it is not all memorizing and it is not zero memorizing but ‘just’ the right mixture of memorizing and recitation that helps a student learn. Several new books on the science of learning recommend splitting a student’s time for acquiring new facts into thirds where one-third of the time should be devoted to memorizing and two-thirds to reciting the knowledge. A common theme in many of the books echo neuroscientist W.R. Klemm’s Mental Biology mantra: “the more you know, the more you can know.” As Ian Leslie points out in Curious:
“Learning skills grow organically out of specific knowledge of specific domains—that is to say, facts…The wider your knowledge, the more widely your intelligence can range and the more purchase it gets on new information. This is why the argument that schools ought to prioritize learning skills over knowledge makes no sense; the very foundation for such skills is memorized knowledge. The more we know, the better we are at thinking.”
Knowing facts and learning go hand-in-hand and are mutually supportive. The all-or-nothing types are fostering a false dichotomy between knowledge and learning.
The science of learning is showing education leaders and policymakers where to look but they are implementing education policies as though they are, in the words of a Thomas Dolby’s 1980s song, blinded by science. If education is about learning (as it should be), then the science of learning should be informing policy. The fields of neuroscience and education have combined to form the emerging field (26 years old) of neuroeducation (a.k.a. educational neuroscience) that is not only revealing the blind spots of our educational system but is also providing ideas of how we should address them. The all-or-nothing schools of thought can only overcome the science of learning by ignoring it. The all-or-nothing crowd might want to try all-for-one and one-for-all.
BOOKS & ARTICLES:
Amy Adams, “Stanford Researchers Bridge Education and Neuroscience to Strengthen the Growing Field of Educational Neuroscience,” Stanford Report (November 21, 2014).
Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel, Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014).
Benedict Carey, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why it Happens (New York: Random House, 2014).
Benedict Carey, “Studying for the Test by Taking It,” The New York Times (November 22, 2014).
Paul A. Howard-Jones, “Neuroscience and Education: Myths and Messages,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience (October 15, 2014).
W. R. Klemm, Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate (New York: Prometheus Books, 2014).
Ian Leslie, Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
To stir a crowd is to get them excited about something and to stir a drink, such as the perfect glass of chocolate milk, is to blend seamlessly (where there is no chocolate at the bottom of the glass but the taste of chocolate in every sip). Two recent books on learning stir in both ways; they get the reader excited about learning and they clearly show that the basis of learning is blending knowledge with understanding. While one book is more scientifically centered (Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning) and the other is more story-based (How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why it Happens), they reinforce each other’s messages in complementary styles. The trouble with both books is that while their ideas are scientifically sound, clearly explained and need to be implemented in schoolrooms as well as boardrooms, the books are not assigned reading for policymakers, teachers and leaders: anyone who cares about and/or whose job is centered around learning needs to read these books. Each book STIRS the reader to actions that are sometimes counterintuitive but always effective for successful learning. (STIRS is an acronym I created to highlight the important factors that both books focus on for building an education that generates successful learning: Spaced, Transfer, Interleaving, Recitation & Sleep.)
Spaced—Spaced learning or the “Forget to Learn Theory” is one of the most effective ways to educate. It is based on the counterintuitive idea that if you want to know something so well that you can easily retrieve the knowledge whenever you want (i.e., your brain as Google), you should separate the learning of that knowledge by gaps of time where you begin to forget the knowledge. This spaced practice of building knowledge embeds learning in long-term memory because when you try to remember something you think you forgot, you activate complex networks in the brain that makes learning more robust and durable. “Forgetting enables and deepens learning,” according to Benedict Carey in How We Learn, “by filtering out distracting information and by allowing some breakdown that, after reuse, drives retrieval and storage strength higher than they were originally. Those are the basic principles that emerge from brain biology and cognitive science (p. 41).” A method to avoid any robust learning is to do what too many traditional teachers recommend (and what Rudy Giuliani famously called for in the 2012 presidential election): “drill baby drill” or what is known in the science of learning lingo as massed practice. Constant drilling and cramming may work for short-term memory goals but it simply does not work for embedding knowledge in long-term memory or, in other words, for any durable learning purpose.
Transfer—The more difficult and effortful we find learning something, the more durable and transferable the learning is to different settings. Both books use Robert and Elizabeth Bjork’s research on “desirable difficulties” as a foundational concept for outlining how learning can be robust and applicable in other contexts. In the words of Brown, Roediger and McDaniel, “the more effort required to retrieve (or, in effect, relearn) something, the better you learn it…The retrieval difficulties posed by spacing [and other practices] are overcome by invoking the same mental processes that will be needed later in applying the learning in everyday settings” (p. 82 & 85). We learn deeper and with wider applicability when learning is effortful.
Interleaving—An effortful and desirably difficult method for learning is interleaving (spacing is another kind of desirable difficulty). Interleaving is the practice of mixing two or more subjects or skills in one learning session. It usually involves weaving new ideas with older material. Make it Stick points-out that “learning from interleaved practice feels slower than learning from massed practice. Teachers and students sense the difference…As a result, interleaving is unpopular and seldom used. Teachers dislike it because it feels sluggish. Students find it confusing…But the research shows unequivocally that mastery and long-term retention are much better if you interleave practice than if you mass it” (p. 50). The mixed practice of interleaving, in short, makes the brain work harder, which makes learning stronger.
Recitation—If you want to remember a written passage or anything else you should spend more time rehearsing or restating it rather than studying or memorizing it. Amazingly, reciting a passage increases your memorization of it better than memorizing it by itself. As Carey writes in How We Learn, you should “spend the first third of your time memorizing it, and the remaining two thirds reciting from memory” (p. 85). In another section of the book, Carey explains how the best way to learn something is to teach it and he calls that “the high-octane kind” of studying (p. 102-103); a recitation with an exclamation.
Sleep—While How We Learn devotes an entire chapter to the importance of sleep to learning (chapter ten), Make it Stick weaves sleep into sections of the book highlighting its importance for consolidating learning. The books, for me, reinforced the ideas and arguments made in the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement this past August for delaying the time schools start each day all for the purpose of improving health and academic success. Another study on delaying school start times by the University of Minnesota in St. Paul (February 2014) “found improved grades and standardized test scores, and a 65 to 70 percent reduction in teen car accidents.” Scores up and accidents down sounds like a type of balanced learning that is good for the students and their communities.
“How we learn” is really about “making it stick” in our brain and the combination of the two books provides scientific and pedagogical clarity for how robust and durable learning can and should occur. Reading the books together was like stirring the perfect glass of chocolate milk made to toast learning. I enjoyed every sip … I learned from every chapter.
American Academy of Pediatrics, “School Start Times for Adolescents: Policy Statement” (Pediatrics: August 25, 2014)
Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel, Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard University Press/Belknap Press: April, 2014)
Benedict Carey, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why it Happens (Random House: September, 2014).
Andy Coghlan, “Open Schools Later so Teens can Lie In, Say US Doctors” (New Scientist: August 25, 2014)
The American Dream, as James Thurow coined and described it in 1931, is about the equality of opportunity. If you believe that Thurow is right, then you need to wake up and open your eyes … now, because organizations from the American Federal Reserve to the International Monetary Fund to Science magazine have all released reports this year showing that inequality is dangerously high. The reports caution that if nothing is done to address the inequality of opportunity in the United States, the American Dream will slowly become a nightmare for Uncle Sam.
The nightmare is being conjured up by two interconnected trends: a growing income gap fueled by diminishing educational opportunities. Educational opportunity provides the surest footing when climbing America’s socio-economic ladder but that foothold is slipping away from an increasing number of Americans each year. In other words, education is becoming less of a force for economic opportunity because the number of Americans each year that have the resources to pursue educational achievements (which will help them climb the socio-economic ladder) is fewer and fewer.
Janet Yellen, Chairperson of the United States Federal Reserve, recently explained (October 17, 2014) “The extent and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me…I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned in March 2014 that the level of inequality in the U.S. “has returned to levels not seen since before the Great Depression” and more generally that “rising income inequality is weighing on global economic growth and fueling political instability.” Science magazine focused its entire May 2014 issue on inequality and one of its main findings was that “the United States has both the lowest [socio-economic] mobility and highest inequality among all wealthy democratic countries.” There are many other non-partisan reports, books and articles released this year but I think you get the point: inequality and, more specifically, inequality of opportunity is rapidly growing thereby slowly killing the American Dream (it is neither a Democrat nor Republican issue but an American challenge).
The best way to keep the American Dream alive has been and continues to be through education, especially a college education (it offers every individual an opportunity to climb the socio-economic ladder). Although Yellen called early education and higher education the “cornerstones of opportunity,” she worried aloud stating “I fear the large and growing burden of paying for it may make it harder for many young people to take advantage of the opportunity higher education offers.” She cited a report showing that “the median annual earnings of full-time workers with a four-year bachelor’s degree are 79 percent higher than the median for those with only a high school diploma” but also provided statistics that showed that every year there are fewer Americans who have the resources to pursue such an opportunity:
…the wealthiest 5 percent of American households held 54 percent of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61 percent in 2010 and reached 63 percent in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution—families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million—held 43 percent of wealth in 1989 and only 36 percent in 2013. The lower half of households by wealth held just 3 percent of wealth in 1989 and only 1 percent in 2013.
The problem is that although education is the key for unlocking economic prosperity—especially in a globalized-knowledge based economy—the key is out of reach for an increasing proportion of Americans every year. Education has been our society’s equalizer until the last couple of decades. However, a new college-rating index that ranks colleges on their ability to provide “pathways for social and economic mobility” was released this month and it seeks to refocus and strengthen America’s great equalizer: higher-education.
The Social Mobility Index (SMI), which was created by CollegeNET and PayScale, was constructed to “stimulate other schools to move beyond opportunity rhetoric towards meaningful action.” Some universities such as Western Connecticut State University (ranked #11 in the country and #1 in Connecticut), where I am fortunate to be a professor, are taking meaningful actions—but there are too few WCSUs “contributing in a responsible way to solving the dangerous problem of economic immobility in our country” (SMI). In answering the question “What should students and their families take away from the SMI rankings?” the authors reply: “If a student wants to pursue academics in an institution that models awareness and civic responsibility, the SMI can provide a valuable guide.” Shouldn’t all educational institutions and organizations strive to pursue such meaningful actions? Wouldn’t a focus on SMI rankings rather than “pursuing the false prestige in popular periodicals” (you know the ones) make our society stronger and more dynamic?
T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia) said “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” While WCSU is one of this country’s leading universities in creating Lawrence’s day dreamers, educational institutions and leaders at all levels have important roles to play in creating and sustaining America’s day dream believers (men and women capable of transforming their dreams into reality). This country was built on the equality of opportunity and education has been a cornerstone of not only building the American Dream but for its realization. Those who diminish and weaken our educational institutions and opportunities at any level (local, state & national) and for any reason will abruptly awaken to a living nightmare created by their own vanity. Education on the pre-K, primary, secondary and higher-ed levels are the ‘pillars’ upon which the strength of America rests and the ‘pillows’ upon which the American Dream occurs.
Binyamin Appelbaum, “Janet Yellen Warns of Inequality Threat,” The New York Times, October 18, 2014
Gilbert Chin and Elizabeth Culotta, “The Science of Inequality: What the Numbers Tell Us,” Science, May 2104
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, “Janet Yellen Decries Widening Wealth Disparity,” The Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2014.
Nicholas Kristof, “It’s Now the Canadian Dream,” The New York Times, May 14, 2014
Survey Acknowledges WCSU as a Leader in Promoting Social Mobility Western Connecticut State University website
Ian Talley, “IMF Warns on the Dangers of Growing Income Inequality,” 3/14/2014, The Wall Street Journal
Yellen, Janet L., “Perspectives on Inequality and Opportunity from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Speech at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at the Conference on Economic Opportunity and Inequality (October 17, 2014), Boston, MA.
Compassionate achievers—successful people who are other-focused and have stronger internal (i.e., looking for meaning in work) rather than instrumental (i.e., looking for money in work) motives—reach higher levels of success than self-centered achievers. Internal or intrinsic values “are those we uphold regardless of the benefits or costs” and instrumental values are those we support because they directly benefit us. Compassionate achievers are people who follow intrinsic values that have positive instrumental consequences; the consequences, however, are not part of their motives. A recent study of over 11,000 West Point cadets concluded: “Helping people focus on the meaning and impact of their work, rather than on, say, the financial returns it will bring, may be the best way to improve not only the quality of their work but also—counterintuitive though it may seem—their financial success.” Learning to be a compassionate achiever increases a person’s success not only at school and home but work.
A Wall Street Journal article outlining tips on “How to Get Ahead ” provided this general advice: “Top executives are attracted to people who lift their heads up from their desks and understand the impact their assignments might have on other departments—not just their own teams.” Employees that help each other are the engines of successful companies and top execs know it. Understanding what others need or need to avoid and then acting on that understanding is at the heart of what compassion is and what a compassionate achiever does. How do you foster compassionate workplaces and achievers? Shawn Achor—author of The Happiness Advantage: the Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work—provides one way with his idea of social investment.
Social investment (building and strengthening the relationships of our social support network) in the people around us is one of Achor’s seven principles for fueling success and performance at work. Success is dependent on the quality of our connections to the people around us and compassion improves the quality. Achor talks about how positive social connections release a specific hormone — oxytocin — that increases our focus and attention while reducing anxiety. The more employees socially invest, the more oxytocin there is around the office. And the more oxytocin, the greater chance for success. In a section of Achor’s book called “Glue Guys,” he writes “The people who actively invest in their relationships are the heart and soul of a thriving organization.” Glue guys, as the Wall Street Journal describes, is baseball speak for players who “quietly [hold] winning teams together…Statisticians don’t buy that they exist, but psychologists do. And players and managers swear by them…They’re the reliable guys…players who are greater than their statistics indicate…If you have some outstanding role models who deal with pressure effectively, that glue is going to spill out of the bottle and help everyone.” Social investment is about spreading the glue so that success will stick.
So how do you invest? You can become a giver. Givers, according to Adam Grant (professor at The Wharton School and author of Give and Take), are people who “are other-focused, paying more attention to what other people need from them” as opposed to takers who are exclusively self-focused. Grant warns, however, against becoming a selfless giver who becomes a doormat to others. Rather his type of giver is someone who balances the concerns of others with concern for themselves. A giver helps others without selflessly sacrificing their own interests; it is otherish as Grant likes to say. He cites Tania Singer’s neuroscience work on compassion to highlight the difference between who his givers are and those who empathize to a fault. Model givers not only help people network together and address otherish needs, but they ask thoughtful questions and patiently listen to colleagues and employees. An added benefit of being an otherish-giver is that it helps with self-compassion (concern for oneself) and that facilitates creativity. An office with more creative people is an office where innovation is constantly generated. Is it any wonder that top executives are attracted to employees who lift their heads off their desks to understand how their work affects others? Compassion brings meaning to work and, therefore, success to individuals, departments and companies. When employees find meaning in their work, they are three times as likely to stay with their company, they “report 1.7 times higher job satisfaction and are 1.4 times more engaged at work.” Compassion adds to the bottom line without even trying, something compassionate achievers intrinsically know.
ARTICLES & BOOKS:
Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (New York: Crown Business, 2010).
Jessica Amortegui, Why Finding Meaning at Work is More Important than Feeling Happy, FastCompany (June 26, 2014)
Darren Everson, “Baseball’s Winning Glue Guys,” The Wall Street Journal (July 16, 2009).
Adam Grant, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (New York: Penguin Group, 2013).
Melissa Korn and Anita Hofschneider, How to Get Ahead As a Middle Manager: Try These Tips: The Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2013): B5.
Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz, The Secret of Effective Motivation: The New York Times (July 4, 2014): SR9.
Darya L. Zabelina and Michael D. Robinson, Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself: Self-Compassion Facilitates Creative Originality Among Self-Judgmental Individuals: Creativity Research Journal 22, no.3 (2010): 288-293.
Send this to friend