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/eAqTPfvw

It’s time to ‘pause for thought’: to set aside a few minutes to ask ourselves some simple yet searching questions. We’ve suggested a few you might start with…

We’re under immense pressure to keep up with the news: no serious person can ever admit to being uninformed by the goings on in the world. But if we’re ever to achieve something newsworthy of our own, we may need to switch off our phones, close down our browsers…and regularly retreat into a media-free cocoon, where we can work – and think – in peace.

Feedback may seem at first like a small issue of office routine. But it is a place where we can see the economy of the future starting to emerge. https://lnkd.in/eDSHyne4

At The School of Life at Work, we’re interested in the skills most businesses overlook – namely emotional skills. Here, we’ve highlighted one such neglected skill: the ability to truly innovate.

Whether consciously or not, all of us are operating with a hierarchy of priorities when working. Maybe we’re going all in on meeting a sales target…or maybe we have loftier, altruistic goals in mind. These might be personal to us…or they might be drilled into us by the organisation we work for. When we’re in the middle of a project, it can be useful to imagine how we might do things differently if we had another priority in mind. What might we do differently if, for example, we cared only about profit? Or conversely, our only goal was to achieve world happiness? It’s an exercise that can unlock new and unexplored avenues…and maybe demonstrate that our usual order of priorities might not be the most effective way forward. Taking the project you’re currently working on as an example, imagine what your next step would be if you were following each of the five alternate priorities listed above. Let us know your answers in the comments below.

The School of Life is looking for a visionary freelance Creative Director to lead the expansion of our retail range, focusing on merging intellectual depth with aesthetic sophistication. The chosen individual will work alongside Founder and Creative Director, Alain de Botton, and our in-house team to craft a lifestyle brand that resonates with modern, design-savvy audiences while staying true to the ethos of The School of Life. The School of Life has a very successful retail range - consisting of books, conversation card sets, psychological games, and a 15-minute timer. Our books and products are designed to contribute meaningfully to our company’s mission to help our customers ‘learn, heal and grow’ in areas including relationships, mental health, anxiety and workplace challenges. In addition, we want our products to look extraordinary: beautiful, mysterious, elegant, made with premium materials, and crafted with environmental sustainability in mind. We are now looking to expand into new ranges of tools and products. Find out more, or get in touch, here. https://lnkd.in/eH8UyrJ4

Don’t regard habit as the closing of the prison house door, the dying of the daylight, the triumph of the average over the individual. Some habits are pitiful, it’s perfectly true. But the mere fact that something becomes routine, and therefore easy and reliable cannot itself be a bad thing. Ideally, habits are glamorous – if the habits themselves are beneficial ones. https://lnkd.in/eGw6Nzb2

If you’re stuck for inspiration on a project, we’ve got an exercise that might help. You can find this and 51 other exercises for overcoming creative blocks in our Inspiration card set. To learn more, click the link below. https://lnkd.in/eqxS3Pdy

The School of Life at Work offers a wide range of learning interventions and modalities that support your employees and teams to better navigate change in their personal and professional lives. Click the link to find out more. https://lnkd.in/g9vBen3B