david brooks Archives

Bringing Radical Humanity Into Our Work Culture

Posted on February 10, 2020 by robbie

Amy Mar had been working at a new job in San Francisco’s tech sector for eight months when her father was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her mother couldn’t care for him alone, so Mar began helping but soon used up all of her paid time off. That’s when her coworkers began transferring their vacation time to her.
That simple act of kindness, of being there for a new coworker, is not unusual at the web development company where she works, Dayspring Technologies. The values of connection, support and interdependence are enshrined in company policies and practices.
Dayspring is among a growing number of organizations that are intentionally adopting a culture of compassion and interdependence over efficiency and competition. These companies view their work as fostering quality relationships among coworkers, customers, collaborators and the community, and not as a simple set of outputs and transactions. Just as relationships are unique, so are the ways each organization supports them.
For example at Dayspring, employees meet twice a week to connect over conversation and reflect on shared values. The company and its employees donate their time, skills and money to a local private middle school that serves many lower income kids and those who would be the first in their family to go to college.
Salary differences, too, are kept in check: The salary of Dayspring’s CEO is no more than three times the effective salary of the person who cleans the office. Contrast that with the wages of the average CEO in the U.S., who earns more than 200 times the median employee salary. Dayspring’s co-founder, Chi-Ming Chien, believes a larger difference would “break down the ability of people to be in community with each other.”
Companies like Dayspring are rebelling against the modern business culture — one in which people are treated as a set of skills to be maximized and management books urge organizations to aggressively rank employees as A, B, and C and then treat each group differently.
New York Times columnist David Brooks argues that this extreme meritocracy, where people compete against each other to work harder and stand out, is ripping apart our social fabric. He says the form of meritocracy embedded in today’s culture excludes most people. There is another way to work, however, which Brooks refers to as an open meritocracy. This system — like the one Dayspring and others are building — is designed to include, support and develop people to their full potential, rather than rank and weed them.
Dayspring’s culture, says Chien, grew out of a spiritual mission to embody and bear witness to God’s redeeming of the workplace, marketplace and community. “‘God’s redeeming’ is maybe language unique to us,” he says. “What it’s trying to express is that the way businesses operate is broken.”
Dayspring strives for a culture of service and grace toward error. It emphasizes quality work that can be completed within set boundaries — for example, where projects are planned so that employees rarely have to work over 40 hours a week to meet client needs. Instead of hurting success, it may fuel it. Chien says the tech company has averaged just 5.4% staff turnover (less than half the current tech industry average of 13%) while maintaining 10% growth per year over the last two decades.

“We’ll do better work if we can bring all of ourselves to work and see each other in our fullness.” – Xiomara Padamsee

Similarly, Xiomara Padamsee founded Promise54, a talent solutions nonprofit, after years as a consultant “navigating a world that can be sharply competitive, where we were stepping on each other to get ahead.” Padamsee says she assimilated and left parts of herself behind in order to be valued. She watched other colleagues of color do the same.
At Promise54, people practice what they call “radical humanity,” which puts trusting and authentic relationships above all else. “We’re complex beings with big lives,” she says. “We’ll do better work if we can bring all of ourselves to work and see each other in our fullness.”
“We’re bringing our whole selves to work whether we like it or not, so we may as well talk about that,” says Banks Benitez, CEO of Uncharted, a social impact accelerator in Denver. Joe Santini, a program manager at Uncharted, remembers Benitez crying tears of joy after a successful accelerator summit that Santini, then an intern, had helped prepare. “I was like, my work from the last three months has amounted to something really special. And also, my male CEO is comfortably crying and being vulnerable in front of 50 people. That was a powerful moment for me.”
Uncharted and like-minded companies are part of a movement working to change the unhealthy parts of today’s organizational culture, says Bart Houlahan, co-founder of B Lab, which supports those using business as a force for good and shared prosperity. “If we think about the business paradigm for the last hundred years, the objective has been to maximize the return to shareholders or the creation of private wealth.” Houlahan notes that more and more organizations are choosing to create cultures in which goals include not just profit or product, but valuing and supporting people as well.
These companies recognize that their stakeholders include more than owners or investors; they include employees, customers, suppliers and the communities they work in. This shift is recognized in their legal status, too: many are classified as B Corps, which stands for “benefit” corporations. Houlahan’s B Lab helps organizations move to a business paradigm that treats all stakeholders with care and respect.
But it’s not just business culture that needs reform, argues Brooks; it is the culture underpinning all of American society – a culture that prioritizes individualism more than meaningful relationships and community. A survey of 10,000 people done last year by the health insurer Cigna found that three in five Americans report feeling lonely. Those who said they didn’t have good coworker relationships or a satisfactory work/life balance had significantly lower scores on a standard loneliness index.
Brooks created Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute in 2018 to highlight and support people across the country who are quietly rebelling against this culture of hyper-individualism. These Americans are prioritizing connections and mutual support whether it be at work, at home, with friends or in their neighborhoods.
“No wonder our society is fragmenting,” Brooks writes. “We’ve taken the lies of hyper-individualism and we’ve made them the unspoken assumptions that govern how we live. We talk a lot about the political revolution we need. The cultural revolution is more important.”
Before joining Dayspring, Amy Mar worked as a secretary at a doctor’s office. “Routinely, if he made a mistake, he would get on the phone and talk about the fact that his secretary had made some mistake and throw me under the bus.” But atDayspring, Mar says, “People practice what it is they say they want to be about. I’m proud of the fact that I work for people I can trust.”

This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.

David Brooks Wants to Weave Connection Into the American Fabric

Posted on January 13, 2020 by robbie

NationSwell: David, you’ve spent most of your life as a journalist, author and columnist holding a mirror to society. What made you decide to join the Aspen Institute and lead a project aimed at shifting American culture?
David Brooks: It’s clear that we have a crisis of connection in this country. I do a lot of reporting across the country and see firsthand the loneliness and division. So many people feel unseen and misunderstood. Black people feel that white people don’t understand their daily experience. Democrats and Republicans glare at each other in angry incomprehension. There are teenagers across the country who feel that no one knows them well. There are seniors wondering what happened to the warm bonds they remember from the old days in their neighborhoods. Our national problems are really relational problems. I realized that the solution wouldn’t come from Washington, DC. It had to happen in our neighborhoods.
Q: How do we solve this crisis of disconnection? How do we make people care about each other?
Brooks: It’s already being solved. It’s being solved by people in neighborhoods everywhere. I will go into a town and ask, “Who is trusted here?” Immediately people start reeling off names of folks who are really good at building community and deepening relationships. Sometimes the people they mention work at a suicide hotline or a mentoring program. Sometimes they run a coffee shop where everybody feels at home. Sometimes they are just the person on the block who invites everybody over for barbecue. Sometimes it’s a young woman in high school who sees someone alone and sits down to talk.
Q: So, for you, are these people “Weavers” of their communities?
Brooks: Yes, they are all Weavers. And they are all very different and yet they are the same in one way. Whatever they do, they lead with love. They create countercultural islands, where love and community are more important than ego and self. The problem is that so far, it’s just islands. So many places and people are left out. Our project began as a way to learn from the Weavers and spread their way of living. Relationships happen one on one. They don’t scale. But social norms do scale. Our goal is to spread this way of living, these social norms that value relationships and community over striving just for yourself. The job is not just to heal division. It’s to find a better way of being.
Q: How do you do that?
Brooks: Our Weave Project does three things. First, we find Weavers and tell their stories to illuminate their values. Being around Weavers has inspired me to change how I live, to be more emotionally open, to live more as an active member of my communities. We use video, narratives and public appearances to bring the Weaver stories to millions of people, so they, too, will be inspired to live a little more in the Weaver way. Culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy them.
Second, we bring Weavers together, online and through in-person gatherings. We’ve learned that Weavers crave each other’s company. They want to know, “I’m not alone.” They want to meet other Weavers to laugh together, share each other’s burdens and learn from each other’s wisdom.
Third, we spread Weaver skills. Building good relationships is hard. How do I talk to someone with depression? How do I help people heal from trauma? How do I organize a community gathering and keep people engaged? How do I weave across racial or ideological lines? We want to spread the wisdom that’s already out there in the community.
Q: What makes Weave unique? How is your project different from other groups that support community development and neighborhood organizations?
Brooks: Wonderful organizations are doing important work in their communities. Their services are crucial to supporting people, but their work alone will not create the kind of society we dream of. Look back on the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and 2000s. In those decades, there were foundations that spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build community and expand social mobility. There were millions of volunteers who dedicated hundreds of millions of hours to this work.
They did good work and helped many people. But the fundamental trends did not change. Social mobility declined. Social trust declined. Polarization got worse. All that work didn’t bend the curves.

They didn’t bend the curves because they focused on creating and scaling good programs. The vast majority of Americans are not in programs. Most of the care in society is informal — friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers and parents.
If you really want to change society, you have to work to change the rest of us. You have to change the culture. You have to change the norms – what people think is the normal way to be a neighbor and citizen, the way a good person behaves. If you’re not doing culture change, you’re not going to bend the curve and make fundamental change.
Weave’s hope is to be one of many organizations that shift people’s perception of how they want to show up in the world. What kind of person do I want to be? How can I live a more connected life, where I deeply see others and where I am deeply seen? How can I lead with love? Culture change is vital.
Q: In today’s society is cultural change on that scale really possible? Aren’t we too steeped in values and a pace of life determined by technology, social media and the pursuit of money and fame?
Brooks: Culture change has happened before and it’s happening now. Back in the 1890s, America was coming apart at the seams just like now. But the Settlement House movement, the Social Gospel movement and the Progressive movement shifted culture and norms and produced 60 years of greater cohesion.
By the 1960s, people found those communities stifling, so they created a counter-culture that emphasized individualism, freedom from restraint, liberation. Think of all the old rock anthems: Free Bird, Rambling Man, Born to Run. They shifted culture again. Today, individualism has gone too far. People acknowledge that. Now the tide is turning again. People from every walk of life, every ideology are talking about connection, relationship, interdependence. Cultural change is already happening. People want to come together, to form new kinds of community. Weave is highlighting those who are on the leading edge of this new way of life.
Weaving is not some complicated legislative agenda. It’s us creating connections that make our hearts glow and souls shine. It’s us spreading that kind of love and care to the people around us, who may be lonely, stressed, or marginalized. It’s us creating a culture where that seems normal, a culture in which it’s easier to be good.
I was in Waco, Texas recently having breakfast at a diner with Mrs. Dorsey. She’s a formidable African-American woman in her nineties who was a school principal for many decades. I was a little intimidated by her. “I loved my students enough to be disciplined,” she told me, firmly.
As we were having breakfast, a friend of hers named Jimmy Dorrell, a white guy in his sixties, came in and grabbed her by the shoulders and beamed into her eyes and said, “Mrs. Dorsey! You’re the best! I love you!” Her face lit up like a thousand suns. They were just there in that moment together, two friends who were making their town a better place.
I remember thinking, I want to be able to do that. I want to be so emotionally open and so caring toward people that I can make heart-to-heart connections with a friend even when I’m just walking into a diner. I want to be so deeply connected and so gift-giving that I radiate joy, the way Jimmy Dorrell does, the way the Weavers do.

This article was published in partnership with Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.

Happiness Is Something We Pursue, Joy Is Something We Choose

Posted on January 2, 2020 by robbie

The following article is adapted from “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life,” by David Brooks, out now from Random House.
Every once in a while, I meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. They are kind, tranquil, delighted by small pleasures and grateful for the large ones. These people are not perfect. They get exhausted and stressed. They make errors in judgment. But they live for others, and not for themselves. They’ve made unshakable commitments to family, a cause, a community or a faith. They know why they were put on this earth and derive a deep satisfaction from doing what they have been called to do.
Life isn’t easy for these people. They’ve taken on the burdens of others. But they have a serenity about them, a settled resolve. They are interested in you, make you feel cherished and known, and take delight in your good.
When you meet these people, you realize that joy is not just a feeling — it can be an outlook. There are temporary highs we all get after we win some victory, and then there is also this other kind of permanent joy that animates people who are not obsessed with themselves but have given themselves away.
I often find that their life has what I think of as a two-mountain shape. They got out of school, began their career or started a family, and identified the mountain they thought they were meant to climb: I’m going to be a cop, a doctor, an entrepreneur, what have you. On the first mountain, we all have to perform certain life tasks: establish an identity, separate from our parents, cultivate our talents, build a secure ego and try to make a mark in the world. People climbing that first mountain spend a lot of time thinking about reputation management. They are always keeping score. How do I measure up? Where do I rank? As the psychologist James Hollis puts it, at that stage we have a tendency to think, “I am what the world says I am.”
The goals on that first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorses — to be a success, to be well thought of, to get invited into the right social circles and to experience personal happiness. It’s all the normal stuff: nice home, nice family, nice vacations, good food, good friends and so on.
Then something happens.

David Brooks and Jenn Hoos Rothberg hosting the “Repairing Our Social Fabric” Panel at the NationSwell Summit 2019 in New York.

Some people get to the top of that first mountain, taste success and find it … unsatisfying. “Is this all there is?” they wonder. They sense there must be a deeper journey they can take.
Other people get knocked off that mountain by some failure. Something happens to their career, their family or their reputation. Suddenly life doesn’t look like a steady ascent up the mountain of success; it has a different and more disappointing shape.
For still others, something unexpected happens that knocks them crossways: the death of a child, a cancer scare, a struggle with addiction, some life-altering tragedy that was not part of the original plan. Whatever the cause, these people are no longer on the mountain. They are down in the valley of bewilderment or suffering. This can happen at any age, by the way, from 8 to 85 and beyond. It’s never too early or too late to get knocked off your first mountain.
These seasons of suffering have a way of exposing the deepest parts of ourselves and reminding us that we’re not the people we thought we were. People in the valley have been broken open. They have been reminded that they are not just the parts of themselves that they put on display. There is another layer to them they have been neglecting, a substrate where the dark wounds and most powerful yearnings live.
Some shrivel in the face of this kind of suffering. They seem to get more afraid and more resentful. They shrink away from their inner depths in fear. Their lives become smaller and lonelier. We all know old people who nurse eternal grievances. They don’t get the respect they deserve. They live their lives as an endless tantrum about some wrong done to them long ago.
But for others, this valley is the making of them. The season of suffering interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life. They see deeper into themselves and realize that down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others. And when they have encountered this yearning, they are ready to become a whole person. They see familiar things with new eyes. They are finally able to love their neighbors as themselves, not as a slogan but a practical reality. Their life is defined by how they react to their moment of greatest adversity.
The people who are made larger by suffering go on to stage two small rebellions. First, they rebel against their ego ideal. When they were on their first mountain, their ego had some vision of what it was shooting for — some vision of prominence, pleasure and success. Down in the valley they lose interest in their ego ideal. Of course, afterward they still feel and sometimes succumb to their selfish desires. But, overall, they realize the desires of the ego are never going to satisfy the deep regions they have discovered in themselves.
Second, they start to rebel against the mainstream culture. All their lives they’ve been living in a culture that teaches that human beings pursue self-interest — money, power, fame. But suddenly they are not interested in what other people tell them to want. They want to want the things that are truly worth wanting. They elevate their desires. The world tells them to be a good consumer, but they want to be the one consumed — by a moral cause. The world tells them to want independence, but they want interdependence — to be enmeshed in a web of warm relationships.
The world tells them to want individual freedom, but they want intimacy, responsibility and commitment. The world wants them to climb the ladder and pursue success, but they want to be a person for others. The magazines on the magazine rack want them to ask, “What can I do to make myself happy?” but they glimpse something bigger than personal happiness.
The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.
At this point, people realize, “Oh, that first mountain wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.” The second mountain is not the opposite of the first mountain. To climb it doesn’t mean rejecting the first mountain. It’s the journey after it. It’s the more generous and satisfying phase of life. And it can happen at any age.
These people show up in the world differently. They’ve found a better way to live. They put relationships at the center of their lives. They weave thick connections and a tight social fabric in their communities. They inspired me to start on this path after my world crumbled. I created Weave: The Social Fabric Project to tell their stories and inspire others to be “Weavers.” Take some time to meet these Weavers and consider if you are ready to climb your second mountain.