Stretching Your Learning Edges: Growing (Up) At Work

by Jennifer Abrams

This is the book for anyone who embraces growth and learning as an individual and as a workplace colleague. You’ll find an introspective view of personal development and an insightful foray into the potential for influencing groups. This book offers research-based tools and templates to guide the journey towards becoming one’s best self. The book is organized by five facets of personal and professional Facet #1 – Know your identity Facet #2 – Suspend certainty Facet #3 – Take responsibility Facet #4 – Engage in reciprocity Facet #5 – Build resiliency A chapter devoted to each facet defines that quality along a continuum of stages with a correlated self-assessment and exercises to stimulate insight and learning. Rich, contextual examples and anecdotes enhance the understanding and relatability of each facet and adult development as a whole. A practical resource for self-study and professional development, this book provides engaging text, web resources, and video links. Clear directions and support materials for implementing each exercise enhance the usability of this book, reduce preparation time for busy professionals, and maximize the learning potential for all readers.

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[Jonathan Peto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jennifer Abrams has clearly read widely. She includes lots of apt quotes from various sources and cites/recommends education and other kinds of books throughout. At the same time, she is not merely summarizing the work of others. In the introduction she describes being inspired by Robert Kegan’s work. What she did is “identify five facets that” she believes “we need to develop if we want to be more successful…” Now, those five facets did not come out of nowhere. Her thinking about them is informed by the sources she cites as well as the spin she adds to it.

Here are the 5 facets she describes:

Know Your Identity
Suspend Certainty
Take Responsibility
Engage in Reciprocity
Build Resiliency

The ideas are very clearly presented and each chapter is well organized with common features, such as guiding questions, a definition of the facet, a list of the facet’s dimensions, a chart with its characteristics and more.

Each chapter also includes exercises to consider as you explore and/or attempt to stretch that facet, that learning edge. Sometimes the exercises contains links or videos to go further. There is also an extensive Works Cited , References & Resources at the end.

I rarely read this type of book, but in the context of work, I think it is a winner, and I will return to it.

On p. 61, one dimension of Take Responsibility is OWN YOUR NEED TO IMPROVE. Abrams begins with a quote from a Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki:

“Each of you is perfect the way you are, and you could use a little improvement.”

A book like this can never conclusively cover the topic or end one's journey but this is inspirational and useful. It is probably not a 5 star read, but it is more than 4.