Lessons Learned: Shaping Relationships and the Culture of the Workplace

"Roland S. Barth′s warm and wise book deserves to be kept close at hand. Witty, entertaining, instructive, and poignant, Barth′s stories will get you thinking, and the ′working rules′ salted throughout the book will help you navigate the deceptive shoals and powerful tides we all have to deal with at work."
Lee G. Bolman, Marion Bloch/Missouri Chair in Leadership
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Author of Leading With Soul and Reframing the Path to School Leadership

Lessons Learned is an insightful, funny, moving look at commonalties between life at sea and life in the schoolhouse. More than any other Barth book, this one exposes Roland for what he really is―an avid sailor, loyal friend, life-long learner, and compassionate leader."
Milli Pierce, Director
The Principals′ Center, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"This charming, humorous, and wise book teaches important lessons about relationships at work and at play. Once again, Barth has written a useful and invaluable book for teachers and principals alike."
Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Lillian Radford Professor of Education
Trinity University
Author of The Lifeworld of Leadership

"Barth′s Lessons Learned is a powerful guide for defining the types of interpersonal relationships needed to bring about success."
Karen M. Dyer, Manager
Education Sector, Center for Creative Leadership
Author of The Intuitive Principal

In Lessons Learned, Roland S. Barth shares his often whimsical, but always thoughtful, reflections on relationships at sea and in the workplace. Drawing on his 40 years of experience on deck and in the schoolhouse, Barth shows us that these two worlds have more in common than we might expect―and that there is much to be learned about getting along with one another from both.

Our day-to-day exchanges with others are central to how we experience and perform in the workplace. Everyone wants to be a member of a high-performing team, be an effective leader, and work in an enlightened and empowering culture. Barth′s seemingly simple stories of interactions among colleagues and companions provide rich, humorous, and often poignant insights into the subtlety and complexity of human relationships that shape teams and leaders. The resulting "rules" provide a practical and delightfully conversational guide to cultivating and fortifying working relationships.

Some lessons learned are obvious, others less so. Most of all, Barth provides a backdrop that invites us to reflect on our own stories so that we may better understand our own "lessons learned."

Founding Director, Harvard Principals′ Center.

Roland S. Barth is a consultant to schools, school systems, state departments of education, universities, foundations, and businesses in the United States and abroad. After receiving his AB degree from Princeton University and master’s and doctoral degrees in Education from Harvard University, he served as a public school teacher and principal for fifteen years in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California. Barth received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and joined the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for thirteen years. He serves as a trustee of Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, a member of the board of Micro-Society Inc., chairman of the Board of the Principal Residency Network, and a member of the Board of Editorial Advisors of the Phi Delta Kappan.