Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

It's sitting next to so many serious courses like Democracy in America and Capitalism in Today's Age.

It was intentional.

It has a few different meanings.

Of course, it's grammatically incorrect, which drives some people up the wall.

But there's two meanings.

A huge part of the course is about balancing gravity and levity.

And so I really wanted to signal that in the course title.

We're gonna take conversation, we're gonna take our work very seriously.

But in order to do that, we need to also maintain a spirit of play and fun.

We have to have fun together or we aren't gonna feel safe, we're not gonna be able to make progress.

The word gooder also is really rooted in this word good.

We're going to work towards a goal of kindness.

We want to be good people when we're talking to other people and hopefully a little bit gooder.

Aren't the people going to Harvard Business School already good at communicating?

I know.

This is what everybody thinks.

And in a way, yes.

And in a way, no.

Okay.

When I was originally recruited to be on the faculty at Harvard, I was recruited to teach a course on negotiation.