Business Leadership Management

Average schools don't inspire greatness - and greatness is what our world needs if we are going to produce world-changing learners. In Culturize, author and education leader Jimmy Casas shares insights into what it takes to cultivate a community of learners who embody the innately human traits our world desperately needs, such as kindness, honesty, and compassion. His stories reveal how these "soft skills" can be honed while meeting and exceeding academic standards of 21st-century learning.

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world's most successful organizations - including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and the US Navy's SEAL Team Six - and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind.

In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle's company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players.

Paris, 1927, a day in July. A destitute young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist. The relationship between the artist and her muse lasted less than a year, yet in 1980, just before Tamara died, she was working on a copy of Beautiful Rafaela. Author Ellis Avery imagines their affair from Rafaela’s point of view, and the final day of Tamara’s life from the painter’s point of view.

This practical resource offers the foundational skills and tools needed by new coaching educators, as well as presenting an overview of the knowledge and theory base behind the practice. Established coaches will find numerous ways to deepen and refine their coaching practice. Principals and others who incorporate coaching strategies into their work will also find a wealth of resources. Aguilar offers a model for transformational coaching which could be implemented as professional development in schools or districts anywhere.

We've all been taught that we must suppress or avoid emotions at work, but this inevitably leads to a loss in productivity, diminished creativity, and crushing job dissatisfaction. Research shows 85 percent of us avoid communicating crucial workplace problems upward, and many of us who are employed are actively looking for a different job. What's going on?

In this bold, enlightening book, social psychologist and professor Daniel M. Cable takes leaders into the minds of workers and reveals the surprising secret to restoring their zest for work. Disengagement isn't a motivational problem, it's a biological one. Humans aren't built for routine and repetition. We're designed to crave exploration, experimentation, and learning - in fact, there's a part of our brains, which scientists have coined "the seeking system", that rewards us for taking part in these activities. But the way organizations are run prevents many of us from following our innate impulses. As a result, we shut down.

In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a handing off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted, and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time.

Hiring and firing are hard to get right - and potentially costly to get wrong. Two of the most crucial tasks you face as a manager, they are vital to both the success of the enterprise...and your own career. No need to worry. This handy guide breaks down the simple but powerful strategies you can use to bring better employees onboard - and weed out the weaker ones.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

In this hands-on successor to the popular book The Trusted Advisor, you'll find answers to pervasive questions about trust and leadership - such as how to develop business with trust, nurture trust-based relationships, build and run a trustworthy organization, and develop your trust skill set. This pragmatic workbook delivers everyday tools, exercises, resources, and actionable to-do lists for the wide range of situations a trusted advisor inevitably encounters.

The history-making development of the Chinese economy has entered a new phase: China is moving aggressively from a strategy of imitation to one of innovation. Driven both by domestic needs and by global ambition, China is establishing itself at the forefront of technological innovation. Western businesses need to prepare for a tidal wave of innovation from China that is about to hit Western markets, and Chinese businesses need to understand the critical importance of innovation in their future.

What Matters Now is Gary Hamel's impassioned plea to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about management, the meaning of work, and organizational life. He asks, "What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead?"

Corporate learning and development programs play an undeniable role in successful business endeavors, but only when they're done right. The significant revisions in the third edition of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning add fresh, timely elements to a resource that has become known globally as a trusted guide for professionals determined to get the most of their companies' training and development programs.

Getting to Yes is a straightorward, universally applicable method for negotiating personal and professional disputes without getting taken - and without getting angry. It offers a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict - whether it involves parents and children, neighbors, bosses and employees, customers or corporations, tenants or diplomats.

As a top-level sport psychologist and performance consultant, Dr. Stan Beeham knows what it takes to succeed - on the playing field, in the board room, and in all aspects of life. This award-winning book takes you inside the minds of major-league athletes, Olympic medal winners, and world-class business leaders to reveal the key motivators and mental processes that drive people to victory.

As a high-ranking officer of the FDNY, John Salka is an expert at both practicing and teaching high-stakes leadership. In First In, Last Out, he explains the department's unique strategies and how they can be adopted by leaders in any field - as he has taught them to organizations around the country. In a tough-talking, no-nonsense style, Salka uses real-world stories to convey leadership imperatives.

Martha Piper and Indira Samarasekera had vastly different career paths on their way to becoming the first (and so far only) female presidents of two of Canada's largest and most respected research universities and directors of some of the nation's largest market cap companies, but what they had in common was their gender, their willingness to take risks when leadership opportunities presented themselves, and a work ethic second to none. It was not always easy, pretty, or fair, but it was always the result of choosing to answer the call to lead.

In this audio edition of the totally revised underground best seller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business, from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed.

In Speak!, you will learn to: conquer fear and gain comfort in public speaking; create and maintain positive impressions; be more natural and relaxed when making presentations; communicate ideas with clarity and force; sell ideas and inspire others; plan and organize professional presentations; speak to a virtual audience; and bring the audience into the conversation, don't talk them to death!