Career Skills

The words you use say a lot about who you are and where you're headed. Whether you want to express yourself clearly to impress a prospective employer during a job interview, or just brush up on those pesky words you encounter every so often reading the newspaper, Kaplan Word Power is the essential tool to help you expand your daily vocabulary.

Based on the analogy of a man too busy cutting down trees to pause and sharpen his saw, this program will help you to see the importance of renewing your most valuable asset: you. By practicing Habit 7, you will preserve and enhance your productivity in all areas of life. Dr. Covey will help you understand the four dimensions of your nature: physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

Using real-life speaking situations to demonstrate vocal characteristics, this step-by-step program will help you develop a richer, sharper, more resonant voice - to make a powerful impression in all phases of your life.

Most people typically listen with the intent to reply. Habit 5 explores the essential communication skill of listening to truly understand, which helps us to avoid reading our own autobiographies into other people's lives. It opens us up to one another's perspectives, ideas, and emotions. Then real communication can happen, new and better ideas can be conceived, and everyone involved can learn from one another.

In your career, there is one transition that stands out as the most crucial - going from individual contributor to competent manager. New managers have to learn how to lead others rather than do the work themselves, to win trust and respect, to motivate, and to strike the right balance between delegation and control. Many fail to make the transition successfully. In this timeless, indispensable book, Harvard Business School professor and leadership guru Linda Hill traces the experiences of 19 new managers over the course of their first year in the role.

In any difficult relationship, whether professional, romantic, family, friendship, or some other type of relationship, there are two sides to the story. What if there was a way to rid any relationship from its dysfunction, even if you think you aren’t the cause of it? Seeing not just your role in the problem, but your ability to change the role of the other side of the equation is powerful. That’s the 50 75 100 solution. Learn how to be the source of the solution if you aren’t the source of the problem.

What skills will matter most for work, business, and life in the future? Where should you focus your energy and effort when the world is changing at an extraordinary rate? How can you future proof yourself, your organization, and your kids? In this groundbreaking book Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory have interviewed hundreds of successful business people, educators, futurists, economists, and historians to uncover the key skills that will always be critical to success in business and in life.

Unlock the magic of effortless conversation with "The Art of Small Talk: Mastering Conversation Skills, Building Relationships, and Networking with Ease." This ultimate guide is your secret weapon to transforming small talk from awkward to awesome. Dive into real-life scenarios and practical tips that make you a networking pro, whether you're at a party, a coffee shop, or a high-stakes business meeting.

The ability to listen and communicate effectively are vital skills, enabling us to motivate and influence people in our personal and professional lives. But all too often, we’re our own biggest roadblock. In The Art of Facilitation, Tina Frey Clements teaches you to master the art, (and even science) of facilitation and use it to your advantage. With more than 25 years of experience as a professional communicator, she shares tools and techniques to successfully deliver your message to any audience, from the board room to the classroom.

In More Time to Think, Nancy Kline demonstrates that the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. The leaders, entrepreneurs and business people who understand this are at the top of their fields and inspire some of the most successful and innovative practices and businesses in the world. In this audiobook, Nancy Kline shares 10 effective ways to help people think innovatively, and with rigour.

Strategic thinking has become a core competency for business leaders globally. Overused and under-defined, the term is often used interchangeably with other strategic management terms. This book delineates and defines strategic thinking as an advanced, conceptual cognitive capability, focusing on the nonlinear, divergent, a-rational, and informal nature of strategic thinking. This unique and practical book is an original primer of how successful strategists learn to think strategically.

Welcome to what may be the most important module in this course. I'll be talking about problem-solving and a way of visually representing problem-solving. You may have heard this referred to as "A3 reporting" or "A3 storytelling". I will be referring to it as "A3 thinking"; that is, it's a way of thinking rather than documenting problem-solving on a piece of paper.

This is the most important module because in the Toyota Way, problem-solving drives continuous improvement and showing respect for people. Problem-solving is the core skill of a lean leader and it is the skill most leaders lack.

Among the many pieces of expert advice in The Essentials of Persuasive Public Speaking is this nugget: "To capture attention, define a problem that keeps listeners up at night." Wyeth may as well be talking about the audiobook itself - for nothing keeps us up at night like the prospect of giving a speech in the morning. In this brief and lucid guide to presenting, Wyeth counsels how to calm a thumping heart and reveals techniques on preparation, delivery, and visual aids as he gives you vivid stories and rubber-meets-the-road advice.

If your answer to any of the following questions is yes, listen to this book now. Eliminate those communication breakdowns! 1. Have you ever inserted your foot into your mouth? 2. Have you ever wished you could take back something you said to a colleague? 3. Have you ever communicated in a defensive manner?

Contrary to conventional wisdom about what makes a good negotiator - namely, being aggressive and unemotional - in Bring Yourself, Taheripour offers a radically different perspective. In her own life, and in her more than 15 years of experience teaching negotiation, she's found that the best negotiators are empathetic, curious, and present. The essence of bargaining isn't the transaction, but the conversation and human connection.

Managers and other employees spend more than 40 percent of their time listening to other people but often do it so poorly that the result is millions of dollars' worth of mistakes, just because most people don't know how to listen. In this new edition of her classic guide to the art of effective listening, Madelyn Burley-Allen tells you how to acquire active, productive listening skills and put them to work for you professionally, socially, and personally.

Filled with engaging improv activities, this interactive guide will ensure you never come away from a tough moment pondering the woulda, coulda, shoulda! again. You'll learn how to nurture your personal style for communicating in every professional situation. From effective listening in the office, giving presentations, and leading meetings to negotiating a raise, acing an interview, and more, you'll start communicating with confidence.

Does the mere thought of speaking in front of an audience give you goosebumps, butterflies, and heart palpitations? If you want to overcome all of these, then you need this book in your life. For a lot of people, public speaking is a terrifying thing. Preparing to speak is the easy part. You either familiarize yourself with the topic, create cue cards to help you remember the things you need to talk about, or in some cases, memorize your speech. But when it's time to step up onto the stage and face the crowd, that's when the real challenge begins.

Too much valuable time is wasted in meetings. Often little advance planning takes place, resulting in productivity drains rather than productivity gains. It’s time to think like a ninja. With realistic and practical advice, this book shows how to reduce the amount of time you spend in meetings and ensure that the ones that you do attend are genuine opportunities to collaborate and get things done.

Today's business environment is getting more competitive every day. Customer loyalty is becoming a quaint, old-fashioned notion. Customers shop around. And service that wows the customer is crucial in securing new business and preserving those long-standing associations with valuable clients. The bottom line: Satisfied customers equal success!