Creative Leadership

Tackle your thorniest problems using the wise fool's savvy strategies! The wise fool is the archetypal contrarian known for his creativity, irreverence, and humor. He looks at life in unorthodox ways and pushes back against the status quo. Throughout history, powerful decision-makers (Egyptian pharaohs, Chinese emperors, Persian sultans, and European kings) consulted wise fools to question the assumptions that kept them mired in stale and obsolete solutions.

What does it take to have fearless schools? It starts with psychological safety-students, teachers, and leaders who know that mistakes are the source of learning, not shame or embarrassment. In order for great learning to take place, we first must build the trust and resilience needed to produce fearless students, teachers, and leaders - and ultimately create fearless schools.

The Innovative Team is an engaging business fable that reveals the impact our underlying work style preferences have on our teams and their results. The authors present a breakthrough thinking process for developing successful teams. They introduce a uniquely effective set of tools built on FourSight, a measure of problem-solving preferences field-tested by top consultants, which can help anyone from professionals to novices solve problems and achieve performance breakthroughs.

From years of research and practical experience as a consultant, Jeff DeGraff has learned that when it comes to any innovation initiative, disharmony is crucial. We innovate when we disrupt, and we first have to disrupt each other.

Can a creative mind thrive in a corporate landscape? Can a business leader use creativity to guide teams more effectively? From one of today’s leading creative minds comes a book for modern rebels on building a rewarding life without losing your edge. Written for uncompromising creative thinkers and aspiring changemakers, The Art of Creative Rebellion encapsulates insights and wisdom collected over a life of creative and professional prosperity.

The 'must have' top tips guide to doing business in Japan. This “quick fix” guide will give you the inside information on how to do business and cope with business socialising in Japan. Despite what some would have you believe, there’s nothing particularly mysterious or complicated about doing business with the Japanese, but there are some important rules to follow in order to avoid causing offense and to ensure that things go smoothly.

Think of your to-do list at work. Chances are the most important tasks require you to work with others - and the success of those endeavors depends on the effectiveness of your collaboration. According to management expert Leigh Thompson, collaboration that is conscious, planned, and focused on generating new ideas builds excitement and produces what she calls a "creative conspiracy". Teams that conspire to organize themselves, motivate one another, and combine their talents to meet creative challenges are the hallmark of the most successful organizations.

Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox - the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity.

In this latest collection of real-life stories, Dave Trott provides lessons about problem solving and creative thinking that can be applied in advertising, business, and the wider world. With his trademark wit, wisdom, and critical eye, he shows how great problem solvers and creative thinkers are those who are not afraid to say “I don’t know."

You have the formal education, the experience and maybe even the title. Yet, you crave additional development of your leadership skills - not just another business book or workshop, but something practical, actionable and real-world. The Complete Leader is for you. Randy Lisk and Ron Price combine experiences and tools gleaned from decades working with leaders from Fortune 100 companies to small businesses to present twenty-five modules in The Complete Leader.

Resilient leaders rise: Empower yourself and your team to conquer every challenge. Have you ever experienced a moment when the pace of the world seemed to surpass your ability to keep up? As a leader, the demands of navigating through challenging times can feel utterly overwhelming. The business landscape is evolving at an unprecedented rate, presenting new challenges and uncertainties every day.

Popular creative coach Gail McMeekin, author of the best-selling The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, offers a wealth of advice for the specific challenges creative women face today: thinking too small, underestimating the need for change, fearing the future, and lacking self-confidence. McMeekin combines interviews with some of today’s most successful women and her own proven success strategies to help readers transcend their “blocks” and achieve success.

Whether it's the great American novel or a groundbreaking new app, many people want to create a Big Thing, but finding the motivation to get started, let alone complete the work, can be daunting. In The Big Thing, New York Times business writer and editor Phyllis Korkki combines real-life stories, science, and insights from her own experience to illuminate the factors that drive people to complete big creative projects - and the obstacles that threaten to derail success.

Starting a creative company needn't cost you everything. If you agree, then you'll find wit and wisdom in this book for creative entrepreneurs. Author, artist, and graphic designer Patricia Arnold presents her best tips for starting a handmade business with this initial volume in her Creative Entrepreneur series. After starting a decade-old business with a shoestring budget and then founding a second business six years later, Patricia Arnold has a lot to say about building creative businesses from scratch.

Marty Strong's direct and compelling message is focused on business, but in truth, its leadership tenets are agnostic as to industry, marketplace, private, or public setting. This is not a textbook. It is a personal conversation between a high-performance business leader and professionals searching for actionable insights that deliver results. Be Nimble provides mentorship, tips, tools, and useful examples to help drive home its valuable leadership insights. Marty Strong has an accomplished leadership career spanning four decades.

The Age of Ideas provides that knowledge. It takes the listener on an incredible journey into a world of self-discovery, personal fulfillment, and modern entrepreneurship. The book starts by explaining how the world has shifted into this new paradigm and then outlines a step-by-step framework to turn your inner purpose and ideas into an empowered existence.

Each chapter builds on common terms and transformational strategies. The aim is to turn you into a savvy leader who is respected and can offer your client or business challenge the confidence to deliver. Let us also not forget that there are lots of real-world examples of proof that this approach will work.

On January 21, 2017, millions of protestors took part in the Women's March, and many of them created a "sea of pink" when they wore knitted pink "pussyhats" in record numbers. The pussyhat swiftly found its place on the cover of Time and The New Yorker, and it ultimately came to symbolize resistance culture. Creator of the Pussyhat Project, Krista Suh, took an idea and built a worldwide movement and symbol in just two months. But like so many women, Krista spent years letting her fears stop her from learning to live by her own rules.

Do you believe negotiating is one of the most important skills for greater success in business and life and that you could be better at it? Do you let your ego, anger, fear, insecurity, or other emotions get in the way of achieving your negotiating objectives? If so, dig beneath the surface, stop looking for the quick tip or best tactic, do the required hard work, and follow the roadmap Corey Kupfer provides in Authentic Negotiating. This audiobook will lead you to authentic success in negotiating, in business, and in life.

This book uniquely identifies the five key emotions that prevent clients from reaching their full creative potential and provides coaches tools to help them overcome them, boosting their productivity as well as their ability to complete and promote their work and personal development. Accessible and personable, Rahti Gorfien interweaves stories from her personal life and private practice to alleviate the burden of blockages creatives generated by their own divergent thinking, unconscious conditioning, and memory.