Leadership Communication Skills

Today everyone - whether they know it or not - is in the emotional transportation business. More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move partners, shareholders, customers, and employees to action. Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it. And this book tells you how to do both. Peter Guber, whose executive and entrepreneurial accomplishments have made him a success in multiple industries, has long relied on purposeful story telling to motivate, win over, shape, engage, and sell.

Negotiation is not a zero-sum game. It’s an essential skill for your career that can also improve your closest relationships and your everyday life. Still, people often shy away from it, feeling defeated before they’ve even started. In this groundbreaking new book on negotiation, Alexandra Carter - Columbia law professor and mediation expert who has helped students, business professionals, the United Nations, and more - offers a straightforward accessible approach anyone can use to ask for and receive more.

Ideas don’t sell themselves. As the forces of globalization, automation, and artificial intelligence combine to disrupt every field career, having a good idea isn’t good enough. Mastering the ancient art of persuasion is the key to standing out, getting ahead, and achieving greatness in the modern world. Communication is no longer a “soft” skill - it is the human edge that will make you unstoppable, irresistible, and irreplaceable - earning you that perfect rating, that fifth star.

Collaborative intelligence, or CQ, is a measure of our ability to think with others on behalf of what matters to us all. It is emerging as a new professional currency at a time when the way we think, interact, and innovate is shifting. In the past, "market share" companies ruled by hierarchy and top-down leadership. Today, the new market leaders are "mind share" companies, where influence is more important than power, and success relies on collaboration and the ability to inspire.

How are you supposed to tell someone that they're not meeting expectations without crushing their spirit? Regular feedback, when delivered skillfully, can turn average performers into the hardest workers and stars into superstars. Yet many see it as an awkward chore: Recent studies have revealed 37 percent of managers dread giving feedback, and 65 percent of employees wish their managers gave more feedback. This trail-blazing new model eliminates the guesswork.

We live, say Edgar and Peter Schein, in a culture of “tell". All too often we tell others what we think they need to know or should do. But whether we are leading or following, what matters most is we get to the truth. We have to develop a commitment to sharing vital facts and identifying faulty assumptions - it can mean the difference between success and failure. This is why we need Humble Inquiry more than ever.

Negotiation is hard. It’s especially tough when you feel like the underdog—whether you face a ‘Godzilla’ counterpart, face threats of budget cuts during a downturn, or know that you need a deal more than the other side does. Seth Freeman can help. Freeman is an award-winning professor who has taught negotiation to thousands of leaders and students.

Ask for It explains why it's essential to ask (men do it all the time) and teaches you how to ask effectively, in ways that feel comfortable to you as a woman. Whether you currently avoid negotiating like the plague or consider yourself hard-charging and fearless, Babcock and Laschever's compelling stories of real women will help you recognize how much more you deserve.

There’s no shortage of negotiation books that advise you to “get to yes,” urge you to “never split the difference,” and push you to “ask for more.” But these one-size-fits-all negotiation techniques disregard the reality of our complex, multifaceted, multicultural world, where snap judgements are made based on perceived differences. When bias lies behind every negotiation, the only constant is you. Learn to leverage who you are—and gain the upperhand.

Communications Skills for Project Managers provides practical advice and strategies for ensuring success, even in the face of shifting organizational priorities, constantly evolving expectations, and leadership turnover. This important guide gives listeners the skills they need to keep everyone in the loop.

Crucial Conversations exploded onto the scene 10 years ago and revolutionized the way people communicate when stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. Since then, millions of people have learned how to hold effective crucial conversations and have dramatically improved their lives and careers thanks to the methods outlined in this book. Now, the authors have revised their best-selling classic to provide even more ways to help you take the lead in any tough conversation.

Clarity is key for any successful leader, so much so that top corporations, such as Micorsoft. Nike, Proctor and Gamble, Kimberly Clark, and many more, have incorporated storytelling into their leadership training programs. These companies know that before you can become a strong leader, you must first master the art of storytelling so you can communicate your vision to your team and inspire them to execute on objectives.

Jeff Bezos is a dreamer who turned a bold idea into the world’s most influential company, a brand that likely touches your life every day. As a student of leadership and communication, he learned to elevate the way Amazonians write, collaborate, innovate, pitch, and present. He created a scalable model that grew from a small team in a Seattle garage to one of the world’s largest employers. The Bezos Blueprint by Carmine Gallo reveals the communication strategies that Jeff Bezos pioneered to fuel Amazon’s astonishing growth.

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.

Now in a second edition, this classic book shows how to make conversations generative and productive rather than critical and destructive so people, organizations, and communities flourish. This edition has been revised throughout with new examples; updates on the latest supporting research in neuroscience, positive science, and positive psychology; and a discussion guide. It also features a new chapter on what the authors call tuning in: cultivating awareness of how our physical and mental state affect our perceptions, emotions, and thoughts as we engage in conversation.

People - friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople - lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines - facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field - into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception....

The secret to giving better feedback isn't what we say - it's what others hear. Too often, people hear about a past they can't control, not a future they can. That changes with "feedforward" - a radical approach to sharing feedback that unleashes the performance and potential of everyone around us.

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?

Are you earning what you're worth? Master negotiator Roger Dawson shows you how to get a better deal from your current employer and how to negotiate the best deal from a new employer. And you won't come off as greedy, overly aggressive, or selfish. In fact you'll learn how to win salary negotiations and still leave your boss feeling like he or she has actually won! You'll also learn how to become more valuable to your employer or prospective employer and how to develop power and control over your career and gain an amazing ability to get what you want.

Strengthen your soft skills and reach your leadership potential. If you listen to nothing else on developing your interpersonal skills, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you identify your social and emotional strengths and weaknesses, approach them with a learning mindset, and become a more effective leader today.