Leadership Culture

People are the problem. They're always the problem. If a business person goes home frustrated, if they talk with their significant other about it, if they lay awake at night stewing about it, inevitably the problem is some person at work - a colleague, subordinate, or boss. Handling people issues is every leader's major headache. It's what takes up the majority of their time and - more important - the bulk of their head space. Every leader can and must develop this most important of all management skills.

Put an end to miscommunication and inefficiency—and tap into the strengths of your diverse team. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on managing across cultures, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you manage culturally diverse employees, whether they're dispersed around the world or you're working with a multicultural team in a single location.

Veteran DEI leader Mita Mallick debunks thirteen myths that hold us back from transforming our workplaces. She delivers powerful storytelling combined with practical and hands-on ways for us to be more inclusive leaders. She teaches us that when we show up as more inclusive leaders, we have the power to change our organizations, ultimately creating a ripple effect across our ecosystem.

Deliberate Discomfort follows the journey of Jason Van Camp as a new Green Beret commander taking over a team of combat-hardened Special Forces veterans. This true story tells firsthand the intense, traumatic battles these warriors fought and won, sharing lessons learned from their incredible backgrounds. A cadre of scientists further break down each experience, translating them into digestible and relatable action items, allowing the listener to apply these lessons forged under fire to their own lives.

Through this essential and easy-to-digest reference book, international leadership expert John C. Maxwell gives you the bottom line on mentoring—what it is, why you should do it, and how you can do it most effectively....

Workplace finger-pointing stifles creativity, reduces productivity, and limits psychological safety. Although no one sets out to be judgmental, learning new habits is hard. Two experienced leadership and agilists coaches share a road-tested leadership model that continuously embraces humility and failure as part of the growth process to deliver results. By facilitating blame-free retrospective meetings, leaders chart a productive path forward. They amplify three essential motivators of purpose, autonomy, and co-intelligence within their team, layered on with four resilience factors.

"What does a workplace utopia look like to you?" This is the question Dr. Ella F. Washington asks company leaders, and often she hears about an ideal vision of an organization that values diversity and inclusion and wants employees to bring their whole selves to work. But how can you get there? Organizations have largely missed the mark when it comes to creating environments where all employees thrive in an equal and equitable way, because they treat diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a program that gets done rather than the necessary and difficult journey it is.

In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help listeners make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.

In The Business Playbook, serial entrepreneur Chris Ronzio walks you through his proven framework for building a playbook: the profile of your business, the people who work in it, the policies that guide it, and the processes that operate it. He shows you how to codify your culture and create a living document that allows you to let go of day-to-day responsibilities and empower your team to run the business without you. If you want to build a company that doesn’t rely on you putting in more hours, this book will show you the way.

Managers want to know how to lead virtually, how to keep their teams motivated, and how to keep employees productive. Providing compelling, evidence-based answers to these issues, Remote Work Revolution is essential for navigating the enduring challenges teams and managers face. Filled with specific actionable steps and interactive tools, this timely book will help team members deliver results previously out of reach. Employees will be able to break through routine norms to successfully use remote work to benefit themselves, their groups, and ultimately their organizations.

Joel Bakan's book is a brilliantly argued account of the corporation's pathological pursuit of profit and power. An eminent law professor and legal theorist, Bakan contends that the corporation is created by law to function much like a psychopathic personality whose destructive behavior, if left unchecked, leads to scandal and ruin. Despite the structural failings found in the corporation, Bakan believes change is possible and outlines a far-reaching program of concrete, pragmatic, and realistic reforms through legal regulation and democratic control.

If you’re anything like journalist Stephanie McNeal—aka, a millennial woman—you spend hours every day indulging in Instagram’s infinite scroll. The influencers on the platform aren’t just providing eye candy; these tastemakers impact how we cook, consume, parent, decorate, think, and live. But what exactly is going on behind the curtain of the perfectly curated Instagram grids we obsess over the most? Through intimate, funny, and vulnerable reporting, McNeal takes us through the looking glass and into the secretive real world of three major influencers.

In a quick, easy listen, you can take the main principles from Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs! John Doerr spells out the recipe for efficiency in corporations by using objectives and key results. A seasoned pro, Doerr traces on his history with OKRs and uses several examples from case studies by people who have implemented his system of utilizing OKRs.

Digital transformation of the business landscape is well underway, and businesses are being reshaped faster than ever before. Agility and adaptability are now critical components of these businesses' survival. But building these traits requires a holistic approach with an unrelenting focus on automation. How does one go about developing that focus? Vijay Tella, Scott Brinker, and Massimo Pezzini deliver a guide to implementing automation in the real world, avoiding jargon and vague bromides in favor of concrete examples.

Not just another book on communication. Adaptive Listening helps you up-level the under-trained side of communication amidst the realities of a hectic workday. Researched and tested exclusively in the work setting, Adaptive Listening moves you beyond active listening, embracing easy-to-remember techniques that strengthen relationships and get work done more effectively.

This practical, actionable guide to success at the executive level helps readers understand what they need to pick up and let go of to achieve the results that are expected at the next level. Along with simple and immediately applicable tools and frameworks he's road-tested with thousands of coaching clients, Eblin offers clear, practical advice reinforced by interviews and case studies from executives who know what it takes to succeed.

Every employee at every level wants to feel seen, heard, and respected. If we don’t feel safe, we can’t be our best selves or do our most creative work. This is why leaders must ensure psychological safety for everyone in their team. Whether you’re a manager, CEO, or entrepreneur, The Psychological Safety Playbook is the guide you need to lead your team to the highest levels of performance and innovation.

We often view authority as something oppressive, stifling, even fearful. And sometimes—perhaps too often—those impressions bear out in reality. We live in an era of overstepped boundaries and abuse in many fields of life, so that authority has become the enemy.

Your organization's culture can feel like something that has a life of its own; it's long-standing, inherited, and seemingly impermeable - in fact, a strong culture is often an obstacle to doing new things or going in new directions. But leaders are the stewards of a company's culture and have the power to shape it. The best leaders know that organizational culture is a fundamental and powerful management tool that can drive positive outcomes.

What really drives workplace equity and inclusion - beyond strategies and systems? The truth is, all historically excluded persons who have broken through to greater levels of professional belonging and achievement have succeeded not by policy and systems change alone, but because of leaders who chose to remove barriers, open doors, and guide them toward their goals. The bottom line? Someone made a way for them. Using case studies, data, and candid storytelling, Tara Jaye Frank outlines how leaders with power and position can clear the path to workplace equity.