Leadership Culture

There's a saying that goes, "Experience is the best kind of teacher." I am here to tell you that experience is the worst kind of teacher. Looking back on my career, I wish I would have avoided all of these mistakes, taking instead the wise advice of those around me, implementing the suggestions I was given over the years, and not being as stubborn. Fortunately, I did figure things out, and I hope you can learn a few important lessons from my ups and downs over the years.

Emotion, more than anything else, spells the difference between stellar and mediocre team performance. Fear, anger, frustration, and other negative feelings, can en danger a group's dynamic. But positive emotions have the power to transform it into a high-performance engine, where everyone operates at their peak. Their minds sharpen. They find creative solutions. They get great results.

In Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura, CEO and founder of Sub Rosa, a design firm that finds creative solutions for iconic brands and institutions such as GE, Nike, Citibank, Nikon, and Warby Parker and also West Point and the White House, offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward. Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work as well as the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value).

In the rapidly changing business landscape, harnessing the power of diversity and inclusion is essential for the very viability and sustainability of every organization. Talent who feel fully welcomed, valued, respected, and heard by their colleagues and their organizations will fuel this growth. We will only succeed in this transformation if those in leadership pivot from command and control management styles to reinvent how we look at people, every organization's greatest asset.

In this timely and essential guide, McKinsey alumni Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas present a proven approach to workplace anxiety that reduces stress, boosts well-being, and overcomes blocks that get in the way of success. It begins with changing our relationship with fear and then developing strategies that improve outlook and performance, leading to greater profits, sustainable growth, and personal rewards. It’s only possible with a culture of unfear.

In order to create an inclusive working environment, it is important for companies to understand the experiences that diverse employees face in the workplace. Diversity in the Workplace is a guided tour of what it means to be a minority in today's labor force.

It's a simple fact that the people who make policy and oversee government, sports, business, and the arts and entertainment are most commonly white men. Another fact: We cannot achieve meaningful progress if we exclude the very people who have the power to make systemic change. This handbook is free of any attempts to shame, blame, or guilt leaders for the choices they made in the past or privileges they were born with. Instead, listeners will learn to view the work they do through a racial equity lens so they can easily and immediately begin making changes.

The Only Leadership Book You'll Ever Need teaches leaders how to overcome their most difficult obstacle: employee engagement. By pinpointing specific areas leaders can focus on and change,this book shows how one leader can effectively change the entire workplace environment - for the better.

Are your organization's ideas growing stale? Do your employees need to refresh their thinking? We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the 10 most important ones to help you instill creativity across your organization.

For the last 15 years you've been fed a diet of methods and processes as the answer to failing projects. Yet, the best projects are the result of the person that leads them and the environment they create. In order to delight stakeholders and transform organizations you need the skills to inspire project teams and create a culture of success.

For decades, alarms have sounded about declining engagement. Yet companies continue to struggle with toxic cultures, and the low productivity and unhappiness that go with them. Why is "culture" so difficult to improve? What makes so many good employees check out? Neuroscientist Paul Zak shows that innate brain functions hold the answers. It all boils down to trust. When someone shows you trust, a feel-good jolt of oxytocin surges through your brain and triggers you to reciprocate.

A new generation of business leaders is turning to mindfulness as a cutting-edge leadership tool. Scientific research suggests that the practice of mindfulness (a technique for learning to live in the present moment) can help individuals to gain clarity, reduce stress, optimize performance, and develop a greater sense of well-being. In The Mindful Leader, Michael Carroll explains what mindfulness is and how to develop it in the hectic and often stressful environment of the twenty-first century workplace.

Everything you think you know about culture is wrong! Most leaders would agree culture is the most important thing in business, yet few can define what it is or explain how to create a healthy culture that blows by the competition. Veteran business culture advisor Greg Cagle reveals exactly how culture gets created and the critical role leaders play in shaping it. Drawing on decades of in-the-trenches experience and leveraging real-world examples, he shares the 4 Dimensions of Culture that drive success across the 3 Core Functions of business that every leader faces.

Agile Conversations brings a practical, step-by-step guide to using the human power of conversation to build effective, high-performing teams to achieve truly agile results. Consultants Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick show listeners how to utilize the five conversations to help teams build trust, alleviate fear, answer the “whys,” define commitments, and hold everyone accountable.

Running with Purpose is a highly engaging listen with insights, inspirational stories, and tangible takeaways for current and aspiring leaders, entrepreneurs, Berkshire Hathaway enthusiasts, and especially the 150+ million runners worldwide and those in the broader running community who continually invest in themselves and put positive energy into the world.

Written by musician/entrepreneur Dave Stewart and branding expert Mark Simmons, The Business Playground offers a revealing look at what creativity is and how to apply it in business through an inspiring mix of scientific studies, anecdotes, high-profile interviews, and thought-provoking games that you can play alone or with your co-workers.

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.

Imagine if you could be a fly on the wall as a family enterprise becomes one of the most successful companies in the world. The Target Story will help you understand and adopt the competitive strategies, workplace culture, and daily business practices that enabled the big box store to become the retail giant it is today.

The Cybersecurity Playbook is the step-by-step guide to protecting your organization from unknown threats and integrating good security habits into everyday business situations. This audiobook provides clear guidance on how to identify weaknesses, assess possible threats, and implement effective policies. Recognizing that an organization's security is only as strong as its weakest link, this audiobook offers specific strategies for employees at every level.

For the past 30 years, one organization in baseball has stood taller than all the rest: the New York Yankees. In Culture of Excellence, Colin Cerniglia takes us inside baseball’s most successful franchise to uncover compelling and useful lessons in leadership. Culture of Excellence is transformative in its premise: it shares strategies you will want to apply and knowledge you can acquire to effectively improve your team and motivate your people.