Organizational Behavior Leadership

One of your most important responsibilities as a manager is to motivate your employees to do their absolute best. Managers who create positive, rewarding, high-energy environments reduce absenteeism and turnover while dramatically increasing productivity and quality. In Motivation, success expert Brian Tracy draws on his decades of experience bringing out the best in others to provide 21 of the fastest, most powerful methods ever discovered for increasing the effectiveness of any individual or group.

Reframing Organizations provides time-tested guidance for more effective organizational leadership. Rooted in decades of social science research across multiple disciplines, Bolman and Deal's four-frame model has continued to evolve since its conception more than 25 years ago. This new seventh edition will be updated to include additional coverage of cross-sector collaboration, generational differences, virtual environments, globalization, sustainability, and communication across cultures.

As Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli implied, you're either predator or prey, and the animal you most resemble determines your position on the food chain. In The Wolf in CIO's Clothing Gartner analyst and author Tina Nunno expands on Machiavelli's metaphor, examining seven animal types and the leadership attributes of each. Nunno posits the wolf - a social animal with strong predatory instincts - as the ideal example of how a leader can adapt and thrive.

The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor - avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy - you can be kind and clear at the same time. Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class.

We've all had experiences with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always need to be the smartest people in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them.

Without creativity, there is no business. At the core of Cirque du Soleil’s lavish, multi-million-dollar productions is Vice Chairman Daniel Lamarre, who has mastered the ability to bring business and creativity together across multiple languages and cultures in a way that has never been seen before. The secrets he shares in Balancing Acts are rooted in tremendous faith in your own creative skills, even if you are convinced you have none, and those of the sharpest minds within your organization.

The retired four-star general and and best-selling author of My Share of the Task shares a powerful new leadership model. Former General Stanley McChrystal held a key position for much of the War on Terror, as head of the Joint Special Operations Command. In Iraq, he found that despite the vastly superior resources, manpower, and training of the US Military, Al Qaeda had an advantage because of its structure as a loose network of small, independent cells. To defeat such an agile enemy, JSOC had to change its focus from efficiency to adaptability.

In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey show how our individual beliefs - along with the collective mindsets in our organizations - combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.

Starting in 1997, Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller pioneered a dramatically different approach to leadership that creates off-the-charts morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance. The company utterly rejects the idea that employees are simply functions to be moved around, "managed" with carrots and sticks, or discarded at will. Instead Barry-Wehmiller manifests the reality that every single person matters, just like in a family. That's not a cliché on a mission statement; it's the bedrock of the company's success.

1:1s are arguably one of the most critical meeting types for the success of team members, managers, coaches, teams, and organizations. The best managers recognize that 1:1s are not an add-on to their role as a manager. Conducting 1:1s successfully are foundational to being a manager. At the same time, these meetings are the core of a direct report's experience and development at work, including how well they engage and attach to their role, perceive the effectiveness of their manager, and envision their future at the organization.

Eileen Sharp and Vic Hightower were frustrated. After years of profitable, predictable growth, Swan Services was in a rut. Meetings were called and discussions held, but few decisions were made and even less got done. People were pointing fingers and assigning blame, but nothing happened to solve Swan’s mounting problems. It felt as though they were working harder than ever but with less impact. The company Eileen and Vic had founded and built for 10 years was a different place. It just wasn’t fun anymore.

You can bring about positive, lasting change in the world, and you don’t have to be rich and famous or lead a big organization to do it. Global leadership icons and best-selling authors John C. Maxwell and Rob Hoskins provide the inspiring and practical roadmap to get started being the change you want to see - in your community and beyond.

Hiring and firing are hard to get right - and potentially costly to get wrong. Two of the most crucial tasks you face as a manager, they are vital to both the success of the enterprise...and your own career. No need to worry. This handy guide breaks down the simple but powerful strategies you can use to bring better employees onboard - and weed out the weaker ones.

Sun Tzu's Art of War for Women helps women find the peaceful path to success through strategies made famous in the ancient Chinese text, The Art of War. Female wisdom, or common sense, is about avoiding needless confrontation, conserving energy for the things that matter, and seeking an outcome in which everyone wins. And for women, as for Sun Tzu, success doesn't come simply from knowing what to do, but from knowing who you are.

"Silos" are organizations' vertical structures—but the word has become synonymous with barriers to workplace effectiveness and connotes deep political infighting. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. They cause stress, exasperation, and disappointment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be teammates.

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world's most successful organizations - including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and the US Navy's SEAL Team Six - and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind.

The world’s best teams don’t win because of leadership alone. They win because of teamship. Yet when it comes to success, it is leaders who are lauded; too little attention is given to the transformation of the team itself. We’ve all but ignored how to extract billions of dollars of shareholder value from the interdependency of talent in teams, Keith Ferrazzi argues. Upgrading teams is one of the least curated and under-leveraged opportunities for success. It is time to focus on teamship.

Leadership can be learned: New evidence from neuroscience clearly points to ways that leaders can significantly improve how they engage with and motivate others. This book provides leaders and managers with an accessible guide to practical, effective actions, based on neuroscience.

Young, ambitious, and overwhelmed, Andrew O'Brien personifies a part of every leader as he wanders in search of the elusive silver bullet that will propel him to success. He happens upon an unlikely guide who distills the seemingly infinite list of leadership perils into the five temptations of a CEO. In an intense and often combative exchange, the two debate fundamental issues faced by all leaders, issues involving personal integrity and effectiveness in the ongoing struggle for success.

Rapid change defines the world around us, requiring a more effective type of organization. New discoveries change our understanding of how the world works, and Margaret J. Wheatley shows us how the “new science” can lead to a powerful new view of the business world. Our world has become nonlinear and filled with constant transition, and this new understanding can be applied to the way we organize work, people, and our lives. Wheatley invites us to transform our way of thinking and adapt ourselves—and our companies—to the 21st century by offering a new way of thinking.