Organizational Culture

Carol Fleming wants to show you that small talk is not as “small” as you might think. It’s the foundation of every relationship, professional and personal. It is the sound of people reaching out to each other, searching for similarities, shared interests, goodwill, connections, and friendship. And it’s something we all do every day with people we know. It’s just the one little bit about strangers that throws some people off. Graceful social conversation can be learned, even by those requiring the smallest of baby steps.

When Reah Bravo began working at the Charlie Rose show, the open secret of Rose’s conduct towards women didn’t deter her from pursuing a position she thought could launch her career in broadcast journalism. She considered herself more than capable of handling any unprofessional behavior that might come her way. But she soon learned a devastating truth: we don’t always react to abusive situations as we imagine we will.

Cynthia Shapiro is a former human resources executive who's pulling back the curtain on the way that companies really work. In Corporate Confidential, she unmasks startling truths and what you can do about them. Shapiro pulls no punches, giving listeners an inside look at a secret world of hidden agendas they would never normally see: a world of insider information and insights that can save a career.

Want to make life easier? Who doesn't? And in Easier, veteran leadership and business coach Chris Westfall delivers practical and effective ways to make progress in your life by improving your efficiency and confidence. You'll find hands-on guidance on communicating more effectively, finding motivation in the midst of uncertainty, and serving with great impact, both at the office and at home.

The most important attribute high-performing organizations have in common is that they are well led. Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet too many organizations take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. The result is a dearth of leaders and a failure to leverage the full capacity of the enterprise.

Ten years of research uncover the secret source of growth and profit...Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories, and maximize profit in the long term. Pulling from a unique 10 year growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best businesses have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect.

The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.

Francesca Gino has been studying rebels in life and in the workplace for more than 15 years. She has discovered that rebels - those who practice "positive deviance" at work - are harder to manage, but they are good for the bottom line: their passion, drive, curiosity, and creativity raise the entire organization to a new level. And she has found that at home, rebels are more engaged partners, parents, and friends. Packed with strategies for embracing rebellion at work and in life, Rebel Talent encourages all of us to rebel against what’s comfortable, so that we can thrive.

In Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships, FranklinCovey's chief people officer, Todd Davis, explains that an organization's greatest asset isn't its people; rather, it's the relationships between its people that is the greatest predictor of personal effectiveness. In the end, employees' ability to build and sustain great relationships is an organization's ultimate competitive advantage.

Have you ever wondered what it would take to be a better leader, or achieve your wildest dreams, or make a bigger difference in the world? The answer lies in the choices you make: about everything from how you spend your time to the way you view the world. Smart Leadership is the latest essential business title from internationally best-selling author of Win the Heart and Chess Not Checkers, Mark Miller. In this book, he shares the four research-based "smart choices" the best leaders make to scale their influence and results.

Market volatility. Sustainability demands. Hybrid working. Opportunities and hazards of fast-changing technology and regulations. Companies and nonprofits face more daunting challenges than ever. How can we collaborate in our organizations—and with outside partners—to solve problems, innovate, and succeed? This indispensable new book lays out a pragmatic action plan blending rich stories, new empirical research, and loads of practical advice to help companies thrive by collaborating more effectively.

A trio of McKinsey & Company veterans draws from a unique combination of psychology, neuroscience, and consciousness practices plus a combined 50-plus years of international board room experience to offer a unique approach to learning and leading with awareness and intentional choice, even amidst the most challenging circumstances.

If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off its head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: "spiders", which have a rigid hierarchy, and "starfish", which rely on the power of peer relationships.

Great leaders are always searching for new ideas and approaches to their work because they know they must continue to evolve in order to succeed in an ever-changing world. And, just like a gardener who knows not to blame their lettuce for failing to thrive, great leaders know that it’s the conditions of their workplace that affect how their people perform and grow. This book explores a variety of leadership topics that will help you meet challenges, respond to opportunities, and nurture a healthy workplace culture in new and innovative ways.

It is rare today for employees to stay with one organization for the long tenures that were the norm before the Great Recession. In fact, "job hopping" is the new norm, especially for Millennials. In The Boomerang Principle, companies learn how to leverage this fact rather than fear it. By engendering a lifetime of loyalty from former employees, leaders can see them "return" in the form of customers, partners, clients, advocates, contractors, and even returning employees.

Part manual, part manifesto, a humorous yet incisive guide to navigating subtle sexism at work - a Lean In for the Buzzfeed generation that provides real-life career advice and humorous reinforcement for a new generation of professional women. Hard hitting and entertaining, Feminist Fight Club blends personal stories with research, statistics, and no-bullsh*t expert advice.

In her two decades researching organizations, Michelle King has discovered that people who succeed possess a particularly unique skill: They know how workplaces work. More specifically, to get ahead, they do not rely on the often generic and outdated written formal rules. Instead, they have learned to gauge how they should behave and perform by becoming aware of informal (and unspoken) rules that exist just below the surface. In this one-of-a-kind guide, King offers her proprietary framework based on over ten years of research and hundreds of employees who reached leadership positions.

We all know how important our habits are for personal productivity, success and happiness. But the truth is that we rarely work alone: reaching our goals depends on how effectively we work with others, and teams have their own habits that can help - or hinder - success. Here, productivity and teamwork expert Charlie Gilkey shows how to cultivate, implement and maintain the small habits that lead to big results for any team.

We've decided by consensus that consensus is good. In In Defense of Troublemakers, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, unoriginal, or false. It leads planes and markets to crash, causes juries to convict innocent people, and can quite literally make people think blue is green. In the name of comity, we embrace stupidity. We can make better decisions by embracing dissent. Dissent forces us to question the status quo, consider more information, and engage in creative decision-making.

The Respectful Leader presents an engaging, thought-provoking lesson for companies seeking off-the-charts performance. Author Gregg Ward draws on 25 years of leadership consulting, coaching, and training experience to reveal the secret to great results: respect. In this true-to-life business fable, he shares the story of Des Hogan, a CEO who discovers that disrespectful behavior on the part of his leadership team is eating away at his company's morale, productivity, and profits.