Work Behavior

We spend most of our waking lives at work - in occupations often chosen by our unthinking 16-year-old selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what it might mean for us. Equally intrigued by work's pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton heads into the office, the factory, the fishing fleet, and the logistics centre, ears and eyes open to the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet?

If you listen to the news, robots are coming for your job. Full-time employment will soon be a thing of the past as organizations opt more to hire employees on a contract basis. With technological advances across email, video, project management, and instant messaging platforms, being tied to a desk working full time for one company is becoming obsolete. So, where does that leave you? The Human Cloud may be the most important book you hear to prepare for how work is done in the future.

Perfunctory efforts to show investment in a business relationship don't cut it anymore. Business professionals working across national and cultural boundaries need to form authentic relationships that drive rapport, camaraderie, and optimal team performance—and Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce provides the most thorough and practical approach to date on this issue. Renowned academics in the field of intercultural relationship-building Andy Molinsky and Melissa Hahn deliver an easy-to-understand approach to help you supercharge your global relationship-building skills.

When we do better work, we live better lives. Share before you’re ready. Get more agreements. Have difficult conversations. These are a few of the practical but profound ideas Lessonly CEO Max Yoder shares in Do Better Work. No matter your rank or role, if you want to see more understanding, accountability, and progress on your team, these stories and examples are for you.

As our workloads expand, attention has never been more valuable. Or more difficult to keep. In Can I Have your Attention?, Curt Steinhorst shows business leaders how to cut through the noise and get their employees back to work. Curt has spent years helping Fortune 500 companies overcome distraction and achieve focus. With technology creating endless opportunities to "improve productivity", people spend so much time responding to the interruptions that they've lost the ability to focus and do their jobs.

Companies spend billions of dollars annually on diversity efforts, with remarkably few results. Too often diversity efforts rest on the assumption that all that's needed is an earnest conversation about "privilege." That's not enough. To truly make progress with diversity, equity and inclusion, we must focus less on documenting the problem and more on just stopping the transmission of it.

In The Well-Behaved Child, beloved psychologist John Rosemond shares his seven essential tools for raising a child who pays attention and obeys. Once you learn how to use his proven, user-friendly techniques, you'll have everything you need to deal effectively with a wide range of discipline problems in children ages three to thirteen, what John terms "The Decade of Discipline". This clear, step-by-step program includes:

This hilarious and profound workplace guide proves the rigorously rational and the supremely sympathetic can meet in the middle and merge their strengths. Listeners will discover how blending with their opposite opens the pathway to being their truest selves. The famed Myers-Briggs personality scale says that Feelers (who lead with their hearts) put more weight on personal concerns and the people involved, and Thinkers (who lead with their heads) are guided by objective principles and impartial facts. This audiobook calls them Cacti and Snowflakes - each singularly transcendent.

For the socially conscious, the intellectually curious, or the creative soul comes an inspiring, New York Times best-selling handbook for success in business, life, and the all-important task of building a more compassionate world—by the visionary founder and CEO of KIND Healthy Snacks.

Unlike many books about employing the disabled, Nadine Vogel includes in the special needs workforce parents of children with special needs and workers with age-related disabilities. In this book she presents the business case for hiring and supporting this untapped and under-used workforce. She demonstrates the value of inclusion with statistics, anecdotal evidence, and examples from the world's most successful companies. Vogel not only encourages employers to consider this under-used group, but also presents concrete how-to information and best practices.

Ed Beltran, the CEO of a powerhouse leadership communication company, believes the antidote to stressed-out workplaces starts with conversation. Beltran has developed a science-based model to reduce stress and help people build what he calls fierce resilience. By leveraging the power of conversations, individuals discover their unique stressors, master skills to neutralize stressors, and build unwavering resilience that elevates their emotional well-being.

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It's their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.

If you have ever been part of a great team, you will know it is exponentially better than being part of a mediocre team. Teams are at the heart of working in complex domains and are essential to the success of agile approaches yet relatively few teams achieve greatness. Agile and leadership coach Geoff Watts has pulled together his many years of experience with all sorts of teams from software to product development, from medical teams to sports teams and has identified five common characteristics of great teams:

Making Work Work is Julie Morgenstern's most important book yet. Through the mastery of brand-new strategies, Morgenstern shows you how small changes in your thinking and behavior will help you achieve the seemingly impossible, boost your value, increase your job security, and afford you the time to still have a life.

This book is about coping with the crazy people at work. It is a serious book with funny stories. The book has 10 rules of survival. Rule # 1 Crazy People Make You Crazy is the foundation of all of them. The rules allow you to identify and then avoid crazy people and crazy situations. This is not a get rich or get sex or self-help book. This is about getting your life focused on what is truly important.

Where can you turn when your attempts to resolve conflict fail? Most approaches emphasize collaboration. You are supposed to sit down, calmly talk through your differences, and find a solution. But what if nothing seems to work, no matter what you do? When situations resist resolution, the Optimal Outcomes Method teaches us conflict freedom. Optimal Outcomes reveals eight groundbreaking practices proven to help people everywhere free themselves from conflict.

In her refreshing and forthright voice, Anne-Marie Slaughter returns with her vision for what true equality between men and women really means and how we can get there. She uncovers the missing piece of the puzzle, presenting a new focus that can reunite the women's movement and provide a common banner under which both men and women can advance and thrive.

This book explores and answers 101 dilemmas that we encounter at work, with topics that include time management, goal-setting, conflict, job dissatisfaction, unemployment, and even workplace trysts. The authors emphasize practical learning and coping, not esoteric insights or metaphysics, applying concrete solutions from Buddhist teachings to real problems in easily digestible chunks.

Have you ever wanted to disagree with your boss in a meeting? Make a tough decision that you know will be unpopular? We all have opportunities to be courageous at work. But since courage requires risk - to our reputations, our social standing, and, in some cases, our jobs - we often fail to act, which leaves us feeling powerless and regretful for not doing what we know is right. There's a better way to work and live - and Choosing Courage provides the moral imperative and research-based tactics to help you make better use of your courageous instincts at work.

Many White leaders want to create change but don't know how to do so appropriately and effectively. How do you know where the blind spots are that can create obstacles for people of color? Your intentions may be sincere and heartfelt, but intentions aren't enough. In It's Time to Talk About Race at Work, Kelly McDonald delivers a much-needed road map for businesspeople.