Work Behavior

Human connection affects much more than the bottom line. Organizations thrive when employees feel valued, the environment is energized, and high productivity and innovation are the norm. This requires a new kind of leader who fosters a culture of connection within the organization. An update to the popular first edition, Michael Stallard’s Connection Culture (Second Edition) provides a fresh way of thinking about leadership and offers recommendations for how to tap into the power of human connection.

New York Times best-selling author and leadership expert Ken Blanchard’s popular TrustWorks! training program is now available in audiobook form! Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships is an insightful guide designed to help people navigate one of the most complex issues that affects all areas of our lives: trust. In Trust Works!, Ken Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead, and Martha Lawrence demonstrate how to get along better with those around us.

In Polite, Louise shows how the unseen science of politeness governs everything we do, from what we say to how we act, and reveals how a better understanding of the rules and norms of politeness can help us in all aspects of our work, leisure and home lives. And, in doing so, she answers the age-old question... are politeness standards really declining?

Whether you're a leader looking to connect with your workforce; a member of a small team, hungry to make a difference; or at the helm of a global organization, with an eye on the horizon - this is a how-to for forward thinkers like you.

Organizations have (finally) begun committing to and investing in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), catalyzed by the social justice movements of 2020. Whether due to pressure from internal and external stakeholders, competition for top talent, or a moral imperative, businesses are increasingly acknowledging that DEI work needs to be done. Yet, as they dive into this work, many companies fail to achieve results. In fact, some don’t even know what results they are looking for in the first place.

When it comes to improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition, experience, and big data alone don't work. What does? Running disciplined business experiments. And what if companies roll out new products or introduce new customer experiences without running these experiments? They fly blind. That's what Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke shows in this rigorously researched and eye-opening book.

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.

Scientific research has found that your ability to resist the damaging effects of stress - your hardiness - can reduce stress-related illness and strengthen your ability to thrive under pressure. Hardiness, written by respected clinical and research psychologists, will help develop your psychological hardiness which, in turn, enables you to enjoy more of life's rewards. Mastering the 3 C's of hardiness - commitment, control, and challenge - is essential to increasing hardiness and responding effectively to stressful situations.

An insightful and practical new guide to how sustainable people management works in today’s global economy, with guidance on how to transform the way your organization recruits, hires, upskills, and retains its people.

Drawing on her 18 years of experience working remotely, plus original interviews with managers, employees, and free agents who've perfected their remote routines, Laura Vanderkam shares strategies for productivity, creativity, and health in the new corner office.

Drawing on four decades of hands-on management experience, the founder of Richer Sounds argues that ethically run businesses are invariably more efficient, more motivated and more innovative than those that care only about the bottom line. He uncovers the simple tools that the best leaders use to make their businesses fair, revealing how others can follow suit. And he also delves into the big questions that modern capitalism has to answer if it is to survive and to thrive.

Few organizations solve as many impossible problems as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and nobody knows more about leading rocket scientists to unlikely breakthroughs than Adam Steltzner. As the phase lead and development manager for EDL (entry, descent, and landing) of the Curiosity rover to Mars, Steltzner spearheaded the creation of one of engineering's wackiest kluges - the sky crane, which allowed the heaviest rover in the history of space exploration to land on Mars unscathed.

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.

Reward and recognition programs can be costly and inefficient, and they primarily reward employees who are already highly engaged and productive performers. Worse still, these programs actually decrease employee motivation because they can make individual recognition, rather than the overall success of the team, the goal. Yet many businesses turn to these measures first-unaware of a better alternative. So, when it comes to changing your organizational culture, carrots and sticks don't work!

Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully.

Today, companies cannot afford to have their employees disengaged and hating or at least not loving their jobs. Traditional management is broken. We need a new, twenty-first-century approach to management that will galvanize the minds and hearts of people giving so much of their lives to organizations. In The No-Limits Enterprise: Organizational Self-Management in the New World of Work, Doug Kirkpatrick examines how companies can begin the journey toward becoming a twenty-first-century enterprise with limitless power for growth.

An entertaining and accessible listen with profound implications for the future, Teeming takes us on a journey through nature’s most ancient and successful R&D labs, and gives practical prescriptions for redesigning organizations to flourish far into the future. Evolutionary biologist and anthropologist Dr. Woolley-Barker weaves poetic vision and deep scientific expertise to illustrate how flat, agile, and adaptive societies like ants, termites, and underground fungal networks self-organize for resilience and value.

Remote working is on the rise. Whether or not we are remote workers, it is likely we are all part of a global workforce. We need to learn to interact remotely, because we are all remote from someone in some way. Rather than simply simulating the way we'd usually work together via digital means, we have to learn new communication skills and adopt a different mindset in order to work remotely effectively, efficiently, and, most importantly, healthily. We'll start by getting you set up with the right equipment and habits. Then, we'll learn the mindset of treating everyone as remote.

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.

Friendship expert Shasta Nelson unpacks the distinct ways we can make work relationships the healthiest they can be, both for the sake of the employee and the mission of the company. She inspires listeners to see why friendship is crucial to our health and our careers, and teaches us exactly how to develop the supportive and meaningful connections we need.