Work Leadership

"Middle manager." The term evokes a bygone industrial era in which managers functioned like cogs in a vast machine and bureaucracy ruled. In recent decades, midlevel managers became a favorite target for the chopping block—underappreciated, often considered a superfluous layer of the organization. Not only does this outdated perspective need to change, the future demands it. In Power to the Middle, McKinsey thought leaders Bill Schaninger, Bryan Hancock, and Emily Field call for a profound reimagining of what middle managers can and must be able to do.

In the tradition of Who Moved My Cheese? and Fish!, Move Your Bus is an accessible and uplifting business parable that illustrates Clark's expert strategies to maximize the performance of each member of a team. These easy to implement techniques will inspire employees and team leaders alike to work harder and smarter and drive the organization to succeed.

In The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze - remember when it seemed plausible that IBM's Watson could cure cancer? - to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world.

Need to design training in a flash? This step-by-step guide to designing training will help you on your way in record time!

Laura Vanderkam has combined her three popular mini auidobooks into one comprehensive guide, with a new introduction. It will help listeners build habits that lead to happier, more productive lives, despite the pressures of their busy schedules. Through interviews and anecdotes, she reveals... What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast - to jump-start the day productively. What the Most Successful People Do On the Weekend - to recharge and prepare for a great week. What the Most Successful People Do at Work - to accomplish more in less time.

Two apparently very different negotiators: a leading hostage negotiator and a mergers and acquisitions dealmaker. One has solved hundreds of high stakes sieges. The other has completed more than sixty corporate M&A deals worth close to $1 billion. In The Work Smarter Guide to Negotiation Kirk and Jim have fused their remarkable life experiences of negotiating in widely contrasting situations to simplify complex issues and provide practical solutions for all kinds of scenarios.

If you're a woman, especially a woman of color, you know this already: You face unique challenges and obstacles as you work to scale the corporate ladder. From not seeing other faces in the room that look like you to dealing with the stereotypes and (often unconscious) biases in the workplace, you may know what to do to succeed, but not how to get it done in this environment. Show Your Worth shows you how. Shelmina Babai Abji speaks directly to professional women about how the power of being intentional and strategic can help transform the headwinds you face into tailwinds.

This book will give you a head start if your goal is to start using work visualization tools such as Kanban for your business. The methods discussed in this book have been proven effective for several businesses and learning about them might just give you an advantage over your competitors who have yet to adopt to this kind of thinking.

The Enneagram at Work is the first audiobook to harness the insight of the Enneagram to transform leadership in today’s workplace. A veteran of the high-profile hospitality industry with two decades of experience working with the Enneagram, author Jim McPartlin has seen firsthand the way self-awareness can radically transform leadership, strengthen teams, and spark creative solutions. From giving and accepting criticism to fostering strong mentorships and managing conflict, The Enneagram at Work will give you invaluable tools for growing and thriving in your career.

Master the art of crafting workshops that not only educate but also inspire lasting transformation in participants, with this time-tested and user-friendly guide. This comprehensive guidebook equips you with everything you need to successfully facilitate personal growth and collective wisdom in workshops, retreats, and trainings. Featuring a range of ready-to-use exercises, templates, worksheets, and checklists, this results-driven guide empowers you to confidently create and fine-tune your workshops with confidence and skill.

Whether you’re stuck in your current job, starting your first job and wondering how you can use it as a stepping-stone toward your dream career, or mid-career and wanting to finally be recognized for promotion or a leadership role, this book is for you. For the first time, Ann Hiatt shares both the daily habits and long-game strategies she learned working side-by-side for decades with the giants of technology at Amazon and Google.

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 the newly revised second edition of Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to the New Hybrid Workforce, veteran business advisor, speaker, and consultant Bruce Tulgan delivers a practical and incisive roadmap to developing crucial professionalism, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. An essential leadership handbook for executives, managers, and other business leaders, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap is a must-have resource for human resources professionals, team leaders, and front-line employees who deal with promising, but unpolished, talent.

History often appears to consist of big gestures and dramatic shifts. But for every peace treaty signed, someone set the stage and provided the pen. As social secretary to the Clintons for eight years, and more recently as chief of protocol under President Obama, Capricia Penavic Marshall has not just borne witness to history, she facilitated it. For Marshall, diplomacy runs on the invisible gesture: the micro-moves that affect the macro-shifts. Facilitation is power, and more often than not, it is the key to effective diplomacy.

Building on his national bestseller, Total Leadership, Friedman identifies the critical skills for integrating work and the rest of life. He illustrates them through compelling original stories of these remarkable people: former Bain & Company CEO and Bridgespan cofounder Tom Tierney, Facebook COO and bestselling author Sheryl Sandberg, nonprofit leader and US Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, US First Lady Michelle Obama, soccer champion-turned-broadcaster Julie Foudy, and renowned artist Bruce Springsteen.

Bestselling author Peter Block is a true visionary: author of the classic Flawless Consulting, his work is about empowerment, stewardship, chosen accountability, and reconciliation of community. In The Empowered Manager, he returns his eye toward management to renew our efforts to create a shift in the traditional hierarchy. Twenty years after the original book, Block talks of why it is so difficult to both open the door to empowerment and more importantly, have people walk through it.

If you find yourself getting fed up and frustrated with a colleague whose incompetence is driving you crazy, a boss who gets angry when you're not a mind reader, or an employee who habitually challenges your authority, chances are you're caught in an emotional trap in the workplace. Quit complaining and do something!

Why do some team members not get along? What is the best way to get new teams and ad-hoc teams to maximize their performance in the least amount of time? How can meetings be designed to achieve useful outcomes? Teams are the source of problem-solving and innovation that today’s organizations need to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex and challenging marketplace. Teamwork is hard because there is no magic formula or step-by-step procedure to ensure results.

Companies that want to stay relevant must apply more energy, focus, and resources to creating knock-your-socks-off customer experiences than they ever did before. The companies that embrace a "more is more" philosophy work harder and go further to ensure that their customers have a positive experience.

The way we do business is changing. Every day, we see new evidence that we've got to move away from the status quo that is burning out workers, enabling greed, and endangering our planet. Yet how do you develop the skills and practical tools to prioritize people, planet, and prosperity? With Shine: Ignite Your Inner Game to Lead Consciously at Work and in the World, Carley Hauck distills the research-based methods and game-changing skills she's brought to corporate settings such as LinkedIn, Pixar, Genentech, Clif Bar, and more.