Work Leadership

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.

As a workplace strategist and business coach, Erica Keswin has spent over 20 years working with top business leaders and executives to build successful organizations that honor relationships. Featuring case studies from top brands such as, Lyft, Starbucks, Mogul, and SoulCycle, to name a few, Bring Your Human to Work distills the key practices of the most human companies into applicable advice that any business leader can use to build a “human workplace”.

Scott Adams' The Joy of Work is a manifesto for coping within the walls of your cubicle. You'll learn to look at the bright side of every work situation the Dilbert way: "I cried because I did not have an office with a door, until I met a man who had no cubicle."

The iconic Sydney to Hobart Race, a 723-mile deepwater challenge - often called the “Everest” of offshore ocean racing - is considered one of the toughest in the world. Unpredictable weather and seas make each race demanding, but in 1998, an unexpected “weather bomb” hit the fleet, creating 80-foot waves and 100-mile-per-hour winds. Many bigger, better-equipped boats tried to maneuver around the storm, but the crew of the AFR Midnight Rambler chose to head directly into its path.

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.

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.

Once more the "unconventional" Peters stimulates corporate thought processes. Along with the best of his columns, Peters includes questions and rebuttals that come from readers and listeners, as well as his own candid responses. A "must" hear for every business person.

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!

Research by Daniel Goleman, a psychologist and coauthor of Primal Leadership, has shown that emotional intelligence is a more powerful determinant of good leadership than technical competence, IQ, or vision. Influencing those around us and supporting our own well-being requires us to be self-aware, know when and how to regulate our emotional reactions, and understand the emotional responses of those around us. No wonder emotional intelligence has become one of the crucial criteria in hiring and promotion.

Woke at Work is a comprehensive guide to help you effectively navigate in the corporate world and take ownership of your career progression. Bringing together experiences and observations gained over 15 years working within various corporate institutions, it is packed with information and approaches to help you position yourself for acceleration and avoid common mistakes.

Rookie Smarts addresses the questions every experienced professional faces: Will my knowledge and skills become obsolete and irrelevant? Will a young, inexperienced newcomer upend my company or me? How can I keep up? The answer is to stay fresh, keep learning, and know when to think like a rookie.

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:

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.

Do you want to be more productive and enjoy your work more fully? The Now Habit at Work, written by top performance expert Neil Fiore, reveals how true time management goes hand-in-hand with greater ease, well-being, and success in business and life. Whatever your occupation, Fiore’s proven tools will empower you to overcome procrastination and engage your full creative potential on the job.

Every so often, an audiobook comes along that captures the attention of the hard working entrepreneur (for more than ten minutes) and literally changes the paradigm of how they view their business. Through a quick listen you will experience Scott Fritz's entrepreneurial journey first hand, as he shares with you the business tools, action focused exercises and mindset philosophy that allowed him to achieve The 40 Hour Work YEAR.

Does the voice in your head fill you with doubt? Are you working harder but accomplishing less? Does the life you’ve always hoped to live still elude you? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it’s time to unleash the beast. In The Business Beast, Brian Dyer leads you down a fulfilling—but sometimes dark and lonely—path. Entering the wild is dangerous, but it offers rewards you can only begin to imagine, and you’ll be in good hands as Brian guides you through the four primal instincts of The Business Beast.

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.

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know - such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best. How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget - and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains?

Managing a call center presents numerous challenges for leaders, including meeting stringent KPIs, maintaining employee motivation, and handling high call volumes. Achieving performance metrics such as average handle time, first call resolution, and customer satisfaction requires meticulous planning and constant monitoring. Simultaneously, leaders must keep their teams motivated in a high-pressure environment, often characterized by repetitive tasks and demanding customers.

Everyone seems to understand that healthy organizations nurture flourishing individuals and societies—what Jesus desires for all. How can Christian business and ministry leaders create a positive organizational culture and identity? Justin Irving has spent twenty years studying, teaching, and reflecting on organizational leadership. Drawing wisdom from the Bible, contemporary leadership theory, and the insights of over two hundred executive leaders, Irving provides a theological framework that makes human flourishing the driving motivation for leading organizations well.