Work Leadership

Have you ever dreaded Sunday night, got a pit in your stomach on the way to work, or had your heartbeat speed up at the sound of your boss’s voice? If so, you may have had anxiety at work. In this empathetic and wise guide, executive coaches and gurus of gratitude Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton explore the causes of workplace stress and anxiety and the management practices that have proven successful in reducing tension and cultivating calm.

High performing organizations see better results than their contemporaries and have more satisfied employees. This book clarifies this unique point in history where key technologies like AI, collaboration platforms, and low code development have converged to transform project and work management and provides practical strategies for seizing this moment to become a higher performing organization with happier people. In the ever-evolving landscape of business and technology, project management stands as a critical pillar, orchestrating the rhythm of progress and innovation.

From the pioneers of the management strategy that's transforming businesses worldwide, Making Work Human shows how to implement a culture of performance and gratitude in the workplace—and seize a competitive edge, increase profitability, and drive business momentum.

Why do as many as 75% of change initiatives fail? We live in an era where constant change is the norm rather than the exception. Given globalization, increased competition, and constant technological turnover, no organization can run in place: change is not optional. However, the sad fact is that the vast majority of change efforts fail. As authors Gregory P. Shea and Cassie A. Solomon argue, they do not fail for a lack of trying or leadership. Chances are you have led or been part of a failed change.

This is an audio summary of Principles, a book by one of the most successful investors and entrepreneurs in the world, Ray Dalio. Ray goes below the surface of the successful reputation of his stock brokerage company, Bridgewater, to reveal the universal truths that he relied on to bring his business from the bottom to the top.

How do you find talent with a creative spark? To what extent can you predict human creativity, or is human creativity something irreducible before our eyes, perhaps to be spotted or glimpsed by intuition, but unique each time it appears? Obsessed with these questions, renowned economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: the people with the creativity, drive, and insight to transform an organization and make everyone around them better.

In User Friendly, Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant reveal the untold story of a paradigm that quietly rules our modern lives: the assumption that machines should anticipate what we need. Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women’s rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this audiobook unpacks the ways in which the world has been - and continues to be - remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.

The concept to this book is a warm approach to the idea of: Only by working in a team will you fulfill your dreams. The focus of the book is on realizing one's dreams, achieving those goals by working in teams. Teams come in every shape and size—spouses in a marriage, colleagues at work, volunteers together for a good cause. It takes teamwork to make the dream work.

Every manager makes tough calls - it comes with the job. And the hardest decisions are the "gray areas" - situations where you and your team have worked hard to find an answer, you've done the best analysis you can, and you still don't know what to do. But you have to make a decision. In Managing in the Gray, Joseph Badaracco offers a powerful, practical, and even radical way to resolve these problems.

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.

In his book, Ray Dalio shares the unconventional principles he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business - and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve his or her goals. This audiobook summary allows you to skip to the nuggets of wisdom and actionable content in a very easily absorbed way, including key takeaways at the end of each chapter.

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.

How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to Do the Best Work of Their Lives offers a blueprint for using flexible work to unlock the potential of your people. The book offers the steps necessary to building the new principles and guardrails to empower flexible, high-performing teams. And it teaches listeners to lead with purpose, to manage and measure differently, and to believe that by letting go, they'll get more back than they thought possible.

Maynard Webb has always been the go-to guy when Silicon Valley companies have thorny problems. Whether revamping eBay's crashing servers (transforming their technology weaknesses into a competitive strength) or investing in emerging technology start-ups, Webb brings strategic and operational savvy to every issue and venture. In his first book, Webb brings this same focus to tackle outdated models of work, created a century ago, which no longer sync up with either individual or employers' needs.

We are living in an epidemic of disengagement and despair that calls us to action. Awakening Compassion at Work answers the call, showing us new ways to enliven the humanity of work and in so doing address the suffering of the world and create an innovative, optimistic, and engaged workforce.

What if you were given the ultimatum: make a radical shift in your life, or lose it all? This was the question Alan Deutschman posed in "Change or Die", his sensational cover story for the May 2005 issue of Fast Company. Surprisingly, Deutschman concluded that although we all have the innate capability and fundamental need to change our behavior, we rarely ever do.

You probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up.

Every church and ministry goes through changes in leadership, and the issue is far bigger than the wave of pastors from the baby boomer generation who are moving toward retirement. When a pastor leaves a church, ministries are disrupted, and members drift away. If the church is already struggling, it can find itself suddenly in very dire straits indeed. But the outcome doesn't have to be that way. What if when a pastor moved on, the church knew exactly what to do to find a suitable replacement because a plan and a process had been in place for some time?

A powerful story about the African philosophy of teamwork and collaboration that has the power to reshape our workplaces, our relationships with our coworkers, and our personal lives, written by the bestselling coauthor of Fish! and the bestselling author of 1001 Ways to Reward Employees.

Being a manager is no easy task. You must set and meet team goals that match business objectives while also ensuring growth and development opportunities for your people. You have to be the voice of authority and a key decision-maker while simultaneously giving your employees autonomy and flexibility. How do you navigate these tensions?