Workplace Leadership

Committed Teams: Three Steps to Inspiring Passion and Performance is based on a deceptively simple philosophy: set a direction, try to stay on track, and make adjustments when necessary. Easy to do? Hardly - especially when the typical workday is time-crunched, stressful, and deadline-driven. Drawing on research done at the Wharton School of Business, the authors reveal how to deliver results under these tough conditions.

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.

Bypass the faulty processes and communication styles that make change impossible in so many other organizations; access these practical tools and ideas for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in your company. This book provides clear, actionable steps for you to build new values, experiences, and perspectives into your organizational culture, infusing it with the diversity, inclusion, and belonging employees need to feel accepted, be their best selves, and do their best work.

Diversity initiatives are falling short. This audiobook shows leaders how to develop the skills needed to build sustainably inclusive organizations using a tested, research-based model developed by the global organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry. This audiobook will help leaders foster the skills to deal with today’s complex challenges and create a more inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous future for all of us.

The Antiracist Business Book: An Equity Centered Approach to Work, Wealth, and Leadership is the business book for the modern world. Trudi Lebrón has spent the last decade working as a DEI and impact coach for businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. And what she learned over that time was that making a lasting change wasn't about fixing old systems; it was about building a new one. In this seminal work, Trudi lays out a plan for all businesses, leaders, entrepreneurs, and coaches to remix business, so that equity and impact become synonymous with profit and power.

The Perils of Toxic Leadership is a science-based research-heavy discovery of toxic leaders’ overall effect on workplace culture, the wellbeing of those they manage, and the costs associated with such leaders. This book aims to take the latest science on the topic and morph it into a user-friendly accounting of its most extraordinary implications. There has never been a more focused time on toxic leadership in the history of the world than there is today.

This. It’s insightful, useful, funny, and incredibly easy to relate to. The audience is distanced in the intro and then pulled into the fold in a unique and engaging way. I love the “tough-love” approach; this audiobook takes a hard, honest look at what people can do to change, what best practices and methods are, and what a toxic work environment looks like. Importantly, it refuses to let the listener bypass recognizing their own flaws and weak points, but it also doesn’t make the listener feel alienated or judged for not being perfect.

Staying healthy at work has never been more top-of-mind than it is today. But staying healthy isn’t the same as staying well. Staying well at work isn’t just about the germs and toxins that impact how we feel physically or even make us sick; it’s also about the many aspects of the environment that affect our stress levels, mood, focus, and productivity. Whether you work in a traditional office or a corner of your bedroom, healthy workplaces need not be a luxury. Well at Work reveals how to design these spaces for wellbeing across the seven domains of integrative health.

In the rapidly changing business landscape, harnessing the power of diversity and inclusion is essential for the very viability and sustainability of every organization. Talent who feel fully welcomed, valued, respected, and heard by their colleagues and their organizations will fuel this growth. We will only succeed in this transformation if those in leadership pivot from command and control management styles to reinvent how we look at people, every organization's greatest asset.

New York Times bestselling author and applied neuroscience expert Christine Comaford knows what it takes to move people from the Critter State into the Smart State, where they have full access to their own creativity, innovation, higher consciousness, and emotional engagement. When an entire culture maintains that state, it becomes what she calls a SmartTribe.

Every business leader today should be asking themselves these questions. Systems and processes have been skewed too long in favor of some at the expense of others, and things are changing - fast. How to Be an Ally shows how to take personal responsibility for driving change that's good for people - and for business.

There are a host of neuroscientific explanations for why laughter makes us feel so great. Laughter triggers "feel good" chemicals in the brain which activate opiate receptors throughout your body and mind. Creating a workplace culture in which laughter is not only allowed but expected is an important step in building the trust, openness, authenticity, storytelling, and teamwork (TOAST) that are essential to any healthy collaborative environment.

From Plato to Plutarch, Shakespeare to Churchill, Machiavelli to Melville, Jane Austen to Carl Jung, Pericles to Peter Drucker and many more - here are the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries. You don't need a big title or a business degree in order to lead with impact. What you need is practical wisdom: the insight, judgment and strength of character that all great leaders have but that most business schools and corporate workshops don't teach.

Learn to harness an unconventional tool for leadership success. As the president and chief executive officer of Kindred Healthcare LLC, Ben Breier has witnessed massive disruptions to the healthcare industry. Gaining an early understanding of how to survive disruptions on the baseball field proved to be invaluable when he entered this challenging field. Using techniques honed over the course of his leadership career, Ben has been able to not only survive disruptions but thrive using intentional disruption as a business strategy.

Rock-star leaders stand out. Up and coming leaders have a challenge: How do you enhance your company’s culture in your current role? How do you establish yourself as a leader who takes your organization’s brand to eleven? You may not be an executive, and you may or may not have direct reports, but author, speaker, and trainer Jim Knight would assert that, nonetheless, you have the power to be a major influencer of your organization’s culture, lighting it up and making it rock, from the inside out.

Why do some companies consistently win in the consumer and capital markets while others struggle from crisis to crisis?The answer, says Noel Tichy, is that winning companies possess a "Leadership Engine" - a proven system for creating dynamic leaders at every level. To get ahead and stay ahead, a company needs agile, flexible, innovative leaders who can anticipate change and turn on a dime. Fortunately, says Tichy, just as everyone has untapped athletic potential, everyone has untapped leadership potential that can be developed.

I have heard story after story from supervisors desperately wanting to know how to avoid being overwhelmed with stress while leading their team. Far too many people are put into supervisory positions without being prepared for the role. They feel as if they are walking a tightrope with no safety net. Mastering the 12 skills outlined in this book positions a supervisor to reduce their own stress, increase the performance of their people, and have all of the right tools in their toolbox to build a top-performing and happy team!

In too many organizations, great ideas and unusual solutions can be suppressed, ignored, or attacked. Departments defend their turf, and people choose what is safe over what is better. Bad ideas move forward and good ideas die, which can lead to disastrous results - financial or otherwise. Luckily, there is a workable path out of this dysfunction. Kim Barnes’ process of constructive debate shows how to establish conditions that encourage the free exchange, discussion, and development of ideas and eliminate conditions that prevent potentially useful ideas from getting heard.

Organizations are stressed. Innovation and global competition have become the source of relentless pressure and customers have never had higher expectations. Corporate efforts to improve everyday productivity and boost profits are producing diminishing returns. Yet a new frontier of enormous opportunity to improve results is hidden in plain sight.

Many project managers do not have the authority to direct the activities of people on their teams - they can only influence them. The most influential people succeed by focusing less on themselves and their message and more on others. They pay attention; they are brave; they are vulnerable; they are curious, and they look for and acknowledge the things that are important about, and to, the other person. And they model the behavior that they want to see. This book tells you how.