Workplace Leadership

From disengaged employees to underserved customers, business failures invariably stem from a culture problem. In The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change, acclaimed culture transformation expert and global executive Siobhan McHale shares her proven four-step process to demystifying culture transformation and starting down the path to positive change.

Beyond Leaning In is a different kind of business book - based on research, but told as a novel and designed to spark discussion among friends, family, classmates, and co-workers across genders and generations. Through the perspective of female and male characters across generations, listeners gain new insights about why gender gaps are so hard to close despite our best intentions. We are inspired to think differently about what both individuals and organizations must do to ensure all employees thrive.

Results and relationships—managers and leaders no longer have to prioritize one over the other to build a culture of exceptional accountability. You don’t have to choose between being the hard-charging task master and being the easy-going people pleaser. By expanding your awareness to create deliberate intentions, take informed actions, and be responsible for your impact, you can achieve better business outcomes and experience greater satisfaction in doing so.

A deployed nuclear submarine operates alone - hundreds of miles from any support and hundreds of feet below the surface. An emotionless and indifferent enemy constantly surrounds the crew. Thousands of pounds of sea pressure sit right over their heads, waiting to crush them like a tin can and send them to the bottom of the ocean. Even the most junior sailor’s mistake can result in loss of the submarine and everyone on it.

In this workshop, happiness expert Jennifer Moss shares science-based strategies for creating meaningful ties at work. By finding ways to proactively strengthen relationships with colleagues and pursue your interests, you’ll create satisfying connections - both professional and personal - while improving your overall well-being.

Kindness isn’t merely about getting along with people and being nice. It’s a game changer in business, the door opener to opportunity, and the key to authenticity and confidence. It’s a superpower that can be honed through an intentional lifestyle of kindness and is especially important in these divisive times.

Agile Conversations brings a practical, step-by-step guide to using the human power of conversation to build effective, high-performing teams to achieve truly agile results. Consultants Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick show listeners how to utilize the five conversations to help teams build trust, alleviate fear, answer the “whys,” define commitments, and hold everyone accountable.

The digital age will raise the question of how we humans will stay relevant in the workplace. To stay relevant, we have to be able to excel cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally in ways that technology can’t. Professor Ed Hess believes that requires us to become hyper-learners: continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning at the speed of change.

Women are acculturated within systems that encourage them to sabotage one another; this book shows how they can break free of this cultural programming and use whatever privilege and power they have to raise each other up. Joy Wiggins and Kami Anderson advocate that the only way women can successfully support each other is by addressing the varying intersections of our individual power and privileges, particularly focusing on how some privileges are inherited along lines of race, class, sexuality, and geography.

Imagine a workplace where people can be themselves. Where there aren’t hierarchies or power dynamics. Where team members continuously find ways to better themselves and their work because it makes them feel excited and fulfilled. Where everyone supports each other without ego. This type of environment is not only possible; it’s the catalyst for a successful company. Nurse Next Door President and CEO Cathy Thorpe inspires leaders to radically change their people practices and organizational culture by leading with kindness.

We’re currently confronting a once-in-a-century opportunity to create a future of work that’s better for everyone. The corporate standard of extreme hours, sleep deprivation, and nonstop travel is dead. Tomorrow’s successful businesses will be hybrid, flexible, and—as glimpsed in The Brain-Friendly Workplace—optimized for peak performance.

The central problem Hammer saw is that despite good intentions, companies don’t perform at the levels they need to because the way they do things is screwed up. This book is a tool kit for how to do things right, providing its listeners with the skills to make deep and fundamental changes in how companies do their work.

A man finds himself on the top step of a stepladder; a woman removes the guard to her machine; a worker is not wearing her safety glasses in the plant. Why do these folks do these things? One tendency is to blame workers for safety errors and label their personal failings as the cause. Labeling does not solve the problems. These tendencies build dysfunctional management practices that create fear associated with your safety programs. I want to teach you a better way to analyze behaviors to understand why your employees were put in a position to take the risk in the first place.

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business? Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea - that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox - the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity.

Unleash Your Leadership Potential: Unlock Unprecedented Success in Just 30 Days, even if you’re a first-time manager or have struggled to lead effectively in the past. Have you recently made the leap from team member to team leader and are grappling with the power shift? Or perhaps you’re already in a leadership role, but feel like you’re balancing targets and team harmony?

Ken Segall's first book, Insanely Simple, was based on observations gained from 12 years working as Steve Jobs' advertising agency creative director, first with NeXT and then with Apple. He saw firsthand that Jobs looked at everything through the lens of simplicity. His obsession with simplicity was visible not just in Apple's products. You could see it in the way the company was organized and how it innovated, advertised, sold at retail, and provided customer service.

Why do even great leadership books leave out the soft skills? Probably because soft skills are not flashy. But soft skills are critical to graceful leadership, and you will find the stories and strategies to hone them, with this book. National Distinguished Principal and leadership advisor Jessica Cabeen understands the soft skills better than most. In Lead with Grace Cabeen shows you how to seamlessly integrate authenticity, empathy, integrity, and the power of vulnerability into your daily work.

In helping Walt Disney create “The Happiest Place on Earth”, Van France and his team started a business revolution in 1955 that eventually became the Disney University - the employee training and development program that powers one of the most famous brands on earth. Disney U examines how Van France's timeless company values and leadership expertise have turned into a training and development dynasty: the Disney U. The book reveals the heart of the Disney culture and describes the company's values and operational philosophies that support the world-famous Disney brand.

Culture Rules is a clarion call for leaders around the world. The pandemic has magnified the essential role that culture plays in an organization's health, vitality, and sustainability—some passed the test with flying colors while others are seeing with fresh eyes, deeply rooted issues and challenges within their culture. After completing a global study with over 5,000 participants from ten countries, Mark Miller and his team have exposed the most predominant fissures and their fixes.