Business Development Skills

For more than 25 years, small-talk expert Don Gabor has helped thousands of people communicate with wit, confidence, and enthusiasm with his best seller How to Start a Conversation and Make Friends. This newly revised and updated edition combines classic techniques in the art of conversation with necessary skills for communicating in the 21st century.

Average schools don't inspire greatness - and greatness is what our world needs if we are going to produce world-changing learners. In Culturize, author and education leader Jimmy Casas shares insights into what it takes to cultivate a community of learners who embody the innately human traits our world desperately needs, such as kindness, honesty, and compassion. His stories reveal how these "soft skills" can be honed while meeting and exceeding academic standards of 21st-century learning.

The ability to “hold space” for yourself and for others has never been more urgent. Faced with global issues of climate change, political unrest, violence, and economic crises, more citizens of the world are experiencing disconnection, grief, and a deep sense of loneliness than at any other time. But, with the right tools, you and your circle can become part of the solution.

In The Science of Likability, you'll get all that and more. I've taken 27 seminal scientific and psychological studies and broken them down, so you can use their findings to your advantage. Every piece of advice in this book to increase your social standing and likability factor is 100% backed by in-depth, peer-reviewed research. You can get a new haircut and wardrobe, and you even learn funny jokes. But likability is something more. It's subconscious, and it's the small signs that signal our brains to let their guards down and embrace others.

The power of effective listening is recognised as the essential tool of good management. In this book, Nancy Kline describes how we can achieve this and presents a step-by-step guide that can be used in any situation. Whether you want to have more productive meetings, solve business problems, create bold strategies, or build stronger relationships, this book offers you a new world of possibilities.

You enter a crowded room. For a moment every eye is on you. And a little voice inside you cries, "Help!" If this has ever happened to you, you're not alone! Walking into a room full of people you don't know can be very uncomfortable. It can also be one of your very best opportunities to meet and make new business contacts and friends. The Mingling Maven™ will show step by step, how to allay your fears and make the most of every moment.

Etiquette, Sara Jane says, is the glue that holds society together. Humans are social creatures, after all—we need connection to survive. But with global cultures in flux and the post-pandemic digital age, shadow epidemics of anxiety and loneliness are on the rise. Plus, the old rules of “decorum” don’t match the times. Amidst all this withdrawal and change, social growth can feel out of reach. How do we leave the comfort of our homes, step away from our screens, and interact face to face?

It’s undeniable: women’s voices aren’t being heard - at work, at home, in every facet of their lives. The fault lies not with women, but in a culture that seeks to silence women’s voices. However, there are skills every woman can harness to understand her own voice and learn how to use it with confidence. Outspoken provides listeners with the insight, guidance, and encouragement they need to use their voice to successfully communicate in meetings, around the dinner table, and during future political debates.

Whether it's a manager who keeps moving the goal posts, an uncooperative colleague, negative friend, or critical family member, some people are just plain hard to get along with. Often, your immediate response is to shrink or sulk, become defensive or attack. But there are smarter moves to make when dealing with difficult people. This book explains how to cope with a range of situations with difficult people and to focus on what you can change.

Organizational psychologist and executive coach Rebecca Newton has found that even her most successful clients still want more of one quality: gravitas. They want their words to carry weight, to have a positive, lasting impact on those around them. Gravitas can seem like an elusive, intangible quality, but it isn't about adopting the style of another or being someone you're not. Newton draws on extensive research and experience coaching business leaders to show what underpins authentic gravitas and how anyone can develop it.

The Korean sixth sense for winning friends and influencing people, nunchi (pronounced noon-chee) can help you connect with others so you can succeed in everything from business to love. The Power of Nunchi will show you how. Have you ever wondered why your less-skilled coworker gets promoted before you, or why that one woman from your yoga class is always surrounded by adoring friends? They probably have great nunchi. The art of reading a room and understanding what others are thinking and feeling, nunchi is a form of emotional intelligence.

People Skills is a communication-skills handbook that can help you eliminate these and other communication problems. Author Robert Bolton describes the twelve most common communication barriers, showing how these "roadblocks" damage relationships by increasing defensiveness, aggressiveness, or dependency. He explains how to acquire the ability to listen, assert yourself, resolve conflicts, and work out problems with others. These are skills that will help you communicate calmly, even in stressful emotionally charged situations.

Negotiation is not a zero-sum game. It’s an essential skill for your career that can also improve your closest relationships and your everyday life. Still, people often shy away from it, feeling defeated before they’ve even started. In this groundbreaking new book on negotiation, Alexandra Carter - Columbia law professor and mediation expert who has helped students, business professionals, the United Nations, and more - offers a straightforward accessible approach anyone can use to ask for and receive more.

Developing successful relationships is critical to our success in both our personal and professional lives. The Power of Understanding People shows you how to establish and develop extremely effective relationships by providing you with techniques to better identify and understand the intrinsic needs of others. As a result, you will achieve better team dynamics, increased sales and client satisfaction, higher levels of employee engagement and performance, and even more satisfying marriages and friendships.

In More Time to Think, Nancy Kline demonstrates that the quality of everything we do depends on the quality of the thinking we do first. The leaders, entrepreneurs and business people who understand this are at the top of their fields and inspire some of the most successful and innovative practices and businesses in the world. In this audiobook, Nancy Kline shares 10 effective ways to help people think innovatively, and with rigour.

What could be better than getting anyone to do anything in seven minutes…or less? Finally, a revolutionary new approach scientifically proven to create instant, effective, and lasting change in anyone—coworkers, friends, family, strangers, even yourself.

Regardless of what you want to accomplish, from growing your business, creating a great company culture, championing a social cause, or affecting your habits, you can’t do it alone. The people around you define your success (whatever that means for you) and they have the potential to change the course of your life.

The art of speaking can be systematically learned, and if you have the desire, discipline, and determination - not to mention one of the world's greatest presenters as your teacher - you too can become a persuasive and powerful speaker. Tracy reveals time-tested tricks of the trade you can use to present powerfully and speak persuasively, whether in an informal meeting or in front of a large group of people.

Today everyone - whether they know it or not - is in the emotional transportation business. More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move partners, shareholders, customers, and employees to action. Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it. And this book tells you how to do both. Peter Guber, whose executive and entrepreneurial accomplishments have made him a success in multiple industries, has long relied on purposeful story telling to motivate, win over, shape, engage, and sell.

Story isn't just one way to persuade. It's the way. It's built into the architecture of the brain, and has been since early humans gathered around the camp fire, trying to figure out how to outsmart the lion next door. In Story or Die, story coach Lisa Cron sets out to decode the power of story, first by examining how the brain processes information, translates it into narrative, and then guards it as if your life depends on it.