Career Success Leadership

More than anything else, you need to understand exactly how your employer evaluates you, and your annual performance review doesn't tell the whole story. In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your "emotional expense" - the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you.

So how do you build a company that matters? Companies and people that matter have successfully become the obvious choices in the hearts and minds of their customers, their employees, and their communities. They elevate themselves by consistently finding ways to solve the most pressing needs their markets face. The result? They create more value year after year and build sustainable, differentiated organizations.

What passes for strategy in too many businesses, government agencies, and military operations is a toxic mix of wishful thinking and a jumble of incoherent policies. Richard P. Rumelt’s breakthrough concept is that leaders become effective strategists when they focus on challenges rather than goals, pinpointing the crux of their pivotal challenge—the aspect that is both surmountable and promises the greatest progress—and taking decisive, coherent action to overcome it.

Sportswriter Sally Jenkins has spent her entire adult life observing and writing about great coaches and athletes. With her engaging and expert prose, she has helped shape the way we view these talented sports icons. But somewhere along the line, she realized, they had begun to shape her. Now, she presents the astonishing inner qualities in these same people that pushed them to overcome pressure, elevate their performances, and discover champion identities.

High-Impact Interview Questions shows you how to use competency-based behavioral interviewing methods that will uncover truly relevant and useful information. By having applicants describe specific situations from their own experience during previous jobs (rather than asking them hypothetical questions about "what would you do..."), you'll be able to identify specific strengths and weaknesses that will tell you if you've found the right person for the job. But developing such behavior-based questions can be time-consuming and difficult.

Brad Lomenick, former president of Catalyst, shares his hard-earned insights from more than two decades of work alongside thought-leaders such as Jim Collins and Malcom Gladwell, Fortune 500 CEOs and start-up entrepreneurs. Operating within the framework of three core character qualities – humble, hungry, hustle – Lomenick identifies 20 essential leadership habits that help listeners embody those qualities.

What entrepreneur or founder doesn't aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb? Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare. So what separates the start-ups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants? The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water.

It's a rainy day in Seattle, and on the third floor of First Guarantee Financial, people have stopped believing they can make a difference. To new manager Mary Jane Ramirez, the challenge of bringing life back to her unenthusiastic and unmotivated team seems impossible, until she discovers an incredibly successful workplace down the street where the employees are so alive and passionate that people stop just to watch them work!

Knowing how to influence others is crucial to your success. It’s found in the simplest interactions with your customers, suppliers, partners, bosses, subordinates, and colleagues, as well as your friends and loved ones. The act of influencing is such a part of your daily life that you may not even realize when you (or others) are doing it. But to use influence effectively - to inspire and convince others to follow your lead, share your point of view, or buy your products and services - requires adaptability, perceptiveness, and some insight....

In Put Happiness to Work, Karpinski draws on his deep experience at the intersection of business and psychology to lay out a step-by-step program that includes specific activities to enhance engagement and generate happiness at work. Utilizing existing work habits and meetings, these dynamic yet simple tools will hardwire effective changes into leaders' and employees' behavior, creating long-term, sustainable engagement.

What links the Mercedes Formula One team with Google? What links Dave Braisford's Team Sky and the aviation industry? What is the connection between the inventor James Dyson and the footballer David Beckham? They are all Black Box Thinkers. Whether developing a new product, honing a core skill or just trying to get a critical decision right, Black Box Thinkers aren't afraid to face up to mistakes. In fact they see failure as the very best way to learn.

This powerful, practical, mini-MBA in the key strategies, methods and techniques of the best managers in the most profitable companies, will save you years of hard work in getting the same or better results.In this practical, proven 12-lecture program, you’ll learn priceless lessons to set you on the road to management success.

From the authors of Leadership and Self-Deception comes a new edition of this best seller that has been thoroughly revised to more effectively address the diversity, equity, and inclusion challenges that plague our communities and hinder our organizations. The Anatomy of Peace uses a fictional story to powerfully show listeners the way to transform conflict.

This is an audiobook for busy people. If you want less on your plate and more for your life and career, tune in to the #1 Wall Street Journal best seller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. The ONE Thing will bring your life and your work into focus. Authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan teach you the tricks to cut through the clutter, achieve better results in less time, dial down stress, and master what matters to you.

Blueprint to Business is the ultimate guide to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Best-selling author and CEO Mike Alden puts aside the rainbows and sunshine, gets real about what it takes to "make it", and gives you the real-world guidance you need to hear. Through anecdotes and advice, he shares his experiences along with those of other top founders and entrepreneurs to give you a realistic picture of what it takes to build a business. It's a bit of tough love, a healthy dose of reality, and a tremendously motivating guide to striking out on your own.

Many people know the benefit of finding a sponsor - someone who goes beyond traditional mentorship to partner with a junior-level employee to help build their skills, advocate for them when opportunities arise, and open doors. But few realize that being a sponsor is just as important to career growth as finding one. Combining powerful new data and rich examples drawn from in-depth interviews with leaders from companies such as Unilever, Aetna, Blizzard Entertainment, and EY, The Sponsor Effect provides a seven-step playbook for how you can become a successful sponsor.

In Impact Players, New York Times best-selling author and researcher Liz Wiseman reveals the secrets of these stellar professionals who play the game at a higher level. Drawing on insights from leaders at top companies, Wiseman explains what the most influential players are doing differently, how small and seemingly insignificant differences in how we think and act can make an enormous impact, and why - with a little coaching - this mindset is available to everyone who wants to contribute at their highest level.

The ability to craft an employee review that is meaningful and change-driven is what separates average supervisors from great managers. How often, though, have you struggled to find the most appropriate words for your needs? This completely revised and updated second edition of Perfect Phrases for Performance Reviews provides hundreds of ready-made phrases you can use to clearly communicate any employee's performance in 74 different skill areas.

James Dallas' Mastering the Challenges of Leading Change is an informative, insightful guide to effectively leading the transition through change. While most change management books present case studies about what happened at other companies, this audiobook is based on the author's own experiences managing over 10 transformational and turnaround initiatives, 15 acquisition integrations, and five operations/quality shared services centers of excellence.

We live, say Edgar and Peter Schein, in a culture of “tell". All too often we tell others what we think they need to know or should do. But whether we are leading or following, what matters most is we get to the truth. We have to develop a commitment to sharing vital facts and identifying faulty assumptions - it can mean the difference between success and failure. This is why we need Humble Inquiry more than ever.