Workplace Leadership

Black Faces in High Places is the essential guide for Black professionals who are moving up through their organizations or industries but need a roadmap for how to get to the top and stay there. Based on the authors' considerable experiences in business, in the public eye, and as a minority, the book shows how African-American professionals can (and must) think and act both entrepreneurially and "intrapreneurially".

Today's ways of working are not working - even for professionals in "good" jobs. Responding to global competition and pressure from financial markets, companies are asking employees to do more with less, even as new technologies normalize 24/7 job expectations. In Overload, Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen document how this new intensification of work creates chronic stress, leading to burnout, attrition, and underperformance. "Flexible" work policies and corporate lip service about "work-life balance" don't come close to fixing the problem.

The world’s best teams don’t win because of leadership alone. They win because of teamship. Yet when it comes to success, it is leaders who are lauded; too little attention is given to the transformation of the team itself. We’ve all but ignored how to extract billions of dollars of shareholder value from the interdependency of talent in teams, Keith Ferrazzi argues. Upgrading teams is one of the least curated and under-leveraged opportunities for success. It is time to focus on teamship.

What’s the secret to business growth and innovation and a purpose-driven career in a world that is becoming vastly more complicated by the day? According to Marc Benioff, the answer is embracing a culture in which your values permeate everything you do. In Trailblazer, Benioff gives listeners a rare behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of one of the world’s most admired companies. He reveals how Salesforce’s core values - trust, customer success, innovation, and equality - and commitment to giving back have become the company’s greatest competitive advantage.

Every year, millions of top performers are promoted to management-level jobs - only to discover that the tactics that got them promoted are not the tactics that will make them effective in their new role. In Welcome to Management, Ryan Hawk provides practical, actionable advice and tools designed to ensure that transition is a successful one.

Unstoppable Teams show managers at every level, at both large and small organizations, including private, public, and nonprofit, how to inspire, motivate, and lead the people around them.

From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work - and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed. "We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing". So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge.

Some people have it, and others don’t. Jeffrey Pfeffer explores why in Power. One of the greatest minds in management theory and author or co-author of thirteen books, including the seminal business-school text Managing With Power, Jeffrey Pfeffer shows listeners how to succeed and wield power in the real world.

Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help listeners choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization.

This book was written for the new manager or anyone who aspires to become a leader. Whether you have just finished school or have been working for some time, you are in (or about to assume) your first real leadership position. Leadership in Balance will help you to see and understand your natural tendency in each of four essential leadership domains. Once you’ve identified your true and natural tendencies, you become self-aware of your default position as a leader.

Our Iceberg Is Melting is a simple fable about doing well in an ever-changing world. Based on the award-winning work of Harvard's John Kotter, it is a story that has been used to help thousands of people and organizations. The fable is about a penguin colony in Antarctica. A group of beautiful emperor penguins live as they have for many years. Then one curious bird discovers a potentially devastating problem threatening their home - and pretty much no one listens to him.

For over a decade, Jaime Taets, chief vision officer and founder of Keystone Group International, has been the go-to consultant for executive teams hoping to untangle their issues and improve their businesses—profits, strategies, and services—along the way. And throughout that time, Jaime has learned that most business problems are actually people problems. To get at the root cause, leaders must go deeper than the business layer with questions that are rooted in culture and people.

The 25 Minute Meeting goes beyond "cut to the chase" and shows you how to take back your work day with smarter planning and more productive action. Meetings have become a de facto way of working, and as they pile up and stretch to interminable lengths, they eat up our days and sink productivity - if they are poorly planned and run. Done well, meetings are short, sharp, productive affairs that provide critical time and space for the interactions that drive business forward.

The Advice Trap is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behavior, so you stay curious a little bit longer. It sounds like it should be easy, but it’s not. To get there, leading coach and trainer Michael Bungay Stanier offers specific coaching strategies, particularly on how to focus on what matters most. The audiobook of The Advice Trap gives you tools to make your conversations, coaching, and otherwise, irresistible.

Imagine what you could do with the time you spend writing emails every day. Complexity is killing companies' ability to innovate and adapt, and simplicity is fast becoming the competitive advantage of our time. Why Simple Wins helps leaders and their teams move beyond the feelings of frustration and futility that come with so much unproductive work in today's corporate world to create a corporate culture where valuable, essential, meaningful work is the norm.

Unfortunately, we've all seen it happen. When faced with a problem, rather than working cooperatively to come up with a solution, your manager or colleagues come swooping in, squawking loudly, dump orders riddled with formulaic advice, and then take off, leaving you behind to clean up the mess. Or—let's be honest: there may have been a time (or three) when you have been guilty of doing this very thing yourself. While this happens in every workplace worldwide more frequently than ever, it doesn't have to. Through the story of Charlie, a seagull who doesn't understand how his management ...

"Emergency Preparedness in the Corporate World: A Blueprint for Executives" is an essential guide for corporate leaders seeking to establish effective emergency response plans. This comprehensive book provides a step-by-step approach to safeguarding organizations from potential crises, equipping executives with the necessary knowledge and tools to mitigate risks, protect employees, and maintain business continuity. With expert insights, practical strategies, and real-world case studies, this blueprint empowers executives to confidently navigate emergencies and ensure the resilience of their...

On television, Coffey is known for using tough love to overhaul failing businesses and help owners take charge of their future. In Own It!, Coffey takes her trademark no-nonsense style and business expertise to provide small business owners, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to “own their lives” with the keys to success. Combining her own experiences with those of everyday people who have faced challenging transitions, Own It! will help listeners reach their goals.

UCLA psychologist and organizational consultant Dr. Robert Maurer provides a simple and proven effective technique for making major changes with minimal disruption. Applying the operational concept of kaizen - small, continual improvements - to common management challenges, managers can drive major improvements with a series of well-planned techniques for boosting quality, innovation, sales, and morale.

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary - and frequently contrarian - principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business.