Straight-Line Leadership: Tools for Living with Velocity and Power in Turbulent Times


Dusan Djukich - 2011
    Within these pages he dramatically unveils exactly what it takes to live a powerful and effective life both personally and professionally.Regardless if you are a CEO, small business owner, parent, or someone who simply wants to make a difference, you will learn to master powerful distinctions that you can apply immediately to resolve the challenges that you are presently up against. You will also become adept at assisting others in solving their most pressing problems with precision and grace.This book boldly demonstrates why Djukich is regarded as the ultimate performance catalyst to business. He simply kicks the hell out of the sacred cows that keep individuals and businesses stuck. Brandon Craig, CEO, BiltRite Corporation

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead


Sheryl Sandberg - 2013
    The book soared to the top of bestseller lists internationally, igniting global conversations about women and ambition. Sandberg packed theatres, dominated opinion pages, appeared on every major television show and on the cover of Time magazine, and sparked ferocious debate about women and leadership. Ask most women whether they have the right to equality at work and the answer will be a resounding yes, but ask the same women whether they'd feel confident asking for a raise, a promotion, or equal pay, and some reticence creeps in. The statistics, although an improvement on previous decades, are certainly not in women's favour – of 197 heads of state, only twenty-two are women. Women hold just 20 percent of seats in parliaments globally, and in the world of big business, a meagre eighteen of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.

The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work


Teresa Amabile - 2011
    The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly.As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day.The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality.Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance.

QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and in Life


John G. Miller - 2004
    No organization—or individual—can successfully compete in the marketplace, achieve goals and objectives, provide outstanding service, engage in exceptional teamwork, or develop people without personal accountability.   John G. Miller believes that the troubles that plague organizations cannot be solved by pointing fingers and blaming others. Rather, the real solutions are found when each of us recognizes the power of personal accountability. In QBQ! The Question Behind the Question®, Miller explains how negative, ill-focused questions like “Why do we have to go through all this change?” and “Who dropped the ball?” represent a lack of personal accountability. Conversely, when we ask better questions—QBQs—such as “What can I do to contribute?” or “How can I help solve the problem?” our lives and our organizations are transformed.THE QBQ! PROMISEThis remarkable and timely book provides a practical method for putting personal accountability into daily actions, with astonishing results: problems are solved, internal barriers come down, service improves, teams thrive, and people adapt to change more quickly. QBQ! is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to learn, grow, and change. Using this tool, each of us can add tremendous worth to our organizations and to our lives by eliminating blame, victim-thinking, and procrastination.                                                                                                 QBQ! was written more than a decade ago and has helped countless readers practice personal accountability at work and at home. This version features a new foreword, revisions and new material throughout, and a section of  FAQs that the author has received over the years.

Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude


Raymond M. Kethledge - 2017
    Eisenhower wrote memoranda to himself during World War II as a way to think through complex problems. Martin Luther King found moral courage while sitting alone at his kitchen table one night during the Montgomery bus boycott. Jane Goodall used her intuition in the jungles of Central Africa while learning how to approach chimps. Solitude is a state of mind, a space where you can focus on your own thoughts without distraction, with a power to bring mind and soul together in clear-eyed conviction. Like a great wave that saturates everything in its path, however, handheld devices and other media now leave us awash with the thoughts of others. We are losing solitude without even realizing it.To find solitude today, a leader must make a conscious effort. This book explains why the effort is worthwhile and how to make it. Through gripping historical accounts and firsthand interviews with a wide range of contemporary leaders, Raymond Kethledge (a federal court of appeals judge) and Michael Erwin (a West Pointer and three-tour combat veteran) show how solitude can enhance clarity, spur creativity, sustain emotional balance, and generate the moral courage necessary to overcome adversity and criticism. Anyone who leads anyone-including oneself-can benefit from solitude. With a foreword by Jim Collins (author of the bestseller Good to Great), Lead Yourself First is a rallying cry to reclaim solitude-and all the benefits, both practical and sublime, that come with it.

The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life


Robin S. Sharma - 2010
    Now, for the first time, Sharma makes his proprietary process available to you, so that you can get to your absolute best while helping your organization break through to a dramatically new level of winning in these wildly uncertain times. In The Leader Who Had No Title, you will learn: • How to work with and influence people like a superstar, regardless of your position• A method to recognize and then seize opportunities in times of deep change• The real secrets of intense innovation• An instant strategy to build a great team and become a "merchant of wow" with your customers• Hard-hitting tactics to become mentally strong and physically tough enough to lead your field• Real-world ways to defeat stress, build an unbeatable mind-set, unleash energy, and balance your personal lifeRegardless of what you do within your organization and the current circumstances of your life, the single most important fact is that you have the power to show leadership. Wherever you are in your career or life, you should always play to your peak abilities. This book shows you how to claim that staggering power, as well as transform your life—and the world around you—in the process.

The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company


Ram Charan - 2000
    And here, they show companies how to create a pipeline of talent that will continuously fill their leadership needs-needs they may not even yet realize. The Leadership Pipeline delivers a proven framework for priming future leaders by planning for their development, coaching them, and measuring the results of those efforts. Moreover, the book presents a combination leadership-development/succession-planning program that ensures a steady line-up of leaders for every critical position within the company. It's an approach that bolsters the retention of intellectual capital as it eliminates the need to go outside for expensive "stars," who will probably jump ship before they reach their full potential anyway.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind: How to Be Seen and Heard in the Overcrowded Marketplace


Al Ries - 1980
    Writing in their trademark witty, fast-paced style, advertising gurus Ries and Trout explain how to:Make and position an industry leader so that its name and message wheedles its way into the collective subconscious of your market-and stays therePosition a follower so that it can occupy a niche not claimed by the leaderAvoid letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one.Positioning also shows you how to:Use leading ad agency techniques to capture the biggest market share and become a household nameBuild your strategy around your competition's weaknessesReposition a strong competitor and create a weak spotUse your present position to its best advantageChoose the best name for your productDetermine when-and why-less is moreAnalyze recent trends that affect your positioning.Ries and Trout provide many valuable case histories and penetrating analyses of some of the most phenomenal successes and failures in advertising history. Revised to reflect significant developments in the five years since its original publication, Positioning is required reading for anyone in business today.

Emotional Vampires at Work: Dealing with Bosses and Coworkers Who Drain You Dry


Albert J. Bernstein - 2012
    These people try your patience, sap your energy, and add an entirely unhealthy dynamic to workplace productivity. The bestselling author of Emotional Vampires and Dinosaur Brains shows you how to spot and deal effectively with these dysfunctional elements in the workplace:ANTISOCIALS, who crave excitement in all its forms, including aggression If your boss or a coworker is trying to push you around . . . Learn that the most important battle to fight with a bully is in your own mind.HISTRIONICS, who believe that what it looks like is more important than what it is If your boss thinks any problem can be solved with a motivational seminar . . . Learn how to get a manager wannabe to actually manage.NARCISSISTS, who believe that the universe revolves around them If your CEO makes Louis XVI look like Gandhi . . . Learn techniques that diplomats have used throughout history to teach infantile monarchs to act like grown-ups.OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVES, who can't seem to see the forest for the trees If there is absolutely no task that your boss considers too small to micromanage . . . Learn to be a Control-Freak Whisperer by seeing your boss's fear rather than your own irritation.PARANOIDS, who think they've found the simple truths that explain everything If you work in a place where you can't get ahead unless you drink the Kool-Aid . . . Learn how to recognize a toxic belief system before it poisons you.VAMPIRE CULTURES: when vampires get promoted to positions of power, they remake organizations in their own image . . . Learn the 15 warning signs that tell you to get out before sunset.PRAISE FOR EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES: We love so much about this book! A great complement to Dealing with People You Can't Stand, it goes beyond dealing with the merely difficult behavior to the truly pathological. Bernstein offers believable examples and useful descriptions. This is the book to recommend when the topic of truly horrible behavior comes up! -- Dr. Rick Kirschner and Dr. Rick Brinkman, authors of the international bestseller Dealing with People You Can't StandThis book equips individuals with the tools to identify and defend against a wide array of emotional vampires at work. It offers well-developed tactics for navigating the most difficult people in any organization. -- Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, bestselling authors of Working with You Is Killing Me and Mean Girls at WorkIt's amazing how one manipulative, territorial, or otherwise self-serving boss or employee can make the lives of everyone around miserable. In Emotional Vampires at Work, Albert Bernstein offers concrete, step-by-step guidance to manage life around these misfits. You'll learn to take care of your and your valued colleagues' needs, while contributing your best to your organization--with maturity and sanity. -- Nancy Ancowitz, author of Self-Promotion for Introverts

The Daily Edge: Simple Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Make an Impact Every Day


David Horsager - 2015
    While he never set out to be a productivity expert, Horsager realized that over the years he has developed and adopted dozens of extraordinarily practical time- and energy-saving techniques that could help today's leader. The key objective is to become so effective in the little things that you have enough time for more meaningful interactions.In The Daily Edge, you'll learn strategies such as identifying the key Difference-Making Actions on which to focus your efforts. Perhaps it is time to set a personal or even company-wide “power hour,” during which you do not attend meetings, answer the phone, or reply to emails, creating the time and space to really focus and get things done. The thirty-five high-impact ideas Horsager introduces in succinct, quick-read chapters are easily implemented and powerful on their own. Taken together, they form a solid wave of efficacy that enables you to get more done, keep your energy up, and make sure that you're able to honor all your relationships, both personal and professional.

Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay


Beverly Kaye - 2003
    And with so many surveys reporting that employees are unhappy and not working up to their full potential, engagement is a second serious and costly issue. The latest edition of this Wall Street Journal bestseller offers twenty-six simple strategies—from A to Z—that managers can use to address their employees’ real concerns and keep them engaged. The fifth edition has been revised and updated throughout and includes many more international examples, reflecting the fact that Love ’Em or Lose ’Em is available in twenty-two languages, from Albanian and Arabic to Thai and Turkish. Its message is truly one that spans continents and cultures.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less


Greg McKeown - 2011
    It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.  By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism  is a movement whose time has come.

High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way


Brendon Burchard - 2017
    After extensive original research and a decade as the world’s highest-paid performance coach, Brendon Burchard finally reveals the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. Based on one of the largest surveys ever conducted on high performers, it turns out that just six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed. Adopt these six habits, and you win. Neglect them, and life is a never-ending struggle.  We all want to be high performing in every area of our lives. But how? Which habits can help you achieve long-term success and vibrant well-being no matter your age, career, strengths, or personality? To become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage. This book is about the art and science of how to practice these proven habits. If you do adopt any new habits to succeed faster, choose the habits in this book. Anyone can practice these habits and, when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers. Whether you want to get more done, lead others better, develop skill faster, or dramatically increase your sense of joy and confidence, the habits in this book will help you achieve it. Each of the six habits is illustrated by powerful vignettes, cutting-edge science, thought-provoking exercises, and real-world daily practices you can implement right now. HIGH PERFORMANCE HABITS is a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life. Best of all, you can measure your progress. A link to a professional assessment is included in the book for free.

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling


Edgar H. Schein - 2013
    But all too often when we interact with people—especially those who report to us—we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry.Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.” In this seminal work, Schein contrasts Humble Inquiry with other kinds of inquiry, shows the benefits Humble Inquiry provides in many different settings, and offers advice on overcoming the cultural, organizational, and psychological barriers that keep us from practicing it.

What's Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done


Matt Perman - 2012
    It’s about getting the right things done—the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. In our current era of massive overload, this is harder than ever before. So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity?When we take God’s purposes into account, a revolutionary insight emerges. Surprisingly, we see that the way to be productive is to put others first—to make the welfare of other people our motive and criteria in determining what to do (what’s best next). As both the Scriptures and the best business thinkers show, generosity is the key to unlocking our productivity. It is also the key to finding meaning and fulfillment in our work.What’s Best Next offers a practical approach for improving your productivity in all areas of life. It will help you better understand:• Why good works are not just rare and special things like going to Africa, but anything you do in faith even tying your shoes.• How to create a mission statement for your life that actually works.• How to delegate to people in a way that actually empowers them.• How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you.• How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day.• How your work and life can transform the world socially, economically, and spiritually, and connect to God’s global purposes.By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God’s purposes and plan, What’s Best Next will give you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do.