Book picks similar to
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Bruce Patton
business
self-improvement
psychology
non-fiction
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
Herminia Ibarra - 2015
The problem is you’re busy executing on today’s demands. You know you have to carve out time from your day job to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mind-sets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra—an expert on professional leadership and development and a renowned professor at INSEAD, a leading international business school—shows how managers and executives at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, she offers advice to help you:• Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions• Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a bigger range of stakeholders• Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolveIbarra turns the usual “think first and then act” philosophy on its head by arguing that doing these three things will help you learn through action and will increase what she calls your outsight—the valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation. As opposed to insight, outsight will then help change the way you think as a leader: about what kind of work is important; how you should invest your time; why and which relationships matter in informing and supporting your leadership; and, ultimately, who you want to become.Packed with self-assessments and practical advice to help define your most pressing leadership challenges, this book will help you devise a plan of action to become a better leader and move your career to the next level. It’s time to learn by doing.
Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life
Kenneth H. Blanchard - 2012
Leadership must be a living process, not a title on a business card, and life means growth. As Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller write in the introduction, “the path to increased influence, impact, and leadership effectiveness is paved with personal growth.… Our capacity to grow determines our capacity to lead. It’s really that simple.” Great Leaders Grow shows leaders and aspiring leaders precisely which areas to focus on so they can remain effective throughout their lives.As the book opens, Debbie Brewster, an accomplished leader herself, becomes a mentor to Blake, her late mentor’s son, as he begins his career. Debbie tells Blake, “How well you and I serve will be determined by the decision to grow or not. Will you be a leader who is always ready to face the next challenge? Or will you be a leader who tries to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems? The latter will ultimately fail. The difference: the decision to grow. And not a short-term decision but a decision to grow throughout your career and throughout your life. This single decision is a game changer for leaders.”Over the next several weeks Debbie reveals what this means in practical terms. She and Blake explore four ways that leaders must continue to grow, both on the job and off, because who you are as a leader is inextricably connected to who you are as a person. Whether you’re a CEO or an entry-level employee, you’ll be inspired to reflect on your own life and to design your own unique long-term growth plan, leading to not only continuing professional success but personal fulfillment as well.
Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!: How to Overcome Psychological Barriers, Get Results, and Move on with Your Life
Alison B. Miller - 2008
Combining psychological support with a project management approach that breaks tasks into small, manageable chunks, experienced dissertation coach Alison Miller shows you how to overcome negativity and succeed in completing your dissertation beyond your own expectations.
A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
Edwin H. Friedman - 2007
He was the first to tell us that all organizations have personalities, like families, and to apply the insights of family therapy to churches and synagogues, rectors and rabbis, politicians and teachers.Failure of Nerve is essential reading for all leaders, be they parents or presidents, corporate executives or educators, religious superiors or coaches, healers or generals, managers or clergy. Friedman's insights about our regressed, seatbelt society, oriented toward safety rather than adventure, help explain the sabotage that leaders constantly face today.Suspicious of the quick fixes and instant solutions that sweep through our culture only to give way to the next fad, he argues for strength and self-differentiation as the marks of true leadership. His formula for success is more maturity, not more data; stamina, not technique; and personal responsibility, not empathy.This book was unfinished at the time of Friedman's death, and originally published in a limited edition. This new edition makes his life-changing insights and challenges available to a new generation of readers.
Power Relationships: 26 Irrefutable Laws for Building Extraordinary Relationships
Andrew C. Sobel - 2013
These relationship laws are ever-present. When you align with them, the results are dramatic. Your network will grow rapidly. You'll be seen by clients as a trusted partner rather than an expense to be managed. And you'll find the people around you eager to help you succeed.When you ignore the laws, however, your efforts will falter. Relationship building will seem like very hard work.Power Relationships gives readers a unique, entertaining guide to relationship success at work and in life. Each of the 26 laws is illustrated and explained using a compelling, real-life story that shows how to implement it. The second section of the book presents 16 common relationship challenges with specific solutions. You'll read about:The top Citigroup executive whose relationship with a CEO was changed forever on a business trip that exploded into chaos, and how you can use the same principle to deepen your own relationships. The philanthropist who, on the verge of being mugged in a dark parking lot, learns how his actions have had an unimaginable ripple effect across several generations How one of the authors flew halfway around the world and used Law 18--"Make them curious"--to turn a make-or-break, five-minute meeting with a top executive into a long-term relationship. The chance encounter on an airplane with a famous actor that revealed a simple but profound truth. It's Law 25: "Build your network before you need it." Sobel (author of Clients for Life, All for One, and Power Questions (with Panas)) and Panas (author of Asking and Supremely Successful Selling) have sold over half a million books and are the leading authorities in their field. Power Relationships is a unique, road-tested guide to relationship success.
Words That Change Minds: The 14 Patterns for Mastering the Language of Influence
Shelle Rose Charvet - 1995
Do you work and live with people who are hard to convince? Who dismiss ideas before even thinking about them? Do you want to know how to influence people, without being manipulative? Want to find out how people get motivated, make decisions, to be more persuasive with everyone? Learn how to use the right words with the right people, and get through the “Communication Wall” Have you ever felt like you were talking to a wall? Well, that’s a very accurate description of what’s happening when 2 people are communicating! Everyone has a metaphorical “Communication Wall” around them to protect them from “bad people”. But in all of our walls, we have left some bricks out, to let the “good people” communicate with us. The problem in communication is not the wall, because the wall is standard equipment that everyone has. The problem comes from the holes where the bricks have been left out. The holes come in specific shapes, unique to each person. And if you want to communicate with that person, you need to use words, and behavior that fit exactly with the holes in the other person’s wall. Shelle Rose Charvet, best-selling author of Words That Change Minds shows you how to match your language to people around you (in your work, with your colleagues, your boss and your clients, and at home, with your partner, family and other relationships). Learn the persuasion psychology, spark interest and enthusiasm and get what you want. In Words That Change Minds you will: - Learn the influence science and practice. - Discover the ways people unconsciously get motivated, process information and make decisions. - Decode any communication problem and solve it. - Find out how to pry open mental space in even the most closed of minds. - Create rapport and credibility with anyone. - Avoid inadvertently saying or doing the wrong thing. - Get practical applications for sales, marketing, recruiting, negotiation, teaching, training, communication at work, conflict resolution. - Increase your impact in interpersonal communication, teamwork, and in mass communication. Words That Change Minds is based on the Language and Behavior Profile, (LAB Profile® for short) – a powerful tool that enables you to understand, predict and influence behavior by de-coding the language people use. You can directly influence people one-on-one, in groups and even in mass communication by customizing your language to match their subconscious Motivation Patterns. Increase your impact, improve relationships and reduce conflicts, by using the Words That Change Minds. The NEW 3rd edition of Words That Change Minds has more than 50% new material; examples, research, advanced applications, with 7 completely new chapters, including: 1. How to Complete a LAB Profile® 2. Conversational Coaching with the LAB Profile® 3. Understanding and Working with Combination Patterns 4. Solving Communication Problems 5. Influencing Strategies and Techniques 6. The LAB Profile® of Conflict 7. LAB Profile® Inventions and Tools, and more. Interested? Just scroll up and get your copy today! About the author: Shelle Rose Charvet is a bestselling author and the international expert on Influencing Language.
Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message
Tara Mohr - 2014
Mohr’s work helping women play bigger has earned acclaim from the likes of Maria Shriver and Jillian Michaels, and has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and a host of other media outlets. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave many women new awareness about what kinds of changes they need to make to become more successful; yet most women need help implementing them. In the tradition of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook” from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive good girl habits, and begin taking bold action. While not all women aspire to end up in the corner office, every woman aspires to something. Playing Big fills a major gap among women’s career books; it isn’t just for corporate women. The book offers tools to help every woman play bigger—whether she’s an executive, community volunteer, artist, or stay-at-home mom. Thousands of women across the country have been transformed by Mohr’s program, and now this book makes the ideas and practices available to everyone who is ready to play big.
What's Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve
Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg - 2020
If you want the superpower of solving better problems, read this book." -- Eric Schmidt, former CEO, GoogleAre you solving the right problems? Have you or your colleagues ever worked hard on something, only to find out you were focusing on the wrong problem entirely? Most people have. In a survey, 85 percent of companies said they often struggle to solve the right problems. The consequences are severe: Leaders fight the wrong strategic battles. Teams spend their energy on low-impact work. Startups build products that nobody wants. Organizations implement "solutions" that somehow make things worse, not better. Everywhere you look, the waste is staggering. As Peter Drucker pointed out, there's nothing more dangerous than the right answer to the wrong question.There is a way to do better.The key is reframing, a crucial, underutilized skill that you can master with the help of this book. Using real-world stories and unforgettable examples like "the slow elevator problem," author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg offers a simple, three-step method - Frame, Reframe, Move Forward - that anyone can use to start solving the right problems. Reframing is not difficult to learn. It can be used on everyday challenges and on the biggest, trickiest problems you face. In this visually engaging, deeply researched book, you’ll learn from leaders at large companies, from entrepreneurs, consultants, nonprofit leaders, and many other breakthrough thinkers.It's time for everyone to stop barking up the wrong trees. Teach yourself and your team to reframe, and growth and success will follow.
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.
Positive Words, Powerful Results: Simple Ways to Honor, Affirm, and Celebrate Life
Hal Urban - 2004
But in this jewel of a book, Hal Urban -- parent, award-winning teacher, and author of the classic Life's Greatest Lessons -- shows us simple and immediate ways that we can use language to change lives -- both our own and those around us.
Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less
Michael Hyatt - 2019
You know, all those things that make life great.Most people think productivity is about finding or saving time. But it's not. It's about making our time work for us. Just imagine having free time again. It's not a pipe dream.In Free to Focus, New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt reveals to readers nine proven ways to win at work so they are finally free to succeed at the rest of life--their health, relationships, hobbies, and more. He helps readers redefine their goals, evaluate what's working, cut out the nonessentials, focus on the most important tasks, manage their time and energy, and build momentum for a lifetime of success.
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.
How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships
Leil Lowndes - 1998
What is their "Midas touch?"What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people.The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you'll find:9 ways to make a dynamite first impression 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!) 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten aliveIn her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," "Bare Their Hot Button," "The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game," for big success in your social life, romance, and business.How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work!By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!
The (7L) The Seven Levels of Communication: Go From Relationships to Referrals
Michael J. Maher - 2010
In (7L) The Seven Levels of Communication, Michael J. Maher tells the inspiring story of real estate agent Rick Masters who is suffering through a down market when he meets a mortgage professional who has built a successful business without advertising or personal promotion. Step by step he learns to change the way he interacts with his clients and begins to focus on people instead of numbers. Yet with each new success comes a new challenge and Rick soon realizes that if he is to fully utilize the lessons of the (7L), he must be willing to change himself as well as his business. He soon learns, however, that the rewards for doing so are far greater than he had ever imagined. (7L) shows Rick how to build a more profitable business and a more fulfilling life in the process. (7L) is available now at www.7LBook.com/Pre.
The Concise Mastery
Robert Greene - 2014
This concise version of the business classic Mastery provides a shortcut to Greene's powerful new tools for achieving greatness. Around the globe, people are facing the same problem - that we are born as individuals but are forced to conform to the rules of society if we want to succeed. To see our uniqueness expressed in our achievements, we must first learn the rules - and then change them completely.Charles Darwin began as an underachieving schoolboy, Leonardo da Vinci as an illegitimate outcast. The secret of their eventual greatness lies in a 'rigorous apprenticeship': they learnt to master the 'hidden codes' which determine ultimate success or failure. Then, they rewrote the rules as a reflection of their own individuality.Told through Robert Greene's signature blend of historical anecdote and psychological insight and drawing on interviews with world leaders, Concise Mastery builds on the strategies outlined in The 48 Laws of Power to provide a practical guide to greatness - and learn how to start living by your own rules.