Book picks similar to
Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It by James M. Kouzes
leadership
business
non-fiction
nonfiction
Rhinoceros Success: The Secret to Charging Full Speed Toward Every Opportunity
Scott Alexander - 1980
tomorrow morning, you could wake up as a full grown rhinoceros and - * charge your way to success * use audacity to reach your goals * be happier than you've ever been before * make your life an exciting adventure * have the persistence and tenacity necessary for success * never worry again * succeed at the world's most profitable hobby * achieve more and have a better balance in the six major areas of your life: FINANCIAL, WORK, PHYSICAL, FAMILY, SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL Scott Alexander has discovered the REAL secret of success: becoming a rhinoceros. Read it and go rhino! That's all there is between you and everything you've ever wanted to do or become in your life. CHARGE!!
Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Laszlo Bock - 2015
"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, head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge. This insight is the heart of WORK RULES!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including:Take away managers' power over employeesLearn from your best employees-and your worstHire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find themPay unfairly (it's more fair!)Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the futureDefault to open-be transparent and welcome feedbackIf you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough. Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, WORK RULES! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands. WORK RULES! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.
Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
Wess Roberts - 1987
The book that leaped to the top ranks of the bestseller lists. The book that's got the business world reading, thinking, and quoting. This is the book that reveals the leadership secrets of Attila the Hun-the man who centuries ago shaped an aimless band of mercenary tribal nomads into the undisputed rulers of the ancient world, and who today offers us timeless lessons in win-directed, take-charge management.
Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Jeff Sutherland - 2014
It already drives most of the world’s top technology companies. And now it’s starting to spread to every domain where leaders wrestle with complex projects. If you’ve ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there’s no more lucid – or compelling – explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago. The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that would have global impact. In this book you’ll journey to Scrum’s front lines where Jeff’s system of deep accountability, team interaction, and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World, and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores. Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable – whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology, devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.
Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life
Francesca Gino - 2018
Rebels have a bad reputation. We think of them as troublemakers, outcasts,contrarians: those colleagues, friends, and family members who complicate seemingly straightforward decisions, create chaos, and disagree when everyone else is in agreement. But in truth, rebels are also those among us who change the world for the better with their unconventional outlooks. Instead of clinging to what is safe and familiar, rebels defy the status quo. They are masters of innovation and reinvention, and they have a lot to teach us. Gino has spent more than a decade studying rebels at organizations around the world,from high-end boutiques in Italy's fashion capital, to the world's best restaurant, to a thriving fast-food chain, to an award-winning computer animation studio. In her work, she has identified leaders and employees who personify "rebel talent," and whose examples we can all learn to embrace. Gino argues that the future belongs to the rebel—and that there's a rebel in each of us. We live in turbulent times. In this cutthroat environment, cultivating rebel talent is what allows businesses to evolve and to prosper. And rebellion has an added benefit beyond the workplace: it leads to a more vital, engaged,and fulfilling life. Whether you want to inspire others to action, grow a business, or build more meaningful relationships, Rebel Talent will show you how to succeed—by breaking all the rules.
The Storyteller's Secret: How the World's Most Inspiring Leaders Turn Their Passion Into Performance
Carmine Gallo - 2016
The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviours that Transform Ordinary People into World Class Leaders
Elena L. Botelho - 2018
You must graduate from an elite college or business school. In fact, only 7 percent of the CEOs of today's companies went to a top school--and 8 percent didn't graduate from college at all. Never put a foot wrong. In fact, people who have become CEOs have on average had five to seven career setbacks on their way to the top.Drawing on the biggest dataset of CEOs in the world -- in-depth analysis of 2,600 leaders, drawn from a database of 17,000 CEOs, as well as 13,000 hours of interviews -- The CEO Next Door is crammed full of myth-busting and counter-intuitive insights in what it really takes to get ahead. Discover the way actual CEOs of top companies think and behave, and the kind of traits to develop if you want to make your ambitions a reality and take your career right to the top.
Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives
Laura Whitworth - 1998
Published in more than ten languages now, this book has been used as the definitive resource in dozens of corporate, professional development and university-based coaching programs as well as by thousands of individuals looking to elevate their communication, relationship and coaching skills. This fully revised third edition of Co-Active Coaching has been updated to reflect the expanded vision of the newly updated Co-Active Model and coaching course curriculum at The Coaches Training Institute, the training organization founded and run by the authors for 20 years. The third edition emphasizes evoking transformational change in the client and extends the use of the Co-Active Model into leadership management and its effectiveness throughout organizations. This edition also contains an on-line Coach's Toolkit (replacing the CD of the second edition), several new coaching demonstrations and more than 35 updated exercises, questionnaires, checklists and reproducible forms.
The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World's Greatest Teams
Sam Walker - 2016
It's not the star.It's not money. It's not a strategy.It's something else entirely.Several years ago, Sam Walker set out to answer one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: What are the greatest teams of all time? He devised a formula, then applied it to thousands of teams from leagues all over the world, from the NBA to the English Premier League to Olympic field hockey. When he was done, he had a list of the sixteen most dominant teams in history. At that point, he became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these freak teams have in common?As Walker dug into their stories, a pattern emerged: Each team had the same type of captain--a singular leader with an unconventional skill set who drove it to achieve sustained, historic greatness.Fueled by a lifetime of sports spectating, twenty years of reporting, and a decade of painstaking research, The Captain Class tells the surprising story of what makes teams exceptional. Drawing on original interviews with athletes from two dozen countries, as well as general managers, coaches, executives, and others skilled at building teams, Walker identifies the seven core qualities of this Captain Class--from extreme doggedness and emotional control to a knack for nonverbal communication to tactical aggression and the courage to stand apart.Told through riveting accounts of some of the most pressure-soaked moments in sports history--from Bill Russell's legendary "Coleman Play" in the 1957 NBA Finals to Barcelona's "Figo Game" against Real Madrid in 2000--The Captain Class doesn't just bring these events to life; it presents a fresh, counterintuitive take on leadership that can be applied to a wide spectrum of competitive disciplines.The men and women who make up the Captain Class were never the most skilled athletes, nor were they gifted orators or paragons of sportsmanship. They were often role players who were allergic to the spotlight. In short, the seven attributes they shared challenge your assumptions of what inspired leadership looks like.
Read This Before Our Next Meeting
Al Pittampalli - 2011
Dread no longer: Read This Before Our Next Meeting not only explains what’s wrong with “the meeting,” and meeting culture, but suggests how to make meetings more effective, efficient, and worthy of attending. It assesses when it’s necessary to skip the meeting and get right to work. Al Pittampalli shares examples of transforming workplaces by revamping the purpose of the meeting and a company's meeting culture. This book belongs on the shelf of any employee, employer and company looking to revolutionize what it means to do "work" all day and how to do it. Simply put: Stop wasting time. Read This Before Our Next Meeting is the call to action you (or your boss) needs to create the company that does the meaningful work it was created to do.
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Ryan Holiday - 2014
What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus AureliusWe are stuck, stymied, frustrated. But it needn’t be this way. There is a formula for success that’s been followed by the icons of history—from John D. Rockefeller to Amelia Earhart to Ulysses S. Grant to Steve Jobs—a formula that let them turn obstacles into opportunities. Faced with impossible situations, they found the astounding triumphs we all seek.These men and women were not exceptionally brilliant, lucky, or gifted. Their success came from timeless philosophical principles laid down by a Roman emperor who struggled to articulate a method for excellence in any and all situations.This book reveals that formula for the first time—and shows us how we can turn our own adversity into advantage.
Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success that Women Need to Learn
Gail Evans - 2000
Only four of the Fortune 500 company CEOs are women, and it's only been in the last few years that even half of the Fortune 500 companies have more than one female officer.A major reason for this? Most women were never taught how to play the game of business. Throughout her career in the supercompetitive, male-dominated media industry, Gail Evans, one of the country's most powerful executives, has met innumerable women who tell her that they feel lost in the workplace, almost as if they were playing a game without knowing the directions.She tells them that's exactly the case: Business is indeed a game, and like any game, there are rules to playing well. For the most part, Gail has discovered, women don't know them.Men know these rules because they wrote them, but women often feel shut out of the process because they don't know when to speak up, when to ask for responsibility, what to say at an interview, and a lot of other key moves that can make or break a career.Now, in her book Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, Gail Evans reveals the secrets to the playbook of success and teaches women at all levels of the organization--from assistant to vice president--how to play the game of business to their advantage.Sharing with humor and candor her years of lessons from corporate life, Gail Evans gives readers practical tools for making the right decisions at work. Among the rules you will learn are:• How to Keep Score at Work• When to Take a Risk• How to Deal with the Imposter Syndrome• Ten Vocabulary Words That Mean Different Things to Men and Women• Why Men Can be Ugly, and You Can't• When to Quit Your JobEvans is not saying that every woman has to play exactly by men's rules--not at all. Women bring many inherent traits to the workplace that can provide them with a potential advantage over men, such as a woman's ability to form relationships, or her intuition. But women do need to know the basic rules so that they can understand the full consequences of their every action and how it makes an impact on their career.An honest and practical handbook that reveals important insights into relationships between men and women and work, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, is a must-read for every woman who wants to leverage her power in the workplace.
Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values
Fred Kofman - 2005
Without it, we forget what's important to us and lose sight of the steps we might take to reach those goals. Conscious business, explains Fred Kofman, means shining this awareness on every area of your work: in recognizing the needs of others and expressing your own; in seeing the hidden emotional obstacles that may be holding your team back; in making good decisions under pressure; and even in delving into such spiritual questions as "Who am I?" and "What is my real purpose here?" In Conscious Business, this visionary teacher and consultant to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and other leading companies presents the complete training manual in the breakthrough techniques he has shared with over 20,000 executives on four continents.
The Way of the Shepherd: Seven Secrets to Managing Productive People
Kevin Leman - 2004
Kevin Leman's story about a young reporter who lands the meeting of a lifetime and walks away with the keys to exceptional leadership. The Way of the Shepherd points you beyond dated trends and out-of-touch management techniques to the strategies that will make you a truly outstanding leader.When William Pentak had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview Ted McBride, one of the most respected CEOs in America, he was shocked by what McBride was willing to share. McBride taught him the seven secrets he inherited long ago from his mentor--an eccentric but brilliant professor who passed on these time-tested management principles that, while ancient in their origin, are still applicable in today's fast-paced, high-tech world.Throughout The Way of the Shepherd, you'll learn how to infuse your work with meaning, no matter your role, title, industry, or the size of your team. Uncover the tried-and-true best practices for how to engage, energize, and ignite your workforce by:Getting to know your team, one person at a timeRelentlessly communicating your values and your missionDefining the cause for your people and showing them where they fit inHaving a heart for the people that you're leadingUnderstanding that great leadership isn't just professional, it's personalIf you're ready to transform your team, create a culture of belonging, and truly learn to lead by example, it's time to discover The Way of the Shepherd.
The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate
Fran Hauser - 2018
If women are nice, they are seen as weak and ineffective, but if they are tough, they are labeled a bitch.Hauser proves that women don’t have to sacrifice their values or hide their authentic personalities to be successful. Sharing a wealth of personal anecdotes and time-tested strategies, she shows women how to reclaim “nice” and sidestep regressive stereotypes about what a strong leader looks like. Her accessible advice and hard-won wisdom detail how to balance being empathetic with being decisive, how to rise above the double standards that can box you in, how to cultivate authentic confidence that projects throughout a room, and much more. The Myth of the Nice Girl is a refreshing dose of forward-looking feminism that will resonate with smart, professional women who know what they want and are looking for real advice to take their career to the next level without losing themselves in the process.