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.

It's Not About the Money


Bob Proctor - 2008
    The ancient laws of attraction are explained in plain language and applied in an economic framework—a new perspective not found in other popular explications of these principles. A path to prosperity is offered in tandem with guidance for achieving harmony in both professional and personal spheres while strategies to overcome destructive thinking patterns and to sustain the flow of wealth while channeling it constructively are delineated. Profiles of individuals who pursued their passion rather than profit, and subsequently reaped immense rewards, will inspire those seeking to transform their lives.

Confessions of a Public Speaker


Scott Berkun - 2009
    For managers and teachers -- and anyone else who talks and expects someone to listen -- Confessions of a Public Speaker provides an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. It's a unique, entertaining, and instructional romp through the embarrassments and triumphs Scott has experienced over 15 years of speaking to crowds of all sizes.With lively lessons and surprising confessions, you'll get new insights into the art of persuasion -- as well as teaching, learning, and performance -- directly from a master of the trade.Highlights include:Berkun's hard-won and simple philosophy, culled from years of lectures, teaching courses, and hours of appearances on NPR, MSNBC, and CNBCPractical advice, including how to work a tough room, the science of not boring people, how to survive the attack of the butterflies, and what to do when things go wrongThe inside scoop on who earns $30,000 for a one-hour lecture and whyThe worst -- and funniest -- disaster stories you've ever heard (plus countermoves you can use)Filled with humorous and illuminating stories of thrilling performances and real-life disasters, Confessions of a Public Speaker is inspirational, devastatingly honest, and a blast to read.

Working with Bitches: Identify the Eight Types of Office Mean Girls and Rise Above Workplace Nastiness


Meredith Fuller - 2013
    But you can usually sense when something's “off”—particularly if you're completely stressed out and hate the job you used to love. Let's face it, ladies: there are plenty of nasty, manipulative, and destructive women in the workplace who fly under the radar while ruthless alpha males get all the bad press.In Working with Bitches, psychologist Meredith Fuller offers practical advice on how to recognize and manage difficult women at work. Dr. Fuller combines actual cases with tips that women can use right away to defuse even the worst situations. Readers will learn how to deal with the eight types of “mean girls” they might face in the office and find powerful reassurance that they are not alone.

Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do with Your Life


Roadtrip Nation - 2015
    From the team behind the inspirational TV series and campus and online resource, it is presented in a motivational format that gets young people excited to think deeply about how they want to enter and thrive in the workforce by detailing how to take Roadtrip Nation's interest-based approach and apply it to one's life. Prompts for write-ins are interspersed throughout, making the reading process interactive and the discoveries personally impactful, and full-color charts and graphs offer a unique visual learning experience. With actionable, realworld wisdom on every page, it's an essential tool for today's young professionals and the parents, educators, and advisors seeking to inspire them.

How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking


Viv Groskop - 2018
    written with style and wit.' Mishal Husain Most books about public speaking don’t tell you what to do when you open your mouth and nothing comes out. And they don’t tell you how to get over the anxiety about performance that most people naturally have. They don’t tell you what to do in the moments when you are made, as a woman, to feel small. They don’t tell you how to own the room. This book does. From the way Michelle Obama projects ‘happy high status’, and the power of J.K.Rowling’s understated speaking style, to Virginia Woolf’s leisurely pacing and Oprah Winfrey’s mastery of inner conviction, what is it that our heroines do to make us sit up and listen - really listen - to their every word? And how can you achieve that impact in your own life? Here’s how.

The Little Book of Leadership: The 12.5 Strengths of Responsible, Reliable, Remarkable Leaders That Create Results, Rewards, and Resilience


Jeffrey Gitomer - 2011
    The true measure of any leader is his or her ability to react based on past experience and gut feelings, respond in real time to current circumstances, and then to recover quickly and move on with new lessons learned. The Little Book of Leadership combines classic style with the latest innovations to challenges the reader to self-evaluate every facet of their leadership, coaching, and communication abilities in order to better formulate what actions can be taken to improve their natural skills. Ideas and answers are provided for every challenge.Chapters include information about the 12.5 leadership strengths: From insights to legacy and every element in between. Morale, Attitude, Resilience, Opportunity, Guts, Measurement, Coach, Celebration, Next-level, and Lost Secret of Leadership Foreword by Dr. Paul "Doc" Hersey, creator of Situational Leadership Other books by Gitomer: The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Revised Edition, also by Wiley, The Little Red Book of Selling (Bard Press) The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude (Pearson) Whereas other books rely on theory or philosophy, The Little Book of Leadership takes leadership into the real world of business, providing proven methods for becoming a successful leader.

No More Excuses: The Five Accountabilities for Personal and Organizational Growth


Sam Silverstein - 2009
    Accountability is a way of thinking.  Those who achieve greatness know true accountability makes all the difference between success and failure. Based on extensive interviews with accountable leaders—from Fortune 500 CEOs to Hall of Fame athletes—No More Excuses identifies the five accountabilities of successful people and organizations. These tenets encourage accountability in others and performance at the highest level. When you willingly accept and embrace the five accountabilities, you encourage accountability in others and empower your teams to achieve at the highest level. The result is an organization focused on its fundamental values and committed, at the individual level, to achieving critical strategic goals. Whether you’re a business owner, a top executive, or a team leader, accountability starts with you and trickles down to everyone else. If you want to build an organization that achieves its goals and beats the competition it’s time for No More Excuses.

Meaningful Work: A Quest to Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul


Shawn Askinosie - 2017
    Askinosie Chocolate is a small-batch, award winning chocolate company widely considered to be a vanguard in the industry. Known for sourcing 100% of his cocoa beans directly from farmers across the globe, Shawn Askinosie has pioneered direct trade and profit sharing in the craft chocolate industry with farmers in Tanzania, Ecuador, and the Philippines. In addition to developing relationships with smallholder farmers, the company also partners with schools in their origin communities to provide lunch to 1,600 children every day with no outside donations. Twenty-five years ago, Shawn Askinosie was a successful criminal defense lawyer trying his first murder death penalty case that would later go on to become a Dateline special. For many years he found law satisfying, but after several high profile trials he reached a breaking point and found solace in the search for a new career.In this inspiring guide to discovering a vocation that feeds your heart and soul, Askinosie describes his quest to discover more meaningful work - a search that led him to volunteering in the palliative care wing of a hospital, to a Trappist monastery where he became inspired by the monks focus on "being" rather than "doing," and eventually traipsing through jungles across the globe in search of excellent cocoa bean farmers to make award winning chocolate. Askinosie shares his hard-won insights into doing work that reflects one's values and purpose in life. He shares with readers visioning tools that can be used in any industry or field to create a work life that is inspired and fulfilling. Askinosie shows us that everyone has the capacity to find meaning in their work and be a positive force for good in the world.

That's Not What I Meant!


Deborah Tannen - 1986
    Deborah Tannen, the internationally-acclaimed expert on communication and author of the bestselling YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND, will help you recognize your own conversational style and how it meshes or clashes with the styles of others. Entertaining and informative, everyone who speaks will want to read this gem.

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else


Michael Gates Gill - 2007
    By the time he turned sixty, he had lost everything except his Ivy League education and his sense of entitlement. First, he was downsized at work. Next, an affair ended his twenty-year marriage. Then, he was diagnosed with a slow-growing brain tumor, prognosis undetermined. Around the same time, his girlfriend gave birth to a son. Gill had no money, no health insurance, and no prospects. One day as Gill sat in a Manhattan Starbucks with his last affordable luxury—a latté—brooding about his misfortune and quickly dwindling list of options, a 28-year-old Starbucks manager named Crystal Thompson approached him, half joking, to offer him a job. With nothing to lose, he took it, and went from drinking coffee in a Brooks Brothers suit to serving it in a green uniform. For the first time in his life, Gill was a minority--the only older white guy working with a team of young African-Americans. He was forced to acknowledge his ingrained prejudices and admit to himself that, far from being beneath him, his new job was hard. And his younger coworkers, despite having half the education and twice the personal difficulties he’d ever faced, were running circles around him. The other baristas treated Gill with respect and kindness despite his differences, and he began to feel a new emotion: gratitude. Crossing over the Starbucks bar was the beginning of a dramatic transformation that cracked his world wide open. When all of his defenses and the armor of entitlement had been stripped away, a humbler, happier and gentler man remained. One that everyone, especially Michael’s kids, liked a lot better. The backdrop to Gill's story is a nearly universal cultural phenomenon: the Starbucks experience. In How Starbucks Saved My Life, we step behind the counter of one of the world's best-known companies and discover how it all really works, who the baristas are and what they love (and hate) about their jobs. Inside Starbucks, as Crystal and Mike’s friendship grows, we see what wonders can happen when we reach out across race, class, and age divisions to help a fellow human being.

JumpStart Your Thinking: A 90-Day Improvement Plan


John C. Maxwell - 2015
    Maxwell shares the secrets to success in this 90-day guide, based on his book Thinking For a Change.Maxwell provides the wisdom and inspiration you need to become a better thinker and achieve your dreams by mastering the eleven types of successful thinking, including: Big-Picture Thinking -- seeing the world beyond your own needs and how that leads to great ideas; Focused Thinking -- removing mental clutter and distractions to realize your full potential; Creative Thinking -- thinking in unique ways and making breakthroughs; Shared Thinking -- working with others to compound results; and Reflective Thinking -- looking at the past to gain a better understanding of the future.Filled with inspiring quotes, engaging lessons, and stimulating questions, over the course of three short months you'll make daily strides toward more effective thinking while tracking your progress in this portable volume.

In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs


Grace Bonney - 2016
    In the Company of Women profiles over 100 of these influential and creative women from all ages, races, backgrounds, and industries. Chock-full of practical, inspirational advice for those looking to forge their own paths, these interviews detail the keys to success (for example, going with your gut; maintaining meaningful and lasting relationships), highlight the importance of everyday rituals (meditating; creating a daily to-do list), and dispense advice for the next generation of women entrepreneurs and makers (stay true to what you believe in; have patience). The book is rounded out with hundreds of lush, original photographs of the women in their work spaces.

The Power of Habit, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook


Charles Duhigg
    Description:- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change We can always change. In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg translates cutting-edge behavioural science into practical self-improvement action, distilling advanced neuroscience into fascinating narratives of transformation.Why can some people and companies change overnight, and some stay stuck in their old ruts? The answer lies deep in the human brain, and The Power of Habits reveals the secret pressure points that can change a life. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook Stephen Covey's THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE took the self-help market by storm in 1990 and has enjoyed phenomenal sales ever since. With over 15 million copies in print, the book has become a classic. Now a touchstone for millions of individuals, as well as for families and businesses, the integrated, principle-centered 7 Habits philosophy has helped readers find solutions to their personal and professional problems, and achieve a life characterized by fairness, integrity, honesty, and dignity. Covey's tried and true step-by-step approach can now be even more thoroughly explored in this new workbook.

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win


Maria Konnikova - 2020
    But she knew her man: a famously thoughtful and broad-minded player, he was intrigued by her pitch that she wasn't interested in making money so much as learning about life. She had faced a stretch of personal bad luck, and her reflections on the role of chance had led her to a giant of game theory, who pointed her to poker as the ultimate master class in learning to distinguish between what can be controlled and what can't. And she certainly brought something to the table, including a Ph.D. in psychology and an acclaimed and growing body of work on human behavior and how to hack it. So Seidel was in, and soon she was down the rabbit hole with him, into the wild, fiercely competitive, overwhelmingly masculine world of high-stakes Texas Hold'em, their initial end point the following year's World Series of Poker.But then something extraordinary happened. Under Seidel's guidance, Konnikova did have many epiphanies about life that derived from her new pursuit, including how to better read, not just her opponents but far more importantly herself; how to identify what tilted her into an emotional state that got in the way of good decisions; and how to get to a place where she could accept luck for what it was, and what it wasn't. But she also began to win. And win. In a little over a year, she began making earnest money from tournaments, ultimately totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She won a major title, got a sponsor, and got used to being on television, and to headlines like How one writer's book deal turned her into a professional poker player. She even learned to like Las Vegas.But in the end, Maria Konnikova is a writer and student of human behavior, and ultimately the point was to render her incredible journey into a container for its invaluable lessons. The biggest bluff of all, she learned, is that skill is enough. Bad cards will come our way, but keeping our focus on how we play them and not on the outcome will keep us moving through many a dark patch, until the luck once again breaks our way.