Some were good, others not so much so. But I want to have GREAT conversations, and Jim Knight has taught me how. The proof is in: better conversations are possible and the results are worth the investment.”--DOUGLAS FISHERCoauthor of Rigorous Reading and Unstoppable LearningBecause conversation is the lifeblood of any schoolYou don’t want this book—you need this book. Why this confident claim? Think about how many times you’ve walked away from school conversations, sensing they could be more productive, but at a loss for how to improve them.Enter instructional coaching expert Jim Knight, who in Better Conversations honors our capacity for improving our schools by improving our communication. Asserting that our schools are only as good as the conversations within them, Jim shows us how to adopt the habits essential to transforming the quality of our dialogues. As coaches, as administrators, as teachers, it’s time to thrive. Learn how to: Coach ourselves and each other to become better communicators Listen with empathy  Find common ground  Build Trust Our students’ academic, social, and emotional growth depends upon our doing this hard work. It’s time to roll up our sleeves, open our minds, and dare to change for the better of the students we serve. You can get started now with Better Conversationsand the accompanying Reflection Guide to Better Conversations.

    They bridge the gaps between the individual and the collective, the person and the purpose. The most successful and effective HR professionals see their careers as a calling, and their work, though driven by corporate goals, is graced by a sense of purpose, a profound generosity, and a love for what they do and the constituencies they serve.HR from the Heart is a book for HR practitioners who love their jobs -- or want to. Libby Sartain, one of the country's top human resources executives, reveals how HR professionals create a synergy between business objectives and the needs and wants of employees. This inspiring book is equal parts motivational message and how-to, confessional and career guide. Filled with stories from Sartain's considerable experience, HR from the Heart offers a first-hand perspective on forging relationships, selling HR to the company, taking diversity beyond ""by the book,"" keeping policy in perspective, and more -- all while making the right career moves, staying engaged, and forwarding the strategic goals of the company."

    You're not a professional designer, but you want your slides to look professional. What do you do?Enter Robin Williams, the beloved, best-selling non-designer's designer (with over 850,000 copies of The Non-Designer's Design Book in print!) who has taught an entire generation the basics of design and typography. In The Non-Designer's Presentation Book, Robin expands upon the design principles introduced in her award-winning Non-Designer's series. She explains four fundamental principles of good design as applied to digital presentations, and adds four more principles specific to clear communication with slides.Whether you work with a Mac or PC, PowerPoint or Keynote, let Robin guide you, in her signature, light-hearted style, through the entire process of creating a presentation—from using the right software to organizing your ideas to designing effective, beautiful slides that won't put your audience to sleep.In this essential guide to presentation design, you'll learn:• What makes a good presentation or a bad one• How to plan, organize, and outline your presentation• Four principles of designing effective presentations• Four principles for designing beautiful slides that communicate clearly• An exhaustive list of timeless presentation rules ... that you should totally ignore

    Few people have “consumed” or learned from and remembered as many books. In The Lifetime Learner’s Guide to Reading and Learning, Gary lays out his method for capturing important ideas contained in books in 30 minutes (or less) without speed-reading. The book contains a multitude of tips about how to learn efficiently, how to find and buy books, and an annotated list of 160 books for expanding your knowledge – from history and geography to entrepreneurship and architecture. The book concludes with an extensive section on how to think creatively and see things that others do not, and how to separate the wheat from the chaff and see the forest beyond the trees.

    And The Diversity Bonus shows how and why.Scott Page, a leading thinker, writer, and speaker whose ideas and advice are sought after by corporations, nonprofits, universities, and governments around the world, makes a clear and compellingly pragmatic case for diversity and inclusion. He presents overwhelming evidence that teams that include different kinds of thinkers outperform homogenous groups on complex tasks, producing what he calls "diversity bonuses." These bonuses include improved problem solving, increased innovation, and more accurate predictions-all of which lead to better performance and results.Page shows that various types of cognitive diversity-differences in how people perceive, encode, analyze, and organize the same information and experiences-are linked to better outcomes. He then describes how these cognitive differences are influenced by other kinds of diversity, including racial and gender differences-in other words, identity diversity. Identity diversity, therefore, can also produce bonuses.Drawing on research in economics, psychology, computer science, and many other fields, The Diversity Bonus also tells the stories of people and organizations that have tapped the power of diversity to solve complex problems. And the book includes a challenging response from Katherine Phillips of the Columbia Business School.The result changes the way we think about diversity in the workplace-and far beyond it.

    Christensen). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles to select the most important ones to help you maximize yourself.HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself will inspire you to:Stay engaged throughout your 50+-year work lifeTap into your deepest valuesSolicit candid feedbackReplenish physical and mental energyBalance work, home, community, and selfSpread positive energy throughout your organizationRebound from tough timesDecrease distractibility and frenzyDelegate and develop employees' initiativeThis collection of best-selling articles includes: bonus article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clayton M. Christensen, "Managing Oneself," "Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?" "How Resilience Works," "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time," "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform," "Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life," "Reclaim Your Job," "Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership," "What to Ask the Person in the Mirror," and "Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance."

    Each chapter outlines one of the 50 ideas and gives three strategies for putting it into practice. Some ideas will surprise you, all will inspire you. Put these simple strategies together and you have a recipe for a better life, a formula that will unlock a more productive you. Whether you want to improve your efficiency, clear your desk, or be on top of your work, this book provides the tools and techniques you need to be more productive. With dedicated sections on having a productive attitude, managing specific projects, aids to productivity and productivity in action, it gives you everything you need to know.

    It's all about THE ATTRIBUTES. "Diviney's incredible book explains why some people thrive--even when things get hard."--Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit During his twenty years as a Navy officer and SEAL, Rich Diviney was intimately involved in a specialized SEAL selection process, which whittled a group of hundreds of extraordinary candidates down to a handful of the most elite performers. Diviney was often surprised by which candidates washed out and which succeeded. Some could have all the right skills and still fail, while others he might have initially dismissed would prove to be top performers. The seemingly objective criteria weren't telling him what he most needed to know: Who would succeed in one of the world's toughest military assignments?It is similarly hard to predict success in the real world.It happens often enough that underdog students accomplish exceptional achievements while highly skilled, motivated employees fail to meet expectations. Dark-horse companies pull away from the pack while dream teams flush with talent and capital go under. In working with and selecting top special operators for decades, Diviney saw that beneath obvious skills are hidden drivers of performance, surprising core attributes--including cunning, adaptability, courage, even narcissism--that determine how resilient or perseverant we are, how situationally aware and how conscientious. These attributes explain how we perform as individuals and as part of a team. The same methodology that Diviney used in the military can be applied by anyone in their personal and professional lives, and understanding these attributes can allow readers and their teams to perform optimally, at any time, in any situation.Diviney defines the core attributes in fresh and practical ways and shares stories from the military, business, sports, relationships, and even parenting to show how understanding your own attributes and those of the people around you can create optimal performance in all areas of your life.

    

    A marketing and business genius, Gary had the foresight to go beyond traditional methods and use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach an untapped audience that continues to grow.#AskGaryVee showcases the most useful and interesting questions Gary has addressed on his popular show. Distilling and expanding on the podcast’s most urgent and evergreen themes, Gary presents practical, timely, and timeless advice on marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and everything else you’ve been afraid to ask but are dying to know. Gary gives you the insights and information you need on everything from effectively using Twitter to launching a small business, hiring superstars to creating a personal brand, launching products effectively to staying healthy—and even buying wine.Whether you’re planning to start your own company, working in digital media, or have landed your first job in a traditional company, #AskGaryVee is your essential guide to making things happen in a big way.

    I learned about myself and learned lessons I will carry with me and reflect on for the rest of my life.”—John W. Fanning, Founding Chairman and CEO napster Inc.“An unusually nuanced view of high-performance cultures.” —Inc.Within each corporation are anywhere from a few to hundreds of separate tribes. In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright demonstrate how these tribes develop—and show you how to assess them and lead them to maximize productivity and growth. A business management book like no other, Tribal Leadership is an essential tool to help managers and business leaders take better control of their organizations by utilizing the unique characteristics of the tribes that exist within.

    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.

    Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.

    With 97 short and extremely useful tips for engineering managers, you'll discover new approaches to old problems, pick up road-tested best practices, and hone your management skills through sound advice.Managing people is hard, and the industry as a whole is bad at it. Many managers lack the experience, training, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. From mentoring interns to working in senior management, this book will take you through the stages of management and provide actionable advice on how to approach the obstacles you'll encounter as a technical manager.A few of the 97 things you should know:"Three Ways to Be the Manager Your Report Needs" by Duretti Hirpa"The First Two Questions to Ask When Your Team Is Struggling" by Cate Huston"Fire Them!" by Mike Fisher"The 5 Whys of Organizational Design" by Kellan Elliott-McCrea"Career Conversations" by Raquel V�lez"Using 6-Page Documents to Close Decisions" by Ian Nowland"Ground Rules in Meetings" by Lara Hogan

    The translator, Lev Shulyak an accomplished inventor, engineer and TRIZ expert published the book at his own expense to bring it into American classrooms. This new edition has been revised extensively by Shulyak and editor Steve Rodman, who have added valuable information not found in the original.Topics include an introduction to the development of the TRIZ theory, and a wide range of problems and the solutions that TRIZ helps produce.