A hands-on, practical guide, "Practice of Adaptive Leadership" contains stories, tools, diagrams, cases, and worksheets to help managers develop their skills as leaders who are able to take people outside their comfort zones and address the toughest challenges.

    She uses a highly instructive and entertaining story to show how to quickly recognize any undermining questions that pop into your mind--or out of your mouth--and reframe them to achieve amazingly positive and practical results. The third edition includes a new introduction and epilogue and two powerful new tools that show how Question Thinking can dramatically improve coaching and leadership. Based on Adams's decades of research and experience, this book can make a life-transforming difference--as it already has for many thousands of people around the world.

    Today, many of the most successful companies use storytelling as a leadership tool. At Nike, all senior executives are designated "corporate storytellers." 3M banned bullet points years ago and replaced them with a process of writing "strategic narratives." Procter & Gamble hired Hollywood directors to teach its executives storytelling techniques. Some forward-thinking business schools have even added storytelling courses to their management curriculum. The reason for this is simple: Stories have the ability to engage an audience the way logic and bullet points alone never could. Whether you are trying to communicate a vision, sell an idea, or inspire commitment, storytelling is a powerful business tool that can mean the difference between mediocre results and phenomenal success. "Lead with a Story" contains both ready-to-use stories and how-to guidance for readers looking to craft their own. Designed for a wide variety of business challenges, the book shows how narrative can help: - Define culture and values - Engender creativity and innovation - Foster collaboration and build relationships - Provide coaching and feedback - Lead change - And more Whether in a speech or a memo, communicated to one person or a thousand, storytelling is an essential skill for success. Complete with examples from companies like Kellogg's, Merrill-Lynch, Procter & Gamble, National Car Rental, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, and more, this practical resource gives readers the guidance they need to deliver stories to stunning effect.

    500 CEOs.An instant classic, this revised and updated edition of the phenomenal bestseller dispels the myths about starting your own business. Small business consultant and author Michael E. Gerber, with sharp insight gained from years of experience, points out how common assumptions, expectations, and even technical expertise can get in the way of running a successful business.Gerber walks you through the steps in the life of a business—from entrepreneurial infancy through adolescent growing pains to the mature entrepreneurial perspective: the guiding light of all businesses that succeed—and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Most importantly, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business.The E-Myth Revisited will help you grow your business in a productive, assured way.

    The consensus is clear: MBA programs are a waste of time and money. Even the elite schools offer outdated assembly-line educations about profit-and-loss statements and PowerPoint presentations. After two years poring over sanitized case studies, students are shuffled off into middle management to find out how business really works.Josh Kaufman has made a business out of distilling the core principles of business and delivering them quickly and concisely to people at all stages of their careers. His blog has introduced hundreds of thousands of readers to the best business books and most powerful business concepts of all time. In The Personal MBA, he shares the essentials of sales, marketing, negotiation, strategy, and much more.True leaders aren't made by business schools-they make themselves, seeking out the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to succeed. Read this book and in one week you will learn the principles it takes most people a lifetime to master.

    Accessible and concise, this on-the-job companion offers expert guidance on all types of ""people"" issues, enabling managers and human resources professionals to:* Save time, money, and trouble* Increase employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention* Attract and hire the best candidates while avoiding the inferior ones** Handle tough issues like sexual harassment, Internet and e-mail usage, performance problems, and more -- fairly, sensitively, and legally.The HR Answer Book is an easy-to-use problem solver that can be read cover-to-cover or as a quick reference in specific situations. An appendix of tools, templates, and lists of additional resources completes this excellent and valuable guide."

    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

    Incorporating data from surveys performed by the prestigious Saratoga Institute of more than 19,000 employees, this critical book examines in depth:* How the employee and the employer travel a two-way street of expectation and reality; What are the warning signs of unmet expectations, and how can you best act on them?* How incomplete talent strategies lead to employee-job mismatches; why a passion for matching must become a core competency in your organization.* The ultimate cost of insufficient or ineffectual feedback; a five-step coaching process that builds strong and durable working relationships.* How growth and advancement opportunities are not keeping pace with new career expectations; how to create opportunities and help your employees create their own.* Best pay practices, rewards programs, and other initiatives for valuing and recognizing employees; understanding the emotional impact of compensation and recognition programs.* The real toll that stress and overwork take on your employees--and on your bottom line; a look at how the best places to work in America got that way, even without high-profile or "newfangled" perks or benefits.* How leadership and employees can (and must) build an environment of mutual trust and confidence; the three universal questions every employee needs answered, and how a disengaged workforce is the direct result of detached leadershipThe key to becoming an Employer of Choice -- a workplace where top talent are knocking down the doors to get in -- is to develop the attitudes and implement the programs that address each of the above areas. The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave presents 54 Best Practices that will serve as the building blocks for a proactive approach to employee satisfaction, growth, and retention."

    Admired for its clarity and zest, Impro lays bare the techniques and exercises used to foster spontaneity and narrative skill for actors. These techniques and exercises were evolved in the actors' studio, when he was Associate Director of the Royal Court and then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers called The Theatre Machine.Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills' and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific approaches which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

    Why We Buy is based on hard data gleaned from thousands of hours of field research–in shopping malls, department stores, and supermarkets across America. With his team of sleuths tracking our every move, Paco Underhill lays bare the struggle among merchants, marketers, and increasingly knowledgeable consumers for control.

    Intentionally kept as a short, readable book to enable job seekers to have an advantage during the interview process.Learn what a real hiring manager is looking for and how to meet their unspoken needs. Recruiter and HR guidance may get you to an interview, but only the actual hiring manager knows WHY some people get hired, and some don't. Don't allow yourself to be put in the "Don't" category.Understand what the person sitting across from you is evaluating and assessing you on - and win the job.

    Unquestionably the best-documented account of sales success ever collected and the result of the Huthwaite corporation's massive 12-year, $1-million dollar research into effective sales performance, this groundbreaking resource details the revolutionary SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) strategy.In SPIN Selling, Rackham, who has advised leading companies such as IBM and Honeywell delivers the first book to specifically examine selling high-value product and services. By following the simple, practical, and easy-to-apply techniques of SPIN, readers will be able to dramatically increase their sales volume from major accounts. Rackham answers key questions such as "What makes success in major sales" and "Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?"You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won't work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales. Packed with real-world examples, illuminating graphics, and informative case studies - and backed by hard research data - SPIN Selling is the million-dollar key to understanding and producing record-breaking high-end sales performance.

    It is intended to instruct students on how to manage effectively and efficiently with full comprehension of the legal ramifications of their decisions. Students are shown how to analyze employment law facts using concrete examples of management-related legal dilemmas that do not present clear-cut solutions. The methods of arriving at resolutions are emphasized, so that when the facts of the workplace problem are not quite the same, the student can still reach a good decision based on the legal considerations required by law, which remain relevant.

    Are you ready for the leadership moment?Merck's Roy Vagelos commits millions of dollars to develop a drug needed only by people who can't afford it · Eugene Kranz struggles to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts home after an explosion rips through their spacecraft · Arlene Blum organizes the first women's ascent of one of the world's most dangerous mountains · Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain leads his tattered troops into a pivotal Civil War battle at Little Round Top · John Gutfreund loses Salomon Brothers when his inattention to a trading scandal almost topples the Wall Street giant · Clifton Wharton restructures a $50 billion pension system direly out of touch with its customers · Alfredo Cristiani transforms El Salvador's decade-long civil war into a negotiated settlement · Nancy Barry leads Women's World Banking in the fight against Third World poverty · Wagner Dodge faces the decision of a lifetime as a fast-moving forest fire overtakes his firefighting crew

    A management expert offers women guidance in acquiring and maintaining power in business, providing advice on the language, dress, attitudes, poses, and rules of success in a world traditionally dominated by men.