Academic Leadership

When you want to learn about a subject, you go to the best. In the study of leadership, there's no one better than Brian Tracy, one of the world's top leadership experts. Over the last 30 years, he has spoken to more than 1,000 large corporations in 62 countries and 10,000 small and medium-sized companies in more than 5,000 talks and seminars on leadership, management, personal success and business development. In The 7 Secrets of Exceptional Leadership, Brian tells us that the wonderful thing about leadership is that your ability to grow as a leader never ends.

Stan McChrystal served for 34 years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient question: "What makes a leader great?" He came to realize that there is no simple answer. McChrystal profiles 13 famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields - from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice.

Paul Van Doren is the founder of Vans - the shoe company beloved by skateboarders, creatives, and fans everywhere for its laid-back, colorful SoCal vibe, and famous for its people-oriented company culture. How did Van Doren establish a family shoe business that evolved into a globally recognized brand with annual revenue of more than four billion dollars? A blue-collar kid with no higher education and zero retail experience, Van Doren leveraged a knack for numbers, a genius for efficiency, and the know-how to make a great canvas tennis shoe into an all-American success story.

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

Toutes les leçons de l'homme qui a fait rayonner l'enchantement. Robert Iger a dédié sa carrière à Disney : en quarante-cinq ans, dont quinze à la tête de l'entreprise, il en a fait le plus grand groupe audiovisuel au monde et l'a guidée à travers une période particulièrement compétitive et riche en bouleversements technologiques. Dans "Leçons de leadership créatif", il revient sur son parcours, ses succès, les obstacles qu'il a surmontés et les principes qui l'ont toujours guidé.

Veteran adman and author Ambi Parameswaran has relied on one process of learning above all others: powerful conversations with clients and customers. A challenging customer, in his view, goes from being someone who poses an obstacle to quality work to someone with eye-opening ideas and concepts. Approached as an exercise in listening and learning, these conversations can become long-term lessons.

The motivating host of one of the nation's largest leadership conferences offers a collection of inspirational and applicable life lessons through conversations with various high-profile people. One Question invites you to peer over the shoulder of a master interviewer with access to today's best and brightest as he delivers carefully crafted questions and collects answers guaranteed to surprise, challenge, and inspire.

In Winners Dream, Bill McDermott - the co-CEO of the world’s largest business software company, SAP - chronicles how relentless optimism, hard work, and disciplined execution embolden people and equip organizations to achieve audacious goals. Growing up in working-class Long Island, a sixteen-year-old Bill traded three hourly wage jobs to buy a small deli, which he ran by instinctively applying ideas that would be the seeds for his future success.

United Airlines, the iconic brand that invented the “Friendly Skies” and built modern aviation, found itself amid rough turbulence and was anything but united in 2015. With its reputation in freefall, operations and profits cratering, customer and employee trust fraying—and competitors pushing into coveted routes—United needed a new captain to turn things around, fast.

For aspiring chefs, seasoned cooks, or anyone with an appetite for personal growth and leadership insights, Chef's PSA: Bad Sous, Good Chef is a must-listen. It's more than just a story—it's a journey towards becoming your best self, served up in a delectable narrative that will leave you hungry for more.

The first inside account of life within a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, eBoys is the fascinating true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups that are transforming the Internet and setting a new pace for the economy - an audible.com audio exclusive!

One L, Scott Turow's journal of his first year at law school and a best seller when it was first published in 1977, has gone on to become a virtual bible for prospective law students. Not only does it introduce with remarkable clarity the ideas and issues that are the stuff of legal education; it also brings alive the anxiety and competitiveness, with others and, even more, with oneself, that set the tone in this crucible of character building.

How can women become effective leaders in large organizations without sacrificing who they are, as women and as mothers? This audiobook answers the question: They should live out the 10 characteristics of today's winning leaders. These characteristics - compassion, honesty, and authenticity, for example - were once seen as feminine weaknesses in the command-and-control corporate world. But today, in an inclusive and connected world, they define the leader who strengthens organizations rather than undermines them.

You would have to live under a rock not to know who Alan Greenspan is. But that's probably about as much as you know. Leave it to investigative reporter Bob Woodward to uncover the story of Greenspan and the power he wields as head of the Federal Reserve.

To most Canadians, the Molson name is part of the very fabric of Canada. Since 1786, when John Molson founded his first brewery in Montreal, it has become synonymous with beer, hockey, and philanthropy. Few realize, however, how close the family came in recent years to losing control of the enterprise. Back to Beer...and Hockey offers intimate details of the life and work of Eric Molson, who not only saved the company, but positioned it to thrive as a global brewery into the 21st century.

In 1962, Stephanie 'Steve' Shirley created a software company when the concept of software barely existed. Freelance Programmers employed women to work on complex projects such as Concorde's black box recorder from the comfort of their own homes. Shirley empowered a generation of women in technology, giving them unheard of freedom to choose their own hours and manage their own workloads. The business thrived, and Shirley gradually transferred ownership to her staff, creating 70 millionaires in the process.

Behind every entrepreneur's success story, there's a never-ending list of gut-wrenching failures, missed opportunities, and jaw-dropping setbacks. Real estate mogul and serial entrepreneur Manny Khoshbin is one of those entrepreneurs with a story of perseverance that will make you believe in the American Dream all over again. Driven: The Never-Give-Up Roadmap to Massive Success goes beyond Manny's personal ride through the entrepreneurial journey to deliver the habits, mindset, and insights aspiring entrepreneurs need to turn dreams into reality.

Most people try their best to avoid conflict. Bar Rescue host Jon Taffer understands that. Conflict can have negative results. It’s easy to think that the key to a happy workplace or marriage is to avoid conflict. In reality, that’s not the case—the key is to argue smarter. Enter the Toolkit for Getting Conflict Right. Taffer’s approach is focused on deliberate conflict—otherwise known as “conflict with a purpose.”

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

Daily observation of classroom teaching can significantly impact the quality of teaching and learning. Organized into 21 chapters designed to be read over a period of 21 school days, Now We're Talking! presents a results-driven approach that far surpasses traditional walkthrough models of feedback for teachers. School leaders will complete two cycles of teacher evaluations while reading the book and establish the necessary foundation for subsequent visits.