Career Skills

How are you supposed to tell someone that they're not meeting expectations without crushing their spirit? Regular feedback, when delivered skillfully, can turn average performers into the hardest workers and stars into superstars. Yet many see it as an awkward chore: Recent studies have revealed 37 percent of managers dread giving feedback, and 65 percent of employees wish their managers gave more feedback. This trail-blazing new model eliminates the guesswork.

Your workday is filled with them - people who frustrate, impede, maneuver, undermine, plot, connive, and whine. This indispensable guide details specific techniques for handling all of them, with easy-to-follow scenarios for every situation. Updated and revised to reflect modern issues including technology, generation gaps, and language barriers, this guide describes 10 kinds of culprits and offers helpful strategies and phrases for diffusing workplace tensions and effectively resolving conflicts.

In 2010, award-winning journalist John Bowe learned that his cousin Bill, a longtime extreme recluse living in his parents' basement, had, at the age of 59, overcome a lifetime of shyness and isolation - and gotten happily married. Bill credited his turnaround to Toastmasters, the world's largest organization devoted to teaching the art of public speaking.

Learn how to leverage dark psychology and emotional manipulation techniques to get what you want out of people. This bundle contains volume one, two, and three in one audiobook!

In an incredibly male-dominated world, it’s crucial - now more than ever - to develop the necessary skills to become an effective leader and start demanding what you deserve. All you need are easy, proven skills and traits that will help you gradually develop your self-esteem, sharpen your trust, and hone your boundary-setting and communication skills.

In Words Like Loaded Pistols, Sam Leith traces the art of argument from ancient Greece down to its many modern mutations. He introduces verbal villains from Hitler to Richard Nixon—and the three musketeers: ethos, pathos and logos. He explains how rhetoric works in speeches from Cicero to Obama, and pays tribute to the rhetorical brilliance of AC/DC's "Back In Black". Before you know it, you'll be confident in chiasmus and proud of your panegyrics—because rhetoric is useful, relevant, and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Written in a personable and homespun style, You, Inc. offers doses of humor and pithy knowledge to anyone who wants to thrive in the increasingly competitive business world. What veteran sales and marketing experts Harry and Christine Beckwith understand is that, to succeed in life, the most important thing you need to be able to sell is you.

In today's troubled economic market, everything is a tough sell. From products to services, everyone is consuming less as they tighten their belts. In this respect, it's easy to forget that the job interview is becoming more and more like the showroom - where the interview itself is the pitch, and the product you're selling is yourself. The Art of Selling Yourself will provide you with the knowhow you need to navigate today's tough business terrain and achieve success in your career and your life.

Carol Fleming wants to show you that small talk is not as “small” as you might think. It’s the foundation of every relationship, professional and personal. It is the sound of people reaching out to each other, searching for similarities, shared interests, goodwill, connections, and friendship. And it’s something we all do every day with people we know. It’s just the one little bit about strangers that throws some people off. Graceful social conversation can be learned, even by those requiring the smallest of baby steps.

In Difficult Conversations Don't Have to be Difficult, bestselling author Jon Gordon and veteran human resources professional and executive coach Amy P. Kelly deliver an inspiring new take on how to make tough workplace conversations an asset in building a stronger team and organization. The book, written as a business fable, follows Ruth, the CEO of a successful multinational company who has been instructed by her board to prepare her company for sale.

Your guide to becoming an explanation specialist. You've done the hard work. Your product or service works beautifully - but something is missing. People just don't see the big idea - and it's keeping you from being successful. Your idea has an explanation problem. The Art of Explanation is for business people, educators, and influencers who want to improve their explanation skills and start solving explanation problems.

Are you seeking a career makeover that'll lead you to the dream life you've always wanted? Let Reinvention Coach® Pamela Mitchell be your personal guide and give you every tool you need to navigate your career transformation. Through the inspiring real-life stories of 10 brave souls who took the leap and transformed their careers using 10 life-changing laws, you'll embark on your journey by envisioning your ideal life.

Networking has garnered a reputation as a sort of necessary evil in the modern business world. Some do relish the opportunity to boldly work the room, but for many others, the experience is often awkward, or even terrifying. The common networking advice for introverts are variations on the theme of overcoming or “fixing” their quiet tendencies. But Karen Wickre, a self-described introvert who has worked in Silicon Valley for 30 years, tells you to embrace your true nature to create sustainable connections that can be called upon for you to get career assistance, advice, introductions, and lasting connections.

Master negotiator and New York Times bestselling author of You Can Negotiate Anything Herb Cohen says, "Negotiation is the game of life." With his signature humor and self-deprecating style, Cohen explains how to learn powerful yet subtle negotiating ploys to help in business, career, and even family relationships. With his extensive international negotiating experience and unique presentation style, Herb offers this essential guide to the art and practice of negotiation in the 21st century.

It’s the great paradox of the digital age, what Radha Agrawal calls “community confusion” - the internet connects us to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, and yet we feel more isolated than ever, with one in four Americans saying they have zero friends to confide in. Where are our people? The answer is found in Belong, a highly energetic guide to discovering where and with whom you fit.

Some people think that in today’s hyper-competitive world, it’s the tough, take-no-prisoners type who comes out on top. But in reality, argues New York Times bestselling author Dave Kerpen, it’s actually those with the best people skills who win the day. Those who build the right relationships. Those who truly understand and connect with their colleagues, their customers, their partners. Those who can teach, lead, and inspire.

Real communication is much more than just talking. Once you've learned how to be a power communicator, there's no limit to how far you can go! Renowned communicator Nido Qubein shows you how to engage people's attention, how to help them understand you, and how to penetrate barriers others may unconsciously set up.

In Strategic, New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Rich Horwath delivers an incisive roadmap to help leaders at all levels think, plan, and act strategically to navigate every business challenge they face. The book offers business leaders a proven framework—the Strategic Fitness System—containing dozens of tools, techniques, and checklists to confidently master every area of the business, from designing market-winning strategies to shaping the organization's culture.

Getting heard is a tricky business: It’s what you say and how you show up, filtered through your audience’s assumptions and biases—and maybe even your own. For women, people of color, immigrants, and queer folks, there’s often a dissonance between how you speak and how we collectively think powerful people should speak: like the wealthy white men who’ve historically been in charge. But, fortunately, the sound of power is changing.

Learn conversational agility to think quickly on your feet, be incredibly smooth, funny, and clever - all at once. Goodbye awkward silences! No matter where you lie on the spectrum of awkward to engaging, witty banter is always the end goal - and it should be. Witty banter, and all the steps that lead to it, allows you to disarm and connect with anyone, immediately exit boring small talk mode, and instantly build rapport.