Workplace Behavior

The ever-increasing pace of change in today's organizations requires us all to understand and quickly adapt to constant shifts in the way our companies operate and how work gets done. Developing your own and your team's learning agility will keep your skills fresh, and help you stay flexible, grow from mistakes, and successfully respond to unexpected challenges.

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.

Sun Tzu's Art of War for Women helps women find the peaceful path to success through strategies made famous in the ancient Chinese text, The Art of War. Female wisdom, or common sense, is about avoiding needless confrontation, conserving energy for the things that matter, and seeking an outcome in which everyone wins. And for women, as for Sun Tzu, success doesn't come simply from knowing what to do, but from knowing who you are.

Communication is essential in a healthy organization. But all too often when we interact with people - especially those who report to us - we simply tell them what we think they need to know. This shuts them down. To generate bold new ideas, to avoid disastrous mistakes, to develop agility and flexibility, we need to practice Humble Inquiry. Ed Schein defines Humble Inquiry as "the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person."

One of your most important responsibilities as a manager is to motivate your employees to do their absolute best. Managers who create positive, rewarding, high-energy environments reduce absenteeism and turnover while dramatically increasing productivity and quality. In Motivation, success expert Brian Tracy draws on his decades of experience bringing out the best in others to provide 21 of the fastest, most powerful methods ever discovered for increasing the effectiveness of any individual or group.

Muhammad Yunus, the practical visionary who pioneered microcredit and won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his world-changing efforts, here develops his revolutionary new concept that promises to redeem the failed promise of free enterprise: social business.

The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.

The traditional attitude toward creativity in the American business world is to "think outside the box": to brainstorm without restraint in hopes of coming up with a breakthrough idea, often in moments of crisis. Sometimes it works, but it’s a problem-specific solution that does nothing to engender creative thinking more generally. Inside the Box demonstrates Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), a method that systemizes creativity as part of the corporate culture. SIT requires thinking "inside the box", working in one’s familiar world to create new ideas independent of specific problems.

Productivity and effective time management end with multitasking. The false idea that multitasking is productive has become even more prevalent and damaging to our productivity and well-being since the first edition of The Myth of Multitasking was published in 2008. In this revised and updated second edition, author and productivity expert Dave Crenshaw provides a solution for the chaos of distraction that multitasking creates - and a way to combat the temptation to constantly switch between tasks.

In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....

Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.

Every organization from any sector can benefit from becoming trauma-informed. Trauma-informed workplaces understand and recognize the presence of trauma, acknowledge the role trauma can play in a person’s life, and promote work environments that support the individual and collective well-being of all staff and clients. They create a sense of belonging, connection, and safety through their attitudes, policies, and practices. As a result of these practices, organizations that are trauma-informed are more resilient and better equipped to achieve their missions.

Paris, 1927, a day in July. A destitute young American named Rafaela Fano gets into the car of a dazzling stranger, the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Struggling to halt a downward slide toward prostitution, Rafaela agrees to model for the artist. The relationship between the artist and her muse lasted less than a year, yet in 1980, just before Tamara died, she was working on a copy of Beautiful Rafaela. Author Ellis Avery imagines their affair from Rafaela’s point of view, and the final day of Tamara’s life from the painter’s point of view.

This book is crucial for every manager or HR representative who shouldn’t just prepare to one day be faced with a report of a traumatic experience at work, but plan on it. This five-step method will help managers make survivors feel supported and understood. The Empathetic Workplace guides supervisors of any level through an understanding of how stories of trauma impact the brain of both the survivor and the listener, as well as the tools to handle the interaction appropriately, to help the listener, the organization, and most importantly, the survivor.

Stephen M.R. Covey has made it his life’s work to understand trust in leadership and organizations. In his newest and most transformative book, Trust and Inspire, he offers a simple yet bold solution: to shift from this “command and control” model to a leadership style of “trust and inspire.” People don’t want to be managed; they want to be led. Trust and Inspire is a new way of leading that starts with the belief that people are creative, collaborative, and full of potential.

The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor - avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy - you can be kind and clear at the same time. Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class.

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated people for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators, and parents - millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the seven habits with modern additions from Sean Covey.

As one of the globe's most trusted leadership mentors, John C. Maxwell debunks the myths that hold people back from leaning into and developing their influence. In this inspiring call-to-action, he shows middle managers how to leverage their unique positions and become 360 degree leaders by exercising influence in all directions - up (to the boss), across (among their peers), and down (to those they lead).

Eileen Sharp and Vic Hightower were frustrated. After years of profitable, predictable growth, Swan Services was in a rut. Meetings were called and discussions held, but few decisions were made and even less got done. People were pointing fingers and assigning blame, but nothing happened to solve Swan’s mounting problems. It felt as though they were working harder than ever but with less impact. The company Eileen and Vic had founded and built for 10 years was a different place. It just wasn’t fun anymore.