Workplace Leadership

Trust is the basis for all that we do as leaders and as organizations. Employees who trust their employers are more productive and creative. Businesses that earn their customers' trust maintain better relationships and reap better results. Meanwhile, breaches of trust between companies and the public are becoming more frequent—and more costly. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on trust, listen to these ten articles.

Richard Branson, one of the world's most famous and admired business leaders, argues that it's time to turn capitalism upside down - to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities, and the planet as he writes: "People often associate me with challenges, with trying to break records while sailing the Atlantic or flying in a jet stream in a balloon or going into space with Virgin Galactic. But this audiobook isn't just about fun and adventure and exceeding one's wildest dreams."

In the modern workplace, employees collaborate. Managers are expected to be effective team leaders and employees are expected to be valued teammates. But many teams struggle. Being part of a struggling team can be unpleasant, but it can also hurt your career and waste company resources.

In DBAFD, Milstein asserts that it’s incumbent upon leadership to promote and model strong, meaningful relationships throughout the community. At the basis of all relationships is trust, and while trust can be built through competency, reliability, and intimacy, it is easily destroyed when leaders’ raging egos are manifested too much of the time.

Managers want great teams, but most build them around decades-old ideas and practices made popular by companies that have lost their edge. Extreme Teams looks at the new generation of teams driving growth in today's most innovative firms. They do this by doing things differently: hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable.

Leadership demands courage. You have to make good decisions while balancing inevitable tensions and knowing when to take risks. And that's where The Courage Way comes in. It's a guide to leadership that shows how to access and draw upon courage in all that you do. It has its roots in the work of Parker J. Palmer, who in 50 years of teaching, speaking, and writing has explored the human spirit - what he has called "the inner landscape" - and its role in life and leadership.

Successful Leaders Aren't Bullies empowers good leaders to choose leadership and to understand the benefits of leading with healthy behaviors and to intervene and to stop bullying. It will inspire and mobilize bullied victims to overcome and to thrive by presenting examples of resilient and healthy individuals and organizations.

Decades before the business world discovered the power of authentic staff engagement, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters cofounder Bob Stiller was busy creating a company with a mission to build an engaged workforce focused on innovation. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters went public, moved to selling wholesale exclusively, invested in Keurig, and became one of the few coffee companies to ever reach $1 billion in sales. In Better and Better, Stiller explains how he did it.

In today’s age of Zoom calls and hybrid workplaces, how can leaders foster relationships that allow everyone to succeed? A trio of best friends and leadership consultants at SkyeTeam have the surprising answer: workplace success starts by being a friend. Meet the Ally Mindset, a model for proactive, thoughtful work relationships. As you heal adversarial relationships and strengthen weaker ties, you’ll find that when you have best friends at work—colleagues who have your back—you thrive.

Based on 15 years of research, To Be Honest explains how four factors (Clear Identity, Accountability, Governance and Cross-Functional Relationships) affect honesty, justice, and purpose within a company. When these factors are absent or ineffective, the organizational conditions compel employees to choose dishonesty and self-interest. But when done well, the organization is 16 times more likely to have people tell the truth, behave fairly and serve a greater good.

Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.

Through detailed case studies, interviews with industry leaders and findings from respected academic research, and drawing on her own experience working with extraordinary brands across a broad range of sectors, Denise shows how great companies achieve the brand-culture fusion that creates extraordinary results and growth.

When you finish this audiobook, you will know how to win somebody over to your team and bring them on your journey. Do I trust our way? We trust it enough to be different by design: We are the only company of our type in the world to guarantee 100 percent performance of the people we recommend you hire. And we guarantee that, not for a week or a month, but for 365 days. We know it works. Very few people are going to join your company and stay for 20 years, but they will choose to make you part of their journey, just as you choose them to be a part of your organization’s journey.

When Fortune announced its list of the World’s Greatest Leaders, the top spot was awarded - not to a captain of industry - but to the new pontiff. In the year since his election, Pope Francis earned that accolade - and more. He has achieved the remarkable: breathed life into an aging institution, reinvigorated a global base, and created real hope for the future.How did a man who spent his life laboring in slums far from the Vatican manage to do this and so quickly?

Choice. Power. Speed. Today's leaders continually face these forces. But with too many choices, too much power, and too much speed, leaders often make decisions in a heightened state of emotion (and drama). Hasty decisions are often poor ones, and in this climate there is no place to hide. Privacy is a thing of the past; the days of covering up or ignoring a problem are over. In today's transparent culture, the decision making of leaders is more vulnerable than ever - and it is more critical than ever to get it right.

The Loudest Duck is a book for managers and executives faced with the productivity and leadership challenges of a heterogeneous, multicultural workplace. It's a book for anyone working his or her way up the ladder in this new corporate world order. It's a book for anyone who belongs to a non-dominant group, be it women, people of color, short people, or employees who don't play golf but whose bosses do.

While people with invisible disabilities can be just as productive as anyone else, embracing invisible disability in the workplace requires a culture of trust, good communication, and an innovative mindset. Jason Reid shares real-life insight into what it is like to work with an invisible disability, as well as how to manage and support yourself and lead others who have the same challenges.

Imagine a world where personal and professional growth are combined, where improving your relationships and owning your strengths at work translate directly into the rest of your life. Creating a company culture like that is not a dream. Through personal stories and real-life conversations, Jonathan Raymond takes you into the room with managers and employees where real culture change happens and shows you a new kind of employee mentoring where each person gets the real-time feedback, support, and clear boundaries we all need.

Sometimes bad accidents happen. When a fatal accident happens, your organization will find itself at a terrible crossroads. The choices your organization must make will set the course for the eventual recovery from this horrible event. The need to understand and explain how the awful event happened is paramount to bouncing forward to a better and more stable future. How you investigate this event is connected to whether your organization wants to blame and punish or learn and improve.

Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, IMoral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation.