Workplace Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic and an ever-changing array of new ways of working seem to have all of us asking, "Does work really have to suck this bad?" It looks like a small taste of flexibility and freedom has made many of us rethink the nature of the work we do and how we do it. In Work Here Now, Melissa Swift delivers an eye-opening roadmap to better work that generates wins for companies and employees alike. In the book, you'll explore different ways to improve the growth-impeding, borderline inhumane people management practices we've created and endured over time.

You don’t need all the answers to lead well. True leadership is about showing up with purpose, supporting your team, and leading by example. In Leadership Uncomplicated, Bryan Banta cuts through the noise to offer a clear, real-world guide to leading others—at work, on the field, or in your community.

Narrated by the author, this book has energy, insight, and humor. What is it that prevents us from making deeper, more long-lasting connections with others? To author John Klymshyn, the answer lies in our understanding of the power of language. We must study, explore, and practice deeper dialogue in order to connect, communicate, collaborate, and contribute!

Employees are your company's most important asset. Attracting the best, getting them to do their best work, and keeping them in the organization are critical to your company's success. 1,001 Ways to Engage Employees gives you all the powerful tools you need.

In today's increasingly diverse, global, interconnected business world, diversity and inclusion is no longer just the right thing to do, it is a core leadership competency and central to the success of business. Working effectively across differences such as gender, culture, generational, race, and sexual orientation not only leads to a more productive, innovative corporate culture, but also to a better engagement with customers and clients.

Reap the benefits of a diverse workforce. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you create a culture that seeks and celebrates difference. This book will inspire you to: identify and address bias; short-circuit discrimination instead of unintentionally feeding it; attract, retain, and engage talented people who represent myriad identities; ensure that everyone has equal access to growth opportunities; trade outdated policies for practices that are proven to foster inclusion; and more.

In her first book, What Your Customer Wants and Can't Tell You, author and behavioral economics specialist Melina Palmer, applies the science of behavioral economics to unlocking what is behind customer decisions. Behavioral economics combines elements of economics and psychology to understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. Now, in her sequel, What Your Employees Need and Can't Tell You, she offers a highly actionable roadmap for business executives and managers faced with the task of instituting successful organizational change.

Workplace finger-pointing stifles creativity, reduces productivity, and limits psychological safety. Although no one sets out to be judgmental, learning new habits is hard. Two experienced leadership and agilists coaches share a road-tested leadership model that continuously embraces humility and failure as part of the growth process to deliver results. By facilitating blame-free retrospective meetings, leaders chart a productive path forward. They amplify three essential motivators of purpose, autonomy, and co-intelligence within their team, layered on with four resilience factors.

Warning! The Happy Leader can revolutionize your life by opening your heart and mind to new possibilities, a fresh perspective, and the inspiration to take action. You might even find yourself signing up for a marathon! The Happy Leader, at its heart, is a story that tells us happiness and success are within our reach, and all we need is for someone to nudge us in the right direction.

As the chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Consolidated, J. Frank Harrison III knows firsthand the importance of not only prioritizing culture but also living out and modeling the values that drive it. He believes every person in an organization matters and how they are led matters just as much. In The Transformation Factor: Leading Your Company for Good, for God, and for Growth, Harrison profiles his company and his own personal journey to show you the radical transformation and amazing ripple effects that come from a purpose-driven, people-focused culture.

This is a book about work choices and life choices, and the critical points, or defining moments, at which the two become one. A refreshing antidote to traditional feel-good, inspirational business ethics, it examines the right-versus-right conflicts that every business manager faces and presents an unorthodox yet practical way for you to think about and resolve them.

From years of research and practical experience as a consultant, Jeff DeGraff has learned that when it comes to any innovation initiative, disharmony is crucial. We innovate when we disrupt, and we first have to disrupt each other.

Building a Strong Team Culture: 10 Essential Management Tips by Liora Quade is a timely and powerful guide for any leader who understands that the foundation of lasting success is not just strategy or productivity—it’s culture. In today's competitive workplace, perks and benefits can no longer compensate for a lack of connection, trust, or psychological safety. Culture is the unseen force that shapes how teams collaborate, innovate, and thrive—or how they fall apart.

Do you feel out of your depth when setting objectives for your team? Ah, the annual ritual of objective-setting! Loved by so few, undertaken by so many. Do you get a slight knot in the pit of your stomach, just thinking about it? Most managers dread it because they're not 100 percent sure of what they're supposed to do. Promoted with little training, they're just supposed to know how to design objectives. Know how to develop soft skills. Sure it's easy, right? On top of that, there’s the niggling feeling that the process doesn’t make much of a difference.

The hardest part of a manager’s job isn’t staying organized, meeting deliverable dates, or staying on budget. It’s dealing with people who are too comfortable doing things the way they’ve always been done and too afraid to do things differently. Treasurer, a courage-building pioneer, proposes a bold antidote: courage. With more courage, workers gain the confidence to take on harder projects, embrace company changes with more enthusiasm, and extend themselves in ways that will benefit their careers and their company.

Business Ethics for Better Behavior concisely answers the three most pressing ethical questions business professionals face: What makes business practices right or wrong? Why do normal, decent businesspeople of good will sometimes do the wrong thing? And how can we use the answer to these questions to get ourselves, our coworkers, our bosses, and our employees to behave better?

While an uninterrupted life, free of misfortune may sound wonderful, it is in the challenge, in the change, that we learn the greatest lessons. This book has been written with 51 years of personal life experiences, and an overlay of close to 30 years of professional subject matter expertise in managing the continuance of business operations across the globe, come rain...or shine. Both aspects have resulted in significant lessons learned...stories of continuity and resilience.

Have you noticed that on some days, everything seems to go so smoothly? Those times when everybody shares the same deadline and all of a sudden everything gets done. What’s going on here? What’s different in these scenarios? At the core of each situation is a replicable occurrence, a behavior pattern, or a trend you can understand and utilize. In fact, with just a little bit of heightened awareness and increased focus on your situation, you can pinpoint these exact patterns and recreate them at will.

Coachability: The Leadership Superpower combines notable research, best-practice strategies, and stories of leaders on all parts of the coachability spectrum. Author Kevin Wilde has been developing leaders for major corporations, executive MBA leadership courses, and coaching hundreds of new and experienced leaders for over 30 years. Kevin shares his insights here with you.

Most leaders know that a winning, engaged culture is the key to attracting top talent - and customers. Yet, it remains elusive how exactly to create this ideal workplace - one where everyone from the front lines to the board room knows the company’s values and feels comfortable and empowered to act on them. Based on Ann Rhoades’ years of experience with JetBlue, Southwest, and other companies known for their trailblazing corporate cultures, Built on Values reveals exactly how leaders can create winning environments that allow their employees and their companies to thrive.