Clarity: Business Wisdom to Work Less and Achieve More
FIND YOUR CLARITY AND SUCCESS WILL FIND YOU!
Clarity can mean different things to different people. For some, it arrives in the form of an answer or a direction. For others, it’s understanding the context of a complex situation. For most, however, clarity evokes a calm and focused state of mind with lower stress and diminished anxiety over what to do next.
As satisfying as it is to help people find clarity with their business problems, it’s far more rewarding to teach someone how to find their own clarity. That’s the purpose of this book – to describe how people can find the clarity to help manage, grow, and lead their businesses to greater success.
Any executive, leader, or owner can benefit from greater clarity regarding their business. Let Clarity show you how you can:
- Learn to quickly sift through distractions and address the real issues.
- Identify the core problems affecting your business and impeding your success.
- Develop the curiosity to destroy assumptions and find solutions.
- Enhance your awareness of the emotions and context that lead us astray.
- Improve your success with better sequencing, timing, and patience.
- Create Conscious Competence around the most impactful parts of your business.
- Develop your own Business Wisdom® to see the world clearly!
GROW WISER, WORK LESS, AND WIN BIG IN BUSINESS!
More info →Mastering the Basics: Simple Lessons for Achieving Success in Business
Do you ever feel pressured to learn the latest strategies just to stay ahead of your peers? Are there times when you feel intimidated by colleagues with fancy titles or advanced degrees who don’t shy away from sharing their opinions? We can all fall into the trap of getting caught up in a competitive and stressful work environment and the result can negatively impact our confidence and ability to maximize our potential. Based on business lessons and techniques that Dean Karrel learned throughout his career this book reveals that common sense, integrity, character, and the importance of self-confidence are the critical cornerstones of being successful and fulfilled in business. Being yourself, working to the best of your ability, and mastering the basics is what can set you apart from the rest! Just a few of the nearly two hundred topics covered include:
- Learning social and soft skills
- The value of emotional intelligence
- The importance of planning and preparation
- Working for a micromanager
- Keeping things simple and avoiding distractions
- Vulnerability is a positive quality
- Prioritizing and focusing on what really matters
- Why you shouldn’t be afraid you don’t know something
Inside the Liberal Arts: Critical Thinking and Citizenship
Inside the Liberal Arts accomplishes two ambitious goals at once, and shows why they are inseparable: It explains the nature and purpose of liberal learning – to produce critical thinkers and well-rounded democratic citizens – and offers a probing, accessible guided tour of critical thinking, emphasizing the analytic skills that form the intellectual core of all higher education. Becoming better critical thinkers doesn’t mean we have to become philosophers. As users of language, Scheuer explains, we’re already philosophers. Advanced critical thinking simply makes us better philosophers – and better learners and citizens. In lucid and often witty prose, Scheuer guides us through the moral and conceptual heart of the liberal education ideal. In an era when colleges and universities are struggling to convey the value of that ideal to students and parents, Inside the Liberal Arts will be a lasting aid to intellectual excellence, and a benchmark for understanding what it means to be an educated citizen.
More info →Leading with Questions: How Leaders Discover Powerful Answers by Knowing How and What to Ask
In this newly revised third edition of Leading with Questions, renowned global leadership consultants Michael Marquardt and Bob Tiede describe how to ask powerful questions that generate short-term and long-term results and success. They show you how effective leaders use questions to encourage participation and teamwork, foster creative thinking, empower others, create relationships with customers, and solve problems.
The authors offer step-by-step guidance on the process of learning the art of questioning and techniques―like active listening and follow-ups – you can use in myriad situations with individuals, teams, and entire organizations. You’ll also find:
- The most recent research on how questions change people and companies for the better
- Interviews with over 40 world-leading executives and managers from a wide variety of industries and regions
- Concrete, hands-on strategies for generating short-term results and long-term change with questions
Perfect for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Leading with Questions will earn a place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in better engaging with and leading others.
More info →The Disciplined Listening Method: How A Certified Forensic Interviewer Unlocks Hidden Value in Every Conversation
The cornerstone of any leader's personal brand is how people perceive their listening skills. Distractions, biases, unhealthy expectations, and misaligned perceptions make it difficult for leaders to truly understand and influence their audiences. An important skill in reducing missed opportunities and increasing commitments to action is recognizing the value of the clues people display during every interaction.
As a Certified Forensic Interviewer, Michael Reddington traveled the world for many years conducting interrogations and teaching professional investigators how to obtain the truth with non-confrontational techniques. His experience in the interrogation room opened his eyes to the strategic, ethical observation, and persuasion techniques necessary to influence people to share sensitive information under vulnerable circumstances. Now, he coaches leaders working to build valuable relationships and affect more positive results.
The Disciplined Listening Method provides leaders with the skills, techniques, and perspectives necessary to identify hidden value in every conversation. The seven core behaviors of the Disciplined Listening Method position leaders to discover the truth often hidden in plain sight by leveraging a learning mentality and a goal-oriented approach to encourage their audiences to save face, commit to sharing sensitive information, and change their behavior.
More info →The Positive Shift: Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health, and Longevity
The truth is, the way we think about ourselves and the world around us dramatically impacts our happiness, health, how fast or slow we age, and even how long we live. In fact, people with a positive mindset about aging live on average 7.5 years longer than those without.
That might sound alarming to those of us who struggle to see the bright side, but the good news is we can make surprisingly simple changes or small shifts to how we think, feel, and act that will really pay off.
In The Positive Shift: Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health, and Longevity, Dr. Catherine Sanderson breaks down the science of thought and shows how our mindset—or thought pattern—exerts a substantial influence on our psychological and physical health. Most important, this book demonstrates how, no matter what our natural tendency, with practice we can make minor tweaks in our mindset that will improve the quality—and longevity—of our life.
Combining cutting-edge research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, as well as vivid real-world examples of the power of mindset, The Positive Shift gives readers practical and easy strategies for changing maladaptive thought patterns and behaviors so they can live longer, happier lives. These behaviors include:
• Appreciating nature, with actions as simple as eating lunch outside
• Giving to others, like volunteering
• Spending money on experiences, not possessions
Living your best life is truly mind over matter. Believe in yourself and rethink your way to a happier reality.
More info →Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels
Why do good people so often do nothing when a seemingly small action could make a big difference? A pioneering social psychologist explains why moral courage is so rare―and reveals how it can be triggered or trained.
We are bombarded every day by reports of bad behavior, from sexual harassment to political corruption and bullying belligerence. It’s tempting to blame evil acts on evil people, but that leaves the rest us off the hook. Silence, after all, can perpetuate cruelty. Why We Act draws on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience to tackle an urgent question: Why do so many of us fail to intervene when we’re needed―and what would it take to make us step up?
A renowned psychologist who has done pioneering research on social norms, Catherine Sanderson was inspired to write this book when a freshman in her son’s dorm died twenty hours after a bad fall while drinking. There were many points along the way when a decision to seek help could have saved his life. Why did no one act sooner?
Cutting-edge neuroscience offers part of the answer, showing how deviating from the group activates the same receptors in the brain that are triggered by pain. But Sanderson also points to many ways in which our faulty assumptions about what other people are thinking can paralyze us. And she shares surprisingly effective and simple strategies for resisting the pressure to conform. Moral courage, it turns out, is not innate. Small details and the right training can make a big difference. Inspiring and potentially life transforming, Why We Act reveals that while the urge to do nothing is deeply ingrained, even the most hesitant would-be bystander can learn to be a moral rebel.
More info →Why Black Wealth Matters in White America
Finally, a Book That Tells the Truth About Black Americans and Money
We're often told that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough, but what does that really mean when the odds are stacked against us from the start?
Are you an African American entrepreneur looking to invest in knowledge to be rich or richer despite the obstacles in your way?
Do you wish to discover valuable resources to help you achieve financial success and create lasting change for the Black community?
Do you want to understand how racism works and what you can do to fight it as an entrepreneur?
Why Black Wealth Matters in White America: Turning Black Spending Power Into Generational Wealth is a detailed manifesto that teaches how to achieve Black generational wealth.
In this book, Solomon recounts his first-hand experiences with diversity, determination, and proven successes to demonstrate that generational wealth is attainable. From his rise to affluence, to financial devastation, and back to a position of monetary abundance, the words directly from Solomon in this book will engage his audience to take action.
In this intimate, raw, and reflective narrative, Solomon reveals:
- knowledge and information you need to be financially successful as an African American entrepreneur
- insights and strategies for building wealth
- a wealth of knowledge that will help you to realize and reach your financial goals
- actionable plans to increase your net worth and achieve financial freedom
- a unique perspective on financial success
- a blueprint for reinventing your financial destiny
- information about the tradition, politics, and policies that affect the African American community and what you can do about it
"Solomon will show you how to ignite a success mindset, sharpen your skillset and monetize your ideas. This book is a groundbreaking read! Get ready to experience an incredible journey that will open a new realm of enrichment as you apply these outstanding principles."
- Les Brown, world renowned motivational speaker
While this book is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the unique challenges African Americans face when it comes to money, it offers the tools for financial success tailored specifically for Black entrepreneurs.
If you want to finally achieve the financial freedom you truly deserve and break down the barriers preventing you from being left out of the American Dream, then it's time to read Why Black Wealth Matters in White America.
This book contains valuable insights on:
- The Making of the American Racial Wealth Gap
- How Corporate America Benefits from Black Spending
- The Politics & Policies That Power Systemic Racism
- Reinventing Our Financial Destiny and Influence
Solomon's no-nonsense approach to financial wisdom will get you fired up and inspire you to put his blueprint for reinventing your financial destiny into motion immediately. By taking advantage of Solomon's roadmap to financial freedom and self-empowerment, you will finally have the knowledge and tools you need to build wealth and create lasting change.
Get ready to reinvent your financial destiny and influence to create real wealth!
More info →Never Sit in the Lobby: 57 Winning Sales Factors to Grow a Business and Build a Career Selling
Are you in sales and want to win more customers, make more money, and build a solid reputation that skyrockets your career? Success in selling doesn’t always depend on doing everything right. Closing a deal often relies on remembering what not to do—like don’t hate on your competition and never fax the facts.After three decades in the office trenches, Glenn Poulos has figured out exactly what to do—and what to avoid—to get the deal.Get results and stay on top of your sales game with the personal wisdom, expert storytelling, and effective business strategy found in Never Sit in the Lobby! Inspired by real-life lessons that shaped Glenn’s career, this guide provides 57 factors for navigating the interpersonal dynamics of selling and the art of negotiation to help you sidestep common costly mistakes—before you lose the sale.You’ll discover:
- How to show them the WSP, a method to maximize you and your product’s attractiveness in the eye of your customer.
- The power of greed-based learning to help you effortlessly obtain the knowledge you need to sell your product.
- The 10 types of challenging customers.
- Secrets to make your emails and voice mails count, including example scripts that will start a digital dialogue rather than get screened.
- Communication and public speaking skills that increase your influence, like active listening, confident body language, and rapport subtleties.
Showcase winning sales factors that close the deal! Get Never Sit in the Lobby and better connect with new customers and build better relationships for the best opportunities that benefit both of you.
More info →Flying in the Face of Fear: A Fighter Pilot’s Lessons on Leading with Courage
Proven principles of leadership from a veteran fighter pilot and military leader
In Flying in the Face of Fear: A Fighter Pilot's Lessons on Leading with Courage, former fighter pilot and retired Air Force Colonel Kim "KC" Campbell delivers an inspiring and practical discussion of leadership and decision-making. In the book, you'll follow the author's journey through the principles that got her through her 24-year career in the high-stakes and high-risk world of aerial combat.
You'll discover lessons and stories that will serve as a resource for you as you lead your employees, students, and others through the challenges of life and work, learning to create a positive impact and make a big difference in the lives of the people who follow you. You'll also find:
- Specific strategies and techniques for leading in situations of extreme stress and risk
- Methods for female leaders to overcome the challenges of working in male-dominated environments
- Ways to act in critical moments by recognizing that being brave and afraid at the same time is both normal and necessary
An essential leadership blueprint for business and military professionals seeking to improve their ability to inspire others to greater achievements, Flying in the Face of Fear will also earn a place in the libraries of young and mid-career professionals looking for mentorship and sound, proven advice.
The Purposeful Growth Revolution: 4 Ways to Grow from Leader to Legacy Builder
Today we are facing the “The Great Resignation.” People are resigning from the workforce or, possibly worse, resigning themselves to an unsatisfying status quo and being disengaged at work. They’ve quit…but stayed. Neither outcome is “great.”
Mark A. Mears prefers to redefine this era as “The Great Repurposing”—an opportunity to focus on what (and who) really matters most to create deeper meaning in our life and work. He shows us that WHO we "serve" is even more important than our WHY—in fact, it can lead us to our WHY and subsequently our HOW and WHAT. The emphasis Mears places on "serve" is on purpose; especially given the fact that team members don't leave bad companies, they leave bad leaders. And Mark believes the very best kind of leaders are servant leaders—those who help us grow into our God-given purpose.
In The Purposeful Growth Revolution, Mears shares a wealth of personal experiences as a C-Suite executive, relevant examples of best practices, and insights from both research and subject matter experts to unveil his revolutionary 4 LEAF GROWTH model based upon “The Higher Power of 4s” (Think 4-circle Venn diagram) where a leaf serves as both a metaphor for growth as well as an acronym which stands for Leadership, Engagement, Accountability, and Fulfillment.
In this book, you will learn to apply 4 holistic and revolutionary processes found in nature to help individuals, teams, and organizations find purpose, fulfill their true growth potential, and leave a living legacy—what Mears calls paying it backward. All designed to fulfill Purposeful Growth, Purposeful Self, Purposeful Work, and a Purposeful Life.
The world of work is changing—on purpose.Are you ready to grow into yours?
The Purposeful Growth Revolution is on!
Mark A. Mears is an author, keynote speaker, consultant, and visionary business leader with a significant track record of building shareholder value. He has driven innovation and profitable growth among world-class, high-profile brands such as PepsiCo/Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Frito-Lay, JCPenney, NBCUniversal, and The Cheesecake Factory.
Today, Mark serves as Chief Growth Officer for LEAF Growth Ventures, LLC—a consulting firm helping individuals, teams, and organizations find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential while making a positive, lasting difference in the world.
To take a free Purposeful Growth Self-Assessment and find out how to grow with Mark, please visit his website at www.MarkAMears.com
More info →Lead From You: We need aware, authentic and emotionally intelligent leaders. Leading from their best selves.
How do you become the aware, authentic and emotionally intelligent leader needed to facilitate the trust, innovation, agility, engagement and success that the fast changing environment of today demands? How do you develop the competencies that enable the heads up leadership style every organisation needs today, just to remain competitive?
Some leaders know about these requirements but struggle to find their way. These leaders understand intuitively that the way they lead now is unsustainable for them and for their people but cannot seem to change direction. Other leaders see their competition evolving, but keep their heads stuck in the sand, too uncomfortable with change to change.
Because we are often unknowingly guided by assumptions and biases, or too influenced by a culture when deciding how to lead, we can limit our capabilities as if blindfolded. We are often unaware of our conditioning, but with a little insight, choices open up for us so we can drop the shackles that bind us to our one way thinking, emotions and behaviours.
The clarity that comes from awareness allows us to operate with a purpose and authenticity that operates like a bright light, guiding us and our people through the fog of challenge and change.
Aidan James Higgins BE MBA is a Leadership and Teamwork Specialist with over 30 years experience working with organisations of all sizes in various roles from Consultant to CEO. Working with world class teachers and some wonderful clients over the last 20 years he has gained a greater understanding of how people perform at their best. Aidan is also a certified Enneagram Teacher and a Master Practitioner of NLP, and he brings a very original and effective perspective to organisational leadership. For well over a decade now, he has been running leadership programs that develop Awareness, Authenticity and Emotional Intelligence in leaders and leadership teams from all levels of the public and private sectors. Leaders who engage with and implement the concepts he teaches often report life-changing insights, improved performance and greater success in achieving their goals.
More info →Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English
Paranoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Concerned that people notice your vocal fry? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”? What if these features of our speech weren’t a sign of cultural and linguistic degeneration, but rather, some of the most dynamic and revolutionary tools at our disposal?
In Like, Literally, Dude, linguist Valerie Fridland shows how we can re-imagine these forms as exciting new linguistic frontiers rather than our culture’s impending demise. With delightful irreverence and expertise built over two decades of research, Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and laugh-out-loud anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow. She teaches us that language is both function and fashion, and that though we often blame the young, the female, and the uneducated for its downfall, we should actually thank them for their linguistic ingenuity.
By exploring the dark corners every English teacher has taught us to avoid, Like, Literally, Dude redeems our most pilloried linguistic quirks, arguing that they are fundamental to our social, professional, and romantic success—perhaps even more so than our clothing or our resumes. It explains how filled pauses benefit both speakers and listeners; how the use of “dude” can help people bond across social divides; why we’re always trying to make our intensifiers ever more intense; as well as many other language tics, habits, and developments.
Language change is natural, built into the language system itself, and we wouldn’t be who we are without it. Like, Literally, Dude celebrates the dynamic, ongoing, and empowering evolution of language, and it will speak to anyone who talks, or listens, inspiring them to communicate dynamically and effectively in their daily lives.
More info →Dancing With Monsters, A Tale About Leadership, Success, and Overcoming Fears
Fears and discomfort slow us down and sometimes completely derail our personal progress. As leaders at work, we can similarly be knocked off course by the conflict, personality differences, motivational issues, and performance problems within our teams.
These obstacles are the monsters in our lives.
In Dancing with Monsters, globally recognized leadership educator, author, and speaker Todd Dewett, PhD, offers an enthralling, fast-paced fable that examines how to embrace those monsters in order to harness you and your team’s true power.
Joe is a depressed vampire at risk of losing his monster status due to poor performance. He is tasked with leading a group of misfit monsters who lack confidence. Sheets, Mum, Wolfy, and Z have not yet learned to do the one thing all monsters do: scare kids. Dancing with Monsters tells the story of their collective efforts, missteps included, toward connecting with their authentic selves.
This captivating story plus Dewett’s discussion and reflection prompts add up to a must-read guide to reclaiming your better self by learning to dance with your monsters.
More info →Soul in the Game: The Art of a Meaningful Life
Soul in the Game is a book of inspiring stories and hard-won lessons on how to live a meaningful life, crafted by investor and writer Vitaliy Katsenelson.
Drawing from the lives of classical composers, ancient Stoics, and contemporary thinkers, Katsenelson weaves together a tapestry of practical wisdom that has helped him overcome his greatest challenges: in work, family, identity, health―and in dealing with success, failure, and more.
Part autobiography, part philosophy, part creativity manual, Soul in the Game is a unique and vulnerable exploration of what works, and what doesn’t, in the attempt to shape a fulfilling and happy life.
More info →Life on the X: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to Meeting Any Challenge with Courage, Confidence, and Readiness
Work, family, relationships—life is demanding. A high-stress situation, or being on the X where all the pressures converge, could be right around the corner. How will you confront it? Your ability to succeed in stressful and challenging situations and seize opportunities depends on how you show up to face these moments. When you’re up against obstacles, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed and underprepared. But the battles you face are won when you prepare for life on the X.
Life on the X shares strategies used by the world’s highest performers. In this guide, you will discover tactics that elite athletes, military special operators, and successful business leaders use to thrive under pressure and deliver world-class results.
You can triumph when you are deliberate in how you prepare for, execute, and assess your actions in the most important moments in your life. By learning the skills and methods of top-performers, you can meet the X with courage and confidence.
Are you ready to bring your A game to life?
More info →Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel
Why are workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts often disappointing? Organizational psychologist and executive coach Gena Cox asserts that although human variation is normal, true inclusion that embraces these variations remains elusive in the workplace. Leading Inclusion, a "how-to-be" book, educates, challenges, and empowers executives and business owners to lead inclusion from the top of the organization.
This plain-spoken-yet-nuanced guide shows leaders how to set and incorporate a vision for diversity and inclusion that enables marginalized employees to see and feel the difference in their day-to-day work experiences. Leading Inclusion challenges many preexisting beliefs about how to lead "diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)" and urges leaders to develop the necessary mindset for bold action this work requires.
Leading Inclusion reframes inclusion as a leadership competency and imperative rather than a moral obligation. Using research from conversations with executives, scholars, DEI practitioners, and the experiences of employees of color Leading Inclusion offers a variation to the traditional "DEI framework. The book's "Respect First" R.E.D.I. (Respect, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) model argues for the primacy of Respect. Cox believes that if underrepresented employees don't feel respected, the "programs or initiatives" leaders implement will not be meaningful or impactful.
More info →Rebel Success for Leaders: Lead, Grow and Sell Fearlessly
Imagine you're winning in the market, your vibrant team is excited and motivated to bring you their unique ideas, and you're attracting and keeping the best people.
In this book, you'll discover how to:
- Create an unstoppable innovation system
- Build agile and transparent teams
- Increase retention and engagement
- Increase your team's influence and confidence with sales
- Create solutions-oriented teams who get results fast
- Develop differentiated products and services
- Harness the power of the unconventional to achieve exceptional results. A powerful book that gives you the keys to unlock the Inner Rebel. Bring out the genius solutions in your team, your organization, and even yourself.
The tools will fast-track your teams to transparent and agile performance as they excel at creating those new and differentiated ideas. Overcome the common challenges with innovation and create a blueprint to market that works for your company.
You'll find the secrets to be a magnet for truly extraordinary people and how to retain the best and brightest. Connecting the company mission to the passions of your people will bring out an unstoppable sense of value in each person.
Align culture, activate creativity, and cultivate genius. Business owners and leaders can use Rebel Success for Leaders as a guide to exceptional results. Your team will fearlessly lead you to success!
More info →The Coaching Effect : What Great Leaders Do to Increase Sales, Enhance Performance, and Sustain Growth
Authors Bill Eckstrom and Sarah Wirth have spent a decade researching the activities, behaviors, and performance of leaders. After studying more than 100,000 coaching interactions in the workplace, primarily of sales teams, they have been able to determine how coaching affects team outcomes and growth.
The authors share three critical performance drivers, along with the four high-growth activities that coaches must execute to build a team that is motivated to achieve at the highest levels. Through both hard data and rich stories, Eckstrom and Wirth demonstrate how leaders can measure and improve their coaching to lead their teams to better results.
The Coaching Effect will help leaders at all levels understand the necessity of challenging people out of their comfort zone to create a high-growth organization. Leaders will learn how they can develop trust relationships, drive accountability and leverage growth experiences to propel their team members to the highest levels of success.
More info →Naked at the Knife-Edge: What Everest Taught Me about Leadership and the Power of Vulnerability
Naked at The Knife-Edge, Vivian James Rigney’s compelling and often harrowing true account of summiting Everest, offers a unique window into lessons on leadership and what it takes to succeed in any circumstance.
Only a relatively small group of individuals has climbed the highest peak on each of the planet’s seven continents. Known as the Seven Summits, it is a feat that typically takes years and an enormous amount of planning, training, and effort, in some of the most inaccessible places on earth. But Vivian James Rigney was determined to do just that.
An executive coach and globally recognized authority on leadership and teamwork in business, Rigney relied on skills learned in the corporate world in addition to physical training to attempt these summits. Everest, his seventh and final peak, almost broke him. There, he and his team confronted wild storms lasting for days, near-vertical walls of ice, and a knife-edge ridge with fatal drops on either side. They endured avalanches, sub-zero temperatures, and tragedy unfolding around them. The roller coaster of pain, self-reflection, questioning, and above all, loneliness left Rigney with ego in tatters. It was then he discovered an awakening of what real purpose and legacy actually is.
This unique and powerful journey reveals critical wisdom for individuals and leaders in any circumstance, including how to:
- Overcome the ego trap and get out of your head
- Triage what you can and cannot control
- Harness your intuition
- Create shared purpose and real followership
- Tap into the power of vulnerability and authenticity
In Naked at the Knife-Edge, Rigney uniquely combines the hands-on and reflective approach of one of today’s most respected executive coaches with adventure and a raw and revealing personal story.
Validation Is For Parking: How Women Can Beat the Confidence Con
Confidence noun con·fi·dence : when you know who you are, own who you’re not, and choose to embrace all of it
If you had more confidence, what decisions would you make? What risks would you take? What dreams would you chase?
For women, confidence is often associated with doing it all—and doing it perfectly. When I earn that promotion, lose ten pounds, or meet the person of my dreams…then I’ll feel confident. We’ve been bombarded with messaging telling us to be confident, but no one has told us how. Speaker, leadership strategist, and coach Nicole Kalil is changing that.
In Validation Is for Parking, Nicole provides a comprehensive guide for building internal trust and reclaiming confidence, a skill built from the inside out. You’ll learn how to create boundaries, give yourself grace, and overcome the five most common derailers that impede progress and contribute to unhealthy patterns. This is a journey in which there are no shortcuts, but Nicole provides the guidance and support you need to break free from limiting narratives. A book for all women, Validation Is for Parking is an uplifting exploration of the untruths we believe and the internal antidotes that teach us to trust ourselves and become who we’re meant to be.
When Everyone Leads: How The Toughest Challenges Get Seen And Solved
Leadership is not about position, or authority.
It’s not about big speeches or grand visions.
Leadership is engaging others to solve daunting challenges. Those challenges appear in our professional lives, in our communities, our families―and they seem unsolvable, beyond our ability to see what needs to be done or outside our capacity to make the changes needed.
They are not.
Because, leadership is an activity―small actions taken in moments of opportunity. And as you start to look around, you can begin to see more of those moments, seize the opportunity in those moments. Most importantly, you can help others see those opportunities too.
That’s why everyone can lead and the real power to solve our most important challenges is when everyone leads.
More info →The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers
A powerful guide to building a data-centric corporate culture that unleashes talent and improves engagement. Amazon delights customers with recommendations that are spot on. Google amazes us by generating answers before we've even finished asking a question. These companies know who we are and what we want.
The key to their magic is Big Data. Personalizing the consumer experience with the collection and analysis of consumer data is widely recognized as one of the biggest business opportunities of the 21st century. But there is a flip side to this that has largely been missed. What if we were able to use data about employees to personalize and customize their experience - to increase their engagement, help them learn faster on the job, and figure out which teams they should be on?
In this book, Leerom and his colleagues outline the six principles they've used to decode work and unlock the maximum potential of their talent, and share success stories from other organizations that have embraced this approach. The Decoded Company is an actionable blueprint for any company that wants the best from its people, and isn't afraid of radical approaches to get it.
Leerom Segal is the president and CEO of Klick and has been named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the Business Development Bank of Canada, won the "Young Entrepreneur of the Year" award from Ernst and Young, and was named to Profit Magazine's Hall of Fame as the youngest CEO ever to lead a nonprofit company. Aaron Goldstein is the co-founder of Klick and is a Senior Certified Project Manager Professional. Jay Goldman was Head of Marketing at Rypple, a venture-backed startup acquired by Salesforce in 2012 and now known as Work.com. He is the author of the O'Reilly Facebook Cookbook, and he has been published in the Harvard Business Review. Rahaf Harfoush is the author of several books including Yes We Did. She was a contributor to the best-selling Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital.
More info →Hangry: A Startup Journey
Hungry and tired one night, Mike wanted a pizza, but getting a pizza delivered was a pain in the neck. He didn’t want to call a million restaurants to see what was open. So, as an avid coder, he created GrubHub in his spare bedroom to figure out who delivered to his apartment. Then, armed with a $140 check from his first customer and ignoring his crushing college debt, he quit his job. Over the next decade, Mike grew his little delivery guide into the world’s premier online ordering website. In doing so, he entered the company of an elite few entrepreneurs to take a startup from an idea all the way to an IPO.
GrubHub’s journey from Mike’s bedroom to Wall Street doesn’t fit into how business schools teach entrepreneurship. In Hangry, he details step-by-step the grind of building an innovative business, with each chapter including sharp lessons for entrepreneurs and startups that Mike learned on the fly as he piloted GrubHub by the seat of his pants. Hangry reveals a decade of eighty-hour work weeks, detailed steps of how Mike garnered his first customers, his hunt for financing dollars, cliffhanger acquisitions, the near collapse of his marriage, a brutally difficult merger, and a pair of tumultuous quit/unquit moments, all to steer the company to become one of the most successful startups in the world. With a razor-sharp wit, Mike reveals hard-won truths about how startups succeed—and even harder-won truths about how startups fail.
Shocking everyone, at the pinnacle of startup success, Mike leaves it all behind, quitting the company he started to bike across the United States in search of balance. But eventually, the grand vistas of America bring the lessons of the past into focus, driving the realization that for entrepreneurs a hunger for success doesn’t end, and he starts another company, even more ambitious than the first.
More info →Management in Balance: THE FULCRUM-CENTRIC PLAN for New and Reluctant Managers
Not everyone is a natural when it comes to management. And yet, in many big companies and organizations, the “reward” for being a top performer and excelling in your current role is to be plunged into management—often with very little warning, and even less time to adjust to the vastly different job description and requirements.
If this describes your situation, you’ll find strategies, solutions, and much-needed guidance in Mike Lerario’s second book, Management in Balance. In these pages, he outlines the four essential domains of management—Time, Material, Risk, and Change—and shares how managers can introduce higher levels of efficiency into their systems and within their teams. He also discusses what it means to manage with balance, and why it’s important to do so, not only for the stability of the company but also for everyone in the heart of your organization.
Leadership in Balance: THE FULCRUM-CENTRIC PLAN for Emerging and High Potential Leaders
This book is written for the new manager or anyone who aspires to become a leader. Whether you have just finished school or have been working for some time, you are in (or about to assume) your first real leadership position. Leadership in Balance will help you to see and understand your natural tendency in each of four essential leadership domains.
Once you’ve identified your true and natural tendencies, you become self- aware of your default position as a leader. Armed with that knowledge, and as you become situationally aware of your team and the environment, you will learn to see when the situation demands a shift in order to find balance between you and the environment where you lead.
More info →The Mental Workbook: The Daily Program To Transform From Who You Are Into Who You Need To Be
The Mental Handbook is an award-winning book. But I realize the book itself wasn't enough.I realize it's not enough to simply tell you how to build Mental Toughness, Confidence & Discipline. I know my daily Work On Your Game Podcast, though the best in its category and a giant step in the right direction, isn't going to permanently change you by itself. I know for a fact that changing your life from the inside-out, starting with your mindset and how you see YOURSELF, isn’t a second-person job. No matter how much I talk to you, inspire and motivate you, nothing I say to you will have a much impact on your life as what YOU say to you. Which is why I created The Mental Workbook. Setting goals and working hard are requirements for achievement. Many people falsely believe that's all there is to it. If that’s all it takes, why are so few people successful? There’s more — much more — to you reaching all your goals than just having them and working every day. The Good News is, I know the exact formula for creating anything you want in life. I explain in detail how and why it works. I walk you through each step of the program. And, most importantly, I put you in position to do it yourself instead of just reading or hearing about it. This is the exact program I follow myself, still to this day. I guarantee that it works. And I DEMAND that you follow it. It’s called The Mental Workbook. Let’s start now.
More info →Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance
For leaders who believe they may not be maximizing their leadership potential, Warwick Fairfax is the trusted leadership advisor who helps readers uncover their own unique path to living and leading with significance, effectiveness, and authenticity in all areas of life.
In Crucible Leadership, he shares the power of embracing the crucible moments: those past trials, failures, and setbacks that can be seen as either roadblocks or as jumping-off points to leading a life of significance and purpose dedicated to serving others. Crucible Leadership comes alive through the unique framework of Warwick’s own story: how his legacy shaped his worldview and drove decisions that eventually led to his own crucible moment. He demonstrates to readers in an honest, self-reflective way how they can make sense of their own talents and trials to lead with authenticity in all areas of life. Warwick empowers readers to become the leader they were designed to be through his unique perspective, which has been shaped by three powerful touchstones:
- Hard-won insights and honest, self-reflective lessons learned from his own crucible moment, and the long road back from it
- Inspiring and instructive stories from his rich and iconic family history
- Time-honored leadership truths proven out by history’s greatest and most inspirational figures
The Art of Clear Thinking: A Stealth Fighter Pilot’s Timeless Rules for Making Tough Decisions
The training to become a fighter pilot is among the most competitive and difficult in the world with less than one-in-a-thousand succeeding. Pushing a cutting-edge jet to its limits at over 1,000 mph means that every split-second decision can have catastrophic consequences. This extreme environment has forged a group of warriors who for the last 50 years have been considered at the apex of decision-making theory and practice.
In The Art of Clear Thinking Hasard Lee distills what he’s learned during his career flying some of the Air Force’s most advanced aircraft. Through riveting storytelling―both from his time as a fighter pilot and fascinating turning points throughout history―Hasard relates to the audience in a compelling and accessible way that makes the book as entertaining as it is useful.
Hasard has used and taught these decision-making techniques across the full spectrum of human endeavor and proved their effectiveness both in the cockpit and the boardroom. Those who have already benefited include CEO’s, astronauts, CIA agents, students, parents, and many others. The Art of Clear Thinking is a book that will change how you interact with the world around you.
More info →Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company
Creating a culture of learning and growth.
Growth is the goal. Helping people develop their potential—enabling them to articulate and become the self they want to be, are capable of being, and that best serves them and others in the short and long term—is what we as individuals and leaders strive toward.
But how do we grow? It turns out it happens in a predictable way, which means we can understand where we are in our growth and chart a way forward. In this compact, complete guide, Whitney Johnson dives more deeply than ever into the S Curve of Learning so that you can envision how growth happens and direct yourself and others in your organization to create a culture that fosters it.
The growth and learning journey comes in three phases: the Launch Point, the Sweet Spot, and Mastery. Compelling examples of successful people will show you when and why growth is slow, how to keep going, what to do when growth and learning are almost too fast to keep up with, and how to leap from one growth journey to another.
As individuals grow, so do organizations and societies. Growth is learning put into action—action that betters the world as we better ourselves and our small niches, both personal and professional, within it. Growth occurs when learning is internalized—when we try something new and invest the effort to move it from being something we do to something we are.
More info →Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems
Life is full of paradoxes. How can we each express our individuality while also being a team player? How do we balance work and life? How can we improve diversity while promoting opportunities for all? How can we manage the core business while innovating for the future?
For many of us, these competing and interwoven demands are a source of conflict. Since our brains love to make either-or choices, we choose one option over the other. We deal with the uncertainty by asserting certainty.
There's a better way.
In Both/And Thinking, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis help readers cope with multiple, knotted tensions at the same time. Drawing from more than twenty years of pioneering research, they provide tools and lessons for transforming these tensions into opportunities for innovation and personal growth.
Filled with practical advice and fascinating stories—including firsthand tales from IBM, LEGO, and Unilever, as well as from startups, nonprofits, and even an inn at one of the four corners of the world—Both/And Thinking will change the way you approach your most vexing problems.
More info →Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus
In the current digital age, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stay focused. Smartphones, tablets, smart watches, and other devices constantly vie for our attention. In both business and life, we are constantly bombarded with tweets, likes, mentions, and a constant stream of information. The inability to pay attention impacts learning, parenting, prioritizing, and leading. Not surprisingly, attention spans have gotten shorter. Already being pulled in a dozen directions every minute, managers and business leaders often struggle to address important issues and focus on everything that needs attention.
Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus teaches managers and leaders how to help themselves and others sharpen their focusing skills. In this follow-up to his first book Brief—the proven, step-by-step approach to clear, concise, and effective communication—author Joseph McCormack helps readers cut through the static and devote their attention to what is important. This engaging, informative book will help you:
- Apply effective, real-world techniques to hone your focus and reduce interference
- Learn the lessons taught to organizations such as Harley-Davidson, BMO Harris Bank, MasterCard, and the US Army
- Understand how modern technology can actually strengthen your focus if used correctly
- Avoid becoming a casualty of “weapons of mass distraction”
Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus is a valuable resource for leaders and managers seeking to develop laser-sharp focus and apply it to everything you do.
More info →Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less
The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012.
So, throw them a lifeline and be brief.
Author Joe McCormack tackles the challenges of inattention, interruptions, and impatience that every professional faces. His proven B.R.I.E.F. approach, which stands for Background, Relevance, Information, Ending, and Follow up, helps simplify and clarify complex communication. BRIEF will help you summarize lengthy information, tell a short story, harness the power of infographics and videos, and turn monologue presentations into controlled conversations.
- Details the B.R.I.E.F. approach to distilling your message into a brief presentation
- Written by the founder and CEO of Sheffield Marketing Partners, which specializes in message and narrative development, who is also a recognized expert in Narrative Mapping, a technique that helps clients achieve a clearer and more concise message
Long story short: BRIEF will help you gain the muscle you need to eliminate wasteful words and stand out from the rest. Be better. Be brief.
More info →Influence Is Your Superpower: The Science of Winning Hearts, Sparking Change, and Making Good Things Happen
Influence doesn’t work the way you think because you don’t think the way you think. Move past common misconceptions—such as the idea that asking for more will make people dislike you—and understand why your go-to negotiation strategies are probably making you less influential. Discover the one thing that influences behavior more than anything else. Learn to cultivate charisma, negotiate comfortably and creatively, and spot manipulators before it’s too late. Along the way, you’ll meet alligators, skydivers, a mind reader in a gorilla costume, Jennifer Lawrence, Genghis Khan, and the man who saved the world by saying no.
More info →The Double Bottom Line: How Compassionate Leaders Captivate Hearts and Deliver Results
Tramuto interviewed nearly 40 successful leaders who practice compassionate leadership and reveals the best strategies from their playbooks. He then combined these interviews with his own insights, numerous studies, and original, qualitative research of 1,500 participants to unleash the measurable data and benefits of compassion in the workplace.
More info →How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters
“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult
How to Begin is for you if…
You’re ambitious, but feel you’ve never been given full permission to find and strive for what’s possible for you.
You’ve achieved things in your career, and it’s now time to “climb the second mountain” and think about legacy.
You’re unhappy with how the world is working right now, and you want to change your part of it for the better.
You’re a coach, and you want to support your clients to be great and do great things.
You’re at the start of your adult life, and you’re fired up to live a life of meaning and impact.
You’re ready to begin, and to start doing something that matters.
We unlock our greatness by working on the hard things.
With The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier wrote the bestselling coaching book of the century. With The Advice Trap, he showed you how to tame your Advice Monster. Now, he’s here to help you reclaim your ambition, figure out what you should dothat matters… and begin.
This is your practical guide to finding the focus and courage to set a Worthy Goal: one that lights you up, compels you to grow, and serves a bigger game by being thrilling, important, and daunting.
With Michael’s trademark humor, compassion, and laser-focused clarity, you’ll walk through a tested process to:
- find and strengthen your Worthy Goal to the very best it can be;
- get absolutely clear on your commitment so you know what you’re up for;
- develop the resources to cross the threshold, so you don’t have to travel alone;
- build momentum, progress, and impact.
Don’t regret a life half-lived. Use this book to start doing something that matters.
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“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult
“Of particular appeal for those of us who instinctively recoil from self-help woo-woo and just want to get on with doing Great Work that leaves the world a bit better than we found it.”
― Courtney Hohne, chief storyteller for Moonshots, X (formerly Google X)
“A friendly voice and a guiding hand.”
― Austin Kleon, New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist
“Eminently practical, clever, delightful, and beautifully rendered––a non-fiction Where the Wild Things Are for adult dreamers and doers.”
― Whitney Johnson, bestselling author of Smart Growth and Disrupt Yourself
“I loved this book, and that’s coming from a gal who’s never been big on goals.”
― Liz Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of Impact Players and Multipliers
“Powerful, magical, and compelling. We don't need more time, we simply need to decide.”
― Seth Godin, author, The Practice