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.

Defense Intelligence Agency operative Matt Drake broke a promise. A promise that cost three people their lives and crippled his best friend. Three months later, he's paralyzed by survivor's guilt and haunted by the memories of the fallen. Matt may have left Syria, but Syria hasn't left him.

In the midst of his self-imposed exile, Matt is dragged back into the world of espionage and assets that he tried to forget. A Pakistani scientist working for an ISIS splinter cell has created a terrifying weapon of mass destruction. The scientist offers to defect with the weapon, but he trusts just one man to bring him out of Syria alive—Matt Drake.

It’s a suicide mission—one man against an army of terrorists. Still, with stakes this high, Matt has no choice but to try. He’s going in on high alert, but he’s blind to his greatest vulnerability. His most dangerous enemy is closer to home—not on the battlefield, but in the Oval Office.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

From the founders of the acclaimed Summit event series and community comes the story of their unconventional journey to business success and the hard lessons they learned along the way.

“If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, Make No Small Plans shows how the Summit team did it.”—Ray Dalio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

In 2008, with no event production experience and two college degrees between the four of them, Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz became business partners and set out to build a global events company. With passion and tenacity, they began cold calling as many inspiring company founders as they could and tried to convince them to attend their first event. In the beginning, only nineteen people said yes.

Since then, they have grown Summit into a global community with events all over the world, hosting luminaries including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, Kendrick Lamar, and Al Gore. In 2013, the Summit founders—with help from their behind-the-scenes co-founder and partner Ryan Begelman—acquired Powder Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States, with a dream of building a mountaintop town of the future.

In Make No Small Plans, they reveal the triumphs, mistakes, and cornerstone lessons from their journey, which began during the Great Recession and continues today. Alongside teachings from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs of our time, the authors offer takeaways such as:

• No idea should go unspoken.
• Reputations are earned by the drop and lost by the bucket.
• The road to success is always under construction.
• Become a favor economy millionaire.

Entertaining and empowering, Make No Small Plans shows that anyone can think big and—with a thirst for knowledge, a talented team, and a little humility—accomplish the impossible.

The authors joined forces professionally when Kathy hired Shannon to be a member of her leadership team. This book describes the transformation they led to convert operations from traditional manufacturing to a lean enterprise.

Kathy (executive leader responsible for profitability) and Shannon (transformation leader) share the finer points of a comprehensive change process, the challenges and triumphs, and the real emotion involved during their quest for success. Each describes the professional journey from their unique perspective and the highlights of an endearing friendship that was formed along the way.

This story will inspire female leaders in any organization, showcasing an example of high-performing women thriving in an intense and fast-paced world. Kathy and Shannon are role models for those juggling intense, fulfilling careers, alongside life’s complexities such as dual-career marriages and raising children.

Their story provides a powerful case study of women supporting each other in the workplace to drive positive culture and significantly improved business results by leading with authenticity and inclusivity.

Today, our nation is like a ship being tossed in tumultuous seas. The winds and waves of change have divided and distanced our society, threatening to wash away the very principles our nation was founded upon. Now more than ever, our nation needs leaders with the moral courage to stand strong and steady-leaders capable of uniting people in support of a shared purpose by building the trust and respect necessary for organizations and their people to thrive.

In Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass, Admiral Sandy Stosz draws upon her forty years of extensive experience and wisdom to provide tools that will help leaders reach their goals and succeed at every level. Character-centered, proven leadership principles emerge from these engaging, personal stories that teach leaders how to find, and then become, an inspiring mentor; implement successful diversity, inclusion, and equity programs; successfully lead in a complex environment; and much more.

Leaders eager to make a difference by helping people and organizations be their best will find Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters their go-to resource.

Doing for courage what Angela Duckworth has done for grit and Brene Brown for vulnerability, Jim Detert, the world's foremost expert on workplace courage, explains that courage isn't a character trait that only a few possess; it's a virtue developed through practice. And with the right attitude and approach, you can learn to hone it like any other skill and incorporate it into your everyday life.

In Trust in a Polarized Age, political philosopher Kevin Vallier offers a powerful counter-narrative to the prevailing sense of hopelessness that dogs the American political landscape. In an unapologetic defense of liberalism that synthesizes political philosophy and empirical trust research, Vallier restores faith in our power to reduce polarization and rebuild social and political trust. The solution is to strengthen liberal democratic political and economic institutions--high-quality governance, procedural fairness, markets, social welfare programs, freedom of association, and democracy. These institutions not only create trust, they do so justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.

Out of the investigations and speculations of contemporary science, a challenging view of human behavior and society has emerged and gained strength. It is a view that equates “human nature” utterly and unalterably with the pursuit of self-interest. Influenced by this view, people increasingly appeal to natural imperatives, instead of moral ones, to explain and justify their actions and those of others.

In their provocative new book, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe explore the insights essential to leading satisfying lives. Encouraging individuals to focus on their own personal intelligence and integrity rather than simply navigating the rules and incentives established by others, Practical Wisdom outlines how to identify and cultivate our own innate wisdom in our daily lives.

The future of work is already here, and what this future looks like must be a pressing concern for the current generation of leaders in both the private and public sectors. In the next ten to fifteen years, rapid change in a post-pandemic world and emerging technology will revolutionize nearly every job, eliminate some, and create new forms of work that we have yet to imagine. How can we survive and thrive in the face of such drastic change?

By looking at the barriers holding women back and the social forces constraining them, Women Don't Ask shows women how to reframe their interactions and more accurately evaluate their opportunities. It teaches them how to ask for what they want in ways that feel comfortable and possible, taking into account the impact of asking on their relationships. And it teaches all of us how to recognize the ways in which our institutions, child-rearing practices, and unspoken assumptions perpetuate inequalities--inequalities that are not only fundamentally unfair but also inefficient and economically unsound.

Following the success of Lean In and Why Women Should Rule the World, the authors of the best-selling Womenomicsprovide an informative and practical guide to understanding the importance of confidence - and learning how to achieve it - for women of all ages and at all stages of their career.

The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.This means that your quality of life is going to be determined by how you handle conflict, both within yourself and with others.
- Have you ever struggled in a difficult conversation?
- Have you ever let fear and anxiety prevent you from saying what needed to be said?

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen?

In this “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review) social psychologist Jonathan Haidt challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike.

We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook—or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google or Facebook or Uber. We see software coders become millionaires or billionaires before age thirty and feel we are failing if we are not one of them.

In Co-Create, David Nour makes the case that co-creation leads to Market Gravity™, a force that attracts stakeholders to your business because they recognize that many others have also united their interests with yours. It’s the sense―backed by tangible metrics―that this is bigger than any of us imagined . . . except that you imagined precisely such an outcome. That’s the power of co-creation.

Relationship Economics isn't about taking advantage offriends or coworkers to get ahead. It's about prioritizing andmaximizing a unique return on strategic relationships to fuelunprecedented growth. Based on the author's global speaking andconsulting engagements, Relationship Economics reveals thatsuccess comes from investing in people for extraordinary returns.This revised and updated version explains the three major types ofrelationships—personal, functional, and strategic—andhow to focus each to fuel enterprise growth. It introduces newconcepts in relationship management, including the exchange ofRelationship Currency, the accumulation of Reputation Capital, andthe building of Professional Net Worth. These are the fundamentalmeasures of business relationship, and once you understand them,you'll be able to turn your contacts into better executions,performance, and results.

Open your heart and prepare to be inspired as award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, and respected diversity and inclusion expert Jennifer Brown shares proven strategies to empower members of your entire organization to utilize allof their talents and potential to drive positive organizational change and the future of work.

Distilling decades of research, experience, and proven success in correctly identifying and accurately extrapolating today’s trends and innovations into tomorrow’s realities, Thomas Frey gives you an advance ticket to the most explosive period of change in all of human history.

In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explores these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation.

In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Retired four-star general Stan McChrystal has studied leadership his whole adult life, from his first day at West Point to his most recent work with the corporate clients of the McChrystal Group. In this follow-up to his bestsellers My Share of the Task and Team of Teams, McChrystal explores what leadership really means, debunking the many myths that have surrounded the concept. He focuses on thirteen great leaders, showing that the lessons we commonly draw from their lives are seldom the correct ones.

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

Widely acclaimed for its engaging style and provocative perspective, this book has helped thousands transform their working lives. Now including a 30-page resource guide that explains the basics of working for oneself.

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. Amy Edmondson shows that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those organizations work. In most organizations, the work that produces value for customers is carried out by teams, and increasingly, by flexible team-like entities. The pace of change and the fluidity of most work structures means that it's not really about creating effective teams anymore, but instead about leading effective teaming.

Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American sharecropper’s son from Mississippi, Jesse became the navy’s first black carrier pilot, defending a nation that wouldn’t even serve him in a bar.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data

Leon Logothetis’s life was well plotted out for him. He was to do well in school, go to university, get a job in finance, and spend the next fifty years of his life sitting behind a slab of wood, watching the rain-slicked streets of London from thirty floors above. For a long time, he followed that script, until one day, he finally realized he was living someone else’s life—a good one—but not one of his own choosing.