Work Leadership

Your organization's culture is the key to its success. Strategic planning is essential. People's competencies should be measured and their weaknesses shored up. People crave feedback. These may sound like basic truths of our work lives today. But actually, they're lies. As Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall show in this provocative, inspiring book, there are some big lies - distortions, faulty assumptions, wrong thinking - running through our organizational lives.

This provocative book makes a compelling case for reducing the number of workdays in a week to four. International business expert Robert Grosse draws on scholarly research to construct an appealing argument for why the four-day workweek benefits both the organization and the employee. Research has demonstrated that longer work hours harm the individual and don't amount to a more effective organization. The book goes beyond merely arguing that a reduced workweek is a good idea. It delves into why, explores the means for achieving it, and scrutinizes the barriers to getting there.

If you listen to nothing else on performing at your highest level, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you focus on what matters, manage your energy and attention, and achieve remarkable results. This book will inspire you to improve on your weaknesses, not just your strengths; rise above the pack; take care of your physical health for sustained mental performance; understand what motivates you; use short-term goals to achieve long-term aspirations; and inspire others.

Managing up helps you build the sort of relationships that foster more communication, collaboration, cooperation, and understanding between people at different levels of power, with a variety of perspectives and skills. Managing Up is your personal manual for building this vital skill so you can begin building your best future. Real-world strategies give you a set of actionable steps, supplemented by expert advice from a top leadership consultant that helps you get on track to advancement.

The benefits of mindfulness include better performance, heightened creativity, deeper self-awareness, and increased charisma - not to mention greater peace of mind. This collection of articles from HBR includes "Mindfulness in the Age of Complexity", an interview with Ellen Langer by Alison Beard; "Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your Brain", by Christina Congleton, Britta K. Hölzel, and Sara W. Lazar; "How to Practice Mindfulness Throughout Your Work Day", by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter; and much more.

Empathy is credited as a factor in improved relationships and even better product development. But while it's easy to say "just put yourself in someone else's shoes", the reality is that understanding the motivations and emotions of others often proves elusive. This collection of articles from HBR includes "What Is Empathy?" by Daniel Goleman; "Why Compassion Is a Better Managerial Tactic Than Toughness" by Emma Seppala; and much more.

In this audiobook, Fowler builds upon the latest scientific research on the nature of human motivation to lay out a tested model and course of action that will help leaders guide their people toward the kind of motivation that not only increases productivity and engagement but that gives them a profound sense of purpose and fulfillment.

In the mode of other best selling business fables, The Energy Bus takes listeners on an enlightening and inspiring ride that reveals 10 secrets for approaching life and work with the kind of positive, forward thinking that leads to true accomplishment - at work and at home. Everyone faces challenges. And every person, organization, company, and team will have to overcome negativity and adversity to define themselves and create their success.

Execution Excellence is the practitioner's guide to real-world implementation. Designed by a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) thought leader with 30 years of experience, this guide gives you a hands-on framework for putting the BSC methodology into action. Clear, and concise, this audiobook skips the theoretical exposition to get right to the point - how can companies use BSC to effectively deploy strategy and drive individual and enterprise performance? You'll find the answers here.

Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don't have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors.

Do you want to be more productive and enjoy your work more fully? The Now Habit at Work, written by top performance expert Neil Fiore, reveals how true time management goes hand-in-hand with greater ease, well-being, and success in business and life. Whatever your occupation, Fiore’s proven tools will empower you to overcome procrastination and engage your full creative potential on the job.

Storytelling in business is different from telling stories to friends in a bar. It needs to be based on facts. Stories at Work will teach you how to wrap your stories in context and deliver them in a way that grabs your audience's attention. The special tools, techniques, and structures in this book will help you bring the power of stories into your day-to-day business communication. They will enable you to connect, engage, and inspire and ensure that everything you share has a lasting impression on your listeners.

When it comes to improving customer experiences, trying out new business models, or developing new products, even the most experienced managers often get it wrong. They discover that intuition, experience, and big data alone don't work. What does? Running disciplined business experiments. And what if companies roll out new products or introduce new customer experiences without running these experiments? They fly blind. That's what Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke shows in this rigorously researched and eye-opening book.

You face tough communication challenges every day at work, both in person and online - a toxic boss, backstabbing coworkers, office politics, and much more. Here are immediate, effective, eye-opening actions you can take to resolve those infuriating problems. You will find stories and examples drawn from corporate communications consultant Leil Lowndes’s more than 20 years of training business professionals, from entry-level new hires to CEOs.

Excellent communicating skills have always been crucial to success in leadership and management roles—and that's one of the reasons the first edition of this book has been an international bestseller taught at universities and referred to by leading CEOs. What's changed in the last ten years? Well, nothing—and everything. Mastering Communication at Work, Second Edition features an essential new chapter on remote team communication along with additional content on equitable leadership and updated case studies.

In this bold, enlightening book, social psychologist and professor Daniel M. Cable takes leaders into the minds of workers and reveals the surprising secret to restoring their zest for work. Disengagement isn't a motivational problem, it's a biological one. Humans aren't built for routine and repetition. We're designed to crave exploration, experimentation, and learning - in fact, there's a part of our brains, which scientists have coined "the seeking system", that rewards us for taking part in these activities. But the way organizations are run prevents many of us from following our innate impulses. As a result, we shut down. 

Resolving Conflicts at Work is a guide for preventing and resolving conflicts, miscommunications, and misunderstandings at work, including dozens of techniques for revealing how the inevitable disputes and divisions in the workplace are actually opportunities for greater creativity, productivity, enhanced morale, and personal growth. In the third edition of this text, all chapters are completely infused with additional content, updated examples, and new case studies. 

Even amid the seeming chaos of the matrix organization - where you are constantly being asked to do things by people who aren't your boss - there is always that special person who seems indispensable, who seems to thrive on complexity, and who is able to stay focused and positive and get the right things done: This is the go-to person. In this game-changing book, Bruce Tulgan reveals the secrets of the go-to person in our new world of work. Tulgan shows how go-to people not only behave differently, but also think differently.

Help! I Work with People is not a book about leadership theory, but rather a handbook on how to connect with people and influence them for good. With his signature transparent and relatable storytelling, Chad Veach uses modern research and biblical principles to encourage you to lean into your leadership potential regardless of your level of influence or experience. In short and easily digestible chapters, he addresses the three phases of becoming a quality leader: learning to lead the hardest person you will ever be in charge of-yourself and more.

Virtual meetings. Video calls. Emails and chat messages. These technological conveniences can be helpful when you're working remotely. But the actual experience of getting your work done while remaining an effective part of a far-flung team can be frustrating. How can you make remote work work for you? The HBR Guide to Remote Work provides practical tips and advice to help you work more productively with your team and colleagues, even though you're not in the same location.