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Holding the Calm is a practical and immediately useful guide that meticulously lays out twenty concrete, easy-to-use tools for defusing tension, settling cases, resolving disputes, and rechanneling arguments.

How do you stop conflict? Settle disputes? Handle someone who is yelling at you, crying, or just won't speak? How do you find a solution when a solution seems impossible? Holding the Calm shares the secrets that enable everyone to avoid, minimize, or resolve conflict.

Popular master mediator Hesha Abrams has tens of thousands of hours in the trenches mediating human conflict, and she shares her pragmatic wisdom in digestible bites that detail how to improve situations and solve difficult problems between human beings, from family and workplace disputes to complex commercial and global conflicts. Learn how to

Speak into the ears that hear you Be the grown-up in the roomListen to what is not saidCreate small, winnable victories
Practical, inspirational, and full of accessible tools you can use right now, Holding the Calm proves that you don't need an advanced degree or certification to minimize challenges and defuse tension between real people, businesses, and countries.

You always know when you are in a Hot Spot. You feel energized and vibrantly alive. Your brain is buzzing with ideas, and the people around you share your joy and excitement. Things you've always known become clearer, adding value becomes more possible. Ideas and insights from others miraculously combine with your own to create new thinking and innovation. When Hot Spots arise in and between companies, they provide energy for exploiting and applying knowledge that is already known and genuinely exploring what was previously unknown. Hot Spots are marvelous creators of value for organizations and wonderful, life-enhancing phenomena for each of us. Lynda Gratton has spent more than ten years investigating Hot Spots--discovering how they emerge and how organizations can create environments where they will proliferate and thrive. She has studied dozens of companies and talked to hundreds of employees, managers, and executives in the US, Europe, and Asia. She has asked the important questions: Why and when do Hot Spots emerge? What is it about certain groups of people that support the emergence of Hot Spots? What role do leaders play? She's discovered a host of elements that together contribute to the emergence of Hot Spots--creating energy and excitement, and supporting and channeling that energy into productive outcomes. In this groundbreaking book, Gratton describes four crucial qualities that an organizational culture must have to support the emergence of Hot Spots, looks at what leaders can do to encourage them, and offers activities and tools you can use in your own company to increase the probability of them arising. In these days when traditional organizational boundaries are becoming barriers to progress, Gratton offers advice and guidance that you can use right now to increase the probability of Hot Spots emerging in your organization.

You always know when you are in a Hot Spot. You feel energized and vibrantly alive. Your brain is buzzing with ideas, and the people around you share your joy and excitement. Things you've always known become clearer, adding value becomes more possible. Ideas and insights from others miraculously combine with your own to create new thinking and innovation. When Hot Spots arise in and between companies, they provide energy for exploiting and applying knowledge that is already known and genuinely exploring what was previously unknown. Hot Spots are marvelous creators of value for organizations and wonderful, life-enhancing phenomena for each of us.

Lynda Gratton has spent more than ten years investigating Hot Spots—discovering how they emerge and how organizations can create environments where they will proliferate and thrive. She has studied dozens of companies and talked to hundreds of employees, managers, and executives in the US, Europe, and Asia. She has asked the important questions: Why and when do Hot Spots emerge? What is it about certain groups of people that support the emergence of Hot Spots? What role do leaders play? She's discovered a host of elements that together contribute to the emergence of Hot Spots—creating energy and excitement, and supporting and channeling that energy into productive outcomes.

In this groundbreaking book, Gratton describes four crucial qualities that an organizational culture must have to support the emergence of Hot Spots, looks at what leaders can do to encourage them, and offers activities and tools you can use in your own company to increase the probability of them arising. In these days when traditional organizational boundaries are becoming barriers to progress, Gratton offers advice and guidance that you can use right now to increase the probability of Hot Spots emerging in your organization.

Bestselling author Lynda Gratton-a world-renowned authority on business strategy-takes an extensive look at Hot Spots-places and times where cooperation flourishes, resulting in productivity and excitement. Now, these previously unexplained flares of ideas and innovation are thoroughly examined, as Gratton shows how to develop of Hot Spots within ones own environment.

Rethink, Redesign, Reboot.

Most people associate performance management with the annual review, which is universally dreaded by employees, management, and HR professionals alike. It's a cookie-cutter, fear-based, top-down approach that emphasizes negatives over positives and stifles healthy career conversations. It's never been shown to motivate anyone to do anything but try to avoid it, but nobody feels like they have any alternative. Tamra Chandler has one—and it works.

Actually, Chandler doesn't offer a single alternative—she offers an infinite number of them. Each organization that uses her Performance Management Reboot is able to develop its own unique version since it doesn't make a lot of sense for organizations with different cultures, in different industries and sectors, to do things exactly the same way. Grounded in the latest scientific findings about motivation, it's a transparent, employee-driven process that values collaboration over competition and rewards people for acquiring new skills and increasing their contribution instead of hitting arbitrary benchmarks.

Chandler lays out the general principles and then walks you through each step in creating a performance management process that employees will actually embrace rather than avoid and that will help you meet the three objectives of great performance management: developing your people, rewarding them equitably, and driving your organization's performance. It's the first comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a performance management solution that's tailored to your organization's needs and goals and that places the emphasis squarely on your greatest asset: your people.

Rethink, Redesign, Reboot.

Most people associate performance management with the annual review, which is universally dreaded by employees, management, and HR professionals alike. It's a cookie-cutter, fear-based, top-down approach that emphasizes negatives over positives and stifles healthy career conversations. It's never been shown to motivate anyone to do anything but try to avoid it, but nobody feels like they have any alternative. Tamra Chandler has one—and it works.

Actually, Chandler doesn't offer a single alternative—she offers an infinite number of them. Each organization that uses her Performance Management Reboot is able to develop its own unique version since it doesn't make a lot of sense for organizations with different cultures, in different industries and sectors, to do things exactly the same way. Grounded in the latest scientific findings about motivation, it's a transparent, employee-driven process that values collaboration over competition and rewards people for acquiring new skills and increasing their contribution instead of hitting arbitrary benchmarks.

Chandler lays out the general principles and then walks you through each step in creating a performance management process that employees will actually embrace rather than avoid and that will help you meet the three objectives of great performance management: developing your people, rewarding them equitably, and driving your organization's performance. It's the first comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a performance management solution that's tailored to your organization's needs and goals and that places the emphasis squarely on your greatest asset: your people.

Performance reviews don't work--they demotivate and drag performance. Chandler presents the answer with the Performance Management Reboot process, an employee-driven solution that powers people up.

Most people associate performance management with the annual performance review, which is universally dreaded by employees and HR alike. No evidence exists that such reviews do anything to improve performance, and yet they endure. Tamra Chandler wants to replace them with something that actually works.

This means more than just a little tweaking. As Chandler explains in vivid detail, the present process is completely broken and outdated. It's a cookie-cutter, fear-based, top-down approach that emphasizes negatives over positives, pits people and departments against each other, and has never motivated anyone to do anything but try to avoid it.

Her alternative, the Performance Management Reboot, is designed for the way people actually work today, and is grounded in the latest scientific findings about motivation. It's a customized, transparent, employee-driven process that values collaboration over competition, and rewards people for acquiring new skills and increasing their contribution instead of hitting some arbitrary benchmarks.

Chandler's illustrated guide cracks the code to building high performance and engaged employees, while optimizing performance management for today's increasingly connected, volatile, and multi-generational business world.

John Hope Bryant, successful self-made businessman and founder of the nonprofit Operation HOPE, says business and political leaders are ignoring the one force that could truly re-energize the stalled American economy: the poor. If we give poor communities the right tools, policies, and inspiration, he argues, they will be able to lift themselves up into the middle class and become a new generation of customers and entrepreneurs.

Raised in poverty-stricken, gang-infested South Central Los Angeles, Bryant saw firsthand how our institutions have abandoned the poor. He details how business loans, home loans, and financial investments have vanished from their communities. After decades of deprivation, the poor lack bank accounts, decent credit scores, and any real firsthand experience of how a healthy free enterprise system functions.

Bryant radically redefines the meaning of poverty and wealth. (It's not just a question of finances; it's values too.) He exposes why attempts to aid the poor so far have fallen short and offers a way forward: the HOPE Plan, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.

Fully 70 percent of the American economy is driven by consumer spending, but more and more people have too much month at the end of their money. John Hope Bryant aspires to “expand the philosophy of free enterprise to include all of God's children” and create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1 percent or even the 99 percent but for the 100 percent. This is a free enterprise approach to solving the problem of poverty and raising up a new America.

John Hope Bryant, successful self-made businessman and founder of the nonprofit Operation HOPE, says business and political leaders are ignoring the one force that could truly re-energize the stalled American economy: the poor. If we give poor communities the right tools, policies, and inspiration, he argues, they will be able to lift themselves up into the middle class and become a new generation of customers and entrepreneurs.

Raised in poverty-stricken, gang-infested South Central Los Angeles, Bryant saw firsthand how our institutions have abandoned the poor. He details how business loans, home loans, and financial investments have vanished from their communities. After decades of deprivation, the poor lack bank accounts, decent credit scores, and any real firsthand experience of how a healthy free enterprise system functions.

Bryant radically redefines the meaning of poverty and wealth. (It's not just a question of finances; it's values too.) He exposes why attempts to aid the poor so far have fallen short and offers a way forward: the HOPE Plan, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.

Fully 70 percent of the American economy is driven by consumer spending, but more and more people have too much month at the end of their money. John Hope Bryant aspires to “expand the philosophy of free enterprise to include all of God's children” and create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1 percent or even the 99 percent but for the 100 percent. This is a free enterprise approach to solving the problem of poverty and raising up a new America.

This book has a simple message for business leaders: you help yourselves by helping the poor. If the poor can gain a stake in the economy they can buy your products and put money in the banks. Increasing poor people's financial literacy will help them move into the middle class and enrich everyone, rich and poor alike.

When we talk about how to save our struggling economy, Operation HOPE founder and successful businessman John Hope Bryant says that for far too long, we've been having the wrong conversation. Fully 70% of the American economy is generated by consumer spending. If we want capitalism to work, we have to make it work for the poor.

“We must make financial literacy – teaching each and every one of our children the language of money – the new civil rights issue for the twenty-first century America,” Bryant writes. In the book, Bryant exposes the historical roots of poverty, explains why the solutions tried so far have held the poor back from getting “the memo” about financial literacy, and offers a way forward. He lays out what he calls a Marshall Plan for our times, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.
Praised by Dr. Bernice A. King of the King Center and former President Bill Clinton, John Hope Bryant's book aspires to create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1% or even the 99%, but for the 100%.

This book has a simple message for business leaders: you help yourselves by helping the poor. If the poor can gain a stake in the economy they can buy your products and put money in the banks. Increasing poor people's financial literacy will help them move into the middle class and enrich everyone, rich and poor alike.

When we talk about how to save our struggling economy, Operation HOPE founder and successful businessman John Hope Bryant says that for far too long, we've been having the wrong conversation. Fully 70% of the American economy is generated by consumer spending. If we want capitalism to work, we have to make it work for the poor.

“We must make financial literacy – teaching each and every one of our children the language of money – the new civil rights issue for the twenty-first century America,” Bryant writes. In the book, Bryant exposes the historical roots of poverty, explains why the solutions tried so far have held the poor back from getting “the memo” about financial literacy, and offers a way forward. He lays out what he calls a Marshall Plan for our times, a series of straightforward, actionable steps to build financial literacy and expand opportunity so that the poor can join the middle class.
Praised by Dr. Bernice A. King of the King Center and former President Bill Clinton, John Hope Bryant's book aspires to create a thriving economy that works not just for the 1% or even the 99%, but for the 100%.

Using a proven three-part framework, this book shows how anyone-from a CEO to frontline employee-can play a pivotal role in creating a diverse and welcoming workplace.

Creating a diverse workplace needs to be an ongoing effort, not just the subject of occasional training. As Celeste Warren says, needed change won't take place unless all employees feel that they have a role to play in creating the culture they would like to see in their organization.

Regardless of what position you hold, you have the ability to impact change and create a more inclusive environment. Anyone can commit to becoming an unofficial Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador in his or her organization. Warren offers a straightforward three-stage model:

Become aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and conscious and unconscious biases.
Take an inventory of your surroundings: what is getting in the way of there being an inclusive environment in your organization?
Develop a personal action plan.

Depending on your position, the actions you take can be as simple as consistently raising DEI-related issues in staff meetings or as far-reaching as leading an Employee Resource Group or developing a new hiring policy. In separate chapters, Warren offers specific advice for chief diversity and inclusion officers, C-suite leaders, first-line managers, human resources practitioners, and individual contributors. This book features examples, exercises, and practical tools that show you how to assess where your organization is at and develop a purpose and strategy that can make diversity a workplace reality.

Using a proven three-part framework, this book shows how anyone-from a CEO to frontline employee-can play a pivotal role in creating a diverse and welcoming workplace.

Creating a diverse workplace needs to be an ongoing effort, not just the subject of occasional training. As Celeste Warren says, needed change won't take place unless all employees feel that they have a role to play in creating the culture they would like to see in their organization.

Regardless of what position you hold, you have the ability to impact change and create a more inclusive environment. Anyone can commit to becoming an unofficial Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador in his or her organization. Warren offers a straightforward three-stage model:

Become aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and conscious and unconscious biases.
Take an inventory of your surroundings: what is getting in the way of there being an inclusive environment in your organization?
Develop a personal action plan.

Depending on your position, the actions you take can be as simple as consistently raising DEI-related issues in staff meetings or as far-reaching as leading an Employee Resource Group or developing a new hiring policy. In separate chapters, Warren offers specific advice for chief diversity and inclusion officers, C-suite leaders, first-line managers, human resources practitioners, and individual contributors. This book features examples, exercises, and practical tools that show you how to assess where your organization is at and develop a purpose and strategy that can make diversity a workplace reality.

Using a proven three-part framework, this book shows how anyone-from a CEO to frontline employee-can play a pivotal role in creating a diverse and welcoming workplace.

Creating a diverse workplace needs to be an ongoing effort, not just the subject of occasional training. As Celeste Warren says, needed change won't take place unless all employees feel that they have a role to play in creating the culture they would like to see in their organization.

Regardless of what position you hold, you have the ability to impact change and create a more inclusive environment. Anyone can commit to becoming an unofficial Diversity and Inclusion Ambassador in his or her organization. Warren offers a straightforward three-stage model:

Become aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and conscious and unconscious biases.Take an inventory of your surroundings: what is getting in the way of there being an inclusive environment in your organization? Develop a personal action plan.
Depending on your position, the actions you take can be as simple as consistently raising DEI-related issues in staff meetings or as far-reaching as leading an Employee Resource Group or developing a new hiring policy. In separate chapters, Warren offers specific advice for chief diversity and inclusion officers, C-suite leaders, first-line managers, human resources practitioners, and individual contributors. This book features examples, exercises, and practical tools that show you how to assess where your organization is at and develop a purpose and strategy that can make diversity a workplace reality.

Positive leaders are able to dramatically expand their people's—and their own—capacity for excellence. And they accomplish this without enormous expenditures or huge heroic gestures. Here leading scholars—including Adam Grant, author of the bestselling Give and Take; positive organizational scholarship movement cofounders Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn; and thirteen more—describe how this is being done at companies such as Wells Fargo, Ford, Kelly Services, Burt's Bees, Connecticut's Griffin Hospital, the Michigan-based Zingerman's Community of Businesses, and many others. They show that, like the butterfly in Brazil whose flapping wings create a typhoon in Texas, you can create profound positive change in your organization through simple actions and attitude shifts.

Positive leaders are able to dramatically expand their people's—and their own—capacity for excellence. And they accomplish this without enormous expenditures or huge heroic gestures. Here leading scholars—including Adam Grant, author of the bestselling Give and Take; positive organizational scholarship movement cofounders Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn; and thirteen more—describe how this is being done at companies such as Wells Fargo, Ford, Kelly Services, Burt's Bees, Connecticut's Griffin Hospital, the Michigan-based Zingerman's Community of Businesses, and many others. They show that, like the butterfly in Brazil whose flapping wings create a typhoon in Texas, you can create profound positive change in your organization through simple actions and attitude shifts.

The field of positive leadership continues to expand. Building on the practical tools and philosophy in Kim Cameron's books (including Positive Leadership, over 30,000 copies sold), this edited volume brings the best research from fourteen scholars and translates it into plain English for organizations.

A step-by-step leadership framework for moving from passive DEI awareness to active advocacy, grounded in nearly two decades of consulting practice and hard-won personal experience.

Leaders often know inequity exists in their organizations but don't know how to act, or worry they'll get it wrong. This expanded second edition gives them a clear, non-judgmental path forward using the acclaimed Inclusive Leader Continuum, a four-stage model that meets readers wherever they are and maps specific actions for moving forward.

What's inside:

• Four stages of inclusive leadership: unaware, aware, active, and advocate, each with hallmarks, real-world stories, and practical strategies
• Tools including the inner circle inventory, the iceberg identity framework, and a free online inclusive leader assessment
• A new chapter on identity, privilege, and what holds leaders back, written as a “call-in” rather than a call-out
• Chapter discussion guides designed for individual reflection and team learning

Who it's for: Leaders at any level, from first-time managers to senior executives, especially those who feel uncertain about where to start or how to show up more effectively.

What you’ll leave with: The language, frameworks, and confidence to stop sitting on the sidelines and start using your influence to build workplaces where everyone can thrive.