Most companies put values statements on their websites and in their annual reports, but as recent scandals and financial crises have shown, the practice of values is dying in organizations. Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster argue that the problem is values are imposed from the top down and offer a process for involving employees in values creation through ruthlessly honest organization-wide conversations.

Studies have consistently shown that employees are deeply cynical about corporate values statements. (Enron had a great one.) The reason, argue top scholars and consultants Edward Freeman and Ellen Auster, is that most companies' values are handed down from on high with no employee input. This practically invites disconnects between intention and reality-and the results are disengagement, lower productivity, less innovation, and even outright corruption.

Freeman and Auster here offer a process, Values through Conversation, that makes values living, dynamic, and evolving, not just static words nobody really believes in. Based on scrupulous research and experience, VTC gives employees a safe space to speak honestly and freely about what's happening in the organization, what is important to them, and what values would have real meaning and impact. The book focuses on four core values areas: introspective (who we are), historical (what we've stood for), connectedness (how we lead and work together), and aspirational (why we do what we do), offering questions, exercises, and examples for developing values in each area. VTC allows companies to explore and create values authentically, not impose them from without.

Picking up where he left off in his bestselling book Synchronicity (over 150,000 copies sold), Joseph Jaworski tells the story his and his colleagues' discovery of the ultimate Source of visionary leadership, transformation, and breakthrough innovation.

Current books on influence usually show how to get what YOU want-that's actually manipulation, according to Rob Jolles. Jolles paints the dividing line between influencing for good and manipulating for selfish reasons and shares the questions and trust exercises that make influence the key to creating positive change.

A much-needed revised edition of the only book that presents a multicultural leadership model integrating eight practices from African-American, American Indian, and Latino communities-an alternative to the heavily or exclusively Anglo-American based concepts of leadership presented by most leadership books. The first edition has sold 20,000 copies, was the winner of the International Latino Book Award, Best Business Book, and was on the Rocky Mountain News Bestseller list.

This career development tool kit is for people who want to take charge of their own professional futures.


This book is for employees who want to take charge of their own professional development. Many organizations have eliminated employee career development programs in favor of DIY efforts-and, even if this is not the case, there is more to be gained than lost in taking responsibility for your own career.

Elaine Biech offers practical guidelines for keeping your career on track and mapping it beyond your current job; overcoming personal roadblocks and finding your passion at work; and initiating talent conversations with your manager. Over 100 skills are outlined, including networking, handling pressure, prioritizing, showing political savvy, being a team player,, and selling your ideas. For each skill, Biech offers actions you can take immediately, ongoing practices, and long-term strategies.
Full of tools, tips, and resources, this book is written for the development of all employees. In addition, a short chapter offers advice to managers who want to bring out the best in their people.

Continuing his groundbreaking work in Positive Organizational Scholarship, Robert Quinn (bestselling author of Deep Change) offers a clear path and concrete actions for creating extraordinarily high-performing organizational cultures.

Conventional beliefs and cultures all too often create work groups, departments, and even entire organizations that are full of unengaged, underperforming people. Drawing on his decades of pioneering research, Robert Quinn shows how to create organizations where people flourish and exceed expectations.

Using many compelling stories and examples Quinn describes how to replace an outmoded and limiting conventional mindset with a new, more positive and affirming “mental map.” He explains how, with this as your foundation, you can clarify the highest purpose of your organization, help others access their own excellence, communicate honestly and authentically, and much more. The book includes the Positive Organization Generator, a tool any leader can use to develop a custom action plan for turning an organization positive. At its heart, Quinn's book helps leaders transform organizations by changing themselves and others from being comfort-centered to being results-centered, from being self-focused to being other-focused, and from being internally closed to being externally open.

Leading scholars Ryan W. Quinn and Robert E. Quinn marshal both scientific research and personal experience to show how you can achieve the fundamental state of leadership-lifting up both yourself and those around you. This second edition (first edition had sold over 10,000 copies) has been revised throughout and includes two new chapters.

Just as the Wright Brothers combined science and practice to finally achieve the dream of flight, Ryan and Robert Quinn combine research and personal stories to demonstrate how we can elevate ourselves and the situations and people around us to greater heights of integrity, openness, and achievement-the psychological equivalent of aerodynamic lift, and the fundamental state of effective leadership.

Lift identifies four questions that, when asked in any situation, will instantly give rise to a positive outlook, and explores the profound implications of each of these questions in-depth. The second edition includes two new chapters highlighting surprising applications of the fundamental state of leadership to situations on the job and off, as well as new stories, examples, supportive studies, and techniques for applying the lessons of Lift. Each person who learns these principles will lift themselves, lift others, and inspire others to spread that lifting as far as they can.

This book teaches leaders how to focus on people development rather than product development. Innovation comes from people, not products or technology. Deborah Piscione's twelve-step process is a comprehensive guide to success for leaders that shows them how to harness the creative energy in their organization, thereby bringing better products to market.


For too long, companies and their leadership teams focused primarily on their products or services. Leaders are deeply dialed in to the minutiae of their companies' operations. But veteran Silicon Valley consultant Deborah Perry Piscione says investments in new technologies or operations do not create innovations-people do. For innovation to happen, organizations need to be people-centric. In this breakthrough book she shows how, by following her People Equation, every organization can develop a mindset, an organizational structure, and a product development process that will maximize creativity and innovation.

Using examples from her consulting work and from her research into successful business practices, Piscione shows how to create a culture where risk taking is rewarded, mavericks are encouraged, collaboration between highly competent people is nurtured, and, when experiments and new initiatives are proposed, the response is to ask how rather than question why. This requires upending the usual organizational pyramid, giving more decision-making power to frontline workers and less to the C-level executives traditionally at the top. Once this is all in place, you can take advantage of Piscione's twelve-step Improvisational Innovation process for bringing new products and services to market. This is a comprehensive guide to harnessing the creative energy in every organization.

There is a crisis of meaning in our lives, work, and society. The solution is to begin the search for deeper meaning. The authors summarize the universal and timeless wisdom of Viktor Frankl and provide new insights based on their work leading the Meaning Movement.



World-renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning was named by the Library of Congress as one of the ten most influential books of the 20th century. Dr. Frankl's story of finding a reason to live in the most horrible circumstance imaginable-Nazi concentration camps-continues to inspire millions.

Drawing on the entire body of Frankl's work, Alex Pattakos and Elaine Dundon elaborate seven Core Principles and demonstrate how they can be applied to everyday life and work in the 21st century. These principles include the ultimate freedom to choose our attitude no matter the situation-the idea most closely associated with Frankl-but his ageless wisdom goes well beyond this. The third edition is revised and updated throughout and includes four new chapters: looking at meaning in a holistic, integrated way; envisioning what a meaning-centered world would look like; and exploring Frankl's legacy in the 21st century. Prisoners of Our Thoughts opens up new opportunities for finding personal meaning through living an authentic life.

Master facilitator Larry Dressler shows group leaders, OD consultants, and coaches who work with polarized or anxious groups how developing an open, authentic, intentional "presence" can both help them guide their groups more effectively and move the facilitator forward on a path toward self-mastery.

In a world of persistent and often overwhelming chaos, this book makes one simple promise: If you close the gaps in the three areas of your life, you will achieve fulfillment, success, and inner peace.

We all ask ourselves the question, “Has my life made a difference?” We want our lives to have meaning. We want to live balanced, productive lives in which we contribute through our work, our relationships, and our example to others. And we search for inner peace to deal with all of the chaos that exists in the world today.

In this new book, Franklin Covey cofounder Hyrum Smith shows that the key to achieving a meaningful, fulfilling, and peaceful life is closing three gaps that we all struggle with. The first is the BELIEF GAP: the gap between what we believe to be true and what is actually true. The second is the TIME GAP: the gap between what we plan to do-our goals and dreams-and what we actually get done. The third is the VALUES GAP: the gap between what we value-what matters most to us-and what we actually do.

Using inspiring true stories of people who have overcome difficult challenges, the author tells how to close each of these three gaps in our personal and work lives. Smith provides new understanding and tools to move from the life we currently have to the life we really want.

A new edition of the bestselling book (75,000 copies sold) that shows how the teachings of Jesus can bring a new angle to your leadership style. No matter what your religious background, this book will help you map out the high road to your personal and professional goals.

Bestselling authors and renowned diversity consultants Fred Miller and Judith Katz bring their long-awaited new book that shows any manager or member of a team how to create safe environments for everyone in their company.


Do you feel safe enough at work to share your ideas, thoughts, and experiences? Raise tough issues? Deal with conflicts? Do your best work?

Many people feel unsafe in work interactions. They hold back, hesitate, and make themselves smaller out of fear of ridicule or retribution. The lack of safety is why new ideas and new people often have such a hard time succeeding in today's organizations, and directly contribute to why stress levels are so high. Many people have the skills they need to do their best work and the ideas to solve problems but lack the safety to apply them. This book describes what constitutes a safe environment and the actions-by both leaders and team members-necessary to create collaborative, inclusive workplaces in which people feel safe enough to be their best selves. Written in plain, everyday language, Safe Enough to Soar identifies the default mindsets and behaviors that create hostile work environments and block collaboration, engagement, partnership, and the acceptance of new ideas and new people. Expert authors Fred Miller and Judith Katz chart a simple, step-by-step process that will enable organization's individuals, work-groups, and teams to skip past the dysfunctional mire of defensiveness, micro-aggressions, cover-your-ass compromises, and judging, and launch them into the innovation-inspiring, collaboration-fostering zone of organizational bravery. When people feel safe enough to act and interact, they step up, speak up, and fully engage…and they and their organizations spread their wings and soar.

Ira Chaleff's bestseller (over 40,000 copies sold across two editions) becomes even more relevant today as failures in leadership grow astronomically requiring greater vigilance and oversight on the part of the citizenry.

Change has become constant, complex, multifaceted, and overwhelming. To meet this challenge, Bill Pasmore presents four keys to help leaders decide where and how to most effectively focus their change initiatives.

It's not news that globalization and ever-faster technological innovation have increased the pace of change exponentially. Existing change models were devised to deal with individual changes, one by one, but that's not a luxury leaders have any more. Bill Pasmore, senior vice president at the Center for Creative Leadership and a professor at Columbia University, offers a four-part model that will allow leaders to deal with multiple changes simultaneously without drowning in the churn.

First, Pasmore urges leaders to think fewer. He shows you how to “back away from the buffet table”-sort through the dizzying array of potential change efforts you could undertake and identify a few focused “healthy” choices that will most benefit your organization. Next, Pasmore says, think scarcer-be realistic about the resources you actually have at your disposal, including how many people in your organization are willing and able to lead change efforts. Then, having narrowed your choices, allocated your resources, and found your change agents, you need to think faster. Pasmore offers advice for streamlining change processes, getting buy-in throughout the organization, and increasing the pace of change. And finally, he says, think smarter: build in processes to learn from change initiatives while they're happening and apply that learning to new and ongoing change initiatives.

Change is not the problem - thinking about change in old-fashioned narrow and prescribed terms is. Recognizing it for the complex machine that it is and accurately taking stock of your resources and speed is what works.

What makes for a truly exceptional leader? Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more-they must be competent-but that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline? What's deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?




The Spanish language edition of the bestselling title The Heart of Leadership is ready to help you answer the question-Are you the type of leader people want to follow? You can be--but first, you've got to understand what sets great leaders apart from all the rest.

Certainly, leaders need people skills, execution skills, a deep knowledge of industry trends, the ability to articulate a vision, and more--they must be competent--but that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's below the waterline? What's deep inside the best leaders that makes them different?

Mark Miller contends it is their leadership character. In his latest enlightening and entertaining business fable, he describes the five unique character traits exhibited by exceptional leaders and how to cultivate them.

The Heart of Leadership begins with young and ambitious Blake Brown being passed over for a desperately wanted promotion, despite an outstanding individual performance. Confused and frustrated, he turns to his former mentor, Debbie Brewster. Rather than attempting to solve Blake's problem for him, she sends him on a quest to meet with five of his late father's colleagues, each of whom holds a piece of the puzzle he's trying to solve.

As Blake puts the pieces together, he discovers that in the final analysis, a lack of skills isn't what holds most leaders back; skills are too easy to learn. Without demonstrated leadership character, however, a skill set will never be enough. Most often, when leaders fail to reach their full potential, it is an issue of the heart. This is Blake's ultimate revelation.

This book shows us that leadership needn't be the purview of the few--it is within reach for millions around the world. The Heart of Leadership is a road map for every person who desires to make a difference in the lives of others and become a leader people want to follow.