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What if better questions could change everything?
The questions you ask yourself shape every decision, relationship, and result. This international bestseller—over 500,000 copies sold—gives leaders, coaches, and professionals a proven system called Question Thinking to shift from reactive, stuck thinking to curiosity, clarity, and breakthrough outcomes.
Through an engaging business fable, Dr. Marilee Adams shows exactly how—and why—it works.
The landmark fifth edition includes the following:
Used by Fortune 500 leaders, executive coaches, educators, and therapists worldwide.
With a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and world's #1 executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith.
The questions you ask yourself shape every decision, relationship, and result. This international bestseller—over 500,000 copies sold—gives leaders, coaches, and professionals a proven system called Question Thinking to shift from reactive, stuck thinking to curiosity, clarity, and breakthrough outcomes.
Through an engaging business fable, Dr. Marilee Adams shows exactly how—and why—it works.
The landmark fifth edition includes the following:
- 14 Question Thinking tools, including 2 brand-new tools built from reader feedback
- The Choice Map, a visual framework for recognizing where your thinking is headed
- Q-Storming, a collaborative approach that generates better questions, not just answers
- New chapter on thriving through AI and technological change
- Step-by-step practices for leadership, coaching, team development, and personal growth
Used by Fortune 500 leaders, executive coaches, educators, and therapists worldwide.
With a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author and world's #1 executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith.
“Chad Ford reminds us that humanity lies within all of us, and although conflict is everywhere in today's world, we have the tools we need to overcome obstacles and to thrive. This is a fantastic, timely book that I highly recommend."
-Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors
Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight.
To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way. We have to open ourselves up with no guarantee that anyone on the other side will do the same. While this can feel even more dangerous than conflict itself, it allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter to us as much as our own.
Ford shows dangerous love in action through examples ranging from his work in the Middle East to a deeply moving story about reconciling with his father. He explains why we disconnect from people at the very time we need to be most connected and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, he gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.
-Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors
Knowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight.
To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way. We have to open ourselves up with no guarantee that anyone on the other side will do the same. While this can feel even more dangerous than conflict itself, it allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter to us as much as our own.
Ford shows dangerous love in action through examples ranging from his work in the Middle East to a deeply moving story about reconciling with his father. He explains why we disconnect from people at the very time we need to be most connected and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, he gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.
From a top scholar and corporate executive comes a new vision for leadership; the days of top-down management are numbered, but the potential for peer-to-peer leadership is limitless.
Two distinguished scholars offer eight steps to help organizations discover and embrace an authentic higher purpose-something that will dramatically improve every aspect of any enterprise, including the bottom line.
Managers are taught that employees are self-interested and work resistant, so they create systems of control to combat these expectations. The result? These gloomy assumptions become self-fulfilling prophecies, workforces tend to underperform and resist control, and managers undermine their own effectiveness in a vicious cycle.
But when an authentic higher purpose permeates business strategy and decision-making, the cycle is broken. Employers and employees fully engage, become proactive contributors to purpose, and exceed expectations. Long-term economic benefits follow.
Robert E. Quinn and Anjan J. Thakor offer a new logic that builds on the assumptions of economics and opens a new path to clearly identifying an organization's higher purpose and integrating it with the organization's strategy. They offer a practical and counterintuitive eight-step approach to articulating higher purpose and show how to weave it into the fabric of the organization.
Managers are taught that employees are self-interested and work resistant, so they create systems of control to combat these expectations. The result? These gloomy assumptions become self-fulfilling prophecies, workforces tend to underperform and resist control, and managers undermine their own effectiveness in a vicious cycle.
But when an authentic higher purpose permeates business strategy and decision-making, the cycle is broken. Employers and employees fully engage, become proactive contributors to purpose, and exceed expectations. Long-term economic benefits follow.
Robert E. Quinn and Anjan J. Thakor offer a new logic that builds on the assumptions of economics and opens a new path to clearly identifying an organization's higher purpose and integrating it with the organization's strategy. They offer a practical and counterintuitive eight-step approach to articulating higher purpose and show how to weave it into the fabric of the organization.
A vivid depiction and real-world example of the personal and institutional impact of the Arbinger Insititute's transformative ideas (Leadership and Self-Deception; 1.4 million copies sold) within a healthcare organization--The Plum Healthcare Group nursing homes. In general, nursing homes are scorned healthcare institutions--but it was in these transformed Plum homes that Kimberly White discovered a new way of "seeing" people and underwent her own personal transformation. Both Plum and White shifted their perspective and mindset based on their adoption of The Arbinger Institute's basic principles.
Without realizing it, we tend to treat people as objects. We see them solely in terms of their usefulness to us. This invites tension and conflict, and changing this mindset is at the heart of the Arbinger Institute's work. This book is a moving true story of an unhappy woman whose life and family were transformed when she began researching how Arbinger's ideas were being implemented in nursing homes. Kimberly White was astonished to discover that those who choose to care for the elderly and ill, earning low pay in a maligned industry, were nevertheless full of satisfaction, compassion and love because of their ability to see their patients as real and true and valuable people. White's research became a personal exploration of how to see the people in her own life as people in that same profound way. When she did, everything in her life and her world changed--and the reader's will too.
Without realizing it, we tend to treat people as objects. We see them solely in terms of their usefulness to us. This invites tension and conflict, and changing this mindset is at the heart of the Arbinger Institute's work. This book is a moving true story of an unhappy woman whose life and family were transformed when she began researching how Arbinger's ideas were being implemented in nursing homes. Kimberly White was astonished to discover that those who choose to care for the elderly and ill, earning low pay in a maligned industry, were nevertheless full of satisfaction, compassion and love because of their ability to see their patients as real and true and valuable people. White's research became a personal exploration of how to see the people in her own life as people in that same profound way. When she did, everything in her life and her world changed--and the reader's will too.
To help leaders, managers, and front-line workers build greater trust within the organization, trainer, speaker, and performance expert Karen Hough guides readers through practice of radical collaboration based on the tenets of improvisation.
Every organization dreams of having enough leaders, and yet so few do; bestselling author Mark Miller shows how any organization can build its leadership capacity from the ground up to the C-suite.
The most important attribute high-performing organizations have in common is that they are well led. Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet too many organizations take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. The result is a dearth of leaders and a failure to leverage the full capacity of the enterprise.
Leadership guru and Chick-fil-A executive Mark Miller describes how any organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders. Miller details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks. He provides a game plan for organizations to create a deep leadership bench.
To help bring the ideas to life, Miller uses the story of Charles, a new executive, as he and his team discover best practices from around the world to ensure a continuous supply of capable leaders. Charles and his team then translate their findings into a practical plan that any organization can use to create a leadership culture that will assure a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success.
The most important attribute high-performing organizations have in common is that they are well led. Every organization dreams of having enough leaders. Yet too many organizations take a haphazard or inconsistent approach to leadership development. The result is a dearth of leaders and a failure to leverage the full capacity of the enterprise.
Leadership guru and Chick-fil-A executive Mark Miller describes how any organization can create a culture in which leaders are routinely and systematically developed, resulting in a surplus of leaders. Miller details how to nurture leaders throughout the organization, from the front lines to the executive ranks. He provides a game plan for organizations to create a deep leadership bench.
To help bring the ideas to life, Miller uses the story of Charles, a new executive, as he and his team discover best practices from around the world to ensure a continuous supply of capable leaders. Charles and his team then translate their findings into a practical plan that any organization can use to create a leadership culture that will assure a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success.
Debbe Kennedy shows how to turn all kinds of differences into competitive advantages, from differences in race, gender, age, national origin, and sexual orientation to differences in experience, position, goals, competencies, working habits, and management style. She presents a tested, 6-step process for bringing about changes that create higher levels of innovation, energy, leadership, and employee engagement.
High performers get passed over every day, and this book explains exactly why, through the story of one man's quest to find out what great leaders are actually made of.
From the international bestselling coauthor of The Secret, this business fable follows Blake Brown, a driven professional who does everything right and still loses the promotion he wanted. His mentor sends him on a journey to meet five of his late father's colleagues, and what Blake discovers changes how he understands leadership entirely.
The core insight is simple but often overlooked: Skills, execution, and industry knowledge are necessary but not sufficient. What separates good leaders from great ones lives deeper, in character.
Inside this book you will find
This book is especially useful for high performers who feel stuck, first-time managers building their leadership identity, and organizations looking for development tools that connect with readers emotionally as well as intellectually.
Leadership is not reserved for a select few, and this book is built to prove that.
From the international bestselling coauthor of The Secret, this business fable follows Blake Brown, a driven professional who does everything right and still loses the promotion he wanted. His mentor sends him on a journey to meet five of his late father's colleagues, and what Blake discovers changes how he understands leadership entirely.
The core insight is simple but often overlooked: Skills, execution, and industry knowledge are necessary but not sufficient. What separates good leaders from great ones lives deeper, in character.
Inside this book you will find
- the five specific character traits that define exceptional leaders,
- a story-based format that makes complex ideas easy to absorb and remember,
- a clear framework for diagnosing why capable people plateau in their careers,
- practical insight for anyone who wants to lead in a way that earns genuine followership, and
- a fast, engaging read designed for busy professionals.
This book is especially useful for high performers who feel stuck, first-time managers building their leadership identity, and organizations looking for development tools that connect with readers emotionally as well as intellectually.
Leadership is not reserved for a select few, and this book is built to prove that.
Innovative, original ideas are a company's most powerful competitive advantage. Nathan Mhyrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, has said that a great employee is worth 1,000 times more than an average one simply because of his or her ideas. In Ideaship, the sequel to his bestselling book, How to Get Ideas, Jack Foster shifts from how individuals spark their new ideas to how to unleash the creative genius of an entire organization.
To create an idea-prone workforce, Foster proposes a totally new concept of leadership: "ideaship." Leaders shouldn't be spending their time obsessing over profits or sales or quality or service. Instead, they should devote most of their energies to making the office a place where creative ideas flow, where the workforce truly believes in its ability to brilliantly solve any problem put before it. Above all, where it's fun to work.
With energy and humor, Foster draws on over thirty-five years as creative director of major advertising agencies-organizations whose only purpose is to constantly generate ideas-to offer dozens of fun, fast, often surprising nuggets of practical advice on how to create an environment where innovation and fresh thinking thrive. He reveals why you should only hire people you like, insist employees take vacations whether they want to or not, why efficiency is sometimes inefficient, and how sometimes you can accomplish more by playing the fool instead of the capital L "Leader."
Ideaship spells out proven ways to encourage creativity, simply and clearly and cogently, without a lot of charts and graphs and formulas and acronyms and statistics and fillers. It flips traditional leadership on its head and shows how simple acts of compassion, trust, and generosity of spirit, as well as some seemingly zany actions, can unleash unexpected, vital bursts of creativity.
To create an idea-prone workforce, Foster proposes a totally new concept of leadership: "ideaship." Leaders shouldn't be spending their time obsessing over profits or sales or quality or service. Instead, they should devote most of their energies to making the office a place where creative ideas flow, where the workforce truly believes in its ability to brilliantly solve any problem put before it. Above all, where it's fun to work.
With energy and humor, Foster draws on over thirty-five years as creative director of major advertising agencies-organizations whose only purpose is to constantly generate ideas-to offer dozens of fun, fast, often surprising nuggets of practical advice on how to create an environment where innovation and fresh thinking thrive. He reveals why you should only hire people you like, insist employees take vacations whether they want to or not, why efficiency is sometimes inefficient, and how sometimes you can accomplish more by playing the fool instead of the capital L "Leader."
Ideaship spells out proven ways to encourage creativity, simply and clearly and cogently, without a lot of charts and graphs and formulas and acronyms and statistics and fillers. It flips traditional leadership on its head and shows how simple acts of compassion, trust, and generosity of spirit, as well as some seemingly zany actions, can unleash unexpected, vital bursts of creativity.
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.
Bestselling author, trainer, and prolific Blanchard keynote speaker Vicki Halsey offers readers a tried and tested model for designing teaching experiences that bring out learners' natural brilliance and make learning stick.
Master creative thinking in the AI age with practical tools that blend imagination and discipline for better innovation in this updated, award-winning business bestseller.
Now updated with 20 percent new content, this Porchlight Business Book of the Year returns with all-new case studies and a groundbreaking chapter on creative partnerships with AI and emerging technologies. Natalie Nixon demonstrates that humans are hardwired for creativity—a competency anyone can develop by balancing wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail).
Drawing on interviews with professionals across diverse industries—from farming to medicine to technology—Nixon reveals how inquiry, improvisation, and intuition enhance creative capacity in every kind of work. This second edition features fresh success stories from resourceful businesses that have mastered the delicate dance between human imagination and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing world.
Combining practical creativity tools with illuminating stories of innovative people and organizations, this book serves as a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity within each of us. Nixon offers a dynamic approach to adaptation and innovation that allows the freedom to access our full human potential—even as technology continues to reshape how we work. This essential guide helps anyone cultivate the creative thinking needed to thrive in today's complex business landscape.
Now updated with 20 percent new content, this Porchlight Business Book of the Year returns with all-new case studies and a groundbreaking chapter on creative partnerships with AI and emerging technologies. Natalie Nixon demonstrates that humans are hardwired for creativity—a competency anyone can develop by balancing wonder (awe, audacity, and curiosity) with rigor (discipline, skill-building, and attention to detail).
Drawing on interviews with professionals across diverse industries—from farming to medicine to technology—Nixon reveals how inquiry, improvisation, and intuition enhance creative capacity in every kind of work. This second edition features fresh success stories from resourceful businesses that have mastered the delicate dance between human imagination and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing world.
Combining practical creativity tools with illuminating stories of innovative people and organizations, this book serves as a provocation, an inspiration, and an invitation to unleash the innate creativity within each of us. Nixon offers a dynamic approach to adaptation and innovation that allows the freedom to access our full human potential—even as technology continues to reshape how we work. This essential guide helps anyone cultivate the creative thinking needed to thrive in today's complex business landscape.
The most successful organizations add a healthy dose of play into their daily or weekly routines. In fact, research has shown that when people actually enjoy their jobs they're more creative, more productive, and more committed to doing their jobs well. Companies like the Colorado Health Sciences Center and Southwest Airlines attest to the positive effect of fun at work. Both trace increased job satisfaction and decreased employee downtime to concerted efforts to make fun a part of their corporate identity.
With 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work , Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes offer a complete resource anyone can use to create a dynamic workplace that encourages and inspires fun-and-games camaraderie among employees. It combines thorough research with practical hands-on tools, and features hundreds of ideas real companies have used to lighten up the workplace.
The authors surveyed over 1,500 individuals from organizations around the world and received enthusiastic responses that yielded a broad range of ways to spice up the work day. The suggestions in 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work include humorous training films, dress-up and dress-down days, silly job titles, awards for people who go "above and beyond the call of duty" when a coworker is on vacation, "ritual dances" at the completion of a project, a fashion show when it's time to choose a new uniform-even foam dart fights after meetings.
Hemsath and Yerkes offer ideas for instilling an element of fun into various business functions-from office environment, to meetings, training, communication, hiring, recognition, team building, and "simple acts of fun." In addition to the fun ideas in these chapters, a series of side bars, called "fun facts," "fun quotes," and "fun resources" offer humorous and interesting facts and statements about the effects of fun on workplace performance and job satisfaction, and direct readers to useful sources for products and services to enhance workplace "funativity."
Hemsath and Yerkes show that creating a fun atmosphere in the workplace increases productivity and morale and has a positive effect on the bottom line. Most importantly, they give readers the tools to have more fun at work, no matter where they work, or what position they're in.
With 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work , Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes offer a complete resource anyone can use to create a dynamic workplace that encourages and inspires fun-and-games camaraderie among employees. It combines thorough research with practical hands-on tools, and features hundreds of ideas real companies have used to lighten up the workplace.
The authors surveyed over 1,500 individuals from organizations around the world and received enthusiastic responses that yielded a broad range of ways to spice up the work day. The suggestions in 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work include humorous training films, dress-up and dress-down days, silly job titles, awards for people who go "above and beyond the call of duty" when a coworker is on vacation, "ritual dances" at the completion of a project, a fashion show when it's time to choose a new uniform-even foam dart fights after meetings.
Hemsath and Yerkes offer ideas for instilling an element of fun into various business functions-from office environment, to meetings, training, communication, hiring, recognition, team building, and "simple acts of fun." In addition to the fun ideas in these chapters, a series of side bars, called "fun facts," "fun quotes," and "fun resources" offer humorous and interesting facts and statements about the effects of fun on workplace performance and job satisfaction, and direct readers to useful sources for products and services to enhance workplace "funativity."
Hemsath and Yerkes show that creating a fun atmosphere in the workplace increases productivity and morale and has a positive effect on the bottom line. Most importantly, they give readers the tools to have more fun at work, no matter where they work, or what position they're in.
Female partnerships are deeply rewarding and a powerful way for women to advance in a world still suffering from gender bias. So why don't women work together more often? Polk and Chotas address the myths and fears that keep women from partnering and offer expert advice on how to make female partnerships thrive.