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.

The corporation has become the core institution of the modern world. Designed to seek profit and power, it has pursued both with endless tenacity, steadily bending the framework of law and even challenging the sovereign status of the state. Where did the corporation come from? How did it get so much power? What is its ultimate trajectory?
After he sold his successful computer book publishing business to a large corporation, Ted Nace felt increasingly driven to find answers to these questions. In Gangs of America he details the rise of corporate power in America through a series of fascinating stories, each organized around a different facet of the central question: "How did corporations get more rights than people?" Beginning with the origin of the corporation in medieval Great Britain, Nace traces both the events that shaped the evolution of corporate power and the colorful personalities who played major roles. Gangs of America is a uniquely accessible synthesis of the latest scholarly research, a compelling historical narrative, and a distinctive personal voice.

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.

At last, everyday leaders can put the science of leadership into action every day to model, inspire, and empower others to perform at their best.

The Science of Leadership brings together two of the world’s leading experts in human development and coaching—Dr. Jeffrey Hull and Margaret Moore, both Thinkers50 Award–winning coaching thinkers. Drawing from decades of research at the intersection of neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and organizational behavior, they reveal how leaders can thrive in an era of complexity and change.

This book organizes the science of leadership (15,000+ studies and articles showing what improves individual, team, and organizational performance) into nine capacities which build upon each other. Each capacity is brought to life by real-life stories, a science overview, practices, and ways to deal with overuse. These capacities are organized into three levels with increasing complexity:
Self-Oriented
1. Conscious - See clearly, including myself
2. Authentic - Care
3. Agile - Flex
Other-Oriented
4. Relational - Help
5. Positive - Strengthen
6. Compassionate - Resonate
System-Oriented (team and organization)
7. Shared - Share
8. Servant - Serve
9. Transformational - Transform

Whether you're a C-suite executive, an emerging leader, or a professional coach or consultant, The Science of Leadership delivers the fundamentals you need to know. You will quiet your ego and feel more fulfilled as a leader as your impact grows. Leading will feel more like flying than trudging uphill, with more ease, less strain, and more pleasure.

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.

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.

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.

Time has become a precious commodity, so business leaders who can save their customers' time more effectively than competitors do will win their loyalty. This book shows how it's done.


Traditionally, corporate efforts to improve have focused on making internal processes run faster. But customers value their personal time far more than a company's time. Real-time companies beat the competition by being faster and more responsive in meeting customer needs.

For example, one company profiled in this book allows customers to customize their products online to the exact shape, size, color, and graphic label they wish. Through lean manufacturing, just-in-time inventory, and digital technologies, customers receive their finished products in days.

The book describes how to apply this real-time message across all areas of products and services: (1) development, (2) functioning (how the product or service actually works), (3) production and delivery, and (4) usage (servicing, maintaining, repairing, and enhancing products and services). Numerous examples describe how companies and organizations of all types and sizes are transforming their products and services to real time in many different ways.

The Hamster Revolution is a timely solution to both the widespread problem of email overload as well as most people's inefficient (or nonexistent) systems for categorizing and storing email messages. This book provides the practical steps needed to deal with these problems and become more efficient in our work.

The authors of the award-winning (2007 Nautilus Book Award and 2008 Axiom Book Award) and bestselling book Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace take the next step by showing how to rebuild trust in any workplace or organization after it has been broken, which is increasingly common because of harsh cutbacks, betrayal of commitments, relationship conflicts, and many other causes.

This new edition of a bestseller (150,000 copies sold) about acquiring all the business you need through referrals adds powerful new concepts and expands into the digital age

Nobody likes cold calls. And nobody really needs to make them. The Referral of a Lifetime teaches a step-by-step system that will allow anyone to generate a steady stream of new business through consistent referrals from existing customers and friends and, at the same time, maximize business with existing customers. Through an entertaining fictional story, Tim Templeton emphasizes the importance of applying the Golden Rule in business-building an ongoing relationship with customers based on genuine respect and caring, rather than just making the sale and moving on. But it's not enough to simply hope your customers will refer you-Templeton offers a proven system to make sure that they do.

In this completely updated and expanded edition Templeton introduces the concept of the Perfect Client Avatar, a detailed profile of your ideal client that you keep in mind at all times to focus your efforts as you build your business. And he adds a new principle to his process: social proof. Templeton shows how the power of social media can help you leverage reviews, testimonials, and case studies of satisfied clients to expand your business 24/7-add clients while you sleep! Your customers and clients already know every new contact you will ever need to succeed-by applying Tim Templeton's system they will naturally refer them to you.