This book shatters leadership myths to reveal a new understanding of how exceptional leaders grow from adversity.

All Leaders Face Adversity. Exceptional Leaders Thrive in It. Leadership is often a struggle, and yet strong taboos keep us from talking openly and honestly about our difficulties for fear of looking weak and seeming to lack confidence. But Steven Snyder shows that this discussion is vital—adversity is precisely what unlocks our greatest potential. Using real-life stories drawn from his extensive research studying 151 diverse episodes of leadership struggle—as well as from his experiences working with Bill Gates in the early years of Microsoft and as a CEO and executive coach—Snyder shows how to navigate intense challenges to achieve personal growth and organizational success. He details strategies for embracing struggle and offers a host of unique tools and hands-on practices to help you implement them. By mastering the art of struggle, you’ll be better equipped to meet life’s challenges and focus on what matters most. “Leadership and the Art of Struggle provides you with the opportunity to learn from Snyder’s remarkable wisdom. It is a living guide that you can return to time and time again as new situations arise.” —From the foreword by Bill George, former CEO, Medtronic; Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School; and author of the bestselling True North “The leadership book of the year…one of the most intelligent, revealing, and practical books on the subject I have ever read. It confronts a vital truth: that challenge is the crucible for greatness and that these adversities introduce us to ourselves.” —Jim Kouzes, coauthor of the bestselling The Leadership Challenge “Steven Snyder covers all the bases from channeling your energy to managing conflict, including a great segment about overcoming your leadership blind spots...This encouraging book is a must-read!” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and Great Leaders Grow “Leadership and the Art of the Struggle gives you clear and compelling advice on transforming pitfalls into possibilities.” —Jodee Kozlak, Executive Vice President, Human Resources, Target

• Offers proven strategies and tactics to help guide leaders through difficult or challenging situations
• Features powerful first-person stories from leaders who have mastered the art of struggle
• Written by an experienced leader and executive coach who worked directly with Bill Gates at Microsoft in its early years
• Read the press release here; for media review copies contact [email protected]m

 

Leadership and the Art of Struggle shatters leadership myths to reveal a new understanding of how exceptional leaders grow from adversity. The image that effective leaders guide their organizations on perpetually smooth journeys quite simply defies reality. Leadership is often a struggle, and yet strong taboos keep us from talking openly and honestly about our struggles for fear of looking weak and seeming to lack confidence.

Exceptional leaders intuitively understand the paradox. They know its precisely struggle that unlocks the potential for the greatest growth. Instead of denying struggle, these leaders embrace struggle as an opportunity for learning, as an art to be mastered.

Leadership and the Art of Struggle paints a realistic portrait of how great leaders navigate intense challenges for personal growth and organizational success. Through 150 stories of leadership struggle drawn from nearly 100 interviews, as well as from his experiences as an early executive at Microsoft, a CEO of a public company, and an executive coach, Steven Snyder derives mastery strategies for welcoming struggle as an integral part of your leadership journey. To help you implement each of these strategies, he offers a host of unique tools and specific, hands-on practices. Youll learn how to cultivate the best mindset for confronting challenges, explore multiple tactics for dealing with struggle, and keep your energy high so you can continue to learn and grow.

Leadership and the Art of Struggle begins a new conversation about leadership. The very striving to make important human values real and effective is core to the practice of leadership. By mastering the art of struggle, leaders meet lifes challenges and adversities, focusing their energies on what matters most.

Executives, investors, and the business press routinely chant the mantra that corporations are required to “maximize shareholder value.” In this pathbreaking book, renowned corporate expert Lynn Stout debunks the myth that corporate law mandates shareholder primacy. Stout shows how shareholder value thinking endangers not only investors but the rest of us as well, leading managers to focus myopically on short-term earnings; discouraging investment and innovation; harming employees, customers, and communities; and causing companies to indulge in reckless, sociopathic, and irresponsible behaviors. And she looks at new models of corporate purpose that better serve the needs of investors, corporations, and society.

We all need to involve others to accomplish tasks and achieve our goals, but all too often involving others seems like more trouble than it's worth. You Don't Have to Do It Alone Alone is the Swiss Army Knife of involvement—a set of tools that can be used in any setting to get you the help you need. The authors lay out a simple, straightforward plan for involving others to get things done, detailing a practical five-step involvement process that begins with five key questions:

What kind of involvement is needed?
How do I know who to include?
How do I invite people to become involved?
How do I keep people involved?
How do I finish the job?

The answers to these questions serve as a guide to finding the right people and keeping them energized, enthusiastic, and committed until the work is completed. Real life examples from corporations, government, and nonprofits illustrate the process in action. You'll learn to involve others in a way that will actually make your work easier, resulting in less stress, better ideas, and more successful outcomes.

Since 1992, Don Mitchell and Carol Coles have been studying the most successful companies, those whose stock prices continually rose the fastest under the same CEO during the previous three years. They discovered that the most successful companies in this group, unlike their competitors, made major improvements in their business models every two to four years. This was their "secret weapon."

This groundbreaking book draws on the authors' extensive study of hundreds of companies. It offers step-by-step guidance for using the most effective, often-ignored, and least understood techniques for establishing and improving on an industry-leading position through continuous business model improvement. It demonstrates how to use the resources and competitive advantages from each reinvention to establish a foundation for future reinventions. The result is an ever-increasing, customer-delighting, stakeholder-rewarding lead over the competition.

• Shares previously hidden secrets of how any company can improve sales and profit growth faster by using continual business model reinvention
• Enables any business to improve customer benefits, adjust prices to make what it offers more attractive to acquire and use, and reduce costs at a record-setting pace
• Provides dozens of new examples of developing industry leadership by a wide variety of small to large companies

Telecommuting-an increasingly common practice of working from home or away from a central office, while staying linked by phone and/or computer-has become a way of life for more than eleven million people in the United States, and the number constantly rises. But most books on the subject focus on its technological or administrative aspects rather than its human ones. What are the pros and cons of telecommuting for the legions of men and women that actually do it on a daily basis? And how can current or would-be telecommuters maximize their performance while minimizing their headaches?
In 101 Tips for Telecommuters, seasoned telecommuter Debra Dinnocenzo shares her practical, easy-to-implement "action tips" for making telecommuting as efficient and productive as possible. Written for full-time, occasional, and aspiring telecommuters, this helpful book covers everything from managing one's own time, balancing telecommuting with family demands, and working effectively with others from afar to networking the "virtual" way, getting a grip on technological overkill and even resisting the ever-beckoning refrigerator when working at home!
Dinnocenzo offers useful advice on special self-management factors to consider when telecommuting; how to keep in touch with all the people-coworkers, managers, support personnel, customers, and others-who make up your telecommuting world; and even how to nurture crucial ties with suppliers, vendors, and service providers.
In the new age of professional mobility, 101 Tips for Telecommuters is the perfect guide for the millions of Americans who want to succeed in this exciting and challenging new way of work.

• A concise, user-friendly guide for telecommuters, written by a veteran telecommuting executive with more than a decade of first-hand experience as both a telecommuter and telemanager

• Focuses on the myriad tasks and roles telecommuters must handle on a daily basis

• Includes a Telecommuter Self-Assessment Checklist so readers can determine if telecommuting is right for them, a Telecommuter Start-Up Guide, and a Telecommuter Resource Guide to refer to whenever telecommuting gets tough

Drawing on ancient and contemporary wisdom, as well as modern research, Richard Leider and David Shapiro provide insightful ways of thinking and being that help us find meaning and purpose in the second half of life. This deeply reflective book uses a safari, (referencing a trip the authors took to Africa in 2006) as a metaphor to show how the second half of life can be a journey of discovery. In what may be their most personal book to date, Leider and Shapiro share dozens of moving stories, from both their own experiences and those of their safari companions, that offer sometimes surprising examples of lives well-lived, lives that exemplify the qualities of authenticity and wholeheartedness that they believe are essential to finding meaning and purpose in the second half of life. There are many pathways to putting our whole selves into life, especially during the second half, and in Something to Live For, Leider and Shapiro explore many routes to vital aging.