Business & Nonprofits

A BUSINESS INSIDER BEST BOOK

"With Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura shows us how to unlock our ability to design solutions, spark innovation, and solve tough challenges with empathy at the center."—Arianna Huffington

Michael Ventura, entrepreneur and CEO of award-winning strategy and design practice Sub Rosa, shares how empathy—the ability to see the world through someone else’s eyes—could be what your business needs to innovate, connect, and grow.

Having built his career working with iconic brands and institutions such as General Electric, Google, Nike, Warby Parker, and also The United Nations and the Obama Administration, Michael Ventura offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward.

Empathy is not about being nice. It’s not about pity or sympathy either. It’s about understanding—your consumers, your colleagues, and yourself—and it’s a direct path to powerful leadership. As such, Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work and the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value).

For leaders of all levels, this groundbreaking guide lays the foundation to establish a diverse, inventive, and driven team that can meet the challenges of today’s ever-evolving marketplace. If you want to connect to the people you work with and for, you first have to understand them.

The influential New York Times bestselling authors--the "apostles of appreciation" Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick--provide managers and executives with easy ways to add more gratitude to the everyday work environment to help bolster moral, efficiency, and profitability.

Workers want and need to know their work is appreciated. Showing gratitude to employees is the easiest, fastest, most inexpensive way to boost performance. New research shows that gratitude boosts employee engagement, reduces turnover, and leads team members to express more gratitude to one another--strengthening team bonds. Studies have also shown that gratitude is beneficial for those expressing it and is one of the most powerful variables in predicting a person's overall well-being--above money, health, and optimism. The WD-40 Company knows this firsthand. When the leadership gave thousands of managers training in expressing gratitude to their employees, the company saw record increases in revenue.

Despite these benefits, few executives effectively utilize this simple tool. In fact, new research reveals "people are less likely to express gratitude at work than anyplace else." What accounts for the staggering chasm between awareness of gratitude's benefits and the failure of so many leaders to do it--or do it well? Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton call this the gratitude gap. In this invaluable guide, they identify the widespread and pernicious myths about managing others that cause leaders to withhold thanks.

Gostick and Elton also introduce eight simple ways managers can show employees they are valued. They supplement their insights and advice with stories of how many of today's most successful leaders--such as Alan Mulally of Ford and Hubert Joly of Best Buy--successfully incorporated gratitude into their leadership styles.

Showing gratitude isn't just about being nice, it's about being smart--really smart--and it's a skill that everyone can easily learn.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER
TORONTO STAR BESTSELLER
Based on his TEDx talk "Everyday Leadership (the Lollipop Moment)"--voted one of the 15 most inspirational TED talks of all time--This Is Day One is leadership expert Drew Dudley's guide to cultivating the behaviors that will help you to succeed and empower those around you.

If you're intimidated by the mystique surrounding leadership, this book is for you. Dudley simplifies leadership without denying its complexity, demonstrating that leadership in all its forms begins at the same clear and accessible place for everyone: what he calls "Day One."

Day One is when you discover, define, and start to consistently deliver on your foundational leadership values. Living that day over and over is what creates leaders, and Dudley provides the key tools necessary to craft and commit to your own personal Day One, including:

• A step-by-step process designed to surface your core leadership values and embed them into your daily behavior
• A roadmap to behavioral changes proven to increase commitment, pride, productivity, and happiness
• Insights into key leadership values that drive performance and impact

Sharing the process that led him through battles with alcohol, obesity, and personal tragedy, Dudley shows you how to develop a relentless commitment to the daily behaviors that will make you a better executive, coach, or teacher, and how you can inspire others to do the same.


Most of the leadership on the planet comes from people who don't see themselves as leaders. This Is Day One shows you how to start changing that. Through the insights of leaders of all types--CEOs, elite athletes, cab drivers, custodians, and everyone in between--Dudley helps you understand what your Day One needs to look like, reminds you why you're a leader, and makes clear what you can do about it--starting today, on Day One.


 

We know why diversity is important, but how do we drive real change at work? Diversity and inclusion expert Jennifer Brown provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.

Human potential is unleashed when we feel like we belong. That's why inclusive workplaces experience higher engagement, performance, and profits. But the reality is that many people still feel unable to bring their true selves to work. In a world where the talent pool is becoming increasingly diverse, it's more important than ever for leaders to truly understand how to support inclusion.

Drawing on years of work with many leading organizations, Jennifer Brown shows what leaders at any level can do to spark real change. She guides readers through the Inclusive Leader Continuum, a set of four developmental stages: unaware, aware, active, and advocate. Brown describes the hallmarks of each stage, the behaviors and mind-sets that inform it, and what readers can do to keep progressing. Whether you're a powerful CEO or a new employee without direct reports, there are actions you can take that can drastically change the day-to-day reality for your colleagues and the trajectory of your organization.

Anyone can--and should--be an inclusive leader. Brown lays out simple steps to help you understand your role, boost your self-awareness, take action, and become a better version of yourself in the process. This book will meet you where you are and provide a road map to create a workplace of greater mutual understanding where everyone's talents can shine.

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

Two veteran executive coaches help today's leaders learn how to retain and inspire their teams through the one thing their research has found works: Leading with Heart.

In these pages, leadership coaches John Baird and Edward Sullivan share hundreds of hours of research and firsthand accounts of guiding leaders at some of the world's most respected big brands and small startups (Apple, Nike, Google, and Slack to name a few).

Through their coaching and research they uncovered the five behaviors transformative leaders engage in to connect authentically with their teams:

1. They are aware of their people's needs. They help their people to confront the fears that hold them back.They understand their own desires and what drives their people. They leverage their unique gifts and help people find their own. They connect with their core sense of purpose and help people find theirs.

The key to achieving these behaviors is asking the right questions and having conversations that connect you and your employees on the deepest human level--conversations the authors coach you on how to navigate.

At a time when workplaces are struggling to build high morale and connected cultures, Leading with Heart will help leaders to unlock the best version of themselves and those around them with transformative results.

No matter where you are in your career, this book is your launch point to leading with heart. By encouraging you to ignore outdated "leadership hacks" and embrace introspection and growth, Leading with Heart guides you to ask the right questions and find your own answers. Now you too can create a leadership game-plan that is authentic to you and brings out the best in those around you.

Winner, 2021 Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, for Leadership and Strategy

"THE MOST UNLIKELY OF PEOPLE, IN THE MOST IMPROBABLE OF CIRCUMSTANCES,

CAN BECOME EXTRAORDINARY."

WE NEED MORE LEADERS.

From socio-political chaos and workplace disruption to the climate change crisis, we have

never needed people with the skill and will to collaborate to create a better world more

than now. We need people who are willing to fill the leadership void. People who will

embrace the influence they have. People who believe in improving society and workplace

culture - not only because it makes life better, but because it is proven to yield positive

results.

The Promises of Giants is a challenge to anyone who aspires to make a difference in their

environment. Over fourteen promises, it seamlessly intertwines personal anecdotes and

workplace and social observation with the latest research, to provide practical, proven tips

and strategies to empower you to maximize your own potential and inspire others. It is

not a self-help book.



It is a how-to guide for winning, rooted in the belief that the most

unlikely of people, in the most improbable of circumstances, can become extraordinary.

John Amaechi well understands the responsibilities and potential that come with being a

giant. The Promises of Giants is the product of a lifetime spent observing and studying

effective leadership - from accompanying his mother's visits to her dying patients to

competing at the highest levels of professional sport, through two decades of

management consulting with multinational corporations. These experiences have shown

that everyone has the ability to act decisively to influence the world in a positive way.



Everyone is a giant to someone.

What every leader needs to know about dignity and how to create a culture in which everyone thrives

This landmark book from an expert in dignity studies explores the essential but underrecognized role of dignity as part of good leadership. Extending the reach of her award winning book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, Donna Hicks now contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity.

Most people know very little about dignity, the author has found, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. Hicks highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization, whether corporate, religious, governmental, healthcare, or beyond. Brimming with key research findings, real life case studies, and workable recommendations, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of how best to be together in a conflict ridden world.

NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • Winner of CMI Management Book of the Year 2019

Based on an in-depth analysis of over 2,600 leaders drawn from a database of more than 17,000 CEOs and C-suite executives, as well 13,000 hours of interviews, and two decades of experience advising CEOs and executive boards, Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell overturn the myths about what it takes to get to the top and succeed.

Their groundbreaking research was the featured cover story in the May-June 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. It reveals the common attributes and counterintuitive choices that set apart successful CEOs—lessons that we can apply to our own careers.
 
Much of what we hear about who gets to the top, and how, is wrong. Those who become chief executives set their sights on the C-suite at an early age. In fact, over 70 percent of the CEOs didn’t have designs on the corner office until later in their careers. You must graduate from an elite college. In fact, only 7 percent of CEOs in the dataset are Ivy League graduates--and 8 percent didn't graduate from college at all. To become a CEO you need a flawless résumé. The reality: 45 percent of CEO candidates had at least one major career blowup.
 
What those who reach the top do share are four key behaviors that anyone can master: they are decisive; they are reliable, delivering what they promised when the promise it, without exception; they adapt boldly, and they engage with stakeholders without shying away from conflict.
 
Based on this breakthrough study of the most successful people in business, Botelho and Powell offer career advice for everyone who aspires to get ahead. Based on research insights illustrated by real life stories from CEOs and boardrooms, they tell us how to:   
 
- Fast-track our career by deploying the career catapults used by those who get to the top quickly
 
- Overcome the hidden handicaps to getting the job we want.
 
- Avoid the 5 hazards that most commonly derail those promoted into a new role.
 
For everyone who aspires to rise up through the organization and achieve their full potential, The CEO Next Door is an essential guide.

The international bestseller--now with a new preface by author John Kotter.

Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter's ideas on change management and leadership.
From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession--we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It's the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever.

John Kotter's now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every organization must go through to achieve its goals, and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work. Leading Change is widely recognized as his seminal work and is an important precursor to his newer ideas on acceleration published in Harvard Business Review.

Needed more today than at any time in the past, this bestselling business book serves as both visionary guide and practical toolkit on how to approach the difficult yet crucial work of leading change in any type of organization. Reading this highly personal book is like spending a day with the world's foremost expert on business leadership. You're sure to walk away inspired--and armed with the tools you need to inspire others.

Published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Become a next generation leader--rich in emotional and social intelligence and orchestrating outstanding collaborative results--by mastering these eight status quo-shattering paradoxes.

The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership unpacks the fresh strategies and new mindset required today from a next generation leader.

Author Dr. Tim Elmore helps leaders of all kinds navigate increasingly complex, rapidly changing environments, as well as manage teams who bring a range of new demands and expectations to the workplace that haven't been seen even one generation prior.

After working alongside John C. Maxwell for twenty years, Tim offers counter-intuitive paradoxes that, when practiced, enable today's leader to differentiate themselves and better connect with their team and customers. The book furnishes ideas that equip leaders to inspire team members in a way a paycheck never could.

Having trained hundreds of thousands of young professionals to develop into leaders--Dr. Elmore shares the secrets of next generation leaders who have practiced the unique paradoxes outlined in this book and inspired their team members in a way that a paycheck never could.

In The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership, readers will:

• Learn how today's team members require a combination of different qualities from their leaders than they did in even the recent past;
• Grasp the importance of eight key paradoxes that are critical for next generation leaders to put into practice right now;
• Be inspired by historic and modern-day leaders who lived the eight paradoxes; and
• Understand how they too can lead with the eight paradoxes, guiding them to emotional and social intelligence that resonates with their teams and leads to outstanding collaborative results.

The world’s most famous military treatise, in an acclaimed translation by the award-winning translator of the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching
 
For more than two thousand years, Sun-tzu's The Art of War has provided leaders with essential advice on battlefield tactics and management strategies. An elemental part of Chinese culture, it has also become a touchstone for the Western struggle for survival and success, whether in battle, in business, or in relationships. Now, in this crisp, accessible translation, eminent scholar John Minford brings this seminal work to life for today's readers. Capturing the literary quality of the work, Minford presents the core text in two formats: first, the unadorned ancient words of wisdom ascribed to Sun-tzu; then, the same text with extensive running commentary from the canon of traditional Chinese commentators. A lively, learned introduction and other valuable apparatus round out this authoritative volume.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" —Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED
From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond.

In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive—which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play.

Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings—conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp—and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.

The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue—and how you host and attend them.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success—“résumé virtues”—and our core principles.
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST
 
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives.

Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.

Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.

“Joy,” David Brooks writes, “is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.”

Praise for The Road to Character

“A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This profound and eloquent book is written with moral urgency and philosophical elegance.”—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon

“A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin.”—The Guardian

“Original and eye-opening . . . Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave an idea bigger than the sum of its parts.”—USA Today

A powerful call to action for achieving equality in leadership.

Women make up fewer than ten per cent of national leaders worldwide, and behind this eye-opening statistic lies a pattern of unequal access to power. Through conversations with some of the world's most powerful and interesting women--including Jacinda Ardern, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christine Lagarde, Michelle Bachelet, and Theresa May--Women and Leadership explores gender bias and asks why there aren't more women in leadership roles.