Leadership and Drive: Best Practices for Cultivating High-Performance Teams


Book Description

Executives are always looking for competent, capable professionals who can lead and drive effectively in their organizations. Remember, your best opportunities come from people you know, so make your executive your next fan and supporter. This book will guide you through: - The best practices for leading and driving within your organization, if even as an individual contributor - How email can be a problematic way to communicate, and the best ways to communicate & influence others depending on situation complexity & sensitivity - How to clone yourself and impart these best practices to your teams - Why the typical management pyramid should actually be inverted - Why ideal management of directs is a two-way street, and why the best managers cultivate their teams like an attentive gardener




No Bullsh!t Leadership


Book Description

What makes a truly exceptional leader? Discover the practical, fail-proof tools that will help you to fine-tune your leadership skills, solidify respect among your workforce, and ensure your company’s lasting success. When Martin G. Moore was asked to rescue a leading energy corporation from ever-increasing debt and a lack of executive accountability, he faced an uphill battle. Not only had he never before stepped into the role of CEO; he also had no experience in the rapidly evolving energy sector. Relying on the practical leadership principles he had honed throughout his thirty-three-year career, he overhauled the company’s culture, redefined its leadership capability, and increased earnings by a compound annual growth rate of 125 percent. In No Bullsh!t Leadership, Moore outlines these proven leadership principles in a clear, direct way. He sweeps away the mystical fog surrounding leadership today and lays out the essential steps for success. Moore combines this tangible advice with honest, real-world examples from his own career to provide a no-nonsense look at the skills a true leader possesses. Moore’s principles for no bullshit leadership focus on: Creating value by focusing only on the things that matter most Facing conflict, adversity, and ambiguity with decisiveness and confidence Setting uncompromising standards for behavior and performance Selecting and developing great people Making those people accountable, and empowering them to do their best Setting simple, value-driven goals and communicating them relentlessly Though the steps aren’t easy, they are guaranteed, if implemented, to lift your leadership–and your organization–to a higher level. Wherever you are in your career, No Bullsh!t Leadership will help you develop the skills and form the habits needed to become a no bullshit leader.




The Wisdom of Teams


Book Description

The definitive classic on high-performance teams The Wisdom of Teams is the definitive work on how to create high-performance teams in any organization. Having sold nearly a half million copies and been translated into more than fifteen languages, the authors’ clarion call that teams should be the basic unit of organization for most businesses has permanently shaped the way companies reach the highest levels of performance. Using engaging case studies and testimonials from both successful and failed teams—ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the U.S. Army to high school sports—the authors explain the dynamics of teams both in great detail and with a broad view. Their conclusions and prescriptions span the familiar to the counterintuitive: • Commitment to performance goals and common purpose is more important to team success than team building. • Opportunities for teams exist in all parts of the organization. • Real teams are the most successful spearheads of change at all levels. • Working in teams naturally integrates performance and learning. • Team “endings” can be as important to manage as team “beginnings.” Wisdom lies in recognizing a team’s unique potential to deliver results and in understanding its many benefits—development of individual members, team accomplishments, and stronger companywide performance. Katzenbach and Smith’s comprehensive classic is the essential guide to unlocking the potential of teams in your organization.







EMPOWERED


Book Description

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--




The Discipline of Teams


Book Description

In The Discipline of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith explore the often counter-intuitive features that make up high-performing teams—such as selecting team members for skill, not compatibility—and explain how managers can set specific goals to foster team development. The result is improved productivity and teams that can be counted on to deliver more than just the sum of their parts. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.




Winning Well


Book Description

To succeed in today’s hypercompetitive economy, managers must master creating a productive work environment for employees while still making numbers. Tense, overextended workplaces force managers to choose between results and relationships. Executives set aggressive goals, so managers drive their teams to deliver, resulting in burnout. Or, employees seek connection and support, so managers focus on relationships and fail to make the numbers. However, managers need to achieve both. In Winning Well, managers will learn how to: Stamp out the corrosive win-at-all-costs mentality Focus on the game, not just the score Reinforce behaviors that produce results Sustain energy and momentum Be the leader people want to work for To prevent burnout and disengagement, while still achieving the necessary success for the company, managers must learn how to get their employees productive while creating an environment that makes them want to produce even more. Winning Well offers a quick, practical action plan for making the workplace productive, rewarding, and even fun.




Accountable Leaders


Book Description

Proven methods to push your organization to its maximum potential with responsible leadership Accountable Leaders is the real-world guide to propelling your business to extraordinary levels of performance and achievement. Leadership accountability is a major issue in organizations around the globe. Research has shown that teams and individual employees are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the degree of accountability demonstrated by their leaders. Effective teams need responsible and accountable leaders—the solution seems simple. Yet, thousands of businesses are struggling with mediocre performance and widening gaps in leadership. This essential resource provides practical and no-nonsense strategies to transform any organization into a cohesive, highly motivated culture of accountable leaders and fully committed teams. Bestselling author Dr. Vince Molinaro shares his proven methods of optimal leadership accountability, providing a step-by-step blueprint for leaders in any organization. Developed from years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies build strong leaders and effective teams, this book will enable you to: Build strong leadership accountability to leverage competitive advantage, increase team performance, and close the leadership gap in your organization Understand why gaps in leadership occur and recognize accountability issues in your own organization Develop an effective strategy to instill a culture of accountability and responsibility in your business Identify and implement organizational practices that encourage accountable leadership throughout your management structure Accountable Leaders is a vital guide for anyone who leads a team: from managers and supervisors, to CEOs and CHROs. This invaluable guide will provide the tools and knowledge to take you and your organization to incredible levels of performance and achievement.




The Culture Code


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Talent Code unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. Drawing on examples that range from Internet retailer Zappos to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade to a daring gang of jewel thieves, Coyle offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, The Culture Code offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. The Culture Code puts the power in your hands. No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together. Praise for The Culture Code “I’ve been waiting years for someone to write this book—I’ve built it up in my mind into something extraordinary. But it is even better than I imagined. Daniel Coyle has produced a truly brilliant, mesmerizing read that demystifies the magic of great groups. It blows all other books on culture right out of the water.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Option B, Originals, and Give and Take “If you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better




High Performance Habits


Book Description

THESE HABITS WILL MAKE YOU EXTRAORDINARY. Twenty years ago, author Brendon Burchard became obsessed with answering three questions: 1. Why do some individuals and teams succeed more quickly than others and sustain that success over the long term? 2. Of those who pull it off, why are some miserable and others consistently happy on their journey? 3. What motivates people to reach for higher levels of success in the first place, and what practices help them improve the most After extensive original research and a decade as the world’s leading high performance coach, Burchard found the answers. It turns out that just six deliberate habits give you the edge. Anyone can practice these habits and, when they do, extraordinary things happen in their lives, relationships, and careers. Which habits can help you achieve long-term success and vibrant well-being no matter your age, career, strengths, or personality? To become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage. The art and science of how to do all this is what this book is about. Whether you want to get more done, lead others better, develop skill faster, or dramatically increase your sense of joy and confidence, the habits in this book will help you achieve it faster. Each of the six habits is illustrated by powerful vignettes, cutting-edge science, thought-provoking exercises, and real-world daily practices you can implement right now. If you’ve ever wanted a science-backed, heart-centered plan to living a better quality of life, it’s in your hands. Best of all, you can measure your progress. A link to a free professional assessment is included in the book.