Listen. Learn. Love. Lead


Book Description

Are you addicted to your cell phone? Are you green and growing or brown and dying? Do you know the 5 Steps to Happiness? Do you like you? These are just a handful of the simple messages presented in this book. This book certainly can be read from cover to cover. The way I like to read a book like this is to just randomly open it to a page. Do it this way, and that is the message you are suppose to hear! A special "SMILE" reflection page accompanies each message. I encourage you to put pen to paper. There are many benefits to journaling and reflection; offers a deeper level of learning, order, action, and release. However you choose to read it, I hope you will enjoy it! And if I'm lucky these simple messages will inspire you!




Listen, Learn, Love


Book Description

“Full of insights and lessons you can use throughout your life—especially in challenging times—to create and enjoy better relationships.” —Sarah Beckman, author of Hope in Hard Places Listen, Learn, Love shows those who are feeling overwhelmed, bored, frustrated, stressed, or lonely with the people closest to them how to make changes for the better quickly—even if the other person isn’t willing or engaged. It is a user-friendly guide filled with practical suggestions and simple skills anyone can use to create better relationships. And who doesn’t have at least one relationship in their life they would like to be better? While wanting a good relationship is a great beginning, building great relationships takes a few skills. Listen, Learn, Love is packed with concise and actionable tips shared with clarity, humor and authenticity, and shows readers how to dramatically improve their relationships in thirty days or less. “Susie Miller gets to the heart of what makes relationships thrive in all the messiness and stress of life. This book is a treasure that you can read in a couple hours but that will benefit you for the rest of your life.” —Brian D. McLaren, author of Faith After Doubt “Every once in a while a fresh voice arrives on the scene that cuts through the jargon and meets us right where we are. Susie Miller is exactly that! Her sage advice and authentic, upbeat style had me hooked from page one. Listen, Love, Learn is for everyone who longs for those deep, abiding relationships that make life meaningful.” —Ann Vertel, PhD, author of Take Charge of Your Confidence




Look, Listen, Learn, LEAD


Book Description

Look, Listen, Learn, LEAD: A District-Wide Systems Approach to Teaching and Learning in PreK-12 lays out the transformational journey of Hampton City Schools (HCS), an urban school division of 30 schools in southeastern Virginia. Our school district faces numerous challenges, such as 62% of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch and 14% of students holding an IEP, and in 2015-2016, Hampton City Schools’ state accreditation rate was approximately half the statewide rate and on a downward trend. In only three years, that was turned around and HCS exceeded the statewide accreditation rate, a more than 100% improvement with 100% of our schools accredited without conditions. We attribute this in large part to our dedicated educators and their implementation of district-wide systems for curriculum, instruction, checking for student understanding, climate, and culture. The goal of this book is to break down the process of what it takes to bring about large-scale educational change that is sustainable. We describe a process for developing a strong mission and vision to undergird the work around a variety of district-wide systems. This book provides insights into how to improve climate and culture, create a guaranteed and viable written curriculum, establish a process for evaluating its implementation, and create a balanced assessment framework to measure student success. Complete with example templates, action plans, and lessons learned, this book is a true example of theory-into-practice to bring about sustained improvement for all learners.




Dare to Lead


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part HBO Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.




Deeper Dating


Book Description

With exercises, practical tools, and inspiring stories, Deeper Dating will guide you on a journey to find the love—and personal fulfillment—you long for Lose weight. Be confident. Keep your partner guessing. At the end of the day, this soulless approach to dating doesn't lead to love but to insecurity and desperation. In Deeper Dating, Ken Page presents a new path to love. Out of his decades of work as a psychotherapist and his own personal struggle to find love, Page teaches that the greatest magnet for real love lies in our "Core Gifts"—the places of our deepest sensitivity, longing, and passion. Deeper Dating guides us to discover our own Core Gifts and empowers us to express them with courage, generosity, and discrimination in our dating life. When we do this, something miraculous happens: we begin to attract people who love us for who we are, we become more self-assured and emotionally available, and we lose our taste for relationships that chip away at our self-esteem. Without losing a pound, changing our hairstyle, or buying a single new accessory, we find healthy love moving closer . . . Deeper Dating integrates the best of human intimacy theory with timeless spiritual truths and translates them into a practical, step-by-step process.




Living for Two


Book Description

This book is for those who savor the journey and are willing to put their lives under a microscope to explore how the pieces fit together. How do you come to define who you are? How do you fill the emptiness in your soul? How do you come to know who you were born to be? Have you lost someone to a violent death? Have you ever doubted your own intrinsic worth, felt crazy, or been labeled by the mental health system? Can you use a dose of meaning and purpose - because we live in a world that can be so unjustly harsh? If you can say yes to any of these questions, this book is for you.




Using Focus Groups to Listen, Learn, and Lead in Higher Education


Book Description

Using Focus Groups to Listen, Learn, and Lead in Higher Education presents an easy-to-use 6-step guide to help leaders in higher education listen to and learn from their stakeholders in order to enhance decision making. The big questions facing institutions today--especially those surrounding access, affordability, and accountability--require more than dashboards. Metrics and quantitative data alone do not offer lasting solutions and improvements. Using qualitative methods to listen to the voices of those involved, especially students and staff, is critical. Focus groups constitute the most appropriate, rigorous, and relevant qualitative research tool for this purpose, and one that is cost-effective and builds community when conducted using the ODU Method described in this book. Using Focus Groups is a single, comprehensive, and practical resource that describes why, when, and how to use focus groups. The authors provide detailed guidance for using focus groups, from developing the research questions with stakeholders, through training and recruiting moderators, and identifying and recruiting participants, to the logistics of conducting focus groups, and ultimately analyzing data and developing final reports. Conversational vignettes illustrate the discussions that regularly occur in each step and help the reader better understand the process. Fifteen appendices provide templates and examples of every part of the process.Written particularly for institutional research and assessment staff and upper-level administrators, this book will also appeal to deans, department and program chairs and directors, faculty leaders, and administrative unit directors, including those in auxiliary and student services, alumni associations, and university foundations. It also serves as an excellent resource for higher education research methods courses.The authors are uniquely positioned to guide readers in this process. The team developed and refined this technique over two decades at Old Dominion University. They have conducted over 100 focus groups with campus, nonprofit, local, and international community organizations to assist them in assessing student learning, transition, and preparedness for the workforce, as well as evaluating organizations work and planning future projects.




Strategic Listening


Book Description

Listening is so simple, yet so difficult. Many times, listening is taken for granted. One could therefore say that listening is the forgotten part of communication. Although organizations have more digital and analog communication channels than ever, too little time is spent listening to customers, employees, and other influential groups. It is a shame that listening is not given more attention, as it is linked to many positive values. Examples include better conversations, increased trust and confidence, more outstanding commitment and job satisfaction, lower absenteeism due to illness, higher productivity and quality of work, increased sales, better relationships with customers and employees, and many other positive effects. To the extent that listening takes place, organizations rarely take a holistic approach to it. Strategic listening means a given objective for listening, thoughts about who should listen, when it should happen, and so on. An organization’s listening must become a strategic issue to exploit the great potential of increased listening. This book provides answers to the following: Why is listening important? What are the barriers to listening? How can both individuals and organizations become better at listening? How can organizations develop strategic listening skills? How does one build a system to improve an organization’s strategic listening?




Especially for the Christian Writer


Book Description

Have an idea tumbling around inside your mind, but have no idea how to get it down on paper? Have you a hot-button issue you feel led to address, but have no idea how to find an audience? Have an experience to share, a book idea you'd like to tackle, but are frozen with inexperience, confusion? Maybe you don't know where to find the encouragement and information needed to guide you on your journey to publication. This book might be your answer. It is a slim, easy to read and assimilate volume with lots of inspiration and helps along the way. HEART CRAFT By Carolyn R Scheidies Drafting words takes more Than talent or skill or art. It's the imparting of the message, God has placed upon your heart.




Following Wisdom, Leading Wisely


Book Description

If it is true that "everything rises and falls on leadership," we have a problem. A recent international survey revealed that 86 percent of respondents believe we are facing a global leadership crisis. The study encompassed leadership in business, government, the non-profit sector, and religion. Non-profit and business leaders ranked highest in terms of public confidence. Government leaders ranked very low. The only leaders to rank lower than government leaders were religious leaders. This leadership crisis is not driven by an absence of leaders. Leaders are everywhere, yet we still have a leadership crisis. Nor is this crisis caused by a lack of leadership training. Who can keep up with the books, seminars, and training programs offering the latest trends and best thinking on leadership? And yet, we still have a leadership crisis. While the world is looking for better leadership methods, God is looking for better leaders--leaders shaped by wisdom. What use, after all, is getting things done, or even servant leadership, without wisdom? In Proverbs we discover an ancient training regimen for leaders, guiding them in the cultivation of virtuous character. Following Wisdom, Leading Wisely is an invitation to rediscover this ancient wisdom for today's leaders.