Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams


Book Description

A proven approach for helping leaders and teams work together to achieve better decisions, greater commitment, and stronger results More than ever, effective leadership requires us to work as a team, but many leaders struggle to get the results they need. When stakes are high, you can't get great results by just changing what you do. You also need to change how you think. Organizational psychologist and leadership consultant Roger Schwarz applies his 30+ years of experience working with leadership teams to reveal how leaders can drastically improve results by changing their individual and team mindset. Provides practical guidance to help teams increase decision quality, decrease implementation time, foster innovation, get commitment, reduce costs and increase trust Outlines 5 core values leadership teams can adopt to exponentially improve results Author of The Skilled Facilitator and The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook Get the results you and your team need. Start by applying the practical wisdom of Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams.




Smart Leadership


Book Description

Escape the mediocrity that ensnares so many in business and become a better, more effective leader. Have you ever wondered what it would take to be a better leader, or achieve your wildest dreams, or make a bigger difference in the world? The answer lies in the choices you make: about everything from how you spend your time to the way you view the world. Smart Leadership is the latest essential business title from internationally bestselling author of Win the Heart and Chess Not Checkers Mark Miller. In this book, he shares the four research-based “smart choices” the best leaders make to scale their influence and results. By teaching you how to Confront Reality, Grow Capacity, Fuel Curiosity, and Create Change, Miller will help you: Bring fresh eyes and fresh thinking to your leadership approach. Increase your confidence in your ability to make a difference. Lead at levels you never thought possible. Accelerate your learning curve so that all these benefits come faster and more naturally. With this guide, your leadership—and your life—will be transformed forever.




Smart Teams


Book Description

Communicate, congregate and collaborate more effectively than ever Smart Teams will help your team to go beyond personal productivity to enhance team productivity. Building on the concepts presented in Smart Work, which focuses on personal productivity, this book shows you how to turn unproductive team behaviours that create friction into ‘superproductive’ behaviours that promote flow. Productivity is, at its core, a leadership issue — and this book provides practical guidelines that help you build a culture where productivity thrives. Working together can be a drag — literally. Email noise, unproductive meetings and poorly organised projects can stifle creativity and disrupt everyone’s workflow. But by creating team agreements that raise awareness of the negative impact of our behaviours, you build the desire and capability to change. This book is packed with tips, guidelines and expert insights for leaders and managers at any level. Foster a culture of ‘superproductivity’ Create a set of Smart Team principles to guide cooperation Run fewer, shorter and more effective meetings Collaborate more productively on projects Reduce urgency, interruptions and email noise People want their work to matter, they want to make an impact and they want to do it all with a healthy work-life balance — productivity is the key to making it all happen. Smart Teams shows you how to implement the culture shift that will allow your team to flourish.




Multipliers


Book Description

Are you a genius or a genius maker? We've all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, lightbulbs go off over people's heads, ideas flow, and problems get solved. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations. These are the Multipliers. And the world needs more of them, especially now, when leaders are expected to do more with less. In this engaging and highly practical book, leadership expert Liz Wiseman and management consultant Greg McKeown explore these two leadership styles, persuasively showing how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation. In analyzing data from more than 150 leaders, Wiseman and McKeown have identified five disciplines that distinguish Multipliers from Diminishers. These five disciplines are not based on innate talent; indeed, they are skills and practices that everyone can learn to use—even lifelong and recalcitrant Diminishers. Lively, real-world case studies and practical tips and techniques bring to life each of these principles, showing you how to become a Multiplier too, whether you are a new or an experienced manager. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you could harness all the energy and intelligence around you. Multipliers will show you how.




The Skilled Facilitator


Book Description

When it was published in 1994, Roger Schwarz's The SkilledFacilitator earned widespread critical acclaim and became alandmark in the field. The book is a classic work for consultants,facilitators, managers, leaders, trainers, and coaches--anyonewhose role is to facilitate and guide groups toward realizing theircreative and problem-solving potential. This thoroughly revisededition provides the essential materials for anyone that workswithin the field of facilitation and includes simple but effectiveground rules for group interaction. Filled with illustrativeexamples, the book contains proven techniques for starting meetingson the right foot and ending them positively and decisively. Thisimportant resource also offers practical methods for handlingemotions when they arise in a group and offers a diagnosticapproach for identifying and solving problems that can underminethe group process.




Lead Inside the Box


Book Description

“In times when leaders have to do more with less, this book gives you the tools to elevate your people to new levels of success.” —Andrea Procaccino, Chief Learning Officer, New York-Presbyterian Hospital Every employee is different, but unfortunately many leaders use a one-size-fits-all approach to leading. In doing so, these otherwise well-intentioned leaders are working harder than they should while not getting all they could out of their teams. Lead Inside the Box gives managers way to get the best out of their teams by focusing their energy where it will make the biggest difference. It teaches leaders how to: Figure out where they are currently investing their time and energy across their teams Identify the unique leadership needs of each team member Make smarter decisions about how and where to invest their time and energy to get the best results out of everyone Through simple frameworks brought to life with stories from the trenches, leaders will be able to see their own teams—and themselves—from a new perspective. Paradoxically these methods will enable leaders to improve their team’s performance exponentially while expending half the effort. “Lead Inside the Box provides cogent advice about exactly how to lead from the middle (as well as the top) in ways that enable managers to make good things happen and help the organization prosper.” —John Baldoni, Leadership expert and author of Moxie: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership “A great fundamental read for every leader no matter what level you are at.” —Rob Miller, Divisional VP, R&D and Scientific & Medical Affairs, Abbott Nutrition




How to Lead Smart People


Book Description

In many jobs people work their way up through a hierarchy, an experience that prepares them for managing a team. In some professions, such as law, finance, accountancy, academia, engineering, education and healthcare, individuals may find themselves managing a team of equals. This book uses 50 simple lessons to show the reader in concise, pithy prose how to manage a team of equals with intelligence and diplomacy. Each lesson features a short introduction and example from the authors' experience, showing you how skills can be acquired. These are then followed by 6-10 action points to implement immediately. Core leadership skills are reevaluated for the leader of a smart team. The book teaches you core skills such as decision making and delegating, but also soft skills such as delivering good and bad news to team members and how to realise more general aims such as building trust and growing your team. The authors also offer advice on how to look after yourself as a team leader, how to build resilience in tough situations, but also how to develop creativity and extend your skill base so that you are constantly learning.




SmartTribes


Book Description

Are You Scaring Your People into Mediocrity? All leaders want to outperform, outsell, and outin­novate the competition. And most teams are fully capable of doing so. The problem: we consistently say and do things that spark unconscious fears and keep our people stuck in their Critter State. This primitive fight, flight, or freeze mode distills all decision mak­ing to one question: What will keep me safest? Lying low, sucking up, procrastinating, and doing a good enough job may keep employees breathing, but it doesn’t make for vital organizations. Leaders have to get their people unstuck and fully engaged, replacing their old, limiting mental patterns with new patterns that foster optimal performance. New York Times bestselling author and applied neuroscience expert Christine Comaford knows what it takes to move people from the Critter State into the Smart State, where they have full access to their own creativity, innovation, higher consciousness, and emotional engagement. When an entire culture maintains that state, it becomes what she calls a SmartTribe. Focused. Accountable. Collaborative. Imbued with the energy and passion to solve problems and do what needs doing, again and again and again. Comaford brings to this book more than thirty years of company-building experience, combined with her expertise in behavioral modification and organizational development. She has helped hun­dreds of leaders navigate rapid growth, maximize performance, resolve internal conflicts, and execute turnarounds with the full support of their people. Now she shares potent yet easy-to-learn neuro­science techniques that will help you do the same. You’ll learn how to move your team forward and reach your next revenue inflection point using the five key Accelerators of the Smart State—focus, clar­ity, accountability, influence, and sustainability. You’ll get better at anticipating and moving through your own stuck spots and those of your people. Using her proven system, Comaford’s clients have already created hundreds of millions of dollars in new value. They’ve seen their revenues and profits increase by up to 210% annually; individuals become up to 50% more productive and 100% more account­able; marketing demand generation grow by up to 237%; new products and services created up to 48% faster; and sales close up to 50% faster. They spot changes in their markets more quickly, then pounce on them to create the future they want. Ultimately, SmartTribes will help you and your team achieve optimal performance and engagement—brilliance—and leave competitors in the dust.




The Ideal Team Player


Book Description

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.




Leading Teams


Book Description

Important new insights on team leadership and motivation, along with powerful tools and techniques taken from the world of sports How do the sports world's most successful coaches instill their teams with esprit de corps, a collaborative mindset, and an unbeatable desire to win? More importantly, what can business leaders and managers learn from their example? This book answers these and a host of key questions about what it takes to be a successful leader in business or in sports. Drawing upon their unique experiences working with top sports coaches, as well as some of the world's leading corporate executives, authors Dino Ruta and Paolo Guenzi offer important new insights into team leadership and motivation, as well as new tools for optimizing teamwork and inspiring teams to reach for and achieve new heights of glory. Develops a bold new team leadership model for managers at all levels, team leaders, project managers and facilitators, as well as sport coaches Arms you with powerful tools and techniques adapted from the world of sport for optimizing teamwork, driving motivating and instilling an unstoppable desire to win An indispensable source of insight and ideas for executives and managers in companies of all sizes, and an important supplement for postgraduate management programs