| In What Queen Esther Knew authors Connie Glaser and Barbara Smalley revisit an ancient question: How did an orphaned Jewish girl win a beauty contest and become the most powerful woman in Persia? They shape the tale of Biblical Queen Esther into an intriguing tutorial for women as managers. Esther’s development as a leader illuminates key strategies for success. These leadership tools are introduced through old/new parallels. |
| For every professional woman who wants to get ahead—but feels she is at an impasse—Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office comes to the rescue. Although it's less threatening and more politically correct for women to point the finger outwardly when assessing why they are overlooked for promotions and assignments for which they are superbly qualified, the real answers may lie inward. In this book, Dr. Lois Frankel, an internationally recognized corporate coach and author, reveals the 101 self-sabotaging behaviors women learn as girls - behaviors and habits that are now holding them back in the workplace, such as couching statements as questions, tilting your head when you speak, waiting to be noticed and pinching company pennies. |
| In keeping with the parable style, Lencioni (The Five Temptations of a CEO) begins by telling the fable of a woman who, as CEO of a struggling Silicon Valley firm, took control of a dysfunctional executive committee and helped its members succeed as a team. Story time over, Lencioni offers explicit instructions for overcoming the human behavioral tendencies that he says corrupt teams (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results). Succinct yet sympathetic, this guide will be a boon for those struggling with the inherent difficulties of leading a group. |
| Practical strategies for building strong managerial skills! |
| RECOMMENDED by Chuck Papageorgiou, our November Speaker... From the bestselling authors who taught the world how to have Crucial Conversations comes Influencer, a thought-provoking book that combines the remarkable insights of behavioral scientists and business leaders with the astonishing stories of high-powered influencers from all walks of life. You'll be taught each and every step of the influence process-including robust strategies for making change inevitable in your personal life, your business, and your world. |
| RECOMMENDED by Chuck Papageorgiou, our November Speaker... Crucial Confrontations borrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance--the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance. |
| RECOMMENDED by Chuck Papageorgiou, our November Speaker... Mainly about resolving conflicts and influencing people, this useful guide covers every conceivable aspect of talking with others. People hear facts and stories and turn them into shared knowledge when they're not attacked or overpowered--in other words, when they feel safe. No mushy mental health lesson, the program does a stellar job of explaining many types of communication errors and describing the best ways to achieve mutual purpose. The authors have exceptional ideas about moving toward healthy solutions in a variety of business and personal realms. Anna Fields gives a perfect reading--emotionally bright but still allowing the lesson to retain its practical, straight-talking nature. T.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine |
| RECOMMENDED by Daniela Campari-Hand, our October Speaker... The 81 simple but profound poems of the Tao Te Ching have provided inspiration and guidance for some 2,500 years. Now, educator and consultant Diane Dreher has reinterpreted the timeless observations of Lao-tzu in an effort to give postmodern business leaders a novel yet practical road map to corporate management and personal fulfillment. The result, The Tao of Personal Leadership, proves the advice of the ancient Chinese philosopher is as relevant today as when it was written. |
| RECOMMENDED by Daniela Campari-Hand, our October Speaker... All too often, Machiavellian managers ruthlessly use office politics to get what they want...and they make good employees feel it's bad to be political. But it doesn't have to be that way! ENLIGHTENED OFFICE POLITICS takes a positive look at the political side of the workplace, explaining why office politics are inevitable, emphasizing their importance, and showing how to play them--and win--in an ethical, principled manner. Readers will learn how to: * Overcome negative attitudes toward office politics and view them as a force for good * Determine whether a coworker is friend or foe * Turn foes into friends * Discover what motivates others * Develop their own political skills and use them in appropriate, powerful ways * Plan and execute an effective "political campaign"--and more. In the world of office politics, it's play or be played. ENLIGHTENED OFFICE POLITICS proves it's possible to play to win--and still keep a clear conscience. |
| RECOMMENDED by Daniela Campari-Hand, our October Speaker... Collins and his team of researchers sort through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. The book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... This leadership classic continues to be a bestseller after three editions and 20 years in print. It is the gold standard for research-based leadership, and the premier resource on becoming a leader. This new edition, with streamlined text, more international and business examples, and a graphic redesign, is more readable and accessible to business readers than ever before, and will prove to be the best edition yet. |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... "Leadership is personal. It's not about the corporation, the community, or the country. It's about you. If people don't believe in the messenger, they won't believe the message. If people don't believe in you, they won't believe in what you say. And if it's about you, then it's about your beliefs, your values, your principles."— from Credibility |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... This book presents a Leadership Character Model; its foundation is integrity which is a balance of responsibility (core qualities: empathy, emotional mastery, lack of blame, humility) and respect (core qualities: accountability, courage, self-confidence, focus on the whole). Each of these eight qualities are explored in depth. The authors show how people and organizations (which are not separable) can develop these qualities. The Model is intended to help people learn how to lead by understanding these qualities of leadership. Each chapter ends with four key concepts. An accessible, thoughtful book, reinforced with many interesting and informative real-life examples. |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... Men ask for what they want twice as often as women do and initiate negotiation four times more, report economist Linda Babcock and writer Sara Laschever in the footnoted but engaging Women Don't Ask. With vivid research examples drawn from cradle, classroom and playground, the authors detail culture as the culprit in discouraging women from negotiating on their own behalf. Men, socialized in a "scrappier paradigm," learn to pursue and energize their goals at work and home. The two key elements are control and recognizing opportunity. For example, girls, rewarded for hard work, learn to see control as outside of themselves while boys are urged to take charge. Boys are schooled to recognize opportunity and girls to choose safe targets. Several chapters are focused on prescription; how women can decrease anxiety, anticipate roadblocks, plan counter-moves and resist conceding too much or too soon. The authors shine in their examination of culture and gender--and their optimism about how women can counter the culture. They falter whenever they adopt the "sexes-from-a-different-planet" fallacy. Most notably, in a chapter that details a "female approach" to negotiating. Overall, the authors have created a smart summary of research and used it to affirm every woman's urgent right to ask. --Barbara Mackoff --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... To prove their various points, most books on business leadership focus strictly on either a series of standard, contemporary corporate illustrations or a single nontraditional model (such as a specific historic personality or a classic manuscript such as the Tao Te Ching). But Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, has long used poignant real-life examples of people facing their "moments of truth"--regardless of the setting--to teach students how best to perform under the pressures they will face in the business world. In The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All, Useem presents some of these surprisingly effective profiles to show how others have responded when push truly comes to shove. Among them are: the story of Roy Vagelos championing an unprofitable drug that ultimately wiped out a debilitating disease in Africa; how flight director Eugene Kranz worked calmly and efficiently to return the endangered Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth; and a look at Arlene Blum's pioneering all-woman ascent of the 26,545-foot Himalayan peak Annapurna in 1978. --Howard Rothman |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... Awakening the Leader Within guides readers through the Six Seeds of Growth, which Cashman has used to help thousands of business leaders change their personal and work lives for the better. He draws on his renowned executive coaching techniques in order to lead the reader on a path to self-discovery and personal betterment. Based on the premise that you need to grow the person in order to grow the leader, this inspirational and interactive story centers on Benson Quinn, a CEO facing a deluge of personal and professional crises. As Quinn confronts the defining moments of his life, the reader learns valuable lessons about authentic and purposeful leadership, applicable at home as well as in the boardroom. At a time when issues of business ethics crowd the headlines-causing many leaders to question whether profit should be a leader's only goal-the practical applications of this book are more timely than ever. Awakening the Leader Within has been endorsed by more than thirty CEOs, thought leaders, and bestselling authors. |
| RECOMMENDED by Sandy Hofmann, our August Speaker... What has happened to the art of conversation? In the age of Internet chat rooms, speed dating, and frantic text messaging, have we forgotten how to meaningfully connect? This book of 4,000 provocative questions will help you get to know anyone and everyone in every social situation. Use it to go beyond small talk at parties, networking events, dates, dinner tables, and road trips. It's for getting to know someone you just met and learning a lot more about someone you thought you already knew (who may be yourself). |
| RECOMMENDED by Jill Ratliff, our July Speaker... Organizational charts rarely describe functional hierarchy. Instead, survival often depends on incorporating oneself into unofficial social networks that allow one to gain access to necessary information and to collaborate with the colleagues who can actually get things done. In this dense but useful volume, Cross and Parker-both consultants with IBM’s Knowledge and Organizational Performance Forum-give readers insight into how such unofficial networks form and function. They also share their methodology for rendering these basically unseen networks visible to managers. |
RECOMMENDED by Jill Ratliff, our July Speaker... In this follow-up to her Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, Evans advises women to trump the old boys' network by playing a "girls' game." Espousing a one-for-all, all-for one approach, Evans insists women must work together to "achieve a critical mass at the highest levels," concluding, "Every woman must always play on the women's team." Leading readers step-by-step through the process of building formal and informal teams, Evans explores seven pivotal topics, including mentoring, "rainmaking," information-sharing and "webbing" , while teaching women how to deal with challenges and dismantling popular myths and allaying common fears. | |
| RECOMMENDED by Michael Reene, our June Speaker... The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers by James Citrin & Richard Smith The authors review why career success varies so widely for people with seemingly equal talent and drive. Their research indicates that people with extraordinary careers are guided by five straightforward patterns that can be harnessed and used by everyone. This work reveals how anyone seeking to build a rewarding, personally satisfying career can take advantage of practical, proven advice. |
| RECOMMENDED by Michael Reene, our June Speaker... Women Who Mean Business A. Mikaelian offers a revealing look at these female pioneers through profiles of 75 who have broken through the so-called glass ceiling in nearly every field of corporate endeavor. Each sketch opens with enlightening yearbook-type data, such as work history, education, associations and networks, community service, mentors and influences, and greatest obstacles overcome. Following these are brief narrative biographies that detail the subjects' business histories and philosophies. |
| RECOMMENDED by Michael Reene, our June Speaker... Lessons from the Top by Neff, Citrin, and Brown. Fifty short but perceptive profiles identify and analyze the men and women who drive today's most successful corporations. The result is a broad but surprisingly consistent palette of personalities and philosophies that highlight by synthesizing into 10 common traits (passion, intelligence, communication skill, high energy, controlled ego, inner peace, a defining background, strong family life, positive attitude, and a focus on "doing the right things right") and six core principles (live with integrity, develop a winning strategy, build a great management team, inspire employees, create a flexible organization, and implement relevant systems). This book is for managers and anyone else looking for the patterns of success, both in and out of business. |