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People are always asking me for more information about the topics I train so I decided to begin publishing my reading list. Scroll down to see what I am reading on the topics of emotional/social intelligence, leadership, personal growth & development and other great books. What you see here is only the start - there is much more to come, so bookmark this page and return often.
By the way, I'm always looking for great books so if you have some recommendations let me know (lgriebel@crescendoinc.com) and I'll add them to my list! Thanks.
Emotional & Social Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
by Daniel Goleman (Author)
 Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"-the rational and the emotional-and how they together shape our destiny.
Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart.
The best news is that "emotional literacy" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.… read more
Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence
by Daniel Goleman (Author), Richard E. Boyatzis (Author), Annie McKee (Author)
 Business leaders who maintain that emotions are best kept out of the work environment do so at their organization's peril. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman's theories on emotional intelligence (EI) have radically altered common understanding of what "being smart" entails, and in Primal Leadership, he and his coauthors present the case for cultivating emotionally intelligent leaders. Since the actions of the leader apparently account for up to 70 percent of employees' perception of the climate of their organization, Goleman and his team emphasize the importance of developing what they term "resonant leadership." Focusing on the four domains… read more
Resonant Leadership: Renewing yourself and connecting with others through mindfulness, hope and compassion
by Richard E. Boyatzis (Author) & Annie McKee (Author)
 A hands-on framework and strategies for consciously creating and maintaining resonance in the face of the relentless challenges of the leadership role. "Resonant Leadership" is the follow-up to "Primal Leadership", which has sold over 250,000 copies to date. Its message about the importance of resonance and emotionally intelligent readership struck a deep chord with readers all over the world. "Resonant Leadership" shows how leaders can recognize the cycles of stress, sacrifice and renewal inherent in their jobs - and actively utilize the qualities of mindfulness, hope and compassion to renew their passion and effectiveness… read more
Becoming a Resonant Leader
by Annie McKee (Author), Richard E. Boyatzis (Author) & Frances Johnston
 Business leaders who maintain that emotions are best kept out of the work environment do so at their organization's peril. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman's theories on emotional intelligence (EI) have radically altered common understanding of what "being smart" entails, and in Primal Leadership, he and his coauthors present the case for cultivating emotionally intelligent leaders. Since the actions of the leader apparently account for up to 70 percent of employees' perception of the climate of their organization, Goleman and his team emphasize the importance of developing what they term "resonant leadership." Focusing on the four domains…read more
Social Intelligence: The new Science of Human Relationships
by Daniel Goleman (Author)
 The latest findings in biology and brain science, confirm that we are "wired to connect" and reveal the deep impact our relationships have on every aspect of our lives.
Far more than we are consciously aware, our daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses, and even strangers shape our brains and affect cells throughout our bodies-down to the level of our genes-for good or ill. This book explores an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a "neural ballet" that connects us brain to brain with those around us.
Our reactions to others, and theirs to us, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins-and bad relationships like poisons. We can "catch" other people's emotions the way we catch a cold, and the consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening. Goleman explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, the complexity of sexual attraction, and how we detect lies. He describes the "dark side" of social intelligence, from narcissism to Machiavellianism and psychopathy. He also reveals our astonishing capacity for "mindsight,"… read more
Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance
by Dalai Lama (Author), Paul Ekman Ph.D. (Author)
 Two leading thinkers engage in a landmark conversation about human emotions and the pursuit of psychological fulfillment.
At their first meeting, a remarkable bond was sparked between the Dalai Lama, one of the world's revered spiritual leaders, and the psychologist Paul Ekman, whose groundbreaking work helped to define the science of emotions. Now these two luminaries share their thinking about science and spirituality, the bonds between East and West, and the nature of our emotional lives.
In this unparalleled series of conversations, the Dalai Lama and Ekman push toward answers to the central questions of emotional experience. What are the sources of hate and compassion? … read more
How We Decide
by Jonah Lehrer (Author)
 Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we blink and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind's black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they re discovering that this is not how the mind works.
Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think. … read more
Mixed Emotions : A tool that helps you make decisions, solve problems, resolve conflicts, and more. (Deck of 60 Sort Cards)
by Petra Martin (Editor), Kris Wiltse (Illustrator)
 Have you ever wished it were easier to make decisions, solve problems, improve relationships, or figure out which career is right for you? Well, it can be. You were born with an inner guidance system--your feelings--and Mixed Emotions can help you learn to use it. Mixed Emotions features beautifully illustrated cards that you can use to access the full power of your inner guidance system. You lay out the cards in meaningful ways to identify patterns and subtleties that you might not have considered before. The knowledge you gain gives you new insights and helps you consider new options. Whether you have a decision to make, a conflict to resolve, or just want to prioritize the things in life that are important to you, Mixed Emotions can help. Without insight into your emotions, it's difficult to make informed choices, especially during times of change or stress. Listen to what your inner guidance system is telling you, and then find your bliss. Mixed Emotions comes with 60 emotion cards, 12 instructional cards, five blank cards (so you can create your own), an instruction booklet, and a drawstring bag to carry your cards in. … read more
Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive
by Barbara Fredrickson (Author)
 In this book, Barbara Fredrickson shares how experiencing positive emotions in a 3-to-1 ratio to negative emotions leads people to achieve what they once could only imagine. Far from frivolous, tapping into one's own unique sources of positivity is a wise and healthy investment in the future.
Dr. Fredrickson reveals how the stunning new scientific discoveries about this powerful - though undervalued - state of mind can enhance your relationships, improve your health, relieve depression, and broaden your mind.
Experience positivity for yourself and make a lasting difference in the way you live… read more
 Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life
by Martin E. P. Seligman (Author)
Known as the father of the new science of positive psychology, Martin E.P. Seligman draws on more than twenty years of clinical research to demonstrate how optimism enchances the quality of life, and how anyone can learn to practice it. Offering many simple techniques, Dr. Seligman explains how to break an "I-give-up" habit, develop a more constructive explanatory style for interpreting your behavior, and experience the benefits of a more positive interior dialogue. These skills can help break up depression, boost your immune system, better develop your potential, and make you happier..
With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behavior at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical-and valuable for every phase of life.… read more
The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace: How to Select For, Measure, and Improve Emotional Intelligence in Individuals, Groups, and Organizations
by Cary Cherniss (Editor), Daniel Goleman (Editor)
 Research during the last twenty-five years has consistently pointed to a set of competencies-some purely cognitive but most emotional-such as self-confidence, initiative, and teamwork as making a significant difference in the performance of individuals. These competencies represent what is called emotional intelligence and are predictive of superior performance in work roles. But how does emotional intelligence as a competency go beyond an individual's performance to become something a group or entire organization can build on and utilize collectively? This book takes emotional intelligence into the workplace, showing how to measure and promote these performance-enhancing abilities within organizations. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace first examines emotional intelligence as a concept, exploring issues of its definition and measurement. It then explores human resource applications in more depth, revealing how organizations can increase emotional intelligence through use of standard human resource functions, such as hiring and performance management systems. Finally, the authors offer specific training and development interventions based on emotional intelligence theories, showing how to improve the individual competencies that are crucial to organizational success. The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace includes fifteen best-practice models that have been tested and empirically validated in existing organizations.… read more
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life
by Joseph Ledoux (Author)
 This book examines emotions and psychological disorders from a biological perspective, analyzing what emotions are, how they operate in the brain, and how they influence everyday lives.… read more
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
by John Medina (Author)
 Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know - like that physical activity boosts your brain power.How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget - and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains? In "Brain Rules", Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives… read more
The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success
by Steven J. Stein PH.d. (Author) and Howard Book PH.d. (Author)
The EQ Edge shows you how the dynamic of emotional intelligence works. By understanding EQ, you can build more meaningful relationships, boost your confidence and optimism, and respond to challenges with enthusiasm--all of which are essential ingredients of success.
This book features case studies and fascinating--and surprising--insights into EQ and the workplace. As an HR or line manager, this book will help you determine which personnel are the right fit for job opportunities and who among your staff will be the most promising leaders and drivers of your business… read more
Emotional Intelligence in Action
by Marcia Hughes (Author) & James Bradford Terrell (Author)
 Emotional Intelligence in Action shows how to tap the power of EI through forty-six exercises that can be used to build effective emotional skills and create real change. The workouts are designed to align with the four leading emotional intelligence measures-EQ-I® or EQ-360TM, ECI 360, MSCEITTM, and EQ Map®, -or can be used independently or as part of a wider leadership and management development program.
All of the book's forty-six exercises offer experiential learning scenarios that have been proven to enhance emotional intelligence competencies…read more
The Emotionally Intelligent Team: Understanding the behaviors of success
by Marcia Hughes (Author) & James Bradford Terrell (Author)
 As the fields of neurology and organizational development continue to evolve, there is a growing body of evidence that clearly demonstrates that particular emotional and social intelligent behaviors have a direct correlation with organizational success.
This book offers practical information and a guide for businesses that want to draw on the power of the emotional competencies of their teams. It reveals how individuals, team members, and leaders can take the steps to become more emotionally intelligent team members and show how to put in place the practices and exercises that will help any team grow in emotional intelligence. read more
 The Emotional Curriculum: A Journey Towards Emotional Literacy
by Sue Cornwell (Author), Jill Bundy (Author)
The increased interest in the emotional aspect of young people's development has made teachers aware of the need to deal in a structured way with emotional learning. This book provides a clear, developmental framework for emotional literacy skills across the primary age range.
Research indicates that emotionally literate people learn more effectively, show greater empathy and have an increased ability to main relationships and solve conflicts. The clear, developmental style of this book will assist all primary schools in providing a coherent structure to support this development.
Topics explored include: complexity of Emotion, self-awareness, managing emotions, relationships, awareness of others and communication… read more
The People Profit Connection, How Emotional Intelligence Can Maximize People Skills & Maximize Your Profits
by Brent Darnell (Author)
 This revolutionary book, written specifically for the construction industry, explains what emotional intelligence is, why it matters, and how it can be measured and improved. It explores the typical emotional intelligence profile for technical people and discusses how this profile is the root cause of many of the industry problems such as safety, burnout, poor industry image, lack of teamwork, poor quality and low productivity, and communication and knowledge sharing. This book is a must for construction industry professionals, but will benefit anyone from the various technical industries such as IT, engineering, accounting, manufacturing, healthcare, and legal.
It also discusses why traditional training fails to create behavioral change in people and how the methodology outlined in the book does, indeed, create permanent and lasting change. This book offers a practical, common sense approach to improving social competence and relays dozens of personal stories and powerful case studies of people who have done just that…read more
Emotionally Intelligent Living
by Geetu Bharwaney (Author)
 This book presents a practical summary of what EI is, explaining it in the clearest terms that require no previous knowledge of psychology. EI can be learned, and your EQ (Emotional Quotient) can be increased. "Emotionally Intelligent Living" contains a unique program of emotional improvement that will revolutionize your ability to use your emotions effectively. Packed with brilliant strategies for emotional management, and inspirational ideas for focusing your feelings, it offers you the very best methods for living an emotionally intelligent life. … read more
The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions
by Esther M. Sternberg (Author)
 Since ancient times humans have felt intuitively that emotions and health are linked, and recently there has been much popular speculation about this notion. But until now, without compelling evidence, it has been impossible to say for sure that such a connection really exists and especially how it works. Now, that evidence has been discovered.
The Balance Within tells how researchers finally uncovered the elusive mind-body connection and what it means for our health. In this beautifully written book, Dr. Esther Sternberg, whose discoveries were pivotal in helping to solve this mystery, provides first hand accounts of the breakthrough experiments that revealed the physical mechanisms - the nerves, cells, and hormones - used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illnesses, and how the immune system can alter our moods.
The Balance Within is essential reading for anyone interested in making their body and mind whole again… read more
The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks
by Al Siebert (Author)
 Resiliency - the ability to adapt to life's changes and crises - is the key to a healthy, productive life. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to get bogged down by feelings of anger and helplessness. The Resiliency Advantage helps readers banish negative, self-defeating thoughts and break free from the roles of "victim" and "good child" while improving problem-solving skills, maintaining humor and optimism during rough times, and becoming both self-reliant and socially responsible. By mastering the five stages of development - sustaining health, energy, and positive feelings; handling challenges; achieving positive self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-concept; honing the skills and attributes of highly resilient people; and developing a talent for serendipity - readers learn to stand up to adversity, overcome obstacles, and meet life head on… read more
Leadership
Coaching with the Brain in Mind: Foundations for Practice
by David Rock (Author) and Linda J. Page (Author)
 Discover the science behind brain-based coaching
By understanding how the brain works, coaching professionals can better tailor their language, strategies, and goals to be in alignment with an individual's "hard-wired" way of thinking. Written by two well-known coaching professionals, David Rock and Linda Page, Coaching with the Brain in Mind presents the tools and methodologies that can be employed by novice and experienced coaches alike to create an effective—and ultimately more rewarding—relationship for both coach and client.
This informative guide to the neuroscience of coaching clearly demonstrates how brain-based coaching works in practice, and how the power of the mind can be harnessed to help an individual learn and grow. Illustrated with numerous case examples and stories, this book is organized for immediate use by professionals in their client work.... read more
Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work
by David Rock (Author)
 Improving employee performance involves one of the hardest challenges in the known universe: changing the way they think. David Rock (author) has proven that the secret to leading people (and living and working with them) is found in the space between their ears. "If people are being paid to think," he writes, "isn't it time the business world found out what the thing doing the work, the brain, is all about?" Supported by the latest groundbreaking research, Quiet Leadership provides a brain-based approach that will help busy leaders, executives, and managers improve their own and their colleagues' performance. Rock offers a practical, six-step guide to making permanent workplace performance change by unleashing higher productivity, new levels of morale, and greater job satisfaction ... read more
Fearless Leadership: Conquering Your Fears and the Lies that Drive Them
by Bruce E. Roselle (Author)
 Fearless Leadership is designed to help people determine how irrational fears, faulty beliefs, and the lies they believe to be true of themselves get in the way of a happy life. This book helps readers learn to create healthy beliefs and bedrock truth to guide them in the future. Fearless Leadership provides a seven-step model for understanding how people develop undesirable behaviors and what keeps them in place. It teaches readers to know the truth about themselves so they are not stopped by their own irrational reactions. Readers can then work with optimistic attitudes and embrace new challenges with confidence and courage... read more
Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor
by Warren Bennis (Author), Daniel Goleman (Author), James O'Toole (Author), Patricia Ward Biederman (Contributor)
 This book looks at what conspires against "a culture of candor" in organizations to create disastrous results, and suggest ways that leaders can achieve healthy and honest openness. The authors explore the lightning-rod concept of "transparency"-which has fast become the buzzword not only in business and corporate settings but in government and the social sector as well.
Together Bennis, Goleman, and O'Toole explore why the containment of truth is the dearest held value of far too many organizations and suggest practical ways that organizations, their leaders, their members, and their boards can achieve openness. The authors reveal the multifaceted importance of candor and show what promotes transparency and what hinders it. They describe how leaders often stymie the flow of information and the structural impediments that keep information from getting where it needs to go. This vital resource is written for any organization-business, government, and nonprofit-that must achieve a culture of candor, truth, and transparency... read more
 Strengths-Based Leadership
by Tom Rath (Author), Barry Conchie (Author)
Nearly a decade ago, Gallup unveiled the results of a landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. More than 3 million people have since taken Gallup's StrengthsFinder assessment.
While continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than 1 million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.
Strengths Based Leadership reveals the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership. ... read more
 Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference
by Tim Sanders (Author)
Every one of us, regardless of title or position, can inspire our companies to change the way they do business, helping them to become a positive force for enriching people, communities, and the environment. When this happens, not only do we help save the world, we help save our companies from becoming irrelevant. We also become part of what Sanders calls the Responsibility Revolution.
Companies that don't participate in this revolution risk becoming obsolete. Today customers, employees, and investors are demanding that companies focus on their social responsibilities-not just their bottom lines. Sixty-five percent of American consumers say they would change to brands associated with a good cause if price and quality were equal; 66 percent of recent college graduates will not work for companies with poor social values. And more than sixty million people are willing to pay a premium for socially and environmentally responsible products…read more
The Leadership Challenge
by James M. Kouzes (Author) and Barry Z. Posner (Author)
 In the 1980s and again in the '90s, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner published The Leadership Challenge to address issues they uncovered in research on ordinary people achieving "individual leadership standards of excellence." The keys they identified--model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, encourage the heart--have now been reexamined in the context of the post-millennium world and updated in a third edition. "What we have discovered, and rediscovered, is that leadership is not the private reserve of a few charismatic men and women," write Kouzes and Posner, "People make extraordinary things happen by liberating the leader within everyone." After explaining their concept and methodology, the authors detail the five essentials… read more
Leadership from the Inside Out - Becoming a leader for life
by Kevin Cashman (Author)
 Leadership from the Inside Out," clearly connects personal growth to leadership effectiveness. Framed in seven simple yet profound "mastery areas," this book serves as an integrated coaching experience that helps leaders understand how to harness their authentic, value-creating influence and elevate their impact as individuals, in teams, and in organizations. Cashman demonstrates that his trademark "whole-person" approach… read more
The Extraordinary Leader : Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders
by John H. Zenger (Author), Joseph Folkman (Author)
 The ability to lead, far more than just a natural gift, is a concrete and learnable skill-one that can be acquired by studying and applying specific proficiencies and attitudes. The Extraordinary Leader draws on responses from 200,000 questionnaires to define the skills that comprise effective leadership, and then provides a systematic and innovative program for attaining, developing, and implementing those skills… read more
Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership
by Lee G. Bolman (Author), Terrence E. Deal (Author)
 Become a more versatile manager and a more artistic leader. This book explains how to use the powerful tool of "reframing" - deliberately looking at situations from more than one vantage point - to bring order out of confusion and to build high-performing, responsive organizations. Presenting four practical perspectives or "frames" from which to work, they show managers how to become constructive change agents, and guide the reader in selecting a leadership strategy that responds to an organization's current and future needs.
- The Structural Frame: how to organize and structure groups and teams to get results
- The Human Resource Frame: how to tailor organizations to satisfy human needs, improve human resource management, and build positive interpersonal and group dynamics
- The Political Frame: how to cope with power and conflict, build coalitions, hone political skills, and deal with internal and external politics.
- The Symbolic Frame: how to shape a culture that gives purpose and meaning to work, stage organizational drama for internal and external audiences, and build team spirit through ritual, ceremony, and story… read more
The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company
by Ram Charan (Author), Stephen Drotter (Author), James Noel (Author)
 This book shows companies how to create a pipeline of talent that will continuously fill their leadership needs-needs they may not even yet realize. The Leadership Pipeline delivers a proven framework for priming future leaders by planning for their development, coaching them, and measuring the results of those efforts. Moreover, the book presents a combination leadership-development/succession-planning program that ensures a steady line-up of leaders for every critical position within the company. It's an approach that bolsters the retention of intellectual capital as it eliminates the need to go outside for expensive "stars," who will probably jump ship before they reach their full potential anyway… read more
What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
by Marshall Goldsmith (Author), Mark Reiter (Author)
 The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. They're intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- it is the subtle nuances that make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back… read more
Personal Growth & Development
 Reasons why YOU ROCK! by Kathy Light (Author)
Learn the secret to accessing and amplifying your personal power!
* What if you could tap into a vast reserve of positive energy and power any time you needed it?
* What if tapping into that power could change your life and the lives of others?
* What if it was incredibly easy and fun to do that?
* Well, it is, and Reasons Why YOU ROCK is your path to that power!
Most people go through life quite unaware of the unique set of amazing qualities that make them great. Understanding and acknowledging this unique combination of qualities, these "reasons why you rock," can lead you to phenomenal success and fulfillment if you will only tap into them. Left untapped, they are dormant stores of energy, unorganized, disconnected, only accessible at random times and for random reasons. This book will help you discover, collect, organize and crystallize that energy reserve, so it is available for your use at any time. And every time you open the book you will be renewed, recharged and reminded of all the greatness that is in you.
Reasons Why YOU ROCK is a treasure chest of riches that will lead you to discover and celebrate the unique and extraordinary greatness in you, and have access to that power for yourself and others at any time... read more
Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements by Tom Rath (Author) and James K. Harter (Author)
 Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements provides you with a holistic view of what contributes to your wellbeing over a lifetime. Written in a conversational style, this book is filled with fascinating research and innovative ideas for boosting your wellbeing in each of these five areas. As a complement to the book, you'll have the opportunity to use Gallup's online Wellbeing Finder to track and improve your wellbeing. By the time you finish reading this book, you'll have a better understanding of what makes life worthwhile. This will enable you to enjoy each day and get more out of your life -- while boosting the wellbeing of your friends, family members, colleagues, and others in your community..… read more
Ground of Your Own Choosing: Winning Strategies for Finding & Creating Work by Beverly Ryle (Author)
 Everything has changed about work except how we go about finding it. Our reliance on the use of traditional job search techniques in a work environment that has dramatically changed is the equivalent of "fighting the last war" with disappointing, even disastrous, results. Most of us sense this, but we don't know what else to do.
This book is a clear, concise guide to a new kind of work security, one that is not dependent on any particular job, but on your own capacity to generate work. It offers a compelling rationale for why it is necessary to change your thinking and provides practical steps, supported by real life stores, for taking action.… read more
Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand by William Arruda (Author)and Kirsten Dixson (Author)
 As a professional, your reputation is your most valuable career asset. Whether you're climbing the ladder at your current company or seeking a new job, in today's fast-paced work environment, you must proactively and continuously position yourself for success. Your credibility, visibility, personality, and personal style all make up your brand. Build and nurture your personal brand and you'll make yourself a must-have, can't-fail professional—and you'll do it without having to be someone you're not.
Career Distinction outlines the proven personal branding process and provides case studies of successful professionals that will help you not only survive, but thrive, in today's dynamic and ultracompetitive workplace. You'll learn to manage your brand with innovative tools that enable you to differentiate yourself and stand out from your peers.
In this definitive step-by-step guide, career and personal brand management experts Arruda and Dixson show you how to:.… read more
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
by John J. Ratey (Author) and Eric Hagerman (Contributor)
 SPARK is a groundbreaking and fascinating investigation into the transformative effects of exercise on the brain. Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance.
In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection. The author presents startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to A.D.D. to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think. … read more
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, Revised 25th Anniversary Edition
William Bridges (Author)
 Whether it is chosen or thrust upon you, change brings both opportunities and turmoil. Since first published 25 years ago, Transitions has helped hundreds of thousands of readers cope with these issues by providing an elegantly simple yet profoundly insightful roadmap of the transition process. With the understanding born of both personal and professional experience, William Bridges takes readers step by step through the three stages of any transition: The Ending, The Neutral Zone, and, in time, The New Beginning. Bridges explains how each stage can be understood and embraced, leading to meaningful and productive movement into a hopeful future. With a new introduction highlighting how the advice in the book continues to apply and is perhaps even more relevant today, and a new chapter devoted to change in the workplace, Transitions will remain the essential guide for coping with the one constant in life: change. … read more
Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life
by Richard J Leider (Author), David A Shapiro (Author)
 Drawing on ancient and contemporary wisdom, as well as modern research, Richard Leider and David Shapiro provide insightful ways of thinking and being that help us find meaning and purpose in the second half of life. This deeply reflective book uses a safari as a metaphor to show how the second half of life can be a journey of discovery. There are many pathways to putting our whole selves into life, especially during the second half. This book explores many routes to vital aging. … read more
The Power of Purpose: Creating Meaning in Your Life and Work
by Richard Leider (Author)
 "Purpose" and "calling" seem at first to be grand words, applicable to only a gifted few. But career coach Richard Leider argues that everyone possesses a true calling, as well as the unique talents needed to support it. Filled with useful tools for self-assessment, The Power of Purpose helps readers uncover their own talents and aspirations, and shows how to incorporate "the common sense of soul" into everyday life. Interviews with people of all ages provide inspiring examples of those who have created lives filled with meaning and passion… read more
Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life's Calling
by Richard J Leider (Author), David A Shapiro (Author)
 Everyone has a calling with a unique purpose to fulfill in the world. Heeding it is about deliberately choosing a way of life and work consistent with individual gifts, passions, and values. Through powerful stories and a guided exploration of 52 possible callings, Whistle While You Work helps readers discover how to make a living doing what they were born to do. The authors provide a framework for embracing a very abstract subject in a systematic, practical, and fun way. And their Calling Cards "TM" help readers develop answers to profound life questions as they learn to "listen with the third ear" to cultivate a mode of searching that isn't limited to the merely tangible…read more
Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life
by Richard J. Leider (Author), David A. Shapiro (Author)
 People everywhere feel overwhelmed today-weighed down by countless responsibilities and buffeted by never-ending changes in their personal and professional lives. Repacking Your Bags shows readers how to climb out from under these burdens and find the fulfillment that is missing in their lives.
This book provides a simple yet elegant process to help you balance the demands of work, love, and place in order to create and live your own vision of success. It show how to "unpack" your physical, emotional, and intellectual baggage and "repack" for the journey ahead.
Repacking Your Bags helps readers develop their own personal vision of the good life and design their lives in order to live it… read more
Claiming Your Place at the Fire: Living the Second Half of Your Life on Purpose
by Richard Leider (Author)
 More than 10,000 people turn 50 every day in the U.S.; how do they handle this shift? Claiming Your Place at the Fire invites this group of "new elders" to ask four key questions: Who am I? New elders synthesize and transfer the wisdom of the past into the present. Where do I belong? They have a powerful sense of where they have come from, where they are, and where they are going. How do I bring my passions alive? They rejoice in rediscovering their life's work, their calling, their vocation. What is my life's purpose? Freed from imposed schedules and demands, new elders now find the freedom to create their lives anew. This book describes how new older adults can rekindle the good life, relight the fire within, and share that warmth and light with others. read more
 The Seeker's Guide
by Elizabeth Lesser (Author)
Elizabeth Lesser synthesizes the lessons learned from an immersion into the world's wisdom traditions and intertwines them with illuminating stories from her daily life. Recounting her own trials and errors and offering meditative exercises, she shows the reader how to create a personal practice, gauge one's progress, and choose effective spiritual teachers and habits. Warm, accessible, and wise, this book provides directions through the four landscapes of the spiritual journey:
THE MIND: learning meditation to ease stress and anxiety.
THE HEART: dealing with grief, loss, and pain; opening the heart and becoming fully alive.
THE BODY: returning the body to the spiritual fold to heal and
overcome the fear of aging and death.
THE SOUL: experiencing daily life as an adventure of meaning and mystery… read more
 Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
by Elizabeth Lesser (Author)
During times of transition, amid everyday stress, and even when we face seemingly insurmountable adversity, life offers us a choice: to turn away from change or to embrace it; to shut down or to be broken open and transformed.
Broken Open is not only a testament to the inner richness and potential of every life but also a deeply trustworthy guide to the dynamics of healing and growth-how we resist and how we surrender, how we stay stuck and how we grow, and how we can turn misfortune into insight, and grief into joy. It helps us to discover within ourselves a fearless heart, a clear mind, and a shining soul… read more
 Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn (Author)
Mindfulness opens us up to the possibility of being fully human and of expressing the humane in our way of being. Within these 108 selections lie messages of profound wisdom in a contemporary and practical form that can lead to both healing and transformation. How we carry ourselves will determine the direction the world takes We are the world we inhabit. Our world is continuously being shaped by our participation in everything around us and within us through mindfulness. This is the great work of awareness…read more
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
by Don Miguel Ruiz (Author)
 "The Four Agreements reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob people of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements -- be impeccable with your word,don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, always do your best -- offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform life into a new experience of freedom, love, and true happiness."… read more
The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance by Tony Schwartz (Author),Jean Gomes (Author)and Catherine McCarthy Ph.D. (Author)
 Demand is exceeding our capacity. The ethic of "more, bigger, faster" exacts a series of silent but pernicious costs at work, undermining our energy, focus, creativity, and passion. Nearly 75 percent of employees around the world feel disengaged at work every day. The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working offers a groundbreaking approach to reenergizing our lives so we’re both more satisfied and more productive—on the job and off.
By integrating multidisciplinary findings from the science of high performance, Tony Schwartz, coauthor of the #1 bestselling The Power of Full Engagement, makes a persuasive case that we’re neglecting the four core needs that energize great performance: sustainability (physical); security (emotional); self-expression (mental); and significance (spiritual). Rather than running like computers at high speeds for long periods, we’re at our best when we pulse rhythmically between expending and regularly renewing energy across each of our four needs.
Organizations undermine sustainable high performance by forever seeking to get more out of their people. Instead they should seek systematically to meet their four core needs so they’re freed, fueled, and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day.… read more
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr (Author) and Tony Schwartz (Author)
 The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. This fundamental insight has the power to revolutionize the way you live.
Managing energy, not time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health, happiness, and life balance. The Full Engagement Training System is grounded in twenty-five years of working with great athletes to help them perform more effectively under brutal competitive pressures.
The Power of Full Engagement is a highly practical, scientifically based approach to managing your energy more skillfully. It provides a clear road map to becoming more physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused, and spiritually aligned -- both on and off the job… read more
The Power of Story: Rewrite Your Destiny in Business and in Life
by Jim Loehr (Author)
 In this book, Dr. Jim Loehr examines the way we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves -- and, most important, the way we can change those stories to transform our business and personal lives.
"Your story is your life," says Loehr. As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories -- of success or failure; of power or victimhood; stories that endure for an hour, or a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about our work, our families and relationships, our health; about what we want and what we're capable of achieving. Yet, while our stories profoundly affect how others see us and we see ourselves, too few of us even recognize that we're telling stories, or what they are, or that we can change them -- and, in turn, transform our very destinies.
Telling ourselves stories provides structure and direction as we navigate life's challenges and opportunities, and helps us interpret our goals and skills. Stories make sense of chaos; they organize our many divergent experiences into a coherent thread; they shape our entire reality… read more
The Story Factor
Annette Simmons (Author)
 Over one hundred stories drawn from the front lines of business and government, as well as myths, fables, and parables from around the world, illustrate how story can be used to persuade, motivate, and inspire in ways that cold facts, bullet points, and directives can't.
These stories, combined with practical storytelling techniques show anyone how to become a more effective communicator. From "who I am" to "I-know-what-you're thinking," Simmons identifies the six stories you need to know how to tell and demonstrates how they can be applied. This revised edition offers a guide to using storytelling in specific business circumstances, including corporate reorganizations, layoffs, and diversity issues. … read more
Positive Energy: 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength, and Love
by Judith Orloff (Author)
 Are you forever rushing through your day, fending off chronic exhaustion? Are you desperately over committed, afraid to say no? Do you want to feel well rested and ready to conquer each day with enthusiasm, but fall short time and time again? If so, you're the victim of a hidden energy crisis. Here, at last, is the complete prescription that will stop you from feeling constantly drained and enable you to live a more vibrant life.
Filled with clear instructions for the simple, powerful exercises Positive Energy is your tool kit for transforming fatigue, stress, and fear into an abundance of vibrance, strength, and love.
… read more
The Strengths Book: Be Confident, Be Successful, and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You
by Alex Linley (Author), Janet Willars (Author), Robert Biswas-Diener (Author)
 The Strengths Book reveals the sixty strengths that make us who we are. Bursting with insights on using each strength in relationships, at work and at play, it also gives examples of famous people who share the strength with you. There’s even advice on not taking your strengths too far!
If you’re a manager, a parent, a career-changer, or even just you, exceptional as you are, The Strengths Book is for you. Discover your strengths - what you do best and love to do - and transform your life by realizing the best of you.… read more
StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths
by Tom Rath (Author)
 Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? hances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.
StrengthsFinder 2.0, is loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths. This new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself -- and the world around you -- forever.
This book includes:
A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment
A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year
A more customized version of your top five theme report
50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)… read more
Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
by Marcus Buckingham (Author)
 Research data show that most people do not come close to making full use of their assets at work -- in fact, only 17 percent of the workforce believe they use all of their strengths on the job. Go Put Your Strengths to Work aims to change that through a six-step, six-week experience that will reveal the hidden dimensions of your strengths.
With structured exercises that will become part of your regular workweek and proven tactics from people who have successfully applied the book's lessons, Go Put Your Strengths to Work will arm you with a radically different approach to your work life. … read more
Trombone Player Wanted
Starring: Marcus Buckingham Director: Marcus Buckingham Format: DVD 
Trombone Player Wanted is a companion film series to Marcus Buckingham's book, Go put your Strengths to Work. The short films (six in the series and approximately 15 minutes in length) communicate in a way that motivates personal and team performance.
Trombone Player Wanted provides powerful lessons for managers and employees striving to be more productive and more focused today than they were yesterday… read more
Other Great Books!
Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor (Author)
 In Plenitude economist and bestselling author Juliet B. Schor offers a groundbreaking intellectual statement about the economics and sociology of ecological decline, suggesting a radical change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live.
Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. As we travel along this shutdown path, food, energy, transport, and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth-a debt-financed consumer boom- is no longer an option our households, or planet, can afford.
Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead, it's an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure. And as Schor observes, Plenitude is already emerging. In pockets around the country and the world, people are busy creating lifestyles that offer a way out of the work and spend cycle..… read more
The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century by Jacqueline Olds (Author)
 In our culture it’s more socially acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely. Yet loneliness is the inevitable by-product of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. In this marvelously acute critique of how we live, Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz show how the American way of life can lead to social isolation. Calling on their extensive clinical experience, new social surveys, and recent research on the effects of social exclusion, Olds and Schwartz uncover the ripple effects of social isolation in areas as varied as physical health, children’s emotional problems, substance abuse, violent crime—even global warming..… read more
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath (Author), Dan Heath (Author)
 Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, the authors reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the "human scale principle," using the "Velcro Theory of Memory," and creating "curiosity gaps."
Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures) and shows us the vital principles of winning ideas-and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.… read more
Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell (Author)
 Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink) takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. "It is not the brightest who succeed," Gladwell writes. "Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them… read more
Far Arden
by Kevin Cannon (Author, Artist)
 Meet Army Shanks - crusty old sea dog and legendary brawler of the high Arctic seas! He's got just one mission: to find the mythical island paradise known as Far Arden, which lies hidden (so they say) in the wintry oceans of the far North. But there's more than just water standing between Shanks and his goal: he'll have to contend with circus performers, adorable orphans, heinous villains, bitter ex-lovers, well-meaning undergraduates, and the full might of the Royal Canadian Arctic Navy! Not to mention he's not so sure how to get to Far Arden in the first place.
In his first solo graphic novel, Kevin Cannon (Top Ten; Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards) proves himself a master spinner of yarns with Far Arden. read more
 The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics and DNA
by Mark Schultz (Author), Zander Cannon (Illustrator), Kevin Cannon (Illustrator)
Let's face it: From adenines to zygotes, from cytokinesis to parthenogenesis, even the basics of genetics can sound utterly alien. So who better than an alien to explain it all? Enter Bloort 183, a scientist from an asexual alien race threatened by disease, who's been charged with researching the fundamentals of human DNA and evolution and laying it all out in clear, simple language so that even his slow-to-grasp-the-point leader can get it. In the hands of the award-winning writer Mark Schultz, Bloort's predicament becomes the means of giving even the most science-phobic reader a complete introduction to the history and science of genetics that's as easy to understand as it is entertaining to read.
Named one of the 2009 Great Graphic Novels for Teens from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), The Stuff of Life meets the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.
The Stuff of Life was the lead story on National Public Radio's Science Friday program (1/30/09.) Ira Flato (show's host) interviewed the author, Mark Schulze who was very enthusiastic when he talked about working with his illustrators (Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon - no relation). If you have a few minutes, I think you will enjoy this brief interview. … read more
Portrait of Passion
by Gail B. Stewart & Paul H. Phillips (Author)
 Portrait of Passion discovers the secrets of the 2007 U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. Gail Stewart, author of more than 200 books for young adults, weaves fascinating stories of these great role models into an enticing and helpful read for soccer fans of all ages. What were the players like growing up? How did they acquire their toughness? How do they handle controversies? What would they have done differently? The book is filled with over 250 photos by top sports photographer Paul Phillips who followed the team from Chicago to China to capture stunning game action and off-the-field candids. … read more
A Whole New Mind - Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future
by Daniel H. Pink (Author)
 Just as information workers surpassed physical laborers in economic importance, Pink claims, the workplace terrain is changing yet again, and power will inevitably shift to people who possess strong right brain qualities. His advocacy of "R-directed thinking" begins with a bit of neuroscience tourism to a brain lab that will be extremely familiar to those who read Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open last year, but while Johnson was fascinated by the brain's internal processes, Pink is more concerned with how certain skill sets can be harnessed effectively in the dawning "Conceptual Age." The second half of the book details the six "senses" Pink identifies as crucial to success in the new economy-design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning-while "portfolio" sections offer practical (and sometimes whimsical) advice on how to cultivate these skills within oneself.… read more
 Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm- shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:
*Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves...read more
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman (Author)
 In this book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America's surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked--how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.
Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world's middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is "hot, flat, and crowded." Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things--unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful… read more
The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman (Author)
 The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency.
What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work… read more
Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself
by Daniel H. Pink (Author)
 With Manpower, Inc., the temporary agency, the nation's largest private employer and one-quarter to one-third of American workers operating as "free agents," Daniel Pink offers analysis of this "new economy" and advice on how to succeed in it. The Fast Company cover story that Pink, a former Gore chief speechwriter, wrote on the growth of "free agency" produced so much feedback that he traveled across the country with his young family to interview "America's new independent workers" for this book. Pink examines facts and figures, explores the roots of increasing free agency, and considers the new work ethic, employment contract, and time clock it generates. He outlines the structure of free-agent work and major disruptions (especially for involuntary free agents) and offers some predictions about how this new paradigm will affect … read more
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
by Daniel H. Pink (Author)
 Daniel Pink offers a first-of-its kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. Step by step he builds a career, illustrating as he does the six core lessons of finding, keeping, and flourishing in satisfying work: There is no plan, Forget about your weaknesses, Persistence trumps talent, It's not about you, Make excellent mistakes, Leave an imprintSmart, engaging, and insightful, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko offers practical advice for anyone looking to start a rewarding career… read more
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Author)
 Team of Rivals doesn't just tell the story of Abraham Lincoln. It is a multiple biography of the entire team of personal and political competitors that he put together to lead the country through its greatest crisis. Here, Doris Kearns Goodwin profiles five of the key players in her book, four of whom contended for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and all of whom later worked together in Lincoln's cabinet… read more
Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands
by Kevin Roberts (Author)
 Sellout "Brand" or just plain "Bland"? In Lovemarks, advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts delves deep into what mysteries lie behind the long-term success and unwavering customer loyalty for a can of Coke or a pair of Levi's, ultimately concluding that Love is the answer, and without some emotional connection to a product, it will dry up like a generic raisin in the sun.
Roberts's points out: "That human attention has become our principle currency." And that, in these times, forming long-term emotionally charged relationships with customers is the only way to make a product weather the long haul… read more
The Lovemarks Effect: Winning in the Consumer Revolution
by Kevin Roberts (Author)
 In The Lovemarks Effect: Winning in the Consumer Revolution, the people speak - consumers, owners, and marketers show the impact of Lovemarks on their lives, their businesses, and their aspirations. How consumers feel about you-their emotional connection to you-is what determines success now. The Lovemarks Effect offers instruction and inspiration about creating emotional connections and winning in a consumer-empowered future.
From the aisles of the in-store experience to the power of sustainable design, from Lovemarks research to consumer stories, The Lovemarks Effect is a joyride through the evolving business landscape… read more
Tapping my 'creative' side!
Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity David Sibbet (Author)
Use eye-popping visual tools to energize your people!
 Just as social networking has reclaimed the Internet for human interactivity and co-creation, the visual meetings movement is reclaiming creativity, productivity, and playful exchange for serious work in groups.
Visual Meetings explains how anyone can implement powerful visual tools, and how these tools are being used in Silicon Valley and elsewhere to facilitate both face-to-face and virtual group work. This dynamic and richly illustrated resource gives meeting leaders, presenters, and consultants a slew of exciting tricks and tools, including:
- Graphic recording, visual planning, story boarding, graphic templates, idea mapping, etc.
- Creative ways to energize team building, sales presentations, staff meetings, strategy sessions, brainstorming, and more
- Getting beyond paper and whiteboards to engage new media platforms
- Understanding emerging visual language for leading groups
Unlocking formerly untapped creative resources for business success, Visual Meetings will help you and your team communicate ideas more effectively and engagingly.… read more
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience
by Carmine Gallo (Author)
 Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s wildly popular presentations have set a new global gold standard—and now this step-by-step guide shows you exactly how to use his crowd-pleasing techniques in your own presentations. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is as close as you’ll ever get to having the master presenter himself speak directly in your ear.
Communications expert Carmine Gallo has studied and analyzed the very best of Jobs’s performances, offering point-by-point examples, tried-and-true techniques, and proven presentation secrets that work every time. With this revolutionary approach, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to sell your ideas, share your enthusiasm, and wow your audience the Steve Jobs way … read more
slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
by Nancy Duarte (Author)
 No matter where you are on the organizational ladder, the odds are high that you've delivered a high-stakes presentation to your peers, your boss, your customers, or the general public. Presentation software is one of the few tools that requires professionals to think visually on an almost daily basis. But unlike verbal skills, effective visual expression is not easy, natural, or actively taught in schools or business training programs. slide:ology fills that void.
Written by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that created the presentation for Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, this book is full of practical approaches to visual story development that can be applied by anyone. The book combines conceptual thinking and inspirational design, with insightful case studies from the world's leading brands … read more
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
by Garr Reynolds (Author)
 Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the net -- presentationzen.com -- shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today's world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business.… read more
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
by Dan Roam (Author)
 "A bold new way to tackle tough business problems-even if you draw like a second grader"
Used properly, a simple drawing on a humble napkin is more powerful than Excel or PowerPoint. It can help crystallize ideas, think outside the box, and communicate in a way that people simply "get". In this book Dan Roam argues that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw.
Drawing on twenty years of visual problem solving combined with the recent discoveries of vision science, this book shows anyone how to clarify a problem or sell an idea by visually breaking it down using a simple set of visual thinking tools - tools that take advantage of everyone's innate ability to look, see, imagine, and show.
THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN proves that thinking with pictures… read more
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Lisa's List
