Showing results by publisher "Ascent Audio" in Management & Leadership

Who has not admired the titans of sport, entertainment, commerce, and public service and been inspired to set course by those stars? What youth has not dreamed of becoming rich and famous? What restless fast-food manager has not dreamed of being the boss of a nationwide restaurant chain? What hard-working employee has not dreamed of running his own company? Perhaps more important, what can they, and we, learn about achieving success from successful people? This is the magic of Masters of Success.

In this timely and provocative book, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic asks two powerful questions: Why is it so easy for incompetent men to become leaders? And why is it so hard for competent people - especially competent women - to advance? Marshaling decades of rigorous research, Chamorro-Premuzic points out that although men make up a majority of leaders, they underperform when compared with female leaders. In fact, most organizations equate leadership potential with a handful of destructive personality traits, like overconfidence and narcissism.

The second global downturn in a dozen years is upon us - but do lessons learned during the Great Recession still apply? What must you and your business do, now, to ensure you come out the other side intact? Global Recession: Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the smartest ways to cut costs intelligently, find opportunities amid upheaval, and reshape your business to seize advantage in the upswing.

In the newly revised second edition of Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others and Raise Performance, clinical psychologist, distinguished leadership professor, and veteran hostage negotiator George Kohlrieser comes together with his son Andrew Kohlrieser, an experienced leadership, negotiation, and conflict resolution consultant, to deliver another incisive and practical discussion of how to use the proven psychological techniques used in hostage negotiations to enhance your leadership skills both professionally and personally.

We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you use design thinking to produce breakthrough innovations and transform your organization. This book will inspire you to: understand the transformative potential of design thinking; proceed from idea to product at lightning speed; iterate with rapid customer feedback; fail small and win big; create new products people love; lead design thinking teams more effectively; and open new paths to innovation at your company.

When he was just 26 years old, Sam Cawthorn's life changed forever. A terrible car accident cost him his arm, left him in a coma, and put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life - or so he thought. Today, Sam is one of the most successful motivational and inspirational speakers around, addressing some 100,000 people around the world each year, from some of the world's biggest companies. In Bounce Forward, Sam shares the tools, strategies, and psychology that anyone can use to overcome any obstacle.

Successful leaders know that leadership is less often about having all the answers - and more often about asking the right questions. The challenge lies in being able to step back, reflect, and ask the key questions that are critical to your performance and your organization's effectiveness. In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, leadership expert Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career.

Innovation requires teaming. (Put another way, teaming is to innovation what assembly lines are to car production.) This book brings together key insights on teaming, as they pertain to innovation. How do you build a culture of innovation? What does that culture look like? How does it evolve and grow? How are teams most effectively created and then nurtured in this context? What is a leader's role in this culture?

No matter how motivated and energetic you are - even if you're the greatest salesperson on the planet! - as a network marketer with limited time, there's only so much money you can make without great people to help you sell your products. Recruiting is the life force of any network marketing, multilevel marketing, or party plan business; it lifts the ceiling off your income, the key that will allow you to keep checks rolling in above and beyond what you can do yourself.

Business today is global - and success requires a new set of skills. But not to worry, whether you're negotiating with vendors in Asia, exploring potential markets in Africa, or leading a diverse team at home, you don't have to master the nuances of every culture you encounter. With cultural intelligence, or CQ, you can lead effectively in any context.

Design Like Apple uncovers the lessons from Apple's singular approach to product creation, manufacturing, delivery, and customer experience. Learn how design can create a competitive advantage by delivering beauty, ingenuity, and charisma. Get guidance on how to nurture taste, talent, and a design culture at every level of your organization.

Profitability or growth? Results today or tomorrow? More synergy or better stand-alone performance? Ask managers which they want and most will tell you both. But they will also tell you that more progress on one front usually comes with less progress on the other. It's like squeezing a balloon in one place only to find that it expands elsewhere.

Forget everything you know about motivating others and building a harmonious workplace. If you want to get the best out of people, you must be willing to fight. But that doesn't mean you become a dominator, nor does coddling others work. The best leader you've ever had in your life was a liberator - someone willing to fight for your highest good, even at a personal cost. In this audiobook, global leadership experts Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram explain what made that leader so unique, how to become that person yourself, and how to share the same gift with others.

So how do you build a company that matters? Companies and people that matter have successfully become the obvious choices in the hearts and minds of their customers, their employees, and their communities. They elevate themselves by consistently finding ways to solve the most pressing needs their markets face. The result? They create more value year after year and build sustainable, differentiated organizations.

Make better decisions, faster. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on decision-making, listen to this book. We've chosen a new selection of current and classic Harvard Business Review articles that will help you understand all of your options, ask the right questions, and make bold choices...

How to be human at work. HBR's Emotional Intelligence series features smart, essential listening on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work.

As the workforce ages and younger trainers and managers emerge, facilitation skills take on a new importance and, with the increased use of social networks, new facilitation skills are needed. Written by two facilitation gurus, this audiobook shows how to make any learning environment come alive. It outlines proven guidelines any trainer can use to unify groups, inspire creativity, and get audiences, teams, and colleagues to speak up, talk back, participate, and engage in meetings.

Crack the Funding Code will show listeners how to find the money, create pitches that attract investors, and then structure fair, ethical deals that will bring them new sources of outside capital and invaluable professional advice. It will give listeners the broader perspective - how funding works, how investors think, and what they need to hear to put their money where your mouth is.

Smart, competent, and capable people are rare and in high demand. Every organization-from commercial enterprises, healthcare, non-profit, sports, education, to the military-is in an outright battle to recruit and retain these bright and talented people. Fanatical Military Recruiting begins where the Recruiting and Retention colleges of the various branches of the military leave off. It is an advanced, master's level training resource designed specifically for the unique demands of Military Recruiting.

The power of uplift enables any organization to do more with less, beat the competition, and perform better than ever. Leaders who uplift their employees' passions, intellects, and commitments produce remarkable results. Based on original research from a seven-year global study, Uplifting Leadership reveals how leaders from diverse organizations inspired and uplifted their teams' performance.