Showing results by publisher "Ascent Audio" in Business Communication

When you're fumbling for words and pressed for time, you might be tempted to dismiss good business writing as a luxury. But it's a skill you must cultivate to succeed: You'll lose time, money, and influence if your e-mails, proposals, and other important documents fail to win people over.

To achieve efficiency, productivity, and significant results, you need to make the best use of the resources available to you. Productivity expert Maura Thomas helps you nurture the crucial resource that is your work culture and build productive habits for yourself and your team, without letting work take over your life. Everyone Wants to Work Here empowers you to define what productivity means for your team and to create conditions that support your own productivity. Starting with yourself, Thomas's holistic advice will help you develop productive strategies for your whole team.

Have you ever felt you're not getting through to the person you're talking to, or not coming across the way you intend? You're not alone. Most of us assume that other people see us as we see ourselves, and that they see us as we truly are. But neither is true. Our everyday interactions are colored by subtle biases that distort how others see us--and also shape our perceptions of them.

In an impatient world of infobesity, people don't want more information - they want to be intrigued and they want to be intrigued fast. After all, goldfish have longer attention spans than humans - nine seconds to our eight. So, right now, people want to know, "How is this relevant and useful to me? Why are you worth my valuable time, mind, and dime?" Bestselling author and ace communication strategist Sam Horn reveals her "secret sauce" for truly connecting with people - whether it's one or one million.

Merging research and real-world application, this insightful guide reveals what really drives decisions and introduces listeners to the persuasion equation - a powerful combination of factors proven to speed agreement.

Strengthen your soft skills and reach your leadership potential. If you listen to nothing else on developing your interpersonal skills, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you identify your social and emotional strengths and weaknesses, approach them with a learning mindset, and become a more effective leader today.

When women we admire such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg advise "Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes" and Vice President Kamala Harris has to remind a room full of men "I'm speaking," it can feel as though having our own voices heard at work can be a lost cause. Whether we're confronting a colleague about an inappropriate comment or trying to avoid being talked over by a male colleague—again—we can find ways to have our voices heard at work. Speak Up, Speak Out helps listeners use their voices more effectively to sound off on issues large and small.

At Dale Carnegie Training, we agree that some things never change. After all, the timeless principles that our founder Dale Carnegie established are still as practical and relevant today as ever. Now that the citizens of our world have made radical shifts because of the global pandemic, and adjusted to remote work and social distancing, the ways we used to connect with others may seem distant or even obsolete. We yearn for real connection, deep and meaningful interactions that are based on commonality instead of what we can get from one another.

In Difficult Conversations Don't Have to be Difficult, bestselling author Jon Gordon and veteran human resources professional and executive coach Amy P. Kelly deliver an inspiring new take on how to make tough workplace conversations an asset in building a stronger team and organization. The book, written as a business fable, follows Ruth, the CEO of a successful multinational company who has been instructed by her board to prepare her company for sale.

Dodging issues, appeasing difficult people, and mishandling tough encounters all carry a high price for managers and companies - in the form of damaged relationships, ruined careers, and intensified problems. In Failure to Communicate, Holly Weeks shows how to master the combat mentality, emotional maelstrom, and confusion that poison difficult conversations.

The HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict will give you the advice you need to understand the most common sources of conflict; explore your options for addressing a disagreement; recognize whether you—and your counterpart—typically seek or avoid conflict; prepare for and engage in a difficult conversation; manage your and your counterpart's emotions; develop a resolution together; and know when to walk away.

We know that the key to getting ahead and launching our ideas is building and sustaining a high-quality and diverse network. But the days of handing out hundreds of business cards at conferences and hoping for the best are over. Our networks need to be both strategic and authentic, made up of real relationships that bring real value. The HBR Guide to Smarter Networking will give you the tools and the confidence you need to make valuable connections, get your ideas off the ground, draw on others' expertise, scope out business opportunities, and land coveted roles.

The HBR Guide to Leading Through Change provides the practical tips, research, stories, and advice you need to understand, communicate, and implement change effectively, no matter the size or scale of the challenge you're facing. You'll learn how to improve your odds of success; communicate a shared vision; keep going, even amid lags and setbacks; deal with naysayers and roadblocks; build trust and resilience on your team; and make a lasting impact.

Are your employees meeting their goals? Is their work improving over time? Understanding where your employees are succeeding—and falling short—is a pivotal part of ensuring you have the right talent to meet organizational objectives. In order to work with your people and effectively monitor their progress, you need a system in place. The HBR Guide to Performance Management provides a multi-step, cyclical process to help you keep track of your employees' work, identify where they need to improve, and ensure they're growing with the organization.

In 90 Days to Level Up Your Teamwork, bestselling author Amy Edmondson teaches you how to become a better team player by focusing on a specific element of cooperative achievement each week. From overcoming barriers to creating psychological safety, this book walks you through exactly how to develop your teamwork skills, one step at a time.

In the workplace, people often choose niceness over honesty in order to avoid hurt feelings or conflict. The truth is, there are hidden costs of "niceness" that allow inequities to endure, projects to fail, and organizations to stagnate. Growth comes from courageous conversations and genuine, authentic action. The Price of Nice introduces an innovative, proven four-step framework that shows listeners how to spot problem areas that are often masked by artificial niceness; facilitate difficult conversations and navigate conflict; empower genuine action and cease endless discussions; and more.

There are days in every working parent's life when it feels like you're screaming into the wind. The days when you have to ask your childless boss if you can leave work early - again - for a kid issue. The days your kid tearfully asks why you have to get on an airplane for work when you just got home. But we can have fewer days like that and more productive conversations. We can listen and be heard. In Communicate Better with Everyone, experts provide answers to the challenges you face as a working parent.

In The Storytelling Edge, the strategy minds behind Contently, the world renowned content marketing technology company, reveal their secrets that have helped award-winning brands to build relationships with millions of advocates and customers. Join as they dive into the neuroscience of storytelling, the elements of powerful stories, and methodologies to grow businesses through engaging and accountable content.

Almost every interaction involves negotiation, yet we often miss the cues that would allow us to make the most of these exchanges. In Getting (More of) What You Want, Margaret Neale and Thomas Lys draw on the latest advances in psychology and economics to provide new strategies for anyone shopping for a car, lobbying for a raise, or simply haggling over who takes out the trash. Getting (More of) What You Want shows how inexperienced negotiators regularly leave significant value on the table - and reveals how you can claim it.

The most effective communicators in the world all structure their messages the same way, by designing for simplicity. But the problem is, simple is hard work. Our brains are programmed to complicate. Our world incentivizes more, more, more. It takes deliberate, intentional effort to communicate in a way that seems effortless. In Simply Put, award-winning marketing entrepreneur Ben Guttmann unveils a five-part framework that allows anybody to communicate with clarity. With this book, you'll be able to design messages that are beneficial, focused, salient, empathetic, and minimal—and that work.