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In conjunction with the Third Edition, we offer an online version of the self-assessment test referenced in the book.

THE COURAGEOUS FOLLOWER ASSESSMENT: Evaluating Your Own Followership Style
and Growth Path

In conjunction with the Third Edition of The Courageous Follower , Berrett-Koehler is pleased to offer an online version of the self-assessment test referenced in the book. Author Ira Chaleff has extensively field tested this self-assessment with live groups in his consulting practice.

The Courageous Follower Self-Assessment Graphic

Many instruments have been designed to capture and reflect leadership styles. Few exist to serve the same purpose for followership styles. Understandably, then, few individuals have ever thought about their own followership style let alone how to grow in this role that everyone plays at least some of the time. Yet understanding our style and growth direction can be critical for our professional development and satisfaction in our work relationships.

Based on your responses, this self-assessment will provide you with language and descriptions about your follower style. It will display these visually and provide you with guidance about growth directions that you might choose to pursue. You may be interested in this assessment in preparation for a courageous follower workshop or simply to satisfy your own curiosity and desire for improvement.

Product: Online streamed application (not downloaded), limited one-year subscription (5 tests or 12 months, whichever comes first), password controlled

Duration: 20 questions, takes an average of 12 minutes to answer

Results: Visual four-quadrant graphic with plotted individual results; includes interpretation from author, growth path, and frequently asked questions, print option

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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. Her disruptive eight-stage INTRIGUE process teaches readers how to replace boring, overlong, one-way communications with concise, compelling, mutually rewarding two-way interactions that add value for all involved. This is a must-read for executives, entrepreneurs, sales and marketing professionals, nonprofit leaders—anyone who wants to build meaningful relationships with others.

The bottom line? If you can’t get people’s favorable attention, you’ll never get their business. The insights and instantly useful ideas here will get smartphones down and eyebrows up—this book has been called How to Win Friends and Influence People for our digital device-driven era. Readers will appreciate these innovative but proven ways to win respect and motivate people to take action now, whether that’s to hire you, refer you, fund you, or say yes to you.

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In this alternately amusing and appalling exposé of the standardized test industry, fifteen-year veteran Todd Farley describes statisticians who make decisions about students without even looking at their test answers; state education officials willing to change the way tests are scored whenever they don't like the results; and massive, multi-national, for-profit testing companies who regularly opt for expediency and profit over the altruistic educational goals of teaching and learning. Although there are absurd moments--as when Farley and coworkers had to grade students based on how they described the taste of their favorite food-- the enormous importance of standardized tests in the post “No Child Left Behind” era make this no laughing matter.

“This book is dynamite! The nice personal voice makes it utterly accessible and enticing, wholly apart from the terribly important ammunition it provides to those of us in the `testing wars' at national and local levels.”—Jonathan Kozol, author of Savage Inequities

In this alternately amusing and appalling expos of the standardized test industry, fifteen-year veteran Todd Farley describes statisticians who make decisions about students without even looking at their test answers; state education officials willing to change the way tests are scored whenever they dont like the results; and massive, multi-national, for-profit testing companies who regularly opt for expediency and profit over the altruistic educational goals of teaching and learning.  Although there are absurd moments--as when Farley and coworkers had to grade students based on how they described the taste of their favorite food-- the enormous importance of standardized tests in the post No Child Left Behind era make this no laughing matter.

Click here for Press Release

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This book shatters leadership myths to reveal a new understanding of how exceptional leaders grow from adversity.

Leadership is often a struggle, and yet strong taboos keep us from talking openly and honestly about our difficulties for fear of looking weak and seeming to lack confidence. But Steven Snyder shows that this discussion is vital—adversity is precisely what unlocks our greatest potential.

Using real-life stories drawn from his extensive research studying 151 diverse episodes of leadership struggle—as well as from his experiences working with Bill Gates in the early years of Microsoft and as a CEO and executive coach—Snyder shows how to navigate intense challenges to achieve personal growth and organizational success. He details strategies for embracing struggle and offers a host of unique tools and hands-on practices to help you implement them. By mastering the art of struggle, you'll be better equipped to meet life's challenges and focus on what matters most.
  • Offers proven strategies and tactics to help guide leaders through difficult or challenging situations
  • Features powerful first-person stories from leaders who have mastered the art of struggle
  • Written by an experienced leader and executive coach who worked directly with Bill Gates at Microsoft in its early years
  • Read the press release here; for media review copies contact [email protected]m

 

Leadership and the Art of Struggle shatters leadership myths to reveal a new understanding of how exceptional leaders grow from adversity. The image that effective leaders guide their organizations on perpetually smooth journeys quite simply defies reality. Leadership is often a struggle, and yet strong taboos keep us from talking openly and honestly about our struggles for fear of looking weak and seeming to lack confidence.

Exceptional leaders intuitively understand the paradox. They know its precisely struggle that unlocks the potential for the greatest growth. Instead of denying struggle, these leaders embrace struggle as an opportunity for learning, as an art to be mastered.

Leadership and the Art of Struggle paints a realistic portrait of how great leaders navigate intense challenges for personal growth and organizational success. Through 150 stories of leadership struggle drawn from nearly 100 interviews, as well as from his experiences as an early executive at Microsoft, a CEO of a public company, and an executive coach, Steven Snyder derives mastery strategies for welcoming struggle as an integral part of your leadership journey. To help you implement each of these strategies, he offers a host of unique tools and specific, hands-on practices. Youll learn how to cultivate the best mindset for confronting challenges, explore multiple tactics for dealing with struggle, and keep your energy high so you can continue to learn and grow.

Leadership and the Art of Struggle begins a new conversation about leadership. The very striving to make important human values real and effective is core to the practice of leadership. By mastering the art of struggle, leaders meet lifes challenges and adversities, focusing their energies on what matters most.

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Successfully Launch and Operate a Virtual Project Management Office

New technology and global businesses and organizations are making virtual project management offices (VPMOs) more important and more prevalent than ever. Successfully operating a VPMO requires project managers to employ additional skills and address different challenges from those necessary to operate a traditional PMO. For example, the virtual project manager must have effective soft skills to build trust among a dispersed team and to select the best forms of communication. He or she must also ensure compliance with the unique policies, procedures, and laws relevant to maintaining a VPMO.

This book offers best practices for successful virtual projects and the most effective ways to create and implement a PMO in a virtual environment. It's a valuable resource for companies considering a VPMO and those already operating one.

You'll find:

- Proven implementation plans
- Guidance for building a business case
- Laws and ethics governing VPMOs
- Tips and advice from experts

Plus! Dozens of practical tools to use in launching a VPMO or improving an existing project management office.

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We live in the midst of one of the greatest technological revolutions in history, an era of deep-seated transformation-a macroshift in civilization, says preeminent scholar and futurist Ervin Laszlo. Its signs and manifestations are all around us, from the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping Africa and the dangerous fire-trap sweatshops routinely killing workers in Bangladesh, to the environmental havoc created by genetic engineering, power plant pollution and mechanized agriculture. The application of new technologies has turned into a double-edged sword.
The world is growing together in some respects, but is coming apart in others. Worldwide economic globalization, another sign of the macroshift, all too often benefits the few rather than the many. Hundreds of millions live at a higher material standard of living, but thousands of millions are pressed into abject poverty. The richest 20% earn ninety times the income of the poorest 20%, consume eleven times as much energy, and eat eleven times as much meat.
There have been other macroshifts in human history, but they spanned centuries, allowing cultural values, beliefs, and change to occur gradually. Today, technology has reduced our time to adapt; the entire critical period of change is compressed into the lifetime of a generation.
Today's macroshift, explains Laszlo, harbors great promise, as well as grave danger. He outlines two possible scenarios: "The Breakdown," where we choose to drift without a change in our current direction toward chaos, anarchy, and destruction, or "The Breakthrough," where we collectively transform our thinking and behavior to produce creative, sustainable solutions to dangerous global problems. And he shows what each of us can do-politically, professionally, and privately-to bring about the Breakthrough and shape a humane and sustainable global future.
While technology is what drives the unprecedented speed of this macroshift, it is our vision, values, and actions now that will ultimately determine the outcome. The choice is up to us-the power is in our hands.
  • Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke
  • The critical crossroad we face at the threshold of the millennium revealed by one of the world's preeminent futurists
  • Comments on today's global crisis and the challenge of change from Thomas Berry, Gary Zukav, Riane Eisler, Edgar Mitchell, and others
  • Draws on the author's profound understanding of systems theory to provide practical guidance for shaping and directing our future

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