Caring Is a Competitive Advantage

Suffering in the workplace can rob our colleagues and coworkers of humanity, dignity, and motivation and is an unrecognized and costly drain on organizational potential. Marshaling evidence from two decades of field research, scholars and consultants Monica Worline and Jane Dutton show that alleviating such suffering confers measurable competitive advantages in areas like innovation, collaboration, service quality, and talent attraction and retention. They outline four steps for meeting suffering with compassion and show how to build a capacity for compassion into the structures and practices of an organization—because ultimately, as they write, “Compassion is an irreplaceable dimension of excellence for any organization that wants to make the most of its human capabilities.”

“Technology is a great servant but a terrible master. This is the most important book ever written about one of the most significant aspects of our lives—the consequences of our addiction to online technology and how we can liberate ourselves and our children from it.”
—Dean Ornish, M.D. Founder & President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF, Author, The Spectrum

Technology: your master, or your friend? Do you feel ruled by your smartphone and enslaved by your e-mail or social-network activities? Digital technology is making us miserable, say bestselling authors and former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. We've become a tribe of tech addicts—and it's not entirely our fault.
 
Taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human brain function, tech companies entice us to overdose on technology interaction. This damages our lives, work, families, and friendships. Swipe-driven dating apps train us to evaluate people like products, diminishing our relationships. At work, we e-mail on average 77 times a day, ruining our concentration. At home, light from our screens is contributing to epidemic sleep deprivation.
 
But we can reclaim our lives without dismissing technology. The authors explain how to avoid getting hooked on tech and how to define and control the roles that tech is playing and could play in our lives. And they provide a guide to technological and personal tools for regaining control. This readable book turns personal observation into a handy action guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.

"La'Wana Harris has opened this coach's eyes to the power of coaching practices to create new paths for diversity and inclusion work—whether or not you are formally trained as a coach. Please read this book and help create workplaces with honest engagement and access for all."
 —Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the world

The ugly truth about diversity is that some people worry they must give up their power for others to have a chance. La'Wana Harris's Inclusion Coaching method helps people realize that sharing power isn't the same as losing it.

The elephant in the room with diversity work is that people with privilege must use it to allow others equal access to power. This is often why diversity efforts falter—people believe in diversity until they feel that they have to give something up. How do we talk them through this shift?

La'Wana Harris introduces Inclusion Coaching, a new tool based on cutting-edge research that identifies the stages of preparation, implementation, and “self-work” necessary to help individuals, teams, and organizations build a sustainable culture of inclusion. Harris's six-stage COMMIT model—Commit to courageous action, Open your eyes and ears, Move beyond lip service, Make room for controversy and conflict, Invite new perspectives, and Tell the truth even when it hurts—provides a proven process for making people aware of their own conscious and unconscious biases and concrete steps to make inclusion an embedded reality.

Harris offers managers and diversity coaches new models to empower everyone from employees to CEOs to “do” inclusion and address deep-rooted biases that are often invisible. She addresses the growing need to challenge bias and build authentic cultures where everyone can feel a sense of belonging.

Stand Up!
How to Get Involved, Speak Out, and Win in a World on Fire

A society that actively combats racism, treats climate change as a serious threat, and ensures that all people have a living wage and a decent life for themselves and their families is not a progressive pipe dream. Victories are being won every day, all over the country. But they didn't happen just by clicking “donate” on a website. Gordon Whitman says that fundamental change demands forming the kind of face-to-face relationships that have sustained every social movement in history.

For two decades, Whitman has been working with PICO National Network to equip tens of thousands to fight racial discrimination and economic injustice. He brings that experience to this book, describing five kinds of conversations that enable people to create organizations that can successfully overcome the forces of oppression and reaction.

The first conversation to have is with ourselves, to make sure we're clear about our purpose and in it for the long haul. Then we need to share the personal story of how we came to this point with others—there is no more powerful way to connect. They in turn will share their stories, and then we can have the third conversation, about becoming a team. This team reaches out to people they know to talk about their concerns and priorities, building a broad base of supporters.. Then, with our base at our back, we can have that final conversation, directly confronting the powers that be.

Of course, this isn't as simple as it sounds. Appropriately enough, Whitman uses stories, his own and others, to illustrate how best to handle these conversations and to show how they work together to build a movement. We can't just sit on the sidelines sharing angry social media posts or signing online petitions. We need to get directly involved, reach out, knock on doors, and bring our whole selves to the table if the changes our country so desperately need are ever going to come.

Arneson was named one of America’s top leadership consultants by Leadership Excellence magazine in 2008 Enables leaders at all levels to design a complete self-directed leadership development program Concise, accessible, practical and flexible Leadership training can be inconsistent in the best of times. In tough economic times it’s often one of the first things that even the most progressive companies cut back on. And you can’t necessarily depend on finding that mentor you’ve been looking for either. Now more than ever, if you’re going to advance your career you need to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. But not entirely: Steve Arneson is here to give you a boost. In Bootstrap Leadership Arneson, one of America’s top leadership coaches, offers a complete blueprint for designing your own personal leadership development program. In fifty brief, to-the-point chapters he provides practical ideas and techniques that have been proven successful in his work with executives at Fortune 500 companies like AOL, PepsiCo and Capital One. Surprisingly, most of these ideas cost nothing to implement, nor do they require any elaborate equipment or infrastructure—they’re open to anyone with sufficient initiative, drive and ambition. The chapters are entirely self-contained and can be read in any order and at any pace. You can read one a week and you’ll have a comprehensive year-long self-improvement program (with two weeks off for vacation). Or you can choose a chapter that speaks to a particular challenge you’re facing at work or one that just seems intriguing. There’s a self-assessment at the beginning of the book to suggest specific chapters that fit your developmental needs. No one is going to just hand that next promotion. You have to earn it by developing and demonstrating your leadership skills. And ultimately it’s not just about you—true leaders make everyone around them better. Bootstrap Leadership shows you how.

• Arneson was named one of America’s top leadership consultants by Leadership Excellence magazine in 2008
• Enables leaders at all levels to design a complete self-directed leadership development program
• Concise, accessible, practical and flexible

 

Leadership training can be inconsistent in the best of times. In tough economic times it’s often one of the first things that even the most progressive companies cut back on. And you can’t necessarily depend on finding that mentor you’ve been looking for either. Now more than ever, if you’re going to advance your career you need to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps. But not entirely: Steve Arneson is here to give you a boost.

In Bootstrap Leadership Arneson, one of America’s top leadership coaches, offers a complete blueprint for designing your own personal leadership development program. In fifty brief, to-the-point chapters he provides practical ideas and techniques that have been proven successful in his work with executives at Fortune 500 companies like AOL, PepsiCo and Capital One. Surprisingly, most of these ideas cost nothing to implement, nor do they require any elaborate equipment or infrastructure—they’re open to anyone with sufficient initiative, drive and ambition.

The chapters are entirely self-contained and can be read in any order and at any pace. You can read one a week and you’ll have a comprehensive year-long self-improvement program (with two weeks off for vacation). Or you can choose a chapter that speaks to a particular challenge you’re facing at work or one that just seems intriguing. There’s a self-assessment at the beginning of the book to suggest specific chapters that fit your developmental needs.

No one is going to just hand that next promotion. You have to earn it by developing and demonstrating your leadership skills. And ultimately it’s not just about you—true leaders make everyone around them better. Bootstrap Leadership shows you how.

Put the principles from Turning People into Teams: Rituals and Routines that Redesign How We Work into practice with the Turning People into Teams Toolkit by coauthors David and Mary Sherwin.  These tools are in Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft PowerPoint file formats. Some tools can be printed and shared; others can be adapted to your specific needs and application requirements. The new toolkit includes 27 rituals discussed in the book with 120 corresponding 1-2 page documents.

Format: downloaded zip file (8.1 MB)

Section 1: BETTER BEGINNNNGS (11 rituals and 55 documents)

Start the Team by Talking About the Team
● Ritual: What Do We Bring to the Team?
● Ritual: What Do We Value as a Team?
● Ritual: What Habits Do We Want as a Team?

What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?
● Ritual: What Problem Are We Trying to Solve?
● Ritual: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Learn?

What Does Success Look Like?
● Ritual: What Does Success Look Like?
● Ritual: What If We Don’t Succeed as a Team?
● Ritual: What Is Our Team Expected to Do?
● Ritual: What Should We Celebrate as a Team?

Plan the Kickoff With Your Team
● Ritual: Who Gets Invited?
● Ritual: What Activities Should Be in the Kickoff?

Section 2: WE'RE STUCK, NOW WHAT? (11 rituals and 40 documents)

Create the Right Kind of Conflict
● Ritual: Can I Give You Some Feedback?
● Ritual: What Should We Do With This Feedback?
● Ritual: How Can We Improve Our Project Work?

This Decision Should Be Easier
● Ritual: What Decision Are We Trying to Make?
● Ritual: What Criteria Apply to Our Decision?
● Ritual: What Options Are We Deciding Between?
● Ritual: What Are the Tradeoffs?
● Ritual: Which Option Are We Most Confident About?

Putting Our Ideas to the Test
● Ritual: What Do We Think Will Fix This Problem?
● Ritual: What’s Our Hypothesis for This Change?
● Ritual: What’s the Impact of This Change?

Section 3: SPRINTING TO THE FINISH (5 rituals and 25 documents)

Reflecting as a Team
● Ritual: What Should We Change?
● Ritual: What Were the Ups and Downs?
● Ritual: What Can We Not Change?

Talking About Accomplishment
● Ritual: Who Was Affected By Our Work?
● Ritual: What Effect Should Our Communication Have?