Tag Archives: business books

Three New Summaries to Advance Your Career

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The desire for continuous self-improvement is part of every executive’s professional DNA. The amount of time you spend shaping and improving your organization should never completely eclipse your efforts to improve yourself. Soundview is now featuring three new Soundview Executive Book Summaries that will help you improve three critical parts of your development: communication, change and boundary breakthroughs.

by Shari Harley

by Shari Harley

How to Say Anything to Anyone by Shari Harley: In How to Say Anything to Anyone, you’ll learn how to ask for what you want at work, improve all types of working relationships, reduce the gossip and drama in your office, tell people when you’re frustrated in a way that resonates, take action on your ideas and feelings, and get honest feedback on your performance. Author Shari Harley shares real-life stories of people who have struggled to get what they want at work. With her clear and specific roadmap in hand, Harley enables you to create the career and business relationships you really want.

 

by John C. Norcross, Ph.D.

by John C. Norcross, Ph.D.

Changeology by John C. Norcross, Ph.D.: Change is hard. But not if you know the 5-step formula that works whether you’re trying to stop smoking or start recycling. Dr. John C. Norcross, an internationally recognized expert, has studied how people make transformative, permanent changes in their lives. Now his cutting-edge, scientific approach to personal improvement is being made available in this indispensable guide. Unlike 95 percent of self-help books, the Changeology plan has a documented track record of success. In his book, Dr. Norcross gives you the tools you need to change what you want within a mere 90 days.

 

by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason

by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason

Boundary Spanning Leadership by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason. We live in a world of vast collaborative potential. Yet all too often, powerful boundaries create barriers that can splinter groups. And this can lead to uninspiring results. To transform borders into frontiers in today’s global, multi-stakeholder organizations, you need Boundary Spanning Leadership. Powered by a decade of global research and practice by the top-ranked Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), this book takes you from rural towns in the United States to Hong Kong’s skyline and from a modernizing South Africa to the bustling streets of India, showing you how to build bridges across boundaries.

All three summaries are now available for download in multiple digital formats.

Balance and Innovation

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We have another two-webinar week coming to Soundview. Next week we will be hosting James Cusumano, author of Balance, and Stephen Shapiro, author of Best Practices Are Stupid. While these two topics are not related to one another, they are both important to every executive.

Balance: The Business-Life Connection by James Cusumano

In this Soundview Live webinar, Balance: Eight Steps for Success in Any Business, James Cusumano will provide a proven template for creating a successful business, and simultaneously, long-term balance and fulfillment in your personal life. Drawing from his just-released book Balance: The Business-Life Connection, the author brings three decades of diverse experience in technology and entertainment, which include Rock Star, Corporate Executive, Entrepreneur, Filmmaker, and Holistic Hotelier. He will show how to identify and unleash the power of life purpose and passion leading to long-term personal and professional fulfillment.

Best Practices Are Stupid by Stephen Shapiro

In This Soundview Live webinar, Why Best Practices Are Stupid, Stephen Shapiro will offer forty counterintuitive yet proven strategies for boosting innovation and making it a repeatable, sustainable, and profitable process at the heart of your company’s culture. Shapiro will show that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack.

You’re invited to attend one or both of these important events. Each webinar will be entertaining in its own way, as Cusumano explains his unusual career path and Shapiro debunks business’s sacred best practices.

If you’re not a current Soundview subscriber, now is the time to join. Both events are free for subscribers, and it only takes three events to cover the full cost of a subscription. Check out the options and join us.

Can Conflict Cause Creativity?

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Conflict is often viewed as one of the biggest roadblocks to achieving a shared goal. There are many instances in which it can bog down or completely derail a project from reaching completion. However, consultant Lina M. Echeverria, author of Idea Agent: Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation, argues that there is a hidden benefit to conflict: it can help your team achieve creative breakthroughs.

In a recent Soundview Author Insight interview, Echeverria addressed the concerns leaders have about conflict:

Conflict is one of the things that scares most leaders because it doesn’t feel good.  We have always been conditioned from early childhood not to fight.  Be good.  Be nice.  And it is not about encouraging fighting; it is about encouraging dialogue.  It is about encouraging the ability to disagree, to give other viewpoints and engage in a dialogue.  But as I say, it really feels in the pit of your stomach like, “Ugh, I don’t want to be here.”  So, what it takes first is a lot of courage once you have come to the realization that that conflict is an essential part of the creative process.

It is an essential part because people that are creative, that have a really good idea that others have not seen, are driven by this vision.  And this vision can be very, very powerful and they’re not going to stop because of any barriers until they achieve the mission.

So, when those viewpoints come from a different angle, you could have a lot of passion, each [person] pulling in a different direction or let’s say, pushing towards the center and trying to make [his or her idea] happen.  So, what is needed is to bring them to the team.  Have them understand that theirs is not the only way and that they need to learn to respect others while at the same time, helping them understand how their behavior can impact the dynamics of the team and can push others down.

Soundview subscribers can login to their online library to hear the complete interview with Echeverria. The Soundview Executive Book Summary of Idea Agent is available for download now.

Communication Week is Coming

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Next week we will be hosting two excellent Soundview Live webinars around the topic of communication and influence. This topic has become critical with changes in the business environment, including a new digital generation entering the workforce, the advent of social media, more people tele-commuting, and companies becoming more culturally and ethnically diverse.

May 13th: How to Hold REAL Conversations with John Stoker

In this Soundview Live webinar, How to Hold REAL Conversations, John Stoker offers clear explanations of the theoretical aspects of conversation along with practical application of real skills that will help you to connect with others in a deep and meaningful way.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The four conversation skills that make for effective communication.
  • The eight principles for conducting REAL conversations.
  • The effectiveness model of conversation involving Respect, Results and Relationship.

May 15th: The New Science of Leading Change with David Maxfield

In this Soundview Live webinar, The New Science of Leading Change, you’ll be the first to hear from author David Maxfield about the new research, case studies, and content featured in the latest edition of Influencer. David will teach influence strategies for achieving  profoundly better results by changing bad and entrenched human habits. And he will examine, in detail, why people do what they do and what it takes as a leader to help them act differently.

What You’ll Learn:

  • How to use three keys of influence to become a true leader.
  • How to identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
  • How to apply strategies for changing both thoughts and actions.
  • How to marshall six sources of influence to make change inevitable.

Please consider joining us for one or both of these important webinars. As always Soundview subscribers attend free of charge. You can fill a conference room with colleagues on one registration, and submit questions to the authors throughout the presentations.

Book Review: Idea Agent

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by Lina M. Echeverria

by Lina M. Echeverria

The cover of innovation leadership consultant and author Lina M. Echeverría’s book Idea Agent: Leadership That Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation perfectly captures the problematic way many organizations view creativity: lightning in a jar. Fortunately for executives, Echeverría removes much of the mystery and offers a better alternative to allow creativity to bloom. Idea Agent is now available in multiple digital formats as a Soundview Executive Book Summary.

Echeverría provides readers with a framework to create a culture of creativity and innovation. She calls the elements the “Seven Passions of Innovation.” The seven passions include everything from gathering diverse teams of intelligent employees to shaping a culture that provides the necessary amount of time for creativity to occur. As Echeverría writes, the seven passions, “come together to make up a living system whose energy radiates from a leader at the core, to its heart center.”

The advice Echeverría provides leaders does a good deal to harness the more difficult parts of innovation. There is an obvious connection between talented individuals, a supportive workplace and successful innovation. Idea Agent delineates the gaps between these pieces and creates a more complete picture. It also provides the business ramifications of creativity in a way that other volumes struggle to attempt. A core tenet of Echeverría’s philosophy is the deep connection between company success and a leader’s commitment to the careers of his or her employees. When a leader pushes to set equally high goals for employees and him- or herself, the results can be game-changing.

Idea Agent is an intriguing journey into the soul of innovation and leaders will find it a worthwhile guide for building better teams.