Business Performance

In How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, veteran journalist Chris Taylor traces the series from the difficult birth of the original film through its sequels, the franchise’s death and rebirth, the prequels, and the preparations for a new trilogy. Taylor provides portraits of the friends, writers, artists, producers, and marketers who labored behind the scenes to turn Lucas’s idea into a legend.

Being a great leader - one who drives massive passion, commitment and engagement - is within your reach. Follow the step-by-step plan in Employee Engagement 2.0 and prepare to be a great place to work.

For decades, alarms have sounded about declining engagement. Yet companies continue to struggle with toxic cultures, and the low productivity and unhappiness that go with them. Why is "culture" so difficult to improve? What makes so many good employees check out? Neuroscientist Paul Zak shows that innate brain functions hold the answers. It all boils down to trust. When someone shows you trust, a feel-good jolt of oxytocin surges through your brain and triggers you to reciprocate.

What author Margaret Graziano proposes in Ignite Culture is a fundament shift in leadership’s approach to creating an intentional, healthy, high-performance organization. Offering a unique combination of experiential coaching, evidence-based leadership tools, and actionable strategies, Ignite Culture empowers business leaders with the wisdom and insights they need to reshape their company’s culture, increase employee engagement, and grow revenue in a supportive, high-performance environment.

Tom Junod’s Esquire profile of Fred Rogers, "Can You Say...Hero?", has been hailed as a classic of magazine writing. Now, his moving story of meeting and observing the beloved host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is the inspiration for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, directed by Marielle Heller and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster. Here, Junod’s unforgettable piece appears for the first time in audiobook form alongside an inspiring collection of advice and encouragement from Mister Rogers himself.

Did you ever wish you could tell a story that leaves others spellbound? Storytelling teacher and champion Margot Leitman will show you how! With a fun, irreverent, and infographic approach, this guide breaks a story into concrete components with ways to improve content, structure, emotional impact, and delivery through personal anecdotes, relatable examples, and practical exercises.

Why were the American POWs imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton so resilient in captivity and so successful in their subsequent careers? This book presents six principles practiced within the POW organizational culture that can be used to develop high-performance teams everywhere. The authors offer examples from both the POWs’ time in captivity and their later professional lives that identify, in real-life situations, the characteristics necessary for sustainable, high-performance teamwork.

Philip Carlson was the first agent to sign Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Billy Crudup, Liev Schreiber, Claire Danes, Idris Elba, Kyra Sedgwick, Adrien Grenier, and Paul Giamatti. He has represented Viola Davis, Kathy Bates, Brian Dennehy, and W.H. Macy among many and gifted others. He shares his practical trade secrets in this extraordinarily comprehensive guide on how to get into show business.

In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test"....

Research data show that most people do not come close to making full use of their assets at work—in fact, only seventeen percent of the workforce believe they use all of their strengths on the job. Go Put Your Strengths to Work aims to change that through a six-step, six-week experience that will reveal the hidden dimensions of your strengths. Buckingham shows you how to seize control of your assets and rewrite your job description under the nose of your boss.

Formerly a successful salesman, Jake McKay is now a failing manager. Join him as he races to learn the fundamentals of team and personal effectiveness from his coach before he loses his job—and the woman he loves.

Understand the dynamics of all different types of teams. Beyond Team Building: How to Build High Performing Teams and the Culture to Support Them represents the latest in thinking about creating effective teams. The authors present a new "Five C" framework that focuses on the core aspects of team building. The book helps the listener assess how his/her team is performing on each of the 5Cs - context, composition, competencies, change, and collaborative leadership - and discusses options concerning how to improve team performance along each of these dimensions.

It is taken for granted in the knowledge economy that companies must employ the most talented performers to compete and succeed. Many firms try to buy stars by luring them away from competitors. But Boris Groysberg shows what an uncertain and disastrous practice this can be.

The Leadership Contract provides the manual that leaders around the world need. With only seven percent of employees feeling confident in senior leadership, the problem is evident: disappointing, and often disgraceful leaders. Employees deserve better than that; organizations need better than that - and this book provides a robust framework for stepping up and making the decision to lead. If you're not exceptional, step up or step aside - this book helps you toughen up and put your commitment to great leadership in writing for yourself as much as everyone else.

Many of us are striving to reach our full potential at work and beyond—to achieve our goals, rise to challenges, and connect well with others. But how can we develop our performance while also taking care of our well-being? The Performance Curve is a bold new holistic guide that effectively tackles this challenge, providing practical insights into how you can develop and sustain a productive and fulfilling life. This book explores not only how you can improve individual performance, but also how to build relationships and environments that bring out the best in others.

In The Performance Culture, leadership expert Khalil Smith and veteran storyteller Chris Weller deliver an authoritative and practical instruction manual for every leader who wants to create healthy, high-performing cultures. The authors explain how to get your employees aligned, engaged, and collaborating with each other using compelling stories and contemporary research.

As an aviation pioneer, Carey D. Lohrenz learned what fearless leadership means in some of the most demanding and extreme environments imaginable: the cockpit of an F-14 and the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Here, her teams had to perform at their peak - or lives were on the line. Faltering leadership was simply unacceptable. Through these experiences, Lohrenz identified a fundamental truth: high-performing teams require fearless leaders.

Your entire career depends on communication. When you can communicate effectively, you already have the foundation for being not just a good leader, but a great one…. A leader who inspires…. A leader who motivates…. A leader who is remembered. Whether you’re leading an entire organization, you’re an entry-level manager, or you’re considering beginning your journey into leadership, it all starts with communication.… And you’re about to uncover its secrets.

There's a revolution taking place that most businesses are still unaware of. The understanding of how our brains work has radically shifted, exploding long-held myths about our everyday cognitive performance and fundamentally changing the way we engage and succeed in the workplace. Combining their expertise in both neuropsychology and management consulting, neuropsychologist Friederike Fabritius and leadership expert Dr. Hans W. Hagemann present simple yet powerful strategies.

Based on his years as a successful basketball performance coach — training superstars like Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Kobe Bryant — and a speaker and trainer to major companies like Pepsi and Amex, Alan Stein brings you the keys to lasting, unimaginable success. The secret? Return to the basics. They're simple, but they're not easy. But the truth is that more connected, productive, and influential leaders and teammates find long-lasting success not with big flashy changes, but with the accumulated of the little things.