Leadership Philosophy

Charles Handy is one of the giants of contemporary thought. His books on management - including Understanding Organizations and Gods of Management - have changed the way we view business. His work on broader issues and trends - such as Beyond Certainty and The Second Curve - has changed the way we view society. In his new book, Handy builds on a life's work to glimpse into the future and see what challenges and opportunities the next generation faces.

This audiobook provides you with the keys to having an outstanding career as a school leader. The American educational system is in crisis; trends of recent years have been extraordinarily hard on educators. An entire generation of school leaders is retiring, many of them early, and the number of candidates applying to replace them is plummeting. In many districts, applications have shrunk by nearly two-thirds.

From an extraordinary partnership between a teacher and an administrator, best-selling Otherful is the easy-to-listen (and laugh-out-loud) book for those who’ve discovered that influence is mightier than control. Research-backed and practitioner-tested, it’s a brilliant resource for in-school PD, administrator leadership classes, and faculty retreats. Otherful reveals an ancient truth of leadership: the most formidable power isn’t force; it’s relationship building.

Brave Leadership Is a Choice: An Inclusive Guide to Creating Belonging is for leaders who care deeply about cultivating inclusive, human-focused environments to support greater connection, creativity, and collaboration.

This book was borne out of urgency. We face the consequences of a raging pandemic, coupled with an unprecedented call to end racial injustice. COVID-19 has exposed longstanding structural inequities, while at the same time offering a rare “breakthrough” opportunity to dismantle inequitable systems that have harmed our most marginalized students for generations. Breakthrough Leadership is rooted in moral courage and calls us to act upon a new discovery, or epiphany about a fundamental truth that challenges previous beliefs.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu has been a much-studied work of military strategy for hundreds of years, influencing great leaders in all walks of life. Here, business journalist Mark Smith applies the lessons to the role of the entrepreneur by showing how the axioms of General Sun Tzu apply to creating and expanding a business in a successful and meaningful way.

The often hilarious and sometimes poignant story behind Dal LaMagna's attempts to create a successful business. By the time LaMagna graduated from the Harvard Business School, his numerous entrepreneurial activities - including operating discotheques in drive-in movie theaters, working with the 1960s musical teen sensations the Cowsills, and opening an ice cream parlor on the Venice Beach boardwalk - had landed him $150,000 in debt. Raising Eyebrows tells the story of how he finally succeeded. After years of failures and living pennilessly, LaMagna finally succeed with tweezers. He started Tweezerman, one of the world's most respected, innovative and successful beauty tool manufacturers with only $500. Not only was Tweezerman a financial success but is became a model of how to operate a company responsibly.

Here is the world's most famous master plan for seizing and holding power. Astonishing in its candor, The Prince is a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, a president.

“Leading with Purpose: Empowering Others to Create Lasting Change” is a practical guide that provides education leaders with clear and actionable strategies for implementing distributed leadership models that prioritize equity and empower their teams to elevate the needs and rights of their school community. The book emphasizes the critical role of distributed leadership in transforming school systems while addressing issues of inequity.

Born 1898 in the Northern-Italian city of Modena, Enzo Ferrari lived his dream and founded the world’s most famous sports car manufacturer. This book analyzes how he achieved his goals by what are considered to be modern concepts. Or were leadership theories, emotional intelligence, business ethics, client orientation, and sustainability already guiding principles of business in the beginning of the last century.

The world at large is in a mess, because few of us know our history. And, because we don't know our history, we have no knowledge of the rich legacy that has been passed down from our elders, nor do we have a plan for how to leave one for our children and our children's children. Stop Wasting Your Time is an audiobook that has been written to provide wisdom on how to build a great legacy. Contained within, Dr. Miller shares critical keys, so that each listener may have a successful future as well.

In Leading in Chaos, Dr. Jim Largent draws from his 21 years as a superintendent to offer guidance on issues faced by education leaders today. His approach includes a blueprint for obtaining your desired job—with a focus on leadership roles in public education—and the transition steps needed to set yourself up for success. Leading in Chaos presents concepts and anecdotes to show you how to work with a variety of people from bus drivers to board members to irate parents.

The unprecedented access to other humans that technology provides has ironically freed us from engaging with them. According to social psychologist Adam Waytz, our increasingly human-free lives come with a serious cost that we’ve already begun to pay: the loss of our humanity. Humans have superpowers. More than any other psychological stimulus, our presence can make experiences feel significant, inspire moral behavior, and encourage action. The Power of Human shows us how to rehumanize and harness these unique abilities to improve our lives, beginning with our jobs.

Most of us readily recognize we were created for God, and we serve for his good pleasure. Why should it be a stretch in our perspective to realize that our priority for him should be the motivating force behind our actions? Our very existence is the proof that he should be our motive.

Since its inception, higher education in the US has claimed to develop leaders. This bold claim appears in college mission statements and mottos, and it is reinforced in recruiting materials and ad campaigns. But is this claim justified? Leadership Reckoning takes to task American colleges and universities for their haphazard, incoherent, evidence-free approaches to developing students as leaders and offers a principle-driven, outcome-oriented blueprint for how effective leader development can occur.

Entrepreneurs, businessmen, and investors are constantly looking for principles and rules that will pave the way for success. Usually, those at the forefront are successful entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley or legendary Wall Street investors. But the principles of economic growth, wealth creation, and preservation were written long before the rise of the modern market economy and its heroes.

The Student Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner—today's premier leadership experts—demonstrate how anyone can be a leader, regardless of age or experience. Grounded in the same extensive research as the best-selling The Leadership Challenge, it uses real-life stories and examples exclusively from college students.

Although there are more women in higher education than ever before—and increasingly in leadership positions—their paths to success are more difficult than those paved for men. Nine Guiding Principles for Women in Higher Education is a concise and accessible resource aimed at helping women faculty succeed in their academic careers. Karyn Z. Sproles offers guidance, humor, and courage to women in higher education, paying particular attention to those with children and women of color.

The Monkey and the Fish decodes profound shifts and events taking place in the world today due to globalism, multiculturalism and technology, and introduces an original approach to ministry, church, and leadership known as The Third Culture. The book title refers to an Eastern parable that will challenge you to reexamine fundamental assumptions of the evangelical movement, including erroneous interpretations that have made the church increasingly irrelevant in North America and the global village.

Teachers deal with change on a regular basis, but there are some principles at the core of teaching that remain constant and that have the biggest impact on student achievement. In this inspiring book from the authors', bestselling author and speaker, you’ll learn how to focus on the most important things in the classroom, not just the "current" things. The authors reveal essential truths that will make you a more effective educator in areas such as student relationships, classroom management, and classroom culture.