Performance Leadership

For decades, performance management has been seen as an annual chore by managers and HR alike. But this process is changing, and there are ways to make it more effective for your organization and more useful for employees. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on performance management in your organization, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you assess performance more accurately, have more effective feedback conversations, and encourage the growth of your employees.

DisneyWar is an enthralling tale of one of America's most powerful media and entertainment companies, the people who control it, and those trying to overthrow them. It tells a story that - in its sudden twists, vivid, larger-than-life characters, and thrilling climax - might itself have been the subject of a Disney classic - except that it's all true.

High achievers are at the top of their game because of the discipline they have during the unseen hours. They have made a commitment to establish, tweak, and repeat positive habits in everything they do. Raise Your Game examines the top leaders in sports and business and proves that success is a result of the little things we do all the time.

How many audiobooks have you listened to on project management? On leadership? Too many, right? But no other book combines the practice of project management and leadership into one balanced approach with practical examples—except this book. You don’t even need Project Manager in your title to employ these lessons. You can be any person on any team who has stepped up to take a leadership role on a critical initiative. You’ll learn what it takes to become the binding agent—the glue—that creates cohesive, engaged, high-performing project teams.

What separates good teams from great ones? Jess Pryce delivers a powerful guide packed with actionable insights to help leaders unlock their team’s full potential and create lasting success. This book is a comprehensive toolkit for leaders determined to move beyond mediocrity and build teams that thrive in today’s dynamic business environment.

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.

Ideal for every manager who wants to understand and move past their own preconceived ideas, The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias explains that bias is the result of mental shortcuts, our likes and dislikes, and is a natural part of the human condition. And what we assume about each other and how we interact with one another has vast effects on our organizational success - especially in the workplace. Teaching you how to overcome unconscious bias, this book provides more than 30 unique tools, such as a list of ways to reframe your unconscious thoughts.

Perform Under Pressure will help you not only survive but thrive in situations that up until now have been holding you back. Targeting the moments when you are most stressed and uncomfortable, Dr. Ceri Evans' red-blue mind model converts his clinical insights into a simple approach that will help you gain emotional control when you need it most.

Becoming a CEO is a high-stakes moment, whether it's your first, second, or third time in the seat. What you say and how you act in your early days as CEO sets the tone for how you'll be perceived for years to come. Yet, until now, few CEOs have shared their stories on what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they'd done differently. In The New CEO, Dr. Ty Wiggins, an experienced leadership advisor specializing in CEO transitions, explains how to land well as a new CEO, accelerate your impact, and unlock the most affirming experience of your career.

Did you know that women only currently make up around 25 percent of the C-Suite? And they lead less than 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies? Hard to believe right? But things are slowly starting to change, and people are starting to realize that women can bring qualities to the table that men simply can’t.

The Four Mindsets: How to Influence, Motivate, and Lead High Performance Teams holds the key to significantly increasing productivity, performance, and revenue in your organization. Developed as a guide proven to help all levels of managers to connect, focus, align, and activate their teams to elevate results, this audiobook also serves as a low-cost alternative to expensive training, coaching, and mentoring programs by providing a range of resources and tools to use and become a "best in class" leader today.

The job of a Chief Technical Officer is broad, ever-changing, and hard to define. Is the CTO an engineer, an architect, a people manager, or an executive? Turns out, in most cases, it’s all of the above—and even the most experienced “techies” often find themselves feeling underprepared for the human and logistical sides of this pivotal role.

Talent doesn’t make the team—the team makes the talent. Why are some teams more motivated, innovative, and successful than others? Why do some groups of talented people fall short against lesser teams? And how do you go about building a high-performing team? Dr. David Burkus understands that to build the best team, you must first shape the habits and practices that bring out the best in each member. Best Team Ever reveals what some of the world’s most effective teams do and shows you how you can do the same.

Leadership is the most overanalyzed, thoroughly dissected, and utterly confused topic in business. In Leaders Open Doors, author Bill Treasurer helps lighten the leadership load by distilling that leaders are simply creators of opportunity for others. Using personal stories and anecdotes, Treasurer presents the idea of open-door leadership - that is, the responsibility that leaders have for noticing, identifying, and creating opportunities for the benefit of people, organizations, and society.

A former Gallup Global Leadership Research and Development leader and the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Strengths-Based Leadership draw from original research comprising interviews with high-performing global leaders to present for the first time a new model that demystifies the aura and complexity surrounding high performing leaders.

As humans, what sets us apart is that we can achieve extraordinary goals when we focus, collaborate, and continuously check on our progress. However, even in large companies, only seven percent of the people know their company's top goals. OKRs, objectives, and key results, are what Google and many other top companies have been using deeply immersed into their culture from the very beginning.

With so many choices available to them today's customers are smarter and more demanding than ever before, putting repeat business at risk. In order to keep them coming back, you can't just give them good, or even great, customer service...you have to knock their socks off!

Gapology is the term Mark Thienes and Brian Brockhoff coined to describe what winning leaders do to identify and close performance gaps in their teams. Gapology is their process. For more than a decade, they analyzed the results, leadership behaviors and tactics of winning leaders as compared to those of leaders who were not winning. They wanted to understand how winning leaders win and if winning could be replicated. They were deeply curious about whether winning can be taught to those not winning or if winning leaders are simply born with the skills to win.

In this book, Mike Robbins dives deep into the ways great businesses build trust, collaborate, and operate at their peak level. As an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, Mike draws on more than 20 years of experience working with top companies like Google and Microsoft, as well as his baseball career with the Kansas City Royals. And, while each team and organization have their own unique challenges, goals, and dynamics, there are some universal qualities that allow teams to truly come together and thrive.

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.