Hardball Leadership

How do you sufficiently progress beyond the status quo when an entire rural community views the status quo as sufficient progress? Educating children in poverty remains the most important educational challenge of our time. What few people know is this: the rate of child poverty in our nation’s rural communities is actually higher than it is in our country’s urban centers. Hardball Leadership is a best practices guide for rural school leaders who are passionate about closing the achievement gap and committed to leading their districts to significant academic improvement. Based upon original research that examined the leadership practices of effective rural superintendents who led their districts to dramatic academic improvement, this book’s insights include: Establishing a strong academic culture where every student can and will be successful Developing a system for improving teacher instructional performance Fostering an academically-focused partnership with the board of education Managing school-based controversy in a productive way Building and sustaining a financially strong district This leadership handbook will help rural school leaders build an academic pathway that will lead their students towards a happy and prosperous life.

Is it possible to be become a better leader in thirty days? Absolutely! Most of us have read one too many books on leadership. We have found them helpful, but the question is, "How much of what we've read have we actually implemented into our everyday leadership style and practice?" We have all heard it takes thirty days to change a habit. So why not take that same approach to leadership? The goal of Become a Better Leader in 30 Days is to do just that! Why do people follow you? What followers want from a leader The importance of developing your intuition How crisis can be a good thing How to delegate effectively Take this thirty-day journey, embrace the concepts, change your perspective, form new habits, and you will be on your way to becoming a better leader.

The bestselling guide fully updated for the post-Lean In era For nearly two decades, Hardball for Women has shown women how to get ahead in the business world. Whether the arena is a law firm, a medical group, a tech company, or any other work environment, Hardball for Women decodes male business culture and shows women how to break patterns of behavior that put them at a disadvantage. It explains how to get results when you “lean in” without being thrown off balance. Illustrated with real-life examples Hardball for Women teaches women how to: Successfully navigate middle management to become a leader in your field Be assertive without being obnoxious Display confidence Engage in smart self-promotion Lead both men and women—and recognize the differences between them Use “power talk” language to your advantage

In his best-selling book, Squirrel Inc., former World Bank executive and master storyteller Stephen Denning used a tale to show why storytelling is a critical skill for leaders. Now, in this hands-on guide, Denning explains how you can learn to tell the right story at the right time. Whoever you are in the organization CEO, middle management, or someone on the front lines you can lead by using stories to effect change. Filled with myriad examples, A Leader’s Guide to Storytelling shows how storytelling is one of the few available ways to handle the principal and most difficult challenges of leadership: sparking action, getting people to work together, and leading people into the future. The right kind of story at the right time, can make an organization “stunningly vulnerable” to a new idea.

Become a next generation leader—rich in emotional and social intelligence and orchestrating outstanding collaborative results—by mastering these eight status quo-shattering paradoxes. The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership unpacks the fresh strategies and new mindset required today from a next generation leader. Author Dr. Tim Elmore helps leaders of all kinds navigate increasingly complex, rapidly changing environments, as well as manage teams who bring a range of new demands and expectations to the workplace that haven’t been seen even one generation prior. After working alongside John C. Maxwell for twenty years, Tim offers counter-intuitive paradoxes that, when practiced, enable today’s leader to differentiate themselves and better connect with their team and customers. The book furnishes ideas that equip leaders to inspire team members in a way a paycheck never could. Having trained hundreds of thousands of young professionals to develop into leaders—Dr. Elmore shares the secrets of next generation leaders who have practiced the unique paradoxes outlined in this book and inspired their team members in a way that a paycheck never could. In The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership, readers will: Learn how today’s team members require a combination of different qualities from their leaders than they did in even the recent past; Grasp the importance of eight key paradoxes that are critical for next generation leaders to put into practice right now; Be inspired by historic and modern-day leaders who lived the eight paradoxes; and Understand how they too can lead with the eight paradoxes, guiding them to emotional and social intelligence that resonates with their teams and leads to outstanding collaborative results.

Classic Strategies for Unapologetic Winners “It” is a strategy so powerful and an execution-driven mind-set so relentless that companies use it to gain more than just competitive advantage ¿ they achieve an industry dominance that is virtually unassailable and that competitors often try to explain away as unfair. In their “hardball manifesto,” authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic “hardball strategies”: unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors’ costs, and break compromises. Based on twenty-five years of experience advising and observing a range of companies, the authors argue that hardball competitors can gain extreme competitive advantage ¿ neutralizing, marginalizing, or even destroying competitors ¿ without violating their contracts with customers or employees, and without breaking the rules. A clear-eyed paean to the timeless strategies that have driven the world’s winning companies, Hardball Strategy redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition for a new generation of business players.

Learn how to develop self-awareness and use it to become more fulfilled, confident, and successful. Most people feel like they know themselves pretty well. But what if you could know yourself just a little bit better—and with this small improvement, get a big payoff…not just in your career, but in your life? Research shows that self-awareness—knowing who we are and how others see us—is the foundation for high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. There’s just one problem: most people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could. Fortunately, reveals organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich, self-awareness is a surprisingly developable skill. Integrating hundreds of studies with her own research and work in the Fortune 500 world, she shows us what it really takes to better understand ourselves on the inside—and how to get others to tell us the honest truth about how we come across. Through stories of people who have made dramatic gains in self-awareness, she offers surprising secrets, techniques and strategies to help you do the same—and how to use this insight to be more fulfilled, confident, and successful in life and in work. In Insight, you'll learn: • The 7 types of self-knowledge that self-aware people possess. • The 2 biggest invisible roadblocks to self-awareness. • Why approaches like therapy and journaling don't always lead to true insight • How to stop your confidence-killing habits and learn to love who you are. • How to benefit from mindfulness without uttering a single mantra. • Why other people don’t tell you the truth about yourself—and how to find out what they really think. • How to deepen your insight into your passions, gifts, and the blind spots that could be holding you back. • How to hear critical feedback without losing your mojo. • Why the people with the most power can often be the least-self-aware, and how smart leaders avoid this trap. • The 3 building blocks for self-aware teams. • How to deal with delusional bosses, clients, and coworkers.

From the Business Community... "Person-Centered Leadership builds on that foundation of caring for every individual in the organization and takes it to the next level. It features engaging ′people first/team result′ anecdotes from a variety of American companies and straightforward ′how-tos′ for becoming the kind of leader (not just business) that people love to work for and be associated with. We′ll use it as a discussion for one of our upcoming staff get-togethers." --Michael A. Fisher, Premier Manufacturing Support Services "Dr. Plas′s book provides insights into aspects of human behavior that enhance effective management skills. She affirms that respecting employees as individuals with unique talents and needs within the workplace creates a productive atmosphere that results in happier people and higher profits. This book is now required reading for everyone in our firm who manages people. I totally agree with Dr. Plas′s conclusions about competent leadership and its positive impact on all aspects of the individual and the company." --Bill W. Shoptaw, Shoptaw-James, Inc. From the Academic Community.. "I found particularly interesting the insightful comment that past teamwork and TQM efforts are flawed because they have not rewarded individuals. This suggests a new form of team with individual recognition and elaborated roles for members. The key ideas of related individualism, authenticity, and acceptance of strength and weakness provide guidelines for transforming organizations. There are three chapter-long case studies and a number of shorter examples that add much interest to the book. I would recommend the reader to look at the ′person-centered principles′ that accompany the three chapter-long cases in the second part of the book and the ′actions, hints, and cautions′ sections in the boxes in Chapter 13. I found the ideas to be well presented and insightful and the case studies to be rich and interesting. I think the practical suggestions in the final chapter will be helpful to managers who try to apply the book′s recommendations for change." --Joseph Seltzer, Department of Management, La Salle University Why hasn′t TQM (total quality management) worked as well in the U.S. as it has elsewhere? In the United States, employees seem to prefer recognition of individual achievement over recognition of the work team. Could the American cultural emphasis on the individual be a crucial factor? This engagingly written textbook demonstrates that the recent participatory management failures are the result of a lack of appreciation for the cultural role of rugged individualism. Offering an alternative, person-centered leadership, which puts the individual at the very center of the management approach, author Jeanne M. Plas demonstrates effective, psychology-based, person-centered management techniques using contemporary examples--many of them drawn from her research and consulting work with successful U.S. businesses and CEOs. Topics include: A historical overview of the relationship of the individual to the corporation. The response of new leaders to the problem of rapid technological and social change that outpaces the development of cultural attitudes. Illustrations of a variety of person-centered leadership approaches that fit different companies and different managerial styles. Specific strategies that leaders and managers can use to bring out the best in themselves, their associates, and their organizations.