Resources

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

by Gary Chapman and Paul White
(Communication/Motivation/Leadership)

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace applies the love language concept to the workplace. This book helps supervisors and managers effectively communicate appreciation and encouragement to their employees, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction, healthier relationships between managers and employees, and decreased cases of burnout.

Ideal for both the profit and non-profit sectors, the principles presented in this book have a proven history of success in businesses, schools, medical offices, churches, and industry. Each book contains an access code for the reader to take a comprehensive online MBA Inventory (Motivating By Appreciation).

The inventory is designed to provide a clearer picture of an individual’s primary language of appreciation and motivation as experienced in a work-related setting. This assists managers and supervisors in communicating effectively to their team members, and thus building a more positive and productive work environment.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, is that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results.

Bringing together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that
matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

Strengths Finder

by Tom Rath

Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in 2001 which ignited a global conversation and helped millions to discover their top five talents.

In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself--and the world around you--forever.

Think Again

by Adam Grant

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions,
when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. This book is an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

by Greg McKeown

Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin?
Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized?
Are you often busy but not productive?
Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?
 
If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.
 
The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.  

By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism  is a movement whose time has come.

Start With  Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

by Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek is leading a movement to build a world in which the vast majority of us are inspired by the work we do. Millions have already seen his video on TED.com about the importance of knowing why we do what we do. Start with Why takes the concept even deeper. 
 
Any person or organization can explain what they do; some can explain how they are different or better; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not about money or profit – those are results.WHY is the thing that inspires us and inspires those around us. 
 
From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Steve Jobs to the Wright Brothers, Start with Why shows that the leaders who inspire all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way – and it’s the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired – and it all starts with WHY.

The Hope Quotient: Measure It. Raise It. You'll Never Be the Same

by Ray Johnston

What's at the heart of every thriving person, every thriving marriage, kid, and business? Hope! The Hope Quotient is a revolutionary new method for measuring-and dramatically increasing-your level of hope. Hope is more than a feeling; it's the by-product of seven key factors. When these are present in your life, they cause hope to thrive.
Factor 1: Recharge Your Batteries Nobody does well running on empty.  
Factor 2: Raise Your Expectations You don't get what you deserve; you get what you expect..
Factor 3: Refocus on the Future It's time to throw away your rear view mirror. No one goes forward well when they are looking back. 
Factor 4: Play to Your Strengths Be yourself; everyone else is taken. 
Factor 5: Refuse to Go At It Alone Never underestimate the power of support. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. 
Factor 6: Replace Burnout with Balance Burning the candle at both ends isn't as bright as you think. 
Factor 7: Play Great Defense Avoid these five toxic hope killers that can threaten your future.
Using seven years of research, powerful biblical illustrations, and compelling human-interest stories, Ray Johnston explains how these seven essential factors will support, sustain, and strengthen your hope. And when consciously built into your life, how they will unleash hope in your marriage, your kids, your career, your church, your community, and the world. With biblical examples of Joshua, King David, and Nehemiah, as well as stories of some amazingly hopeful people today, Pastor Ray shares the only way to get more hope is to consciously build it into your life. Your HQ is the most important contributor to your overall success. Because when hope rises, not just positive thinking but solid hope from God, everything changes.

Inner Critic Inner Success: Claiming Your Success While Taming the Critics

by Stacey Sargent

Inner Critic Inner Success straddles the worlds of business and self-help in a way that’s bursting with smarts yet is full of soul. It’s a guide to finding the sweet spot in life where you can hold both success and doubt in a way that feels actionable and spacious instead of pointless and stuck. This book helps you capitalize on the dynamic and powerful relationship between critic and success. With attention and awareness, you’ll become adept at seeing the dynamics of how success and doubt play off each other on a daily basis. You’ll begin to transform that negative Inner Critic voice into a beam of light that spotlights your most cherished hopes, values and strengths. It challenges you to define success in a radical new way — on YOUR terms (versus what society, culture and business dictate) and from the perspective of how you feel about success not just how you think.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

by Clotaire Rapaille

Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes.

In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world. 

Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do. 

Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us. 

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

by Susan Cain

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. 

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

People Over Profit

by Dale Partridge

Every day major headlines tell the story of a new and better American marketplace. Established corporations have begun reevaluating the quality of their products, the ethics of their supply chain, and how they can give back by donating a portion of their profit to meaningful causes. Meanwhile, millions of entrepreneurs who want a more responsible and compassionate marketplace have launched a new breed of socially focused business models.

Sevenly founder Dale Partridge uncovers the seven core beliefs shared by consumers, starters, and leaders behind this transformation. These beliefs have enabled Dale to build a multimillion-dollar company that is revolutionizing the marketplace. He believes they are the secret to creating a sustainable world that values honesty over deception, transparency over secrecy, authenticity over hype, and ultimately, people over profit.