What keeps a team performing at its peak even under the most difficult conditions? Conversational capacity: the ability to have open, balanced, nondefensive dialogue In a world of mounting complexity and rapid-fire change, it's more important than ever to build teams that work well when the pressure is on. Craig Weber provides managers and team leaders with the communication tools they need to ensure that the team remains on track even when dealing with its most troublesome issues, responds to tough challenges with greater agility and skill, and performs brilliantly in circumstances that incapacitate less disciplined teams. Craig Weber is an international consultant specializing in team and leadership development.

The acclaimed author of Conversational Capacity shows you how to exercise more effective leadership—and find deeper purpose and meaning—by building your ability to engage in open, constructive, learning-focused dialogue when it counts. With his breakout book, Conversational Capacity, Craig Weber revolutionized the concept of business communication by teaching a veritable conversational martial art that allows teams to perform well and remain open, balanced, and nondefensive as they tackle their most troublesome issues. His proven methods have been used to bolster the performance of executive groups and flight crews, as well as surgical units and CDC emergency response teams. Even more impressive, in over a dozen U.S. states it is even helping Democratic and Republican legislators work together more effectively as they craft public policy. In Influence in Action, Weber goes deeper, showing you how to put these principles into practice―using a step-by-step program that includes case studies, sample dialogues, skill-building exercises, and powerful conversation techniques. This book will help you balance candor and curiosity under pressure by honing your awareness, shifting your mindset, and sharpening your skills. Better still, it will help you do this as you inspire constructive change all around you. Research shows that people yearn for more meaningful work. They want to feel like active participants in the workplace. They’re eager to be more engaged. They’re raring to make a difference. And what is leadership if not influence in action?

The acclaimed author of Conversational Capacity shows you how to exercise more effective leadership—and find deeper purpose and meaning—by building your ability to engage in open, constructive, learning-focused dialogue when it counts. With his breakout book, Conversational Capacity, Craig Weber revolutionized the concept of business communication by teaching a veritable conversational martial art that allows teams to perform well and remain open, balanced, and nondefensive as they tackle their most troublesome issues. His proven methods have been used to bolster the performance of executive groups and flight crews, as well as surgical units and CDC emergency response teams. Even more impressive, in over a dozen U.S. states it is even helping Democratic and Republican legislators work together more effectively as they craft public policy. In Influence in Action, Weber goes deeper, showing you how to put these principles into practice―using a step-by-step program that includes case studies, sample dialogues, skill-building exercises, and powerful conversation techniques. This book will help you balance candor and curiosity under pressure by honing your awareness, shifting your mindset, and sharpening your skills. Better still, it will help you do this as you inspire constructive change all around you. Research shows that people yearn for more meaningful work. They want to feel like active participants in the workplace. They’re eager to be more engaged. They’re raring to make a difference. And what is leadership if not influence in action?

What makes the difference between your collaboration's failure or success? Collaboration: What Makes It Work, Second Edition answers this question with an up-to-date and in-depth review of collaboration research. This new edition also includes The Wilder Collaboration Factors Inventory.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

The key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It's not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuroscience from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can understand and apply it in their everyday lives. Author Judith Glaser presents a framework for knowing what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain; and what activates higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment. Conversational Intelligence makes complex scientific material simple to understand and apply through a wealth of easy to use tools, examples, conversational rituals, and practices for all levels of an organization.

The first and only guide to diagnosing and dealing with the hidden or covert factors that can ruin even the most meticulously planned change processes. Organizational change initiatives often fail because they focus exclusively on the rational, overt aspects of change, overlooking the powerful role played by concealed or irrational factors. It’s well known that these covert processes—such as hidden agendas, blind spots, office politics, tacit assumptions, secret hopes, wishes and fears—frequently sabotage change efforts, but up until now nobody has offered a rigorous, consistent way of identifying and dealing with them. Drawing on over thirty years of experience as an organizational change consultant to global corporations and government agencies, Robert J. Marshak shows precisely how to bring these hidden processes to light and deal with their negative impact. Marshak identifies five different dimensions of covert processes, presents an integrated model to explain the ultimate source of all of them, and shows how to diagnose whether any covert processes might be at work in your organization. He then offers specific tools and techniques for engaging and managing these “under-the-table” processes and for creating the kind of organizational environment in which such hidden dynamics are unable to flourish. Covert Processes at Work is a comprehensive and practical guide that managers, leaders, and consultants can use to deal with the hidden dynamics that are often at the root of many organizational problems. “Adding these tools…will take both your practice and your clients to a whole new level of capability and impact.” —Karen Boylston, PhD, Managing Director, Duke Corporate Education