Organizations are only as productive as the interactions that take place between individuals, teams and divisions. This book is a short, engaging guide for dramatically improving the quality of these interactions. The four 'keys' that Judith Katz and Frederick Miller provide offer a framework and a common language for creating an open, honest and supportive workplace, one where people aren't afraid to speak up and where everyone feels respected. The four keys are: - Lean into Discomfort: Be willing to move beyond your comfort zone, and help create an environment where others feel the same way. - Listen as an Ally: Try to find ways you can support fellow employee's ideas. - Share Your Intent and Intensity: Make it crystal clear how committed you feel to any idea you raise. - Share Street Corners: Your perspective - your corner - is only one point of view. Actively encourage people from other ""corners' to offer their perspectives.

Some organizations pay a great deal of attention to ensuring the physical safety of their team members, but do the team members feel safe enough to speak up and raise tough concerns? Share bold and still-in-formation ideas? In this book, bestselling authors and inclusion experts Frederick A. Miller and Judith H. Katz introduce the concept of “interaction safety” and demonstrate how it can help create a work environment of trust, inclusion, and collaboration. Interaction safety encourages reasonable risk-taking and inspires every individual to be brave enough to reach for higher goals and more ambitious possibilities. When interaction safety exists, people know they will not be penalized, ostracized, demoted, made small, discounted, or shunned because of their thoughts, contributions, and conversations. Individuals feel encouraged, empowered, and can achieve more together than they would alone. Miller and Katz provide a four-level model for assessing and increasing the interaction safety in organizations, illustrated by short scenarios taken from real-life situations. They offer concrete actions team members, leaders, and organizations can take to build and maintain a productive, collaborative, and innovative environment in which people do their best work individually and collectively. When interaction safety is a way of life, the energy people used to spend walking on eggshells, trying to get their ideas heard, navigating minefields, or avoiding those they distrust can instead be put towards doing their best work and winning bigger for the organization. With a culture of openness and true collaboration, both the organization and individuals can soar!

Too many people have decided that the safest way to get through life is to be small. They try not to attract attention to themselves, just tending their own safe little garden. They've decided it's too dangerous to think big, to speak out, to take risks. They might get shot down. Or look foolish. People will think they're just not good enough. But, particularly today, organizations need people to step up and be BIG. We need new ideas, new products, new processes. People have to bring more of themselves to the workplace, to contribute more, and to have a bigger impact on the success of the organization. This inspiring illustrated book challenges all of us to show up more fully as individuals and in our interactions with others and to find ways to be BIG together. In straightforward, incisive language, Judith Katz and Frederick Miller help us understand all of the many, sometimes subtle ways we make ourselves small. They show how we make others small as well and how these same attitudes can keep us from working together effectively. And they encourage us to nourish new attitudes that will make us, our coworkers, and our organizations bigger. Be BIG invites us to bring more of ourselves to each situation—whether working independently, with another individual, or with a group—so that we can do our best work together.

Managers, employees, and customers meet in the limited space of an aircraft. They interact and encounter conflicts such as those found in other areas of the world of work. How the interaction takes place strongly depends on the skills and performance of the cabin crew, who at best must anticipate and de-escalate challenges and at worst solve them immediately and without help from the outside. This calls for the highest level of personal and interpersonal competence—with all the consequences. So what can managers and employees learn from the setting on board? Each chapter begins with exciting real-life stories that happened at a certain latitude and longitude and an altitude of thirty thousand feet. The reader directly recognizes parallels to his or her life, tracks down problems faster in the future, and finds new solutions. If you want to increase your professional and personal effectiveness, this book is a must-read for you.

This book explores how theater artistry melds the forces of collaboration and leadership, igniting creativity from the first spark of an idea to the climactic curtain call. It throws the spotlight on the dynamic interplay of roles, covering the collaboration between producer, director, playwright, actor, designer, stage manager, dramaturg, and stage crew. Each chapter illuminates various strategies and insights, revealing how you can harness these transformative techniques on your own journey, crafting spellbinding productions through the power of collective creativity. In this new edition, Joel Veenstra builds upon, updates, and expands on Robert Cohen's original concepts in the following ways: - Updated case studies and examples drawn from the combined 75 years of professional theatre-making experience of Cohen and Veenstra, as well as insights from their extensive network of collaborators - Revised flow and scope to include the collaborator's worldview, specific practices for creating collaborative milieu from the start, and conflict resolution tools - Modernized with new research, perspectives, and insights from leadership experts like Brené Brown and Simon Sinek, and team-based organizations like Google and The Second City - Refreshed exercises to enhance practical understanding and application of the concepts - Expanded lens for applications beyond the realm of theatre-making to any collaboration - Revised appendices with recommended digital resources

The Wall Street Journal bestseller—a Financial Times Business Book of the Month and named by The Washington Post as “One of the 11 Leadership Books to Read in 2018”—is “a refreshingly data-based, clearheaded guide” (Publishers Weekly) to individual performance, based on a groundbreaking study. Why do some people perform better at work than others? This deceptively simple question continues to confound professionals in all sectors of the workforce. Now, after a unique, five-year study of more than 5,000 managers and employees, Morten Hansen reveals the answers in his “Seven Work Smarter Practices” that can be applied by anyone looking to maximize their time and performance. Each of Hansen’s seven practices is highlighted by inspiring stories from individuals in his comprehensive study. You’ll meet a high school principal who engineered a dramatic turnaround of his failing high school; a rural Indian farmer determined to establish a better way of life for women in his village; and a sushi chef, whose simple preparation has led to his unassuming restaurant being awarded the maximum of three Michelin stars. Hansen also explains how the way Alfred Hitchcock filmed Psycho and the 1911 race to become the first explorer to reach the South Pole both illustrate the use of his seven practices. Each chapter “is intended to inspire people to be better workers…and improve their own work performance” (Booklist) with questions and key insights to allow you to assess your own performance and figure out your work strengths, as well as your weaknesses. Once you understand your individual style, there are mini-quizzes, questionnaires, and clear tips to assist you focus on a strategy to become a more productive worker. Extensive, accessible, and friendly, Great at Work will help us “reengineer our work lives, reduce burnout, and improve performance and job satisfaction” (Psychology Today).

Teamwork is essential to improving the quality of patient care and reducing medical errors and injuries. But how does teamwork really function? And what are the barriers that sometimes prevent smart, well-intentioned people from building and sustaining effective teams? Collaborative Caring takes an unusual approach to the topic of teamwork. Editors Suzanne Gordon, Dr. David L. Feldman, and Dr. Michael Leonard have gathered fifty engaging first-person narratives provided by people from various health care professions.Each story vividly portrays a different dimension of teamwork, capturing the complexity—and sometimes messiness—of moving from theory to practice when it comes to creating genuine teams in health care. The stories help us understand what it means to be a team leader and an assertive team member. They vividly depict how patients are left out of or included on the team and what it means to bring teamwork training into a particular workplace. Exploring issues like psychological safety, patient advocacy, barriers to teamwork, and the kinds of institutional and organizational efforts that remove such barriers, the health care professionals who speak in this book ultimately have one consistent message: teamwork makes patient care safer and health care careers more satisfying. These stories are an invaluable tool for those moving toward genuine interprofessional and intraprofessional teamwork.