Reach back into your childhood and recapture the leadership principles you learned from your favorite toys. Authors Ron Hunter and Michael E. Waddell take a nostalgic look back into their childhood toy boxes to revisit the valuable leadership and life lessons we all unintentionally learned during playtime. While these lessons started in fun, as adults, we’ve complicated the principles of leadership - cluttering them with popular trends and theories. Toy Box Leadership clears away the clutter and takes listeners back to the simple and essential roots of the most effective and unchanging leadership best practices. In this book, you will learn: what Lego bricks can teach you about building your business through connection; how Slinky Dog demonstrates the value of patience when you're growing your organization; what every kid learned from the Little Green Army Men that can be used in business strategy; and many more playful and insightful lessons. Whether you still feel young at heart or your childhood seems to be a distant memory, Toy Box Leadership will bring you back to the place where all important life lessons began to reinvigorate your ability to influence and lead others in the playground of life.

Have you ever been led by someone who cared for you like family, and dared you to achieve more than you ever thought possible for yourself, your organization, and even society? Award-winning author of Hostage at the Table, George Kohlrieser, along with his co-authors Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Coombe, explain how becoming a secure base leader releases extraordinary potential in others. Part of the Warren Bennis leadership series Care to Dare shows you how to become a Secure Base Leader so that you release your followers from the fears that get in the way of their performance. It shows you how you can unleash astonishing potential by building the trust, delivering the change, and inspiring the focus that underpins sustainable high performance. From extensive interviews with executives from all over the world, as well as from surveys with more than a thousand executives, the book reveals the nine characteristics that Secure Base Leaders display on a daily basis. The research shows that a primary difference between a successful leader and a failed leader is the presence or absence of secure bases in his or her life. Care to Dare will take you on a journey where you will discover your own secure bases, past and present, and determine how you can be a secure base for other people in your life at work and at home.

Flip conventional ideas upside down, escape clichés on leadership, and see real leadership principles revealed right side up.

"A one-two punch! Half kick in the ass, half cheerleading encouragement." —Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art If you are happy being just a dreamer, perhaps you don’t need this book. If you’re enjoying the status quo, don’t even consider reading this book. If you are content waiting for success to find you, please put this book down and go find something else to read. Why has Poke the Box become a cult classic? Because it’s a book that dares readers to do something they’re afraid of. It could be what you need, too. "Is Seth Godin the Pied Piper for however many of us have been afraid to fail? Will I answer his call? Will you?" —Peter Shermeta, reviewing the original edition of Poke the Box

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

LEADERSHIP IS ALIVE WHEN IT IS USED FOR OTHERS. IT DIES WHEN IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU Anyone can make an impact through influence. It is the most potent professional asset on the planet. The problem is that influence is also the most underused asset on the planet. And the primary reason is that the enemy of influence is a universal human trait: self-preservation. If leaders are too concerned with protecting their status and reputation, they limit their opportunity to forge open and honest ties with others. Making Your Leadership Come Alive shows how leaders who are genuine-who give themselves away-have the greatest influence and are the most successful in their work. Truly, the more you give, the more you receive. With confidence and trust in company leadership at an all-time low, Jeremie Kubicek's tested-and-proven concepts will show readers how to restore faith through the importance of relationships-and how to avoid the self-defeating and selfish approach commonly used by the leaders of today.