The Thong Principle has little to do with beachwear and everything to do with effective communication. It's about ensuring messages are successful for the sender - and the receiver. The book delves into the elements that comprise successful communications - conciseness, clarity, concreteness, and much more. It also puts those elements into context. Communications that miss the mark confuse and annoy. They fail to deliver their message. They damage our credibility and erode goodwill. The Thong Principle overflows with real-world examples to help us understand why we fail to get our messages across as intended. Then it explains how we can anticipate, identify, and correct errors and oversights. This is both at the highest level - including building and maintaining trust - and down in the weeds where even one word makes a difference. The Thong Principle will draw you in and keep you reading with: Examples Exercises Information that resonates. It's also funny. Laughter and learning are wonderful partners.

The key to career success and job satisfaction are effective working relationships. This book will help you to understand why relationships matter so much, what is happening when they go wrong and the different skills you need in different working environments. It will provide you with the tools and techniques required to make your relationships great, whether you are working in an office, working virtually, or blending both.

A new way of approaching start-ups which encourages a more flexible plan that allows for uncertainty and change
Business plans do not allow for the unexpected. Often written at the outset of a new business proposal, there is little room for change or learning from experience once the venture is underway.
Beyond the Business Plan provides 10 new principles for starting a new business venture which guarantee the flexibility to face any uncertainties. These principles can be used as an alternative to a traditional business plan or even alongside one allowing it to adapt when needed. This book does not dictate how to run a business but provides the insight needed to overcome unforeseen obstacles, to adapt, grow, and change as necessary. This fresh approach teaches how to be responsive to uncertainty and demonstrates that flexible development can navigate the changing world economy better than any business plan.

Negotiation Preparation in a Global World guides the reader through a series of issues to consider in building international and intercultural business negotiation skills. It takes the approach of examining failed business negotiations to analyze how improved communication might have led to successful outcomes. Each chapter presents theoretical background related to a communication failure and explores alternative strategies to the situation. This volume is ideal for undergraduate- and graduate-level students studying business, leadership, and organizational development, as well as those new to the global marketplace or interested in learning how to negotiate in the intercultural business arena.

*WINNER OF THE BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2020!* If you're a coach, consultant, or speaker who makes a living from your expertise, this is for you. It's the guide you need to help you plan, write, and promote the book that elevates your authority, increases your visibility, and gets more clients saying 'yes'. Because creating such a book is a challenge. Where do you start? How do you keep going until the end? And what do you do when you've finished? Don't let your book stay in your head - allow it to come to life and make a positive difference to both you and your readers by following the guidance you'll find in here. * Section 1: Plan. Learn how to create a strategic plan and outline for your book, so it both supports your business and helps the people you want to reach. * Section 2: Write. Master the art of crafting your work so it engages, inspires, and educates your readers. * Section 3: Promote. Discover how to market your book so it sells to a ready-made audience. This is the final step in building a reputation as the go-to expert in your field.

* Increasingly relevant considering covid-19 for professionals in practice and in training. * Filled with case studies throughout to demonstrate how skills explored can be seen in practice. * Demystifies the human need to connect and focuses on what coaches can do to improve the remote experience in their practice. * Will be of interest to a general audience across disciplines. * Offers perspectives on how to raise engagement, strengthen connections, and foster a sense of well-being when a significant portion of life's interactions are remote.

* Increasingly relevant considering covid-19 for professionals in practice and in training. * Filled with case studies throughout to demonstrate how skills explored can be seen in practice. * Demystifies the human need to connect and focuses on what coaches can do to improve the remote experience in their practice. * Will be of interest to a general audience across disciplines. * Offers perspectives on how to raise engagement, strengthen connections, and foster a sense of well-being when a significant portion of life's interactions are remote.

Even though office gossip is generally frowned upon, many studies show that gossip in organizations is not only inevitable, but can even be a positive communication tool. However, by gossiping in the wrong way, employees can easily lose the trust of their colleagues and be perceived negatively very quickly. Research shows that people who claim to never gossip tend to be considered as socially inept, but those that are constantly gabbing at the coffee machine are quickly seen as untrustworthy. There is an optimal amount of time one should gossip - somewhere in the middle - which we call the sweet spot of gossip. However, it's not only the amount of time one spends gossiping that will make or break an employee or manager. Other factors such as credibility, what we gossip about, whom we gossip with, culture, and place, all play an equally crucial role in the art of gossiping successfully at work. Finding the right balance for all of these factors is of the essence.

WINNER: Independent Press Award 2022 - Career Are you avoiding an uncomfortable conversation at work? If you're an executive or a team leader, strengthening your organization's ability to have difficult conversations is necessary and worth the discomfort. The key to successful dialogue starts and ends with changing the conversation. Recognizing that it takes two people to engage in meaningful outcomes, Can We Talk? outlines what each contributor needs to do to achieve the best possible result. Using examples from everyday work situations, this book offers guidance on how to create the right conditions for a meaningful discussion. The author identifies the seven key principles that enable both parties to gain a deeper understanding of what the other person may be thinking and will help establish their point of view more clearly: confidence, clarity, compassion, curiosity, compromise, credibility, courage. Can We Talk? includes examples and advice from those who have been there and thrived, as well as lessons learned from conversation failures and example scripts of productive conversations. Readers will learn how to prepare, start and manage the potentially challenging exchange of words that typically occur at work, and come away with an understanding that for any conversation to take place, both parties must be engaged.

Chart a Course to Excellence

Sponsored by The American College of Physician Executives

A much-needed, practical guide to giving and receiving feedback . . . a guide that is essential to the successful conduct of one of humanity's most important activities?productive conversation.
--Edgar H. Schein, Sloan Fellows professor of management emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management

Managing relationships, building trust, and communicating effectively are all essential skills to improving performance and ensuring the quality of patient care. This timely book offers the tools and techniques necessary to face the challenges of being a leader and resolving conflicts to produce win-win outcomes.

Irwin M. Rubin and Thomas Campbell show how to eliminate the pitfalls of traditional feedback approaches and enhance the win-win quality of all communication. With vignettes, a case study, and pithy cartoons, the authors detail two dynamic tools to help chart a course to excellence in giving and receiving championship-level feedback. Their integrated four-phase feedback model and practical behavioral tools provide the ingredients essential to plan for and learn from our daily experiences.

This business book is great for leaders, middle managers, entrepreneurs and anyone interested in:

• PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
• SOFT SKILLS FOR THE FUTURE
• RESILIENCE & ADAPTABILITY

"Although we are born with these seven skills,  it is never too late to improve the way we use them in life and work. Everyone should buy this book and keep it by their bedside for reference. This way each of us can continually increase our happiness, success and well-being.” - Mark Swindell, Founder and CEO of Rock Rail

"It has been a delight to work with Emma- Sue she has so much passion for what she does. Her workshop and book are excellent and particularly fit well with our core company values, definitely 7 key skills we need for our future!" – Tanya Zuchowski Learning & Development Manager at CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP.“A great CV might open a door but these 7 skills will determine your future success and happiness - this gem of a book will help you to develop these essential work and life skills.” Dr Lisa Day, Director of Studies Online MBA, University of Liverpool“Life is too important to live without some guidance – this book is THE guidance all of us need to flourish in work and beyond.” University Professor Dr Sarah Mercer, Professor of Language Teaching at the University of Graz, Austria
Feeling in control over your life is crucial to success and wellbeing.

Our world is changing - so fast, so furiously, so ferociously - that to stand out you need to tap into your own resources and competences. Doing so puts you firmly back into the driving seat of your own life, enabling you to be happier, find and do work you love and have a true sense of purpose. But what are the key competences that you need?

7 Skills for the Future sets the scene for seven new soft skills that will propel you forward. Through a combination of scientific research, no-nonsense advice, practical exercises and case studies, this book shows you how to understand, develop and use:

• Adaptability - respond better to opportunities and change by being flexible and agile
• Critical thinking - think smarter, more resourcefully, creatively and collaboratively
• Empathy - nurture all your relationships by learning how to listen and be present
• Integrity - trust, values and honesty are the name of the game now as is authenticity
• Optimism - be the most positive person you know
• Being Proactive - respond rather than react and learn to reinvent yourself
• Resilience - make mistakes, bounce back, learn from experience and move on to the next challenge

By learning how to tap into these essential skills, and understanding how to put them into practice each day of our lives, we can be happier, more effective and abler to cope with change in an uncertain and exciting future.

Improv is an art form in which participants act and respond in the present, trusting that each thoughtful action will lead to a wonderful outcome-even if it isn't the intended result. In this book, the principles and practices of unscripted theater are applied to non-theatrical circumstances. This book is based on a highly successful business school course, and aids in the development of communication, teamwork, creativity, confidence, emotional intelligence and other abilities. Each chapter assesses a different component of improv--how it connects to stage success and how it can be used in professional, academic and social settings. This is the only text that lays out an entire course on applied improv, providing activities with detailed instructions and descriptions. With roots in higher education, the book is informal, entertaining, and designed to be beneficial for anybody. Behavioral science, philosophy, art and athletics are all used to inform this discussion of improv and its real-world applications.

WINNER: Business Book Awards 2018 - 'Selling The Dream' category (1st edition) In an increasingly competitive professional services sector, it is vital that firms have an effective tendering strategy. The advantages gained from winning and retaining clients can be transformative, and the cost of losing key tenders can be catastrophic. Strategic Tendering for Professional Services provides end-to-end best practice guidance, from the crucial decision of which request-for-proposals to respond to, right through to the all important face-to-face presentation and post-pitch follow-up. Now in its second edition, this practical book captures insights from both sides of the market through interviews with both proposal professionals and decision makers from the client side. Focusing on key considerations, including the need for diversity and inclusion, providing evidence of global citizenship and how public sector pitching differs from the private sector, this book is packed with features and tools to help professionals turn guidance into practice. Strategic Tendering for Professional Services is the essential guide to improving your pitches, honing your tendering skills and boosting your win rate.

As leaders or parents (or both), navigating difficult conversations is part of our job description. How do we keep calm and achieve a productive outcome, all while keeping our relationships intact? The secret is curiosity. It is the innovation-driving, emotion-calming skill that comes so naturally to us as kids, but gets buried so easily beneath our busy, multitasking lifestyles. The good news is that we just have to relearn what we already know! In "The Power of Curiosity", mother-daughter executive coaching team Kathy Taberner and Kirsten Taberner-Siggins introduce the Curiosity Skills and a full, step-by-step process to use anytime, even when potentially challenging conversations arise. In 'The Power of Curiosity' you'll learn: How to be fully present in every conversation, even when distractions abound The fie listening choices you always have available, whether at home, work, or school Specific calming strategies to access when negative emotions run high A step-by-step process to transform potential conflict into relationship-building opportunities."

Let 50 World Class Speaking Coaches Show You How to Keep Your Audience on the Edge of Their Seats and Turn Your Presentations Into Profits. The World Class Speaking In Action 6-Part System provides you with real life examples and case studies on how to... * Craft an unforgettable message that hits home with your audience * Deliver your speech in a way that keeps your audience on the edge of their seats * Sell your message so your audience members take the exact next step you want them to take * Master leading-edge technologies and speak to thousands without even leaving home World Class Speaking In Action is a definitive guide for the professional speaking and coaching industry. Until now, public speaking books have covered either the art of public speaking or the business of public speaking. World Class Speaking In Action shows you how to master both. World Class Speaking is the one-stop-shop for building breakthrough presentations and turning them into bundles of profits!

All in favor of improving meeting procedures, say Aye! Trying to keep your in-person and virtual meetings on track and running smoothly? You need Robert's Rules of Order! These rules for conducting meetings have stood the test of time as the gold standard for practical and effective procedure in group settings like corporate and nonprofit boards, councils, and more. And there's no better way to learn the latest version of the rules than with Robert's Rules For Dummies. This handy guide demystifies the Rules and offers readers a practical roadmap to applying efficient procedures to everything from conducting online and in-person meetings to voting by email. It also: Contains brand-new, updated content on the latest 12th Edition of Robert's Rules Offers sample meeting agendas, minutes, scripts, and other material to show you how the pros keep meeting records Walks you through the basic--and not so basic--ways to nominate and elect officers and directors in organizations Ideal for board members, convention delegates, business owners, nonprofit executives, and anyone else trying to maintain an orderly flow of business--online or in person--Robert's Rules For Dummies is a need-to-read resource that will make you wonder how you ever survived without it.

Despite being more connected than ever before, many are also more isolated. The tools and technology available today have pushed business owners, entrepreneurs, and motivated professionals toward shallow, surface-level engagement, robbing them of connections, opportunities, profits, and fulfillment. In Save Your Asks, bestselling author Chris Tuff shares his transformative approach to building genuine, productive business relationships. No more stale bagels or burnt coffee, no more "speed dating" networking meetings, and no more high-pressure networking groups. Just a simple, innovative system that encourages genuine interaction and fulfillment while building deep connections with prospects and referral partners. Featuring some of the most innovative CEOs, athletes, auctioneers, surfers, and others, Save Your Asks will help you: Develop an authentic personal brand that people actually remember Identify your "networking currency" and use it to generate results Avoid the "askholes" and others who will hold you back Land more business by mastering "the art of the ask" Chris Tuff is on a mission to help business leaders create connections that make work cultures thrive, improve retention rates, and multiply sales. Save Your Asks is the motivated networker's ticket to achieving those results, and more!

Modaff and DeWine's new undergraduate text, Organizational Communication: Foundations, Challenges, and Misunderstandings, offers a unique perspective on the field of internal organizational communication. The authors review the foundational material, but intersperse the discussions with excerpts from interviews conducted with over 60 leaders and workers in a variety of organizations.
A central feature of the text is the concept of misunderstandings, which highlights the idea that organizations are inherently problematic. This focus positions communication at the center of organizational life, and shows the reader how and why communication can serve to create and resolve misunderstandings of all types. The authors advance a model, the Communicative Organization, which allows the reader to see the significance of communication to every aspect of organizational functioning.
Benefits to instructors and students include:
* The use of real-life problems as told by organizational leaders and workers to illustrate the material discussed in every chapter, which provides an easy mechanism for starting class discussions.
* Chapters on realistic recruitment and organizational socialization, which are not typically found in other introductory organizational communication textbooks.
* Integration of the concepts of gender and diversity throughout the text.
* Discussions of current applications of theories and concepts as students have or will experience them.
* A postscript that ties all of the material from the text together.
* A writing style that is student-centered yet sufficiently challenging.
* A dedicated website (created by Derek Lane, Universityof Kentucky, Lexington) to support the text is available at http: //www.uky.edu/~drlane/orgcomm. It includes chapter outlines, supplemental content, and suggested course syllabi. The site greatly facilitates use of the text for students. A PDF of corrected pages of the subject index from the first printing is also available at this site.

The book is a unique and necessary contribution to the literature on school administration. Research, theory, and practice were melded to produce a book that can be used as a primary or supplemental text or as professional growth resource for practitioners. Communication scholars, especially since 1990, have concluded that competence must be defined and studied in the context of professions. As such, a growing number of medical schools, law schools, and business schools have integrated communication into their curricula. This book provides a resource for such integration into the study and practice of district and school administration.

Customer Service: Career Success through Customer Loyalty, 6e provides a systematic process for building service skills that all business people need. Presented in a friendly, conversational manner, the text is filled with examples that demonstrate the link between service skills and career achievement. This edition features more on social networking, trustability, and customer service trends. Information is also included on internal customers, emerging technologies, and stress-reducing techniques. Throughout the text, there is an emphasis on transforming good service intentions into a workable plan that yields loyalty and success.

WINNER: Independent Press Award 2022 - Career Are you avoiding an uncomfortable conversation at work? If you're an executive or a team leader, strengthening your organization's ability to have difficult conversations is necessary and worth the discomfort. The key to successful dialogue starts and ends with changing the conversation. Recognizing that it takes two people to engage in meaningful outcomes, Can We Talk? outlines what each contributor needs to do to achieve the best possible result. Using examples from everyday work situations, this book offers guidance on how to create the right conditions for a meaningful discussion. The author identifies the seven key principles that enable both parties to gain a deeper understanding of what the other person may be thinking and will help establish their point of view more clearly: confidence, clarity, compassion, curiosity, compromise, credibility, courage. Can We Talk? includes examples and advice from those who have been there and thrived, as well as lessons learned from conversation failures and example scripts of productive conversations. Readers will learn how to prepare, start and manage the potentially challenging exchange of words that typically occur at work, and come away with an understanding that for any conversation to take place, both parties must be engaged.

DISTINGUISHED FAVOURITE: NYC Big Book Awards 2017 Content, in all its forms, is the single most critical element of any marketing campaign. Finding a successful equilibrium between content marketing and content strategy is difficult, but essential. Content - The Atomic Particle of Marketing goes beyond superficial descriptions of how to produce engaging social media content to offer the results of many years of deep quantitative research, and hours of interviews with senior marketers at some of the world's leading brands. Written by a recognized industry thought leader, Content - The Atomic Particle of Marketing explores how content functions in the broader framework of all marketing, as well as organizational concerns and IT decision making. It demonstrates the value content brings not only to "owned" media initiatives, such as a company website or blog, but also the essential role content plays in all other marketing initiatives, from social media to advertising to offline channels. It will enable readers to make the organizational, staffing, tools and process decisions necessary to get content up and running across divisions and organizational silos. Deeply researched and insightful, Content - The Atomic Particle of Marketing is, quite simply, the definitive research-based guide to content marketing.