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.

This workbook is intended for business analysts who wish to improve their skills in creating data visuals, presentations, and report illustrations used to support business decisions. It is a qualitative lab to develop the power of visualization and discrimination. It does not require the reader to modify charts, but to analyze and describe what would improve charts. In a set of controlled exercises, the reader is taken through the eighteen elements of six dimensions of analyzing and improving charts, visuals and reports used to communicate business concepts. Includes companion files with videos, sample files, and slides used in examples from the book. Features: Includes eighteen labs, three for each of the six major dimensions of data visuals: Story, Signs, Purpose, Perception, Method,and Charts Uses a comprehensive RAIKS (Rapid Assessment of Individual Knowledge and Skills) survey to judge readers' progress before and after using the text Provides a capstone exercise to review the aggregate analysis and final results for the two analyzed charts Companion files that include video tutorials and all of the sample files and templates used in the book's examples

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.

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.

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.

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.

Offers a more academic approach to the practice of business networking than the current 'how-to' offering; Pedagogical features in each chapter include an international case study to exemplify the theory, keywords, a reading list, and a chapter summary and test questions; The blend of theory and practice makes this book appropriate for a broad range of courses, from marketing and entrepreneurship modules, to personal and professional development and employability courses.

Offers a more academic approach to the practice of business networking than the current 'how-to' offering; Pedagogical features in each chapter include an international case study to exemplify the theory, keywords, a reading list, and a chapter summary and test questions; The blend of theory and practice makes this book appropriate for a broad range of courses, from marketing and entrepreneurship modules, to personal and professional development and employability courses.

An expert guide for professionals seeking to understand how to navigate the world of work. Kimberly Brown, author of Next Move, Best Move: Transitioning into a Career You'll Love, leaves no stone unturned with this thorough, expert guide for professionals seeking to understand how to navigate the world of work, from beginning to end, starting with uncovering personal and professional values in an effort to align their expertise and skills to roles and companies that will finally change the trajectory of their career and set them up to be leaders in the workforce. As a former career development adviser in some of the nation's top universities and a diversity + inclusion professional in a Fortune 100 company, Brown has recognized that people work for the sake of working without understanding how to leverage their unique gifts and position themselves for success. As a result, Next Move, Best Move: Transitioning into a Career You'll Love shares transformational lessons to ensure success and puts the ball back in your court. In Brown's highly acclaimed book, a specific, effective framework is unveiled to ensure each reader channels and utilizes their highest potential as they regain control and steer professional opportunities in their favor, gaining key information as to: Taking stock of their experiences to ensure strategic career moves Discovering how to cultivate and maintain fruitful relationships that support career growth Uncovering how to build a two-year career strategy to move you into future leadership positions Gaining a deeper look into personal and professional branding to ensure alignment with leadership capabilities and career goals Learning how to use their voice in the workplace to advocate for themselves

There is a growing interest in corporate whistleblowing, but no comprehensive research has yet focused on public relations practice. Drawing on extensive research on Fortune 1000 and Wilshire 5000 corporations, this book reveals executives' attitudes and relationships toward their organizations and their impact on whistleblowing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it reveals that wrongdoing in corporations and the privileges of power coexist. Top-ranking public relations executives, who are mostly white and male, are more likely to be aware of wrongdoing but no more likely to blow the whistle, fundamentally due to their positive relationship with their employers. Using the new lens of evolutionary theory, this study explains whistleblowing, retaliation, and relationships, and in the light of the connection between whistleblowing behavior and executives' attitudes, it proposes a new theory of the phenomenon of Golden Handcuffs. As public attitudes to corporations, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and transparency harden, these findings have serious implications for companies globally. Researchers, scholars, and advanced students in public relations, organizational communication, corporate communication, strategic communication, corporate reputation, and CSR will find this book full of revealing insights.

This book presents a comprehensive guide for public relations and strategic communication professionals and entrepreneurs to effectively manage the communication aspects of startups in the context of business in China. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories, current issues, and updated research evidence obtained from entrepreneurs and startup leaders in China, this concise volume provides research-based insights on the best practices for public relations and strategic communication in the unique context of startups. It addresses relationships with stakeholders, public relations practice, leadership communication, and how to leverage the power of social media in the entrepreneurial context. Strategic Communication for Startups and Entrepreneurs in China will be of great benefit to public relations and strategic communication scholars and practitioners, startup leaders and entrepreneurs interested in opportunities in China, and advanced students in public relations, business communication, and entrepreneurship.

We tend to assume that we may divide our activities into talk and action. In so doing we tend to suggest that talk is subordinate to action. Taking issue with these presumptions, Stories for Management Success: The Power of Talk in Organizations argues that talk is central to what managers do. Indeed it argues that, for managers, 'walking the walk' necessarily implies 'talking the talk such that storytelling is now central to managerial work'. Noting that managerial talk is increasingly located within an account of storytelling the book offers a critical review of the academic debates associated with telling tales at work and uses this critical reflection to shape and guide those who would realise the power of talk. Thus, the book concludes with six key questions designed to prompt both introspection and action on storytelling in an organized context. With reflections on the relevant management research, the author provides a scholar's digest to aid management thinking and practice. This book offers an examination of the processes of organizational storytelling and has been designed to allow practitioners of management to recognise and in so doing to unleash the power of talk in organizations.

What is the secret to being a captivating and credible speaker? Never be boring If you are boring, people will not listen. The central message and focus of PowerSpeak is the importance of engaging, stimulating, and maintaining an audience's attention.

This book focuses on the elements of speaking effectively from a design and a delivery perspective. Dorothy Leeds isolates these essential elements to assure that any speaker can gain and keep the audience's attention. She focuses on the trouble spots of any presentation and the six major faults speakers make.

This book also includes tips on the following:

Breaking the fear barrier.
-- Ten steps that guarantee a complete presentation.
-- How to avoid weak, passive language and make humor your ally.
-- Voice and speech exercises.
-- How to handle the Q & A portion of a presentation.
-- How to develop your own style and project positive body language.
-- How to incorporate (or not incorporate) new technology into presentations.

Every believer is a person of influence. In the Maxwell Leadership Bible, leadership expert John C. Maxwell shows you the principles of leadership taught in God’s Word and how to use them. Whether you are an employee, a boss, a parent, or a neighbor, you are a person of influence in your part of the world. Throughout the pages of Scripture, John Maxwell has assembled the time-tested and irrefutable biblical principles of leadership to equip and encourage leaders with his signature approach, including the 21 Laws of Leadership, the 21 Qualities of a Leader, biographical profiles, and hundreds of notes.

This book offers a new understanding of innovation in the built environment. The ways meaning of innovation is constructed has important implications for policymakers, project managers, academics and students. Through a longitudinal research study into innovation in firms and projects, the book addresses some key themes, challenges and concerns that practitioners face when managing innovation in the built environment. It examines the key drivers for innovation in the construction, engineering and infrastructure firms and projects. In particular, the questions of how and why innovation becomes recognised and sustained over time are explored. Different theoretical perspectives are considered to explain different aspects of innovation. This includes sensemaking, organisational and individual identity, storytelling and narration. The book has practical implications for how organisational activities become labelled as 'innovation' and for what purpose. It shares some lived stories of innovation as mobilised by practising managers. The connectivity between the formal narratives of innovation at the policy level and the lived narratives of innovation articulated by practitioners is explored. Combining the theory with practice, this book presents an insightful view on the implications of innovation in the business world today.

You can master the mysterious art of networking.; Overcome all your networking fears and learn how effortlessly to build and leverage the powerful connections you need to enhance your reputation, raise your profile and win more business. Networking expert Rob Brown will coach you on all the essential skills that will help you meet new people, create new leads, open up opportunities and grow your business - confidently and effectively.

This is a guide for anyone who wants to connect better with people in the workplace by speaking clearly and with purpose. It is a result of five years at Charlie Corbett's consultancy, Bullfinch Media, where he helped convince executives that speaking plainly, thoughtfully, and behaving with humanity, is the best way to win business, boost morale and advance careers. It provides carefully detailed wisdom on how to write well, speak publicly and stand out in your job, as well as how to craft compelling communications, make the best of social media and handle the press. The Art of Plain Speaking aims to improve the experience faced by many in the modern workplace, a world where senior management are entirely absent from the shop floor - replaced by indecipherable emails from HR - and where people speak in esoteric corporate riddles, believing that sounding clever is more productive than speaking clearly.

The Ultimate Guide to Business Writing is a comprehensive guide on how to write any kind of business document. Written clearly in an engaging voice, it explains in depth the whole process: from determining objectives to establishing readers' needs, conducting research, outlining, and designing a template; to writing the first draft; to editing for meaning, accuracy, concision, style and emotional impact; to creating glossaries and indices; to proofreading and working with reviewers. The book also explains how to exploit the psychology of perception and motivation, collaborate effectively with business colleagues, manage documents holistically across an organisation, and deal with the other everyday practicalities of managing knowledge in a corporate environment. Every section of the book is packed with questions to stimulate thinking and generate meaningful answers, and dozens of examples of what works and why. The book's also rich in practical examples drawn from real life, anecdotes, humour, and visual aids. But the advice isn't just practical and anecdotal: it's also rigorously supported by scientific evidence from notable linguists and psychologists such as Steven Pinker, Daniel Goleman and Yellowlees Douglas. And anyone keen to explore further will benefit from the bibliography and links to videos and other online resources. The book is ideal not just for professional business writers, such as editors, technical writers, copywriters and creative directors; it's also suitable for anyone whose job requires them to write, whether it's something as simple as an email or as complex as a set of policies or a handbook.

In this insightful, engaging and entertaining book, you will learn the amazing secrets of effective communication gleamed in recent years from neuroscience and behavioural economics. You'll discover 8 simple rules that you can effectively, simply apply to your business and work so your messages are never ignored.