OPEN, BALANCED DIALOGUE--THE KEY TO PEAK TEAM PERFORMANCEIn a world of rapid-fire change, it's more important than ever to build teams that work well when the pressure is on-and quality communication can mean the difference between success and failure. Conversational Capacity provides the communication tools you need to ensure that your team remains on track even when dealing with its most troublesome issues, that it responds to tough challenges with agility and skill, and performs brilliantly in circumstances that would incapacitate less disciplined teams. Praise for Conversational Capacity:"This book blows the lid off everything you have learned about team building and will have you asking, 'Why didn't someone show me this before?'" -- Rick Woodcock, Chief Technology Officer of the US Naval Institute, Annapolis "Easy to implement, Craig Weber's techniques will transform your organization. We put these principles into practice and saw immediate results." -- Scott Goodey, CEO, Greenpoint Technologies "A must-read for leaders and those who aspire to lead. It's one of the most influential books on the value of teaming." -- Benjamin Ola Akande, PhD, Professor of Economics and Dean of the George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology, Webster University "Conversational Capacity is one of those rare books that will forever change how you see yourself and the people with whom you work. Read it. Recommend it to your boss, your team, and your friends." -- Jan Wilmott, Director of Leadership Development at the Royal Bank of Canada "This book provides a practical roadmap to learning the single most important skill that any leader can and should master. Conversational Capacity will change the way you lead and transform your relationships--at work and at home." -- Andy Restivo, President and CEO of Creative Channel Services, an Omnicom Group Company "Conversational Capacity shows leadership teams how to think actively and adapt quickly. Better yet, the simplicity of the book enables the reader to apply the concepts and ideas in any leadership position." -- Mark Milliner, CEO of Personal Insurance at Suncorp "Craig Weber has a gift for connecting what it means to build healthy relationships with the nuts and bolts of running an organization. In Conversational Capacity he brings a refreshing combination of practical tools, personal examples, and wisdom from having worked with hundreds of leaders over the years. If you are a leader or someone interested in getting better at what you do, Conversational Capacity is a must read." -- Rob McKenna, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Research and Development and author of Dying to Lead "Craig Weber challenges us to think differently about the way we talk to each other. Not since the seminal work of Chris Argyris have I read a book that so well documents the promise and the peril of dialogue. Readers will learn to develop conversational competence with team members and with leaders at all levels. You will learn to become more mindful in difficult situations, appreciate the power of curiosity, and develop ways to experiment, compare, reframe, and reengage with renewed commitment. We need this book, now more than ever. Once you read it, you will want to share it as soon as possible!" -- Frank J. Barrett, PhD, Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior, Global Public Policy, at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School and author of Yes to the Mess "This book has transformed the way I lead, teach, and facilitate. Weber captures the essence of team effectiveness and provides a well-researched and tested model that supports the other building blocks of leadership." -- Dr. Tony Herrera, Direct of Partner Development at Schreiber Foods "Required reading! Improving the conversational capacity of your team and organization is invaluable. These same skills are needed to address the broader issues we face as a society. Get this book! Share it with your colleagues, friends, and family." -- Chris Soderquist, President of Pontifex Consulting and author of The Strategic Forum "Craig Weber's Conversational Capacity works. It works to build an internal culture that allows our organization to focus on the work at hand--without the drama, emotions, and egos that often get in the way of creating a high-functioning organization. It also works when building relationships with funders, stakeholders, and other clients, allowing our team to listen for commonalities and to find areas of true agreement." -- Michele Lueck, President and CEO of the Colorado Health Institute "Those who aspire to use a conversational process to facilitate and deliver high-impact team results have come to the right place. Having worked with Craig Weber to design training programs for colleagues, I can personally attest to his brilliance in using narratives to capture our attention and emotional intelligence with evidence-based methods to build our conversational skills. With clarity, practicality, and case examples, this book will help you find the sweet spot in any conversation while ensuring a productive outcome." -- Dr. Kathleen Keil, Senior Manager of Learning and Development at Pfizer Animal Health "Craig Weber's Conversational Capacity reduces organizational fear through a simple, effective technique that increases trust and maximizes creativity. It will help any organization realize new levels of confidence, creativity, and success. The tools within these pages may very well be the most important keys to both change and growth in the twenty-first century." -- Scott Eck, President of Leadership Masters "We often see the need for collaboration but do not have the tools and skills required to make it happen. Using Craig Weber's techniques to build conversational capacity is exactly what we need in both our professional and personal lives." -- Karen Minyard, PhD, Director of the Georgia Health Policy Center at the Andrew Young School of Public Policy, Georgia State University "The ideas in these pages are profound, life changing, and applicable to every area of life. My nonprofit team acquired a new set of skills that increased our capacity to tackle governance, interpersonal relationships, and the future in a dynamic and changing economy. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a master the tools required to elevate awareness, skill, and discipline to achieve desired--and amazing--results." -- Jane Soderquist, Board Chair of the Upper Valley Waldorf School

Agility in business has become one of the most important management topics of recent times. The ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent business environment is the essence of agile. But being agile starts with the leader, who has to make the shift from traditional "command and control" to "enabling people". This book is a practical workbook for leaders on their journey to achieving agility. It moves the conversation over agility into practice; exercising measures and techniques that will encourage leaders to adapt with changing times. To help and encourage leaders to make that personal shift, it offers ideas and tools to master agility in their organizations. Designed to be sensible and self-reflecting, the book also includes an appendix of over 20 exercises that have been tried and tested with executives all over the world in their successful pursuit of agile.

True leadership is about character - this is the key to winning 'the right way'. In a world where we're bombarded by messages of 'winning at any cost', dishonest politicians, CEOs committing fraud, disgraced military commanders and cheating athletes, integrity matters more than ever. The Character Edge explains the powerful role character plays in trust, culture and leadership, and offers readers tools to exercise and strengthen their own. Reaching from the battlefield to the classroom and beyond, former superintendent of West Point Robert Caslen and professor of psychology Dr Michael Matthews explore the vital link between strong character and strong leadership, and explain why the latter cannot exist without the former. 'Caslen and Matthews show how and why this fundamental inner architecture of leadership can - and must - be built' - Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great.

What makes a great leader? Personality? A response to the demands of time and circumstance? Where is leadership located in modern organizations? Has it a place in the management of corporate enterprise? What contributes to a leader's control? These and many other questions are explores in the theoretical background of this work. An examination of twentieth century theories about the sources of personal powers, the social forces that enabled it, the psychological roots of leader relationships, the ingredients of leader style and quality, and the conduct identified as a leader behaviors is directed at identifying the measurable elements of this social phenomenon.

Three chapters document experimental attempts to analyse leader performance, recognizing form, style, and quality in quantifiable detail. The use of descriptive questionnaires as means of labeling leader performance and quantifying its characteristics provides definitive insights into the nature of this social phenomenon.

Finally a unique system for leader appraisal, the Leader Appraisal Questionnaire (LAQ), based upon sound theoretical principles and twenty years of experimental research with the questionnaire methodology, is detailed. This novel system, adaptable to all kinds of organizations and enterprises, provides a unique tool for leadership evaluation and development. Given that leadership is a primary consideration in all kinds o organizational pursuits, this book is a must for every major institutional ans corporate executive office, every government administration, institutions of higher learning and research, and any person who wishes to undertake and make success of a group enterprise.

This book analyzes the growing importance of information disclosure in Japanese universities in the context of the country's changing circumstances from both a macroscopic and microscopic perspective, with a focus on the concept of universities as organizations. This macroscopic analysis is based on available data concerning the various information disclosure practices of Japanese universities and includes a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. As for the microscopic analysis, questionnaires and various other quantitative methods have been used to study overall satisfaction with the level of disclosure among students and teachers in public and private universities, including differences between Japanese and Chinese students. The results of these surveys have then been analyzed to identify the main factors informing students' views on the subject. Finally, additional insight into the practice of information disclosure in Japanese universities has been provided in a series of representative case studies, which should help promote further study concerning the practical applications of such disclosure. Based on the above analysis, this book proposes a social responsibility-based approach to university information disclosure, which incorporates stakeholder theory-based identification of public information content, an underlying focus on disclosure as a means to realize universities' social responsibilities, identification of the types of information that universities should seek to disclose, recommendations for developing a framework for the systematic disclosure of such information, and recent disclosure trends. As part of this approach, recommendations concerning the arrangement of different sources of information, thoughts on building a publicly accessible platform for sharing university information, and key points underlying the systematic disclosure of information within universities are also proposed. Finally, this book is helpful in identifying further areas of research, including but not necessarily limited to the ideas and legal principles underlying the construction of a university information disclosure system, the development of information disclosure systems based on social responsibility, and the development of various standards for the disclosure of information. The ideal approach would ensure that all stakeholders are provided with meaningful access to relevant information, and that transparency takes precedence over any competing considerations as part of an overriding effort to improve university administration and oversight.

Global Women Leaders transports the reader into the fascinating lives of trailblazers in four very different countries. All were change-makers in their professions, and all of them confronted the challenges women everywhere will recognize as their own. How they succeeded, despite roadblocks, is both inspiring and instructive. Each gives us sound advice on a range of familiar hurdles from those associated with work and family to lack of confidence and sexism. If you want to know how to achieve authentic leadership, this is the book for you.' - Melanne Verveer, Georgetown University, US Global Women Leaders showcases narratives of women in business, nonprofit organizations and the public sector who have achieved leadership positions despite cultural obstacles and gender bias. Featuring leaders from India, Japan, Jordan and the United Kingdom, the book examines how these women have overcome challenges and served as role models in their professions. Regina Wentzel Wolfe and Patricia H. Werhane present stories of these women leaders within their unique cultural contexts. Standout features include models of feminist leadership behaviors and interrogations of the dominant paradigm of male leadership. Challenges for women in the workplace, systems thinking and various female leadership styles are also explored. The successes of the leaders featured in this book will be of interest to those in public, private and nonprofit sector organizations as well as academics and students teaching and studying feminist leadership, MBA students and entrepreneurs.

As the world continues to evolve, globalization remains a key topic area among scholars and practitioners across disciplines and industries. It is essential for managers to stay informed and look out for potential threats that can negatively affect global operations. Geopolitics and Strategic Management in the Global Economy is a pivotal reference publication featuring the latest scholarly research on an international view of the challenges and opportunities organizations face in the global marketplace. Including coverage on a broad range of topics such as firm competitiveness, project management, and social capital, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, and managers seeking current research on best ways to handle international management issues.

These five short stories are about people and organisations struggling with change. In each tale our hero or heroine experiences one of the major pitfalls that beset people going through change at work and discovers how to turn the situation on its head. In short, they learn to work with the grain of human nature and thereby achieve successful change. Although the stories are easy and enjoyable to read, each one packs a punch, illustrating a key technique for dealing with change; the book makes an excellent training aid, and an inspiring read for anyone grappling with the challenges of change. 5 Tales of Change is a companion volume to the author's first book, The 5 Forces of Change, described by Professional Manager Magazine as " - a masterclass on the competencies required to achieve effective organisational change - This work provides an outstanding guide to managers charged with securing organisational change in today's volatile business environment."

Never has this capacity for strategic thinking been more important. Over the next few years leaders of all types of organisations - corporate, entrepreneurial, social enterprise and community based - will be called upon to transform their endeavours as the world is hit by successive waves of financial, economic and environmental turbulence. The Power of Strategic Thinking demonstrates not only how to develop the power to think strategically but is full of a myriad of stories, examples and case studies drawn from businesses, not-for-profit organisations and ordinary men and women who are doing just this - applying strategic thinking to make a big difference right now.

The final entry in this all-you-need-to-know series summarizes the best points in the previous 12 books, updates many of them, and integrates must-have knowledge into a unified, indispensable whole. Entrepreneurs need authors who will speak to them as equals, sharing the secrets they found as they built their own businesses. Crafted in that spirit, Praeger's Entrepreneur's Guide series provides practical, accessible, and authoritative advice on the major considerations in establishing and growing a new venture. Each book includes wisdom, tales from the trenches, worksheets, templates, sample documents, and resource lists to help entrepreneurs leverage their time and money. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Running a Business distills and shares the important points from each of the series' previous books, making the road to success smoother and more certain. This culmination of the professional development series takes the reader through all the important steps of starting and running an enterprise. It includes such essentials as writing the business plan, hiring the team, raising capital, managing technology, doing market research, and, of course, marketing the product. Once the business is up and running, the book can be consulted for advice on managing growth and inspiring and retaining employees, as well as for knowledge about handling crises and flourishing even during a recession. Combines knowledge, expertise, and personal experiences from a group of successful entrepreneurs Delves into the nitty-gritty of actually starting and running a business, covering the full cycle of business ownership, not just the initial steps Shares insights into personal growth necessary for success, including leadership and strategic management skills Explores new ways of obtaining capital such as "crowdsourcing," soliciting for investors over the Internet

"'No Not another book on leadership ' That was my first reaction as I received the manuscript of this book. Upon careful reading, I came to realize that Dr. Enlow has artistically captured the essence of leading by influence and has presented it in a clear and colorful way. As a veteran leader, Dr. Enlow speaks from vast experience, but it is not merely subjective anecdotal experience. The book is firmly rooted in serious and current research. As I meet leaders from all over the globe, I am no longer hesitant what to recommend them to read."

-Riad Kassis, director of Langham Scholars Ministry; international director of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education

"This book under-promises and over-delivers with a powerful palette of leadership wisdom. But drop everything-right now-and read the warning in the last chapter on doxological leadership. ... I am recommending this book to all my clients-and I will likely reread this gem once a year. It's that important."

-John Pearson, consultant (www.johnpearsonassociates.com) and author of Mastering the Management Buckets

Founded in 1959, York University is now the second largest university in Ontario and third largest university in Canada. However, starting in 1970s the success of the university was far from guaranteed. Leading the Modern University documents the challenges and solutions that five successive university presidents (H. Ian Macdonald, Harry Arthurs, Susan Mann, Lorna Marsden, and Mamdouh Shoukri) encountered from the very early 1970s up to 2014. This book is the rare occurrence where a series of university presidents describe and analyze the challenges they faced regarding financing, morale crises, and succession. With each president contributing a chapter, covering her or his own years in office, Leading the Modern University reveals that large public institutions have internal dynamics and external forces that supersede any individual leader's years in office. This is a case study for those interested in organizational change as seen by the leadership of a major public institution during a dynamic period in higher education.