There's never been a better time to create the career you love. This book shows you how.

By the time you retire you'll have spent a third of your life working. That's far too long to be stuck in a job you hate or even just tolerate. But where to start?

Life's Work will show you 12 proven ways to fast track your career, so when you leap out of bed every Monday morning you'll be ready to take on the world. The book is written by James Reed, Chairman of REED, Britain's best-known recruitment brand. Over the past 25 years he has helped millions of people find jobs. This has given him a deep insight into what makes some people successful in building a rewarding career, while others are stuck in the confusion and frustration of not landing the job they want.

Through these multiple observations and conversations, James has learned that there are 12 key ways to build and sustain the career you want. You will learn how to:

· Be (sustainably) selfish
· Kick start some good habits and kick out some bad ones
· Think in days and decades
· Be powerful, be prepared
· Find a boss you can learn from

Today's job landscape allows you more freedom to carve your own path than ever before. Along with this, however, comes the responsibility of shaping your mind and actions to make your career work for you. This book shows you how.

If you read nothing else on communicating effectively, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review. The best leaders know how to communicate clearly and persuasively. How do you stack up? HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication 2-Volume Collection provides enduring ideas and practical advice to help you express your ideas with clarity and impact&#8212no matter what the situation. Bringing together HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication and HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication, Vol. 2, this collection includes twenty articles selected by HBR's editors and features the indispensable article "The Necessary Art of Persuasion" by Jay A. Conger. From timeless classics to the latest game-changing ideas from thought leaders Erin Meyer, Robert B. Cialdini, Nick Morgan, Heidi Grant, and more, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication 2-Volume Collection will inspire you to: Power your organization through conversation Pitch your brilliant idea&#8212successfully Establish credibility and connect with your audience Unlock value throughout your company by asking better questions Achieve better outcomes in cross-cultural negotiations Create smart, effective data visualizations Spark collaboration, learning, and innovation using digital tools Build consensus and win support HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever-changing business environment.

Drawing on knowledge from process improvement, organisation theory, human resource management, change management, occupational health and safety, and other fields, the book is a practical, easy-to-read guide to problem solving. Illustrated with a series of short case studies, this book provides an integrated approach to problem solving in the workplace. Collaborative Problem Solving walks through the steps in the problem solving process, introducing dozens of tools, techniques, and concepts to use throughout. Chris J. Shannon describes the behaviours to practice which are most conducive to creating a positive problem solving culture based on curiosity, collaboration, and evidence-based thinking. This book explains why successful problem solving is a collaborative process and provides tools and techniques for responding to other people's behaviour when designing and implementing solutions. Offering practical advice on problem solving in an easy-to-understand way, this book is aimed at people working in office environments, service industries, and knowledge organisations, enabling them to feel confident in applying the knowledge from the book in their own workplace.

When it comes to mentoring, women face more barriers than men. Here's how men can help change that. Increasingly, new employees and junior members of any profession are encouraged--sometimes stridently--to "find a mentor!" Four decades of research reveals that the effects of mentorship can be profound and enduring; strong mentoring relationships have the capacity to transform individuals and entire organizations. But the mentoring landscape is unequal. Evidence consistently shows that women face more barriers in securing mentorships than men, and when they do find a mentor, they may reap a narrow range of both professional and psychological benefits. Athena Rising is a book for men about how to eliminate this problem by mentoring women deliberately and effectively. Traditional notions of mentoring are modeled on male-to-male relationships, yet women often report a desire for mentoring that addresses their interpersonal needs. Women want mentors who not only understand this, but truly honor it. Coauthors W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith present a straightforward, no-nonsense manual for men working in all types of institutions, organizations, and businesses to become excellent mentors to women, because as women succeed, lean in, and assume leading roles in any organization or work context, the culture will become more egalitarian, effective, and prone to retaining top talent.

A Meaningful Life at Work addresses a range of contemporary issues that impact on an individual's experiences in the workplace, including those that may restrict opportunities for personal growth in a professional setting. Understanding an employee's values, their choices and the problems they face in the workplace may help organisations to better structure their human resource policies, compensation packages and working conditions. The authors explore employee wellbeing from a Malaysian perspective as a developing country, but they also reflect on the broader Asian and wider global context. The key themes analysed in this book include work addiction, cyber bullying, sexual harassment in the workplace and the ethics of workplace behaviour. The book contributes to the theoretical discourse around organisation studies and employee wellbeing, while also seeking to integrate academic concepts with practice. In this way, it offers practical steps towards promoting positivity and happiness in the workplace.

Play the System helps leaders who are ready to stop struggling with their people turn their workplace into a healthier and more effective work environment. Nora Ganescu, best-selling author, coach, and consultant for 25 years, brings corporate leaders and CEOs her newest book, Play the System, to show them how to: Make their workplace receptive, supportive, and excited for what they can offer Get management to stop standing still and support their initiative Get the time and the resources they need to turn their ideas into reality Understand the real reasons so many staff-driven initiatives fail (and why many ideas never even get spoken about) Be a successful intrapreneur Change the culture of their company for good Within everyone is the power to transform any system: their company, their family, and even their community.

Explore the psychology behind what really motivates and influences your clients, colleagues and customers. Discover what makes people tick, how they perceive and react to different situations and why they behave the way they do. In this fast, focused guide, emotional intelligence expert Robin Hills reveals insights into motivation and how people perceive situations in business. As he unlocks the secrets of human nature you'll learn how to inspire top performance, gain trust, win confidence and build lasting relationships - more effectively and with great results!

Walmart is the largest employer in the world. It encompasses nearly 1 percent of the entire American workforce-young adults, parents, formerly incarcerated people, retirees. Walmart also presents one possible future of work-Walmartism-in which the arbitrary authority of managers mixes with a hyperrationalized, centrally controlled bureaucracy in ways that curtail workers' ability to control their working conditions and their lives. In Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how workers make sense of their jobs at places like Walmart in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present as sites of struggle for social and economic justice. They describe the life experiences that lead workers to Walmart and analyze the dynamics of the shop floor. As a part of the project, Reich and Bearman matched student activists with a nascent association of current and former Walmart associates: the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart). They follow the efforts of this new partnership, considering the formation of collective identity and the relationship between social ties and social change. They show why traditional unions have been unable to organize service-sector workers in places like Walmart and offer provocative suggestions for new strategies and directions. Drawing on a wide array of methods, including participant-observation, oral history, big data, and the analysis of social networks, Working for Respect is a sophisticated reconsideration of the modern workplace that makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality and the centrality of the experience of work in a fair economy.

Did you know that games can be a terrifically effective way to build team spirit, communication, and trust among people who work together day in and day out? Now you can spark morale in any work group by choosing from 70 stimulating games and activities specifically designed for the manager whos looking to raise sagging morale in a department, liven up boring staff meetings, enable team members to collaborate smoothly and effectively, and much more!

Assertiveness at Work tackles the realities of modern business life the uncomfortable situations that can arise with flatter structures, tough workloads, demanding hours, and the need to exert influence across traditional boundaries. In these situations, successful people need assertiveness in order to achieve their goals.Whether you are a line manager, project leader, specialist, or key member of a team, this book gives practical guidance for developing your own natural assertiveness to benefit both yourself and your organisation.About the AuthorsKen and Kate Back have specialised in assertiveness training for more than twenty years. In this practical book, Ken and Kate have brought together their experiences in training thousands of people to be more assertive at work. In addition to books, they have written many articles, advised on and produced videos and appeared on television programmes about assertiveness. They have made a significant contribution to the development and spread of assertiveness training both in the UK and overseas.Ken and Kate can be contacted via their website kenandkateback.com.

In Superconnect, Richard Koch and Greg Lockwood show that success is less about who you are than how you connect a chance meeting with an old colleague leads to a swanky new job; two businessmen collaborate online and cofound a successful start-up; a friend introduces a promising entrepreneur to a millionaire looking to invest. But why do these lucky breaks always happen to other people? Personal and professional networks shape everything we do, but simply knowing that they exist won t help you harness your connections for maximum success. With an eye toward business applications, Superconnect outlines the new rules of our densely linked society. At the core of the analysis are three simple network components strong relationships, weak relationships, and hubs that interact in surprising, counterintuitive ways. Understanding how these components mesh, and connecting unrelated people, is the way to achieve in today s hyper-connected world.

Remote working is the new reality, and transactional work - provided by freelancers, contract employees or consultants - has increased exponentially. It is forecast that as much as half the labor force will be working independently and virtually by 2020. Most organizations are still grappling with how to effectively manage their virtual staff and how to effectively support and motivate them - an increasingly urgent task as more Millennials join the workforce, bringing changed attitudes to work satisfaction. This book, the fruit of the author's three decades of experience planning and implementing remote working environments, provides expert guidance for anyone planning a shift to remote working, managing teams of teleworkers, or themselves working in a virtual team. The author's key message is that, in an environment where there is no face to face and informal contact, virtual working requires the creation of a matrix of distributed teams, and that their success depends on the right preparation, changing corporate culture and rewards, and implementing appropriate strategies at the management level to create team cohesion and motivate team members. Working Virtually is for the executive leading changes in an enterprise that is preparing for virtual work or seeking to improve current performance. It offers tools to assess readiness, advice on creating appropriate reward policies, and strategies to adapt performance management processes to be more team-driven and technology leveraged. Working Virtually is written to and for the virtual leader who wants to establish high performing virtual teams. It provides an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of managing a virtual team, offering a wealth of advice on creating the conditions for collaboration, motivating team members, and identifying and defusing problems. Working Virtually is for the professional who works remotely from home, on the road, or in an office with remote colleagues. It is for anyone who wants to succeed in this new work environment by developing skills and networks to create a sustained and satisfying career path. With this new edition providing a 360 Degrees view of the roles and objectives of all stakeholders in the virtual workspace, this book uniquely provides readers with a rounded picture of the policies, processes, work habits, and commitments needed to achieve the shared goal of high performance remote teams.

'Powerful and perceptive . . . belongs on the shelves - and in the hearts and minds - of leaders everywhere' - Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of To Sell is Human From Kim Scott, author of the revolutionary New York Times bestseller Radical Candor, comes Just Work: How to Confront Bias, Prejudice and Bullying to Build a Culture of Inclusivity - that will help you recognize, attack and eliminate workplace injustice - and transform our careers and organizations in the process. We - all of us - consistently exclude, underestimate and under-utilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business. Just Work is the solution. Just Work by Kim Scott reveals a practical framework for both respecting everyone's individuality and collaborating effectively. This is the essential guide leaders and their employees need to create more just workplaces and establish new norms of collaboration and respect.

Freud said that "love and work" are the central therapeutic goals of psychoanalysis; the twin pillars for a sound mind and for living the "good life." While psychoanalysis has masterfully contributed to understanding the experience of love, it has only made a modest contribution to understanding the psychology of work. This book is the first to explore fully the psychoanalysis of work, analysing career choice, job performance and job satisfaction, with an eye toward helping people make wiser choices that bring out the best in themselves, their colleagues and their organization. The book addresses the crucial questions concerning work: how does one choose the right career; what qualities contribute to excellence in performance; how best to implement and cope with organizational change; and what capacity and skills does one need to enjoy every day work? Drawing on psychoanalytic thinking, vocational counseling, organizational psychology and business studies, The Psychoanalysis of Career Choice, Job Performance, and Satisfaction will be invaluable in clinical psychoanalytic work, as well as for mental health professionals, scholars, career counselors and psychologists looking for a deeper understanding of work-based issues.

A new perspective on tackling diversity and difference in the workplace. Rewire: A Radical Approach to Tackling Diversity and Difference takes a fresh look at the issue of equality, diversity and inclusion at work. It critiques the current thinking and practices that are responsible for slow progress in this area, while providing readers with a new, holistic and tactical perspective that leverages what we know about influencing and changing people's mind-sets. The issue of difference sits at the core of many of the world's crises. Large corporations are a microcosm of the globalized world we inhabit, and hold significant power in shaping our societies and ideas. Despite decades of work in diversity and inclusion, little progress has been made because current approaches focus on specific contexts, short-term results and commercial returns, rather than taking into account what we know about human behaviour and addressing the social and economic cultures in which we operate. This book argues that in order to achieve sustainable positive change, we need to focus on how to create a culture of openness, empathy and inclusion - which in turn enables corporate strategy and drives innovation. The authors, who have worked in a number of leading organizations, including Caterpillar, American Express, HSBC, Towers Watson and the NHS, put forward a new approach, based on years of experience of achieving both individual and organizational change. They present: * A causal map, which describes a wide range of social, biological, psychological, evolutionary and organizational factors that influence how we think and operate. * A unique step-by-step approach to rewiring our fundamental psychological processes and creating change at an individual, organizational and cultural level. This book offers corporate executives and social leaders a fresh perspective on diversity and difference, along with the tools to create more inclusive, effective and innovative environments.

The aim of this book is to equip any person working in an office environment with the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes to communicate effectively in the administrative and office environment. To ensure effective communication, it is necessary to have a basic knowledge of communication and this text will enable one to: understand the importance of good communication in an office environment, as well as the elements of the communication process (verbally and written communication); compile business letters, memoranda and reports; use different forms of electronic communication in the office; and organise all aspects of a meeting and take the minutes.

Containing the largest bank of test questions on the market, How to Pass Numerical Reasoning Tests provides advice, practice and exercises to help you prepare for the rigorous tests used by employers, helping you to build up speed, accuracy and confidence. An overview of the basics is followed by a step-by-step guide to numerical tests, covering: - Fractions and decimals - Rates - Percentages - Ratios and proportions - Data interpretation Also containing practice on mathematical problems in written word format to aid your analytical skills, How to Pass Numerical Reasoning Tests gives you everything you need to boost your ability and face the challenge head on.