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

An invaluable source of guidance for helping leaders to attain high performance with integrity. Transform your workplace with a few simple tools. Told in the parable format of The One Minute Manager , Leadership by the Book draws on the model and messages of Jesus as a source of practical lessons in effective leadership. Recounting the story of a teacher, a minister and a marketplace leader who support one another in their leadership challenges, this extraordinary book offers unexpected and exceptional answers to tough leadership issues such as: How do I best serve our customers by serving our people? How can I unify my personal beliefs and my role as a leader in a way that feels good 'deep down' and still produces the desired results? How can I get customers who enjoy the service, staff who enjoy their work, and still get financial well-being by leading with integrity? The authors offer simple strategies for bringing vision - and values - to the workplace by examining messages and examples from the Bible. Leadership by the Book also provides lessons for the day-to-day life of parents, coaches, entrepreneurs and religious and community leaders everywhere.

This thoroughly revised, extended and updated second edition of Silvia Gherardi's classic book gives the reader a must-read orientation through the myriad of methods and styles involved in practice-based research. Practice-based approaches to knowing, learning, innovating, and managing have thrived in recent years. Calling upon numerous narratives from a range of research fields, the author offers insight into the many possibilities of practice research, highlighting the inextricable links between humans and technology as the key emergent trend in management studies. Developing an innovative posthumanist approach, this novel book offers a useful and insightful compass for the navigation of practice-based studies through the lens of exemplar vignettes from internationally acclaimed researchers. A valuable and instructive work, this book is critical to any scholars of practice theories, as well as management and organizational studies and those with a keen interest in research methods. Masters students seeking insight into the development of practice-based studies, and PhD researchers developing their own methodologies will also find the guidance of this book indispensable in their studies.

In the digital economy, a new type of business activity, digital entrepreneurship, has developed rapidly and required breakthrough technologies such as blockchain, big data, cloud technologies, and more. There is a need for a comprehensive resource that provides all-encompassing insight into the essence, special aspects, models, and international best practices of e-business based on various digital technologies in various high-tech markets. Digital Technologies for Entrepreneurship in Industry 4.0 provides theoretical frameworks and recent results of research in this sphere. It substantiates digital entrepreneurship, discusses the practical experience of its implementation, and develops the scientific and methodological recommendations for the development of its infrastructural provision and regulation of provision of its competitiveness. Covering topics such as investment attractiveness, corporate reporting modernization, and public-private partnership mechanisms, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs, business executives and managers, investors, IT managers, students and faculty of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Faced with chaotic environments, it is not possible to make totally efficient forecasts, especially when it is necessary to analyze events with multiple variables and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) constantly face events that escape the laws of the market. The handling that has been given to the crisis caused by the coronavirus has been trial and error, and the economic, social, and environmental results remain to be seen. The markets and the world are chaotic. With the markets in chaos due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to look at the methods used in these environments to promote business success. The Handbook of Research on Management Techniques and Sustainability Strategies for Handling Disruptive Situations in Corporate Settings elaborates on the skills, techniques, and tools that are more useful for these environments and identifies what makes companies that work well in organizational chaos and in chaotic economic environments perform better than companies that are well organized. Covering topics such as strategic management, multidimensional chaos approach, and the global unstable market, this book is essential for managers, executives, academicians, policymakers, entrepreneurs, researchers, undergraduate and graduate business students, and any person interested in state-of-the-art business issues.

For hundreds of years, different leadership theories have been explored to try to explain exactly how and why certain people become great leaders. Research spans a discussion of personality traits, the characteristics of the situation at hand, and qualifications of the leader to try to determine what causes people to become more likely than others to take charge. This can be in various settings: CEOs, presidents and prime ministers, managing directors, governors, senators, head coaches, and more. Through the examination of first-time leadership, new theories and ideas on leadership are explored. The Handbook of Research on Innate Leadership Characteristics and Examinations of Successful First-Time Leaders is a comprehensive reference source that focuses on what qualities distinguish first-time leadership from traditional leaders, while furthering leadership theories that look at other variables such as situational factors, knowledge base, skill levels, etc. It reviews the various approaches used by first-time leadership and how each of them uniquely approaches effective leadership, key outcomes, and the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Furthermore, it distinguishes between the traditional route for leadership, the gradual moving up of an individual over time to higher positions, and a first-time leadership in which an individual begins right away in a position without climbing the professional ladder. This book will attempt to draw lessons from existing first-time leadership experience and provide evidence for the appropriateness of such a route to leadership. Topics highlighted include transformational leadership, political leaders, ethical and unethical leadership, and leadership development. This book is ideal for young professionals, leaders, executives, managers, graduate students, practitioners, government officials, researchers, academicians, and students.