There are many things that politics is not. Politics is not good or bad; it's neutral and natural. Politics is not a zero-sum game; politically savvy individuals can use their influence in an effective, authentic manner so that all parties involved get something positive out of the experience. Politics is not about being false; instead, political savvy is about using your skills, behaviors, and qualities to be effective, and sincerity is vital. Use the ideas and exercises in this guidebook to become a more politically savvy leader, and build your capacity to lead effectively in your organization.

You want to start working on the next steps in your career. Your boss made remarks in your last performance review that you want to take action on. You know now the kind of leader you aspire to be and want to pursue your aspirations. You have an "enduring weakness" that motivates you to improve. You feel bored or stale in your current job and want to develop new capabilities. If you've experienced those things or have had similar experiences, then you know that what makes you successful now won't take you to the next level of performance or leadership. Successful leaders have the ability to adapt, change, and reinvent themselves. They thrive on change. Do you? The FIVE STEPS in Change Now will help you become the leader you aspire to be by guiding you through a process of change. Use this book to identify where to focus your development energy, create goals that work for you, craft a plan for achieving your goals, overcome obstacles, and stay on course. Don't wait. Become the leader you want to be, the leader you need to be.

Feedback is a rare commodity in day-to-day organizational life, but it is a key to ongoing effectiveness.One popular vehicle for getting feedback from one's boss, peers, subordinates, and customers is the multiple-perspective or 360-degree-feedback instrument. Whether part of a management-development course or used alone, this kind of instrument can enhance self-awareness by highlighting a leader's strengths and areas in need of further development.Selecting the right instrument from among the dozens that are available can be difficult, however.This new edition of Feedback to Managers, the fourth, updates and expands the popular 1998 edition.It guides the selection process with an in-depth analysis of 32 publicly available instruments that relate self-view to the views of others on multiple management or leadership domains. Each of the instrument reports includes descriptive information, a look at the research behind the instrument, and descriptions of support materials.

Benchmarks, a 360-degree assessment, has been used by approximately 16,000 organizations and over 200,000 managers. Data collected through its administration has resulted in large comprehensive databases that have provided the basis for numerous studies. These annotations on published research were written for anyone who is interested in the research leading to the development and refinement of Benchmarks, the interpretation of the assessment's results, or the relationship of Benchmarks to other psychological assessments.

Managers who achieve significant professional goals don't often worry about career derailment. But complacency isn't the same as continued success. Many high-performing executives have one or more blind spots that they ignore as long as they meet their business goals. The traps that lead to derailment can usually be found among five leadership competencies: interpersonal relationships, building and leading a team, getting results, adapting to change, and having a broad functional orientation. Managers who rely on any of these skills at the expense of the others or who neglect these skills when promoted from a technical to a managerial role can sidetrack their career. Leadership success--achieving it and continuing it--depends heavily on a manager's developing and using each of these skills.

It is a troubling fact of organizational life that executives with a track record of success, and who are expected to continue to succeed, are sometimes fired, demoted, or plateaued. The derailment research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership in the 1980s investigated the reasons why. This publication reports on a study that extended CCL research by comparing contemporary derailed and successful executives in the U.S. and in Europe, and by comparing these results to the earlier findings.

Feedback is a rare commodity in organizational life, but it is key to managerial effectiveness. One increasingly popular vehicle for getting feedback from one's boss, peers, and subordinates is the multiple-perspective, or 360-degree, feedback instrument. Use of such an instrument can enhance self-confidence by highlighting individual strengths and can facilitate greater self-awareness by pointing out areas in need of further development. Because of the availability of so many feedback instruments, finding the best instruments for an organization's needs is difficult. This book presents a step-by-step process that shows how to evaluate multiple-feedback instruments intended for management development. The steps take you through such issues as instrument development, validity and reliability, feedback display, scoring strategies, and cost.