Management & Leadership Audiobooks | Business & Economics

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, 2nd Edition

Being a startup CEO is a job like no other: it's difficult, risky, stressful, lonely, and often learned through trial and error. As a startup CEO seeing things for the first time, you're likely to make mistakes, fail, get things wrong, and feel like you don't have any control over outcomes. Author Matt Blumberg has been there, and in Startup CEO he shares his experience, mistakes, and lessons learned as he guided Return Path from a handful of employees and no revenues to over $100 million in revenues and 500 employees. Startup CEO is not a memoir of Return Path's twenty-year journey but a thoughtful CEO-focused book that provides first-time CEOs with advice, tools, and approaches for the situations that startup CEOs will face. You'll learn: how to tell your story to new hires, investors, and customers for greater alignment; how to create a values-based culture for speed and engagement; how to create business and personal operating systems so that you can balance your life and grow your company at the same time; how to develop, lead, and leverage your board of directors for greater impact; and how to ensure that your company is bought, not sold, when you exit. Startup CEO is the field guide every CEO needs throughout the growth of their company.

Matt Blumberg (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Battle Tested!: Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders

You may never visit the Gettysburg battlefield, but understanding historic lessons from Battle Tested! will have a profound influence on not only your leadership abilities, but also your life, organizations, and career. In order to be a truly effective leader, it is necessary to learn as much as possible from the examples of history-the disasters as well as the triumphs. At Gettysburg, Union and Confederate commanders faced a series of critical leadership challenges under the enormous stress of combat. The fate of the nation hung in the balance. These leaders each responded in different ways, but the concepts and principles they applied during those traumatic three days contain critical lessons for today's leaders that are both useful and applicable-whether those leaders manage operations at a large corporation, supervise a public institution, lead an athletic team, or govern a state or municipality. In the twenty-first century, leadership is the indispensable quantity that separates successful organizations from failures. Successful leaders communicate vision, motivate team members, and inspire trust. One must move both people and the collective organization into the future while, at the same time, dealing with the past. A leader must learn to master the dynamic requirements of decision-making and change.

Jeffrey D. Mccausland, Tom Vossler (Author), Walter Dixon (Narrator)

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How Successful Engineers Become Great Business Leaders

High performance expert Paul Rulkens provides the inside advice you need to accelerate your career as a business leader with an engineering background-from building on your unique strengths to achieving big business goals. How Successful Engineers Become Great Business Leaders is full of thought-provoking insights, practical applications, and pragmatic techniques to help you get everything you can out of everything you have. You don't have to be ill in order to get better. Whether you're an experienced business executive, corporate manager, or ambitious professional, this book will show you how to apply your specific engineering strengths to: maximize your skill and talent to accelerate your career; grow your business with the least amount of effort; set and achieve ambitious business goals; focus on strategic quitting to raise the performance bar; avoid behaviors that mask your strengths; create a high-performance execution culture; improve your own executive judgment; build long-term client relationships; and develop a blueprint to become an unstoppable goal achiever. The road to business success for leaders with engineering backgrounds is common and predictable, but not always obvious: There is a method to the madness. This unique book will show you how.

Paul Rulkens (Author), Gary Bennett (Narrator)

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Leading Transformation: How to Take Charge of Your Company's Future

Leaders know that their job is to transform their organizations to keep pace with technology and an ever-changing business environment. They also know that they are bound to fail in doing so. But this discouraging prospect is not because they won't be able to solve a technological or strategic problem. Leaders will fail because of intractable human responses associated with change-responses such as fear, ingrained habits, politics, incrementalism, and lack of imagination. These stumbling blocks always arise when we humans are faced with change, but what if we had a way to transcend them? This book reveals a radical new method for doing just that. Written by the executive who designed and implemented it, the neuroscientist who helped make it work, and the academic who explains why it works and how to do it, Leading Transformation introduces an innovative yet proven process for creating breakthrough change. Divided into three steps, this process uses cutting-edge tools such as science fiction, cartoons, rap music, artifact trails, and neuroprototypes to overcome people's inability to imagine or react to what doesn't yet exist, override powerful habits and routines that prevent them from changing, and create compelling narratives about the organization's future and how to get there.

Kyle Nel, Nathan Furr, Thomas Zoega Ramsoy (Author), Mike Carnes (Narrator)

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Attention Management: How to Create Success and Gain Productivity

Discover the revolutionary antidote to overload and exhaustion Have you tried everything to become more productive-but you're still too busy and stressed? That's because the old approaches to productivity just don't work in today's fast-paced, tech-driven workplaces. What does work? Time management is outdated. Attention management is the solution you need. Attention management is the most essential skill you need to live a life of choice rather than a life of reaction and distraction. It's a collection of behaviors, including focus, mindfulness, control, presence, flow, and other skills, that will support your success. Productivity speaker, trainer, and author Maura Nevel Thomas shows you how to master attention management with practical strategies that make an immediate impact.

Maura Nevel Thomas (Author), Maura Nevel Thomas, Maura Nevelthomas (Narrator)

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Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the (In)formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get

An all-new approach to understanding the (in)formal connections of an organization From the bestselling coauthor of the business classic The Wisdom of Teams comes an all-new exploration of the modern workplace, and how leaders and managers must embrace it for success. Katzenbach and Khan examine how two distinct factions together form the bigger picture for how organizations actually work: the more defined 'formal' organization of a company-the management structure, performance metrics, and processes-and the 'informal'-the culture, social networks, and ad hoc communities that spring up naturally and can accelerate or hinder how the organization works. With dynamic examples from enterprises around the world, this book takes a timeless organizational approach and creates a powerful paradigm-shifting toolset for applying it. Includes self-assessment guidelines for senior leaders, front-line managers, and individual contributors Features organizations in business, government, the nonprofit sector, and academia-including the New York City schools system, Aetna, the Marines, United Nations, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Home Depot, Bell Canada, and the Houston Police Department Leading Outside the Lines illustrates how leaders can make the two distinct factions work together to get the best of both.

Jon R. Katzenbach, Zia Khan (Author), Ken Kliban (Narrator)

Audiobook

Reality-Based Leadership: Ditch the Drama, Restore Sanity to the Workplace, and Turn Excuses Into Re

Recent polls show that 71% of workers think about quitting their jobs every day. That number would be shocking-if people actually were quitting. Worse, they go to work, punching time clocks and collecting paychecks, while completely checked out emotionally. In Reality-Based Leadership, expert Fast Company blogger Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances-one who deals with the facts, clarifies roles, gives clear and direct feedback, and insists that everyone do the same-without drama or defensiveness. Filled with dynamic examples, innovative tools, and diagnostic tests, this book shows you how to become a Reality-Based Leader, revealing how to: Uncover destructive thought patterns with yourself and others Diffuse drama and lead the person in front of you Stop managing and start leading, empowering others to focus on facts and think for themselves Equipped with a facts-based, confident approach, you will free yourself from the frustrations you face at work and transform yourself into a Reality-Based Leader, with the ability to liberate and inspire others.

Cy Wakeman (Author), Deanna Hurst (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: Know What Boosts Your Value, Kills Your Chances, & Will Ma

The key to understanding how your manager calculates your real value?and how to boost it More than anything else, you need to understand exactly how your employer evaluates you, and your annual performance review doesn't tell the whole story. In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your 'emotional expense'?the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you. With Cy's clear, straight-to-the-point advice, you can confront and reduce your emotional costliness, become an invaluable member of your team, and even learn to love your job again. Reveals a formula for measuring your current performance, future potential, and the biggest detractor, your emotional expense Shares real-world advice for quickly boosting your value and becoming a highly-valued, sought after employee and teammate Builds on the lessons in Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman's first book for leaders and managers The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace is the essential guide for boosting your value, owning your career, and becoming the kind of employee no organization can afford to lose.

Cy Wakeman (Author), Kim Mckean (Narrator)

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Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader: A Guide to Cultivating Effective Leadership and Organi

Success requires more than hard work and good ideas: you need to be able to understand, inspire, and motivate those around you. Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader helps you hone your emotional intelligence (EQ)-the ability to be aware of, control, and express your emotions, as well as handle interpersonal relationships empathetically. Building off proven research, this user-friendly guide teaches you the pillars of high-EQ leadership. Whether it's developing self-awareness or bolstering empathy, discover simple and easy-to-use exercises that you can make use of on your own. You'll even learn about emotionally intelligent leaders and how they've utilized this skill as part of their successes. Emotional Intelligence for the Modern Leader includes: - Emotionally intelligent leadership-Find out what it means to lead with high EQ and how you can make it part of your organization's culture. - Your leadership style-Determine what your professional leadership style is and how that affects the people around you. - Growing your emotional intelligence-Take advantage of exercises and self-assessment tools that allow you to effectively and efficiently improve your abilities.

Christopher D. Connors (Author), Gabriel Vaughan (Narrator)

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The Tao of Influence: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Leaders and Entrepreneurs

A Unique Leadership BookTao and the Four Pillars of Influence stands apart as a business book. It speaks ancient wisdom to the modern-day leader, while providing practical and tangible actions that lead to high levels of sustainable influence. The book is an easy-to-follow roadmap to creating lasting change in your workplace, community and family, while navigating chaotic and demanding environments. Make an impact and positively influence others to create much needed change. As the "old world" influence of manipulation, hidden agendas, control and greed crumble, people are seeking a replacement. They want to be part of the solution. Tao and the Four Pillars of Influence is this replacement: it fills the gap between old and new world influence through the teachings and application of the Tao Te Ching, a 4000-year-old wisdom book written by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. The greatest power is in understanding the use of power. Karen McGregor is an international keynote speaker, TEDx speaker, and a guide to thousands of entrepreneurs and professionals seeking to become more influential leaders. In the Tao Te Ching, the Tao represents masculine creation and Te represents feminine nurturing. Tao and the Four Pillars of Influence speaks to both the feminine and masculine within, using words and concepts that are in keeping with the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, and that don't rely on having to force, beat or defeat anything. Each chapter begins with a quote from the Tao Te Ching that connects with that chapter's theme. Then concludes with reflections and recommended action. Learn how to: - Handle challenges, including difficult people - End the dynamic that heightens power struggles and destroys influence - Create stillness and space to generate more presence and authentic power If you have read books such as Weconomy, Leaders Eat Last, or Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, you will want to read and learn from Karen McGregor's Tao and the Four Pillars of Influence.

Karen Mcgregor (Author), Tanya Eby (Narrator)

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Hyper-Learning: How to Adapt to the Speed of Change

“Ed Hess's Hyper-Learning is uniquely practical and is the essential starting point for charting new ways of thinking, living, working, leading, and being fulfilled in our new world.” —Gary Roughead, Admiral, US Navy (retired) former Chief of Naval Operations The Digital Age will raise the question of how we humans will stay relevant in the workplace. To stay relevant, we have to be able to excel cognitively, behaviorally, and emotionally in ways that technology can't. Professor Ed Hess believes that requires us to become Hyper-Learners: continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning at the speed of change. To do that, we have to overcome our reflexive ways of being: seeking confirmation of what we believe, emotionally defending our beliefs and our ego, and seeking cohesiveness of our mental models. Hyper-Learning requires a new way of being and a radical new way of working. In Part 1 of this how-to book, Hess takes a practical workbook approach and helps readers create their Hyper-Learning Mindset, choose and embrace their needed Hyper-Learning Behaviors, and adopt their daily Hyper-Learning Practices. In Part 2, Hess focuses on how to humanize the workplace to optimize Hyper-Learning. Featuring case studies of three business leaders and two public companies, this book shows how to harness the power of human emotions, choices, and behaviors to enable the highest levels of human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral performance—individually and organizationally.

Edward D. Hess (Author), Anna Crowe (Narrator)

Audiobook

Softening the Edge: Empathy: How humanity's oldest leadership trait is changing our world

Does your business have an 'empathy deficit'? Is your business facing an economic or social crisis? Do you want to motivate the new generation of employees, keep the top talent and create meaningful relationships with leading clients, brands and business communities? If you answer yes to any of these questions then Mimi Nicklin’s Softening the Edge is a must read. Empathetic influence is this decade’s most critical human and scientifically validated skillset. The ability to connect authentically as people has the power to not only change our business environments, but to change the shape of our world. Softening the Edge will help you to future-proof and evolve the way you do business. ‘Empathy might just be the change we have been waiting for’ — Elana Afrika-Bredenkamp, Broadcaster & TV host 'We need Mimi’s voice.Her passion can change the future of work and close the empathy gap that affects our world' — Laurie Ruettimann, author of Betting On You & host of Punk Rock HR

Mimi Nicklin (Author), Mimi Nicklin (Narrator)

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Management & Leadership Audiobooks in Business & Economics