Balance isn't an issue of time, but an issue of choice. It's about living your values by aligning your behavior with what you believe is really important. Aligning your behavior with your values is much like any other developmental experience; the basic process involves assessment, challenge, and support. You need to determine where you are, define where you want to go, and then put into place the tools you need to get there.
Balance is about more than how you spend your time. It's about how you live your life. It's about recognizing that you have control over the choices you make and...

Critical Reflections is a process that leaders can use to help their groups learn lessons from key events, positive or negative. The basic process is short and simple. It begins with a key event and includes three stages: exploring--reliving the event and sharing perceptions of what happened; reflecting--reaching an understanding of how and why it happened; and projecting--harvesting lessons for the future. The goal is to create a specific action plan that will set the stage for a productive future.

Despite all of the attention and accolades that organizations place on teams, they are not always the most efficient way to meet a business challenge. Its expensive and time consuming to launch a team, and its a full-time job to lead a team toward achieving organizational objectives. This guidebook was written to help managers determine if a team is the right tool for meeting a business goal, and explains potential obstacles and challenges to forming a team that can operate at its full potential.

This is a book about leading dispersed teams--teams that are made up of people who don't work in the same geographical area. Such teams don't often meet face-to-face. Usually their members are separated by time and distance, and they often bring different cultural views to bear on their work. Solving potential communication problems and devising processes for making decisions and managing conflict are challenges for leaders of dispersed teams. But before they can address those challenges, they need to analyze the support such a team will get from the organization as a whole.
Dispersed...

Social Identity comprises the parts of a person's identity that come from belonging to particular groups, including age, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Your social identity informs how you lead. The social identities of those around you affect how they view you as a leader and how they views, and thus work with, others. This guidebook includes questions and activities to help you develop your awareness of social identity. Armed with that knowledge, you can decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding, increase your ability to be...

To be a successful leader, you need to get results. To get results, you need to set priorities. This book can help you do a better job of setting priorities, recognizing the personal values that motivate your decision making, the probable trade-offs and consequences of your decisions, and the importance of aligning your priorities with your organization's expectations. In this way you can successfully meet organizational objectives and consistently produce results.

A vision has to be shared in order to do what it is meant to do: inspire, clarify, and focus the work of your organization. One part of your job as a leader is to create commitment to your organization's vision. In order to do this, you have to communicate the vision effectively. In this guidebook we suggest many ways to communicate a vision. We also discuss how to deal with a resistant audience and what to do in the event that you yourself are resistant. You'll learn how to communicate a vision to others in ways that will help them understand it, remember it, and then go on to share it...

Leaders often have to make decisions without complete information, and those decisions are expected to be not only right but also timely. Using reflective techniques can help you learn to depend on your intuition for help in making good decisions quickly. Reflective practices may seem time-consuming at the beginning, but the time you put in on the front end is well worth the investment. It will pay you back both in time and in the quality of the decisions you make.

Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit of profitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A process that targets innovation provides leaders with just such a problem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task--which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk.
Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities in five areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving, learning and understanding different problem-solving styles, learning and...

Conflict is inevitable when people work together, and it's one of the most difficult challenges facing managers. But it's a challenge that successful leaders learn to address. Managers who develop an understanding of difference without judgment and are willing to see more than one perspective or solution are in a good position to manage conflict with their direct reports. Conflict between managers and direct reports highlights a power relationship and affects the work itself--the tasks for which managers and direct reports share responsibility. Managers who look to see both sides of conflict...