Explore these tools and resources to continue developing your leadership skills.
Exploring leadership
- Developing Your Self-Reflection & Intuition (Library): In the world of work, leaders often find themselves in the position of having to make decisions without complete information. They’re expected to make decisions that are not only right but also timely. Strategic and tactical choices can’t always wait, so effective leaders learn to depend on their intuition as well as the evidence of the moment to reach decisions quickly with minimal information. – From the author, Talula Cartwright.
- A River Runs Through It: A Metaphor for Teaching Leadership Theory (Library): Leadership educators are some of the best teachers around when it comes to creating exciting, effective experiential learning opportunities, which teach students leadership skills. Where the curriculum and instruction falls short is when we try to teach leadership theory… This article explores a new instructional metaphor for teaching leadership theory. This metaphor has been an effective tool for helping students understand the historical development of leadership theory as a foundation for the leadership skills they are learning. – From the author, John S. Burns.
- The Leadership Challenge (Library): With scores of new case studies and a timeless and inspiring message, The Leadership Challenge is a “personal coach in a book,” guiding readers through the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. When leaders understand that leadership is a relationship and they begin to engage in the Five Practices – Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart – they are better able to embark on a lifetime of success and significance. – From the authors, James Kouzes and Barry Posner.
- Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Library): Leadership authorities Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky marshal a half century of combined teaching and consulting experience to show that it is possible to put ourselves on the line, respond effectively to the risks, and live to celebrate our efforts. With examples including the presidents of countries and the presidents of organizations, everyday managers and prominent activists, politicians and parents, the authors illustrate proven strategies for surviving and thriving amidst the dangers of leading.” The authors also address often-neglected aspects of leadership, such as how to manage your personal vulnerabilities, and how to anchor yourself and sustain your spirit through tough times. Both uplifting and practical, this book enables each of us to lead courageously and confidently – without losing ourselves. – From the authors, Ronald Heifetz and Martin Linsky.
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Building effective teams
- Building Team Power: How to Unleash the Collaborative Genius of Teams for Increased Engagement, Productivity, and Results (Library): Digs into the crucial behaviors you need to understand and practice to be a collaborative leader. It takes you into the how-tos for building collaborative partnerships and facilitating teamwork within your own work group, across work groups, or in task forces, committees, problem-solving teams, executive councils, and the like. – From the author, Thomas Kayser.
- Beyond Team Building: How to Build High Performing Teams and the Culture to Support Them (Library): Many books on teams and teamwork (including our own) focus on how to repair broken teams in which team members are not acting as one. But this book has a different purpose. We go beyond focusing on how to repair broken teams, and focus on how to create a team building organization that will foster an environment which will create and maintain great teams from the outset. – From the authors, Dyer, Gibb, and Jeffrey.
- 3 Ways to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in Employees (YouTube): In fact, walkouts do happen pretty much everyday in the workplace. They’re just not normally done with our feet – instead they’re checkouts, they’re invisible walkouts that happen with our hearts and with our hands and with our voices… When we feel psychologically unsafe or unvalued, we protest quietly, sometimes even silently or subconsciously. – From the speaker, Chris White.
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Interpersonal communication and leadership
- A Quick Summary of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: The seven habits in this book will help you move from a state of dependence, to independence, and finally to interdependence. While society and most of the self-help books on the market champion independence as the highest achievement, Covey argues that it’s interdependence that yields the greatest results. Interdependence is a more mature, advanced concept. It precludes the knowledge that you are an independent being, but that working with others will produce greater results than working on your own. – From the author, Elle McFarlane.
- Active Listening: Improve your Ability to Listen and Lead (Library): Many of us intuitively know what active listening looks, sounds, and feels like. However, we may not know what we need to do to be seen as good listeners. Leaders who practice active listening are able to draw out more information—and information that’s more meaningful—during a conversation. At its most engaging and effective, active listening is the norm for conversation, and everyone involved is a full participant. It involves bringing about and finding common ground, connecting to each other, and opening up to new possibilities. – From the author, Leadership Center.
- Supervisors’ Active-Empathetic Listening as an Important Antecedent of Work Engagement (Library): Social support from supervisors is a job resource that has been found to be an important antecedent to work engagement. However, there is a knowledge gap in understanding one of the key features of social support—i.e., supervisors’ active-empathetic listening—and its relation to employees’ work engagement. To bridge this gap, this study explores how supervisors’ active-empathetic listening is associated with employees’ work engagement. – From the authors Inga Jonsdottir and Kari Kristinsson.
- Virtual Team Leadership: The Effects of Leadership Style and Communication Medium on Team Interaction Styles and Outcomes (Library): Rapid technological advancements have led to a new paradigm of work—it can now be conducted anytime, anywhere, in real space or through technology (Cascio & Shurygailo, 2003). The virtual environment and its various communication technologies have created a new context for leadership and teamwork (Avolio, Kahai, Dumdum, & Sivasubramaniam, 2001a). Leadership within this new context has been referred to as “e-leadership” or “virtual leadership,” defined as “a social influence process mediated by advanced information technologies to produce changes in attitudes, feelings, thinking, behaviour, and/or performance of individuals, groups, and/or organizations” (Avolio, Kahai, & Dodge, 2001b, p. 617). – From the authors Laura Hambley, Thomas O’Neill, and Theresa Kline.
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Exploring conflict management
- 50 Activities for Conflict Resolution (Library): This collection of activities, self-assessments, and exercises is especially useful as a resource to introduce the issue of conflict and its resolution as a part of workshops on management, leadership, communication, negotiation and diversity. – From the authors, Jonamay Lambert and Selma Myers.
- Conflict Management (Library): This book demonstrates that tensions, differences and conflicts in companies and organisations are normal, necessary and productive if they are taken seriously and the employees and managers involved find a proactive way to approach them. – From the author, Stephan Proksch.
- The Critical Role of Conflict Resolution in Teams: A Close Look at the Links Between Conflict Type, Conflict Management Strategies, and Team Outcomes (Library): This article explores the linkages between strategies for managing different types of conflict and group performance and satisfaction. Results from a qualitative study of 57 autonomous teams suggest that groups that improve or maintain top performance over time share 3 conflict resolution tendencies: (a) focusing on the content of interpersonal interactions rather than delivery style, (b) explicitly discussing reasons behind any decisions reached in accepting and distributing work assignments, and (c) assigning work to members who have the relevant task expertise rather than assigning by other common means such as volunteering, default, or convenience. – From the authors, Kristin Behfar, Randall Peterson, Elizabeth Mannix, and William Trochim.
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Understanding and developing intercutural competence
Cultivating self-awareness with Personality Dimensions®