Books about Effectiveness from Amazon.com

A Clear and Effective Approach to Learning DBT Skills

First developed for treating borderline personality disorder, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has proven effective as treatment for a range of other mental health problems, especially for those characterized by overwhelming emotions. Research shows that DBT can improve your ability to handle distress without losing control and acting destructively. In order to make use of these techniques, you need to build skills in four key areas--distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

This book, a collaborative effort from three esteemed authors, offers straightforward, step-by-step exercises for learning these concepts and putting them to work for real and lasting change. Start by working on the introductory exercises and, after making progress, move on to the advanced-skills chapters. Whether you are a professional or a general reader, whether you use this book to support work done in therapy or as the basis for self-help, you'll benefit from this clear and practical guide to better managing your emotions.

The individual struggling with overwhelming emotions and DBT therapists will benefit significantly from this workbook. McKay, Wood and Brantley have expanded and translated DBT Skills, making Linehan's iconic work on emotional skill building even more accessible and easy to apply to everyday life.
--Kate Northcott, MA, MFT, is a DBT therapist in private practice with Mindfulness Therapy Associates and is director of New Perspectives Center for Counseling, a non-profit counseling center, in San Francisco, CA.
Price: $13.27 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $9.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“It’s not the magic that makes it work; it’s the way we work that makes it magic.”

The secret for creating “magic” in our careers, our organizations, and our lives is simple: outstanding leadership—the kind that inspires employees, delights customers, and achieves extraordinary business results.

No one knows more about this kind of leadership than Lee Cockerell, the man who ran Walt Disney World® Resort operations for over a decade. And in Creating Magic, he shares the leadership principles that not only guided his own journey from a poor farm boy in Oklahoma to the head of operations for a multibillion dollar enterprise, but that also soon came to form the cultural bedrock of the world’s number one vacation destination. But as Lee demonstrates, great leadership isn’t about mastering impossibly complex management theories. We can all become outstanding leaders by following the ten practical, common sense strategies outlined in this remarkable book. As straightforward as they are profound, these leadership lessons include:
Everyone is important.
Make your people your brand.
Burn the free fuel: appreciation, recognition, and encouragement.
Give people a purpose, not just a job.

Combining surprising business wisdom with insightful and entertaining stories from Lee’s four decades on the front lines of some of the world’s best-run companies, Creating Magic shows all of us – from small business owners to managers at every level – how to become better leaders by infusing quality, character, courage, enthusiasm, and integrity into our workplace and into our lives.

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Price: $13.32 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Completely Updated and Revised

This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. As Senge makes clear, in the long run the only sustainable competitive advantage is your organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition. The leadership stories in the book demonstrate the many ways that the core ideas in The Fifth Discipline, many of which seemed radical when first published in 1990, have become deeply integrated into people’s ways of seeing the world and their managerial practices.

In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire.

The updated and revised Currency edition of this business classic contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future.

Mastering the disciplines Senge outlines in the book will:

• Reignite the spark of genuine learning driven by people focused on what truly matters to them
• Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity
• Free you of confining assumptions and mindsets
• Teach you to see the forest and the trees
• End the struggle between work and personal time.
Price: $14.87 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In clear, simple terms Leadership and the One Minute Manager® teaches managers the art of Situational Leadership®--a simple system that refutes the conventional management mandate of treating all employees equally. Here, you'll learn why tailoring management styles to individual employees is so important; why knowing when to delegate, support, or direct is critical; how to identify the leadership style suited to a particular person; and how consistent use of the One Minute techniques will produce better management and enhanced motivation on all levels. This remarkable, easy-to-follow book is a priceless guide to creative, personalized leadership that elicits the best performance from your staff--and the best bottom line for any business.

If your management motto is "everyone should be treated equally," Leadership and the One Minute Manager. will show you why this style not only hinders workplace efficiency, but also frustrates your staff. In clear, simple terms, Ken Blanchard, co-author of the enormously popular The One Minute Manager., coupled with business gurus Patricia and Drea Zigarmi, teach managers the art of Situational Leadership.. You'll learn why tailoring management styles to individual employees is so important; when to delegate, support, or direct; how to identify the leadership style suited to a particular person; and how consistent use of the One Minute techniques will produce better management and enhanced motivation on all levels. This remarkable, easy-to-follow book is a priceless guide to creative, personalized leadership that elicits the best performance from your staff and the best bottom line for any business..
Price: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An innovative guide to how great nonprofits achieve extraordinary social impact.

What makes great nonprofits great? Authors Crutchfield and McLeod Grant searched for the answer over several years, employing a rigorous research methodology which derived from books on for-profits like Built to Last. They studied 12 nonprofits that have achieved extraordinary levels of impact from Habitat for Humanity to the Heritage Foundation and distilled six counterintuitive practices that these organizations use to change the world. This book has lessons for all readers interested in creating significant social change, including nonprofit managers, donors and volunteers.

Leslie R. Crutchfield (Washington, D.C.) is a managing director of Ashoka and research grantee of the Aspen Institute. Heather McLeod Grant (Palo Alto, CA) is a nonprofit consultant and advisor to Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship and the Stanford Center for Social Innovation. Crutchfield and Grant were co-founding editors of Who Cares, a national magazine reaching 50,000 readers in circulation between 1993-2000..
Price: $16.42 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A business parable about how companies can achieve remarkable results by helping their employees fulfill their dreams

Managing people is difficult. With disengagement and turnover on the rise, many managers are scratching their heads wondering what to do. It’s not that we don’t dream of being great managers, it’s just that we haven’t found a practical and efficient way to do it. Until now . . .

The fictional company in this remarkable book is grappling with real problems of high turnover and low morale -- so the managers begin to investigate what really drives the employees. What they discover is that the key to motivation isn’t necessarily the promise of a bigger paycheck or title, but rather the fulfillment of crucial personal dreams. They also learned that people at every level need to be offered specific kinds of help and encouragement -- or our dreams will forever remain just dreams as we grow dissatisfied with our lives and jobs.

Beginning with his important thought that a company can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that its employees are becoming better-versions-of-themselves, Matthew Kelly explores the connection between the dreams we are chasing personally and the way we all engage at work. Tackling head-on the growing problem of employee disengagement, Kelly explores the dynamic collaboration that is unleashed when people work together to achieve company objectives and personal dreams.

The power of The Dream Manager is that simply becoming aware of the concept will change the way you manage and relate to people instantly and forever. What’s your dream?.
Price: $8.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Chet Holmes has been called “one of the top 20 change experts in the country.” He helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand strategies to improve your business, zero in on the few essential skill areas that make the big difference.

Too many managers jump at every new trend, but don’t stick with any of them. Instead, says Holmes, focus on twelve critical areas of improvement—one at a time—and practice them over and over with pigheaded discipline.

The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up and soup up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve. Like a tennis player who hits nothing but backhands for a few hours a week to perfect his game, you can systematically improve each key area.

Holmes offers proven strategies for:
• Management: Teach your people how to work smarter, not harder
• Marketing: Get more bang from your Web site, advertising, trade shows, and public relations
• Sales: Perfect every sales interaction by working on sales, not just in sales
The Ultimate Sales Machine will put you and your company on a path to success and help you stay there!.
Price: $8.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Breathtaking in its simplicity and profound in its impact, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) distills the balanced scorecard process into twelve logical steps, equipping users with an implementation resource kit that includes questionnaires, worksheets, workshop outlines, and a list of over 500 performance measures. Author David Parmenter provides you with everything you need to master and implement a KPI-driven strategy..
Price: $24.44 [Notify me when price goes down.]