Books by Tom Despard

Tom Despard has done it again! Emotional Avenues, Feeling How We Work is a sequel and supplement to his groundbreaking book Performance Avenues, Knowing How We Work. In order to more fully understand who we are at work, we need to look at both how we normally think AND how we normally feel. For the first time, we now have a tool to assess our Performance Type - and that of others at work - by intuitively evaluating both our thinking AND our feeling in one comprehensive approach. Assessments and descriptions of work traits and types have traditionally centered much more on thinking than feeling. And yet feeling drives our behavior more or less as much as thinking and more so in quick decision-making. In this excellent new book, Tom Despard tackles a range of questions that modern leaders are just starting to reflect on. Read it and deepen your grasp of what makes for excellence in any organizational context! - Tom Morris, Author of The Oasis Within, True Success, and If Aristotle Ran General Motors, among many other books, Wilmington, NC Tom brings his rich experience as a CEO to an engaging perspective of how emotions impact job performance. His Emotional Avenues model combines with his Performance Avenues model to offer an insightful exploration of how to apply these concepts to the day to day management of people. - Chuck Russell, Chairman & CEO BestWork DATA, Atlanta, GA Tom applies his successful business background and a unique blend of structured thinking and creative writing into Emotional Avenues. I have personally benefited from Performance Avenues. This new book, which speaks to the heart, is another great resource for talent development for individuals, teams and companies. - Bob Kramer, Executive, Trainer and Business Coach, Lancaster, PA If Helen Keller is right that, "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart," then Tom Despard is on track. Top performance, in any field, cannot be achieved without first understanding and accessing the power of emotion. - Jon Adams, Lead Pastor, The Vine Community Church, Cumming, GA Tom's work contains an intensity and depth of intellectual stimulation that cannot be captured in a single reading. When readers return to immerse themselves in a chapter or two of this book, they will draw another nugget of wisdom to utilize in their personal interactions with others. - Dave Thompson, Management Consultant, Lancaster, PA Tom Despard is a retired builder and the author of four business books and four poetry collections. He has had a longtime interest in talent development and most recently in how emotions govern our behavior and decision-making at work. He resides in historic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and places in the sunny south with his wife Gayle. www.PerformanceAvenues.com

Touch identifies fifty positive "emotions" and their potential power, especially when connected with the positive thinking of a corresponding "knowmotion." For example, do we touch and teach, promote with passion and reason, and act daringly and decisively? While many believe that our feelings and thoughts do battle, Tom Despard's innovative approach shows how they can form an effective alliance. "I think and feel, therefore I am." Also included is a free Touch Quotient (TQ) questionnaire.

Finding Your Clown Poems to Lookup and Love By is a collection of poems that will peel the onion of your jocular side and unlock some of the happy clown within you that may still be hiding. There is joy in the Lord - seek and you will find it. Find it and you will live it. You don't have to be the plowman looking back nor the worrier looking ahead. Selections: Finding Your Clown (last six lines) It's there -- emotion's court jester dancing down deep. Come out, latent clown -- my happiness to keep! You're so perceptive, so persuasive, a saint within. You may, you can, you must rejuvenate me again. Ah..there it is. I feel my clown. I'm laughing now. The sorrow has passed. O clown, take a bow! courtship (first four lines) i met you and wanted to meet you again i met you many times and then i longed for you to be in my court on my ship and in my port City Park Freeze frame a photo of a spring afternoon in a city park Where young, middle and old are each on their own lark. Sweet children, hopeful parents, and gentle sages, The generations come together like a book of life's pages. Tom Despard is a Christian author and poet and this book is his third collection of published poems following Winter Wind and Turning the Stones. He is a real estate entrepreneur and actively involved in faith-based organizations and his community. He and his wife Gayle reside in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and part-time in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when not adventuring throughout the world.