Books published by Center for Creative Leadership

Listening well is an essential component of good leadership. You can become a more effective listener and leader by learning the skills of active listening.

This book will show you how to diagnose problems in your team by focusing on the three outcomes of effective leadership: direction, alignment, and commitment.

This report is an expanded version of the article, "Promotion Deci­sions as a Diversity Practice," published in 1995 as part of a special issue of the Journal of Management Development on gender issues in management development (volume 14, issue 2, pp. 6-23). The journal, published by MCB University Press in West Yorkshire, England, serves as an international com­munication medium for all those working in the management development field. We decided to publish this version of the journal article so that more of our primary audience of American managers, academicians, and human resources practitioners would have access to the information.

A prevalent way of viewing leadership is as a process of social influence. In this report, the authors offer an alternative perspective seeing leadership as a process of social meaning-making. The practical and research implications of such a view are considered.

This is the participant workbook for the One Day - Leading Through Transitions workshop. During the workshop, you will be given the tools to evaluate what's working, what's not working, and what's missing. This grounded, real learning experience will give you the confidence to meet the demands of both managing the business and leading your people.

Trust is a mechanism of people's decision-making processes that mediates nearly every interaction in their lives. Identifying and discussing the specific issues or behaviors that increase or decrease one's willingness to trust-to be vulnerable to the actions of others-helps leaders increase their comfort in dealing with today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Developing fluency in initiating trust conversations helps both leaders and their colleagues open up to the possibility of creating greater responsibility throughout their relationships, teams, and business units.

This guidebook outlines the benefits of effective delegation and the fears and concerns that can prevent or hinder it, then offers four key ideas that leaders can use to enable better delegation.

Inspire collaborative, creative conversations using a wide variety of images with Visual Explorer. A favorite of CCL's own program facilitators, Visual Explorer offers everything you need to utilize this proven method of developing ideas and insights into useful dialog as part of your leadership development training.

If your team isn't getting results, you may think the problem starts with a failure in leadership. While the person in charge may have issues, a leadership problem doesn't necessarily mean you have a "leader" problem. Leadership is not just about the people at the top, but is a social process, enabling individuals to work together as a cohesive group to produce collective results. This book will show you how to diagnose problems in your team by focusing on the three outcomes of effective leadership: direction, alignment, and commitment. By assessing where your group stands in each of these outcomes, you can plan and implement the changes necessary to get better results.

This book will show you how to diagnose problems in your team by focusing on the three outcomes of effective leadership: direction, alignment, and commitment. By assessing where your group stands in each of these outcomes, you can plan and implement the changes necessary to get better results.

When managers in multinational companies are not properly prepared for assignments in foreign countries, the costs are great - for the managers themselves, for their organizations, and for their home countries. The selection - development - support framework described in this report not only identifies the important factors to consider when working overseas but also specifies ways to develop a talent pool of effective expatriates. Such factors as personality, early-life experiences, role of the spouse, language and cultural training, and repatriation are discussed in detail and recommendations for expatriate success are provided.

With thirty-seven years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a three-star general, and nine years as the president and CEO of the Center for Creative Leadership, Walter F. Ulmer, Jr., has a wealth of leadership experience. He is also an exceptionally thoughtful person committed to learning from his experience. This book, selected from columns that he wrote for CCL's periodical Issues & Observations and introduced by an adaptation of an essay written for the Kellogg Leadership Studies Project, demonstrates his understanding of both practice and theory, and reminds us that there can be no true leadership without learning.

Senior executives, however, sometimes require a richer feedback experience - one which might also include one or more of the following: detailed verbatim descriptions of performance, observations from family members and friends, psychometric measures of personality and motivation, and data on early history, plus an extended coaching relationship with a professional in leadership development. With this added scope and power, however, comes increased risk, which makes it essential that additional precautions be taken. In this report, the authors offer guidelines for how enhanced feedback can be provided safely and effectively.

This Center for Creative Leadership(R) publication shows you the important steps you can take to become more self-aware and to treat new ideas and those who suggest them with the respect and consideration they deserve. Ask any leader about innovation and you are likely to hear how critical it is to their organization. Innovation provides a way to stand out from competitors around the globe and to address ever-rising customer expectations for products, services, and experiences that are new, different, and make life easier. Despite what we say about innovation, how we act is often in direct contradiction to our words. Most of us are quick to see new ideas as a risk- lacking all the evidence and detail we need to make us feel comfortable. Rather than embracing new ideas and nurturing them along the way, we tend to discard them out of hand-sabotaging the very creativity we need to fuel innovation. The six tips described in this publication will inspire & equip any leader to become an innovation hero!

Mentoring is an intentional, developmental relationship in which a more experienced, more knowledgeable person nurtures the professional and personal life of a less experienced, less knowledgeable person. Both mentors and mentees realize many benefits from mentoring, as do organizations that encourage, structure, and support mentoring. Effective mentors develop the leadership capacity of their mentees while increasing their own skills. They transfer their knowledge and expertise back into their organizations. They nurture the alignment between employee aspirations and organizational imperatives, and they create depth and loyalty within their organizations. Leaders who take mentoring seriously and handle it effectively have a profound impact.

What brought you to where you are now probably won't take you to where you want to go. If you want to reach the next level of performance or leadership, now is the time to DEVELOP, the time to GROW. Now is the time to CHANGE. The FIVE STEPS in this book will help you achieve the changes you seek. You will identify where to focus your development energy. You will create goals that work for you. You will craft a plan for achieving your goals. You will learn how to anticipate and overcome obstacles. And you'll figure out how to stay on course. Successful people have the ability to adapt. They thrive because they change. You can be one of them. Don't wait. Follow the steps in this book and CHANGE NOW!