Leadership Ain’t Rocket Science is an easy read with practical advice and exercises you can immediately use to improve your leadership skills. The author has 45 plus years experience in business, non-profit and military leadership positions and he uses an informal, personal writing style to pass on lessons learned of leadership successes and failures. He gives the reader practical exercises and ideas to improve personal integrity, vison, passion, collaboration, competence, generosity, communications, courage and decision-making; his key traits for effective leaders. Although the book can be read in a few hours; you will use its’ lessons for many years to come.

This book is about leadership for middle school and high school students; nothing more, nothing less. This book has a singular focus, to make students aware of how critical the concept of leadership is to their personal happiness and success. I have been there, done that; it may have been a different time in history, but lots of teen challenges nonetheless. Yes, times have changed and personal, family and societal issues may now have different priorities and obstacles, but the need to be an effective leader remains paramount. So, whether its 1967 or 2011, some things remain the same. This book covers 10 key leadership attributes. There are certainly many more, but I have chosen a select 10 that I think every young adult should master to become an effective leader, not just for their school years, but for a lifetime beyond. Leadership is, without question, one of the more critical ingredients to anyone’s personal and professional success. There simply is no substitute. If we all desire to achieve some measure of happiness and success in our lives, then becoming an effective leader is a must.

You’re holding a briefcase full of practical tools that can boost your leadership skills and help you identify and develop associates who can move the organization forward. Author Michael L. Ryan is president and CEO of Human Resource Professionals, which helps agencies, companies, and other organizations boost leadership skills and cultivate top talent. In this guide, Ryan leads managers on a quest to become leaders. Through case studies, statistics, and secrets he discovered during a fifty-year career, you can learn how to recruit, attract, and retain excellent employees; create a workplace that encourages employees to motivate themselves; counsel, coach, and constructively resolve conflicts; stay out of trouble with lawyers and government agencies; and communicate effectively in writing, orally, and nonverbally. He also offers insights on becoming a better listener, balancing work and life, and implementing the necessary change to accomplish your goals. While books and manuals sit on a shelf and collect dust, a briefcase is kept handy and carried around. Wear this one out and keep it near you at all times, and you’ll be on your way to becoming a leader and accomplishing business objectives.

This book is an extension of my vocation: guiding others through the college search process. It is intended to help students, parents, educators and allies be better informed as to the benefits of being educated, and the path or paths one can take in achieving an education. It is intended to demystify and explain what has become complicated and complex; to reduce this process to its simplest form. The purpose of this book is to show everyone that finding, selecting, and going to college is not, in fact, rocket science.

Failure is always an option, and so is choosing to lead your team into an environment that helps them avoid catastrophe and pull off miracles. For more than fifty years, NASA’s Mission Control has done just that. Take the ultimate insider’s look at the leadership values and culture that made that track record possible. Paul Hill paints a vivid picture, candidly portraying the critical cultural connections in human spaceflight triumphs and failures. By demonstrating how his Mission Control team learned to steward this culture into their management roles, Paul provides a guide for any organization to boost their own performance by leveraging the core ideas and values that have delivered “impossible” wins for decades. Whether failure means cost and schedule overruns, quality escapes, loss of market share, bankruptcy, or putting people’s lives at risk, how we lead can determine whether even small mistakes snowball out of control and destroy an enterprise. Discover how to take Leadership from the Mission Control Room to the Boardroom, and enable this leadership environment in your team. What can your team learn from top tier leaders at NASA Mission Control? Maybe more than you think. In Leadership from the Mission Control Room to the Boardroom, former NASA flight director Paul Hill tells the true story of the game-changing transformation of Mission Control’s senior leadership team. Ride along on a journey of evolution as these executives rediscover the core purpose and values that had never left their organization. Hill’s candor and intensity makes this a fascinating read for every leader! — KEN BLANCHARD, COAUTHOR OF THE NEW ONE MINUTE MANAGER® AND LEADING AT A HIGHER LEVEL There is no higher-stakes environment than NASA’s Mission Control. This incredible team’s leadership journey — and development of precise decision-making in the face of unbelievable pressure — are inspiring. Filled with fascinating insights into spaceflight and leadership alike, every leader will find parallels to their own organization. Paul’s incredible book is a must-have for anyone leading a high-performance team and an invaluable addition to any business library. — MARSHALL GOLDSMITH – THE THINKERS 50 #1 LEADERSHIP THINKER IN THE WORLD This is an arresting work by a former NASA Flight Director with whom I was privileged to work during the Return-to-Flight of the Space Shuttle Program in 2005. Paul Hill takes the reader through NASA’s legendary ‘Mission Control’ in a way not found in any other work with which I am familiar. From its origins in aircraft flight test, to the early days of the space program with Project Mercury, and on to the iconic time of Apollo, and from there to the Space Shuttle program, Paul Hill offers a view from the inside track to both laymen and space professionals. From there, he takes you to the business world outside of NASA, and shows how the principles and values of the Mission Operations Directorate apply in a far larger arena. No leader or manager can fail to benefit from the lessons captured here. — MICHAEL D. GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR, 2005-09 AND SCHAFER CORPORATION CEO Paul Hill has written a stunning ‘instructional manual’ for business executives and leaders who want to learn from the best team on the planet: The men and women of NASA’s Mission Control. For the first time, a leader of the Mission Operations Directorate of NASA shares the hard-won lessons of this world-famous organization and translates them into key principles and examples designed to hone a superior leadership team grounded in integrity and bedrock organizational values. Steeped in the lessons of history, rich with achievement and heart-rending loss, laser-focused on application and results, and above all a great narrative, this book, like its author, is one-of-a kind. — MARY LYNNE DITTMAR, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COALITION FOR DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION AND FORMER MEMBER, HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT COMMITTEE, NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING AND MEDICINE This engaging book tells the story of how NASA’s renowned Mission Control evolved into an extraordinary team that directed many of the world’s greatest technical triumphs. Equally important is Paul Hill’s cautionary tale that sustaining excellence may be more difficult than attaining it. He shares how Mission Control learned the importance of articulating, modeling and nurturing its core values of technical truth, integrity and courage to maintain exceptional performance under adverse circumstances. Leaders from every organization will benefit from these vital lessons. — WALTER E. NATEMEYER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, NORTH AMERICAN TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

Are you signed up to serve at a Christian camp this summer? Whether you are a veteran staffer or have never been to camp before, this book is for you Get your heart ready for the spiritual challenge of camp leadership. Consider why you are going to camp, and what will be expected of you. Learn what makes kids tick, and ways of developing healthy relationships. Prepare to lead effective Bible discussions. Gain skills in managing issues and problems. Become confident in sharing your faith in Jesus.

A longtime student of the Japanese and American quality movements, Cole focuses on the response of American industry to the challenge posed in the early 1980s by high quality goods from Japan. While most American managers view this challenge as slowly but successfully met, many academics see the quality movement that emerged from it as just another fad. In seeking to reconcile these two views, Cole explores the reasons behind American industry's slow response to Japanese quality, arguing that a variety of institutional factors inhibited management action in the early 1980s. He then describes the reshaping of institutions that allowed American companies to close the quality gap and to achieve sustained quality improvements in the 1990s.

Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators is a resource for practitioners, policymakers, researchers and program developers that illuminates creative, cutting edge ways to inspire and motivate young people about science and technology learning. The book is aligned with the National Research Council's new Framework for Science Education, which includes an explicit focus on engineering and design content, as well as integration across disciplines. Extensive case studies explore real world examples of innovative programs that take place in a variety of settings, including schools, museums, community centers, and virtual spaces. Design, Make, and Play are presented as learning methodologies that have the power to rekindle children's intrinsic motivation and innate curiosity about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. A digital companion app showcases rich multimedia that brings the stories and successes of each program--and the students who learn there--to life.

Through a century of movies, the U.S. military held sway over war and service-oriented films. Influenced by the armed forces and their public relations units, Hollywood presented moviegoers with images of a faultless American fighting machine led by heroic commanders. This book examines this cooperation with detailed narratives of military blunders and unfit officers that were whitewashed to be presented in a more favorable light. Drawing on production files, correspondence between bureaucrats and filmmakers, and contemporary critical reviews, the author reveals the behind-the-scenes political maneuvers that led to the rewriting of history on-screen.