Do you feel comfortable delivering bad news? Do you look forward to speaking in public? Do you enjoy networking? Is it easy for you to speak your mind and be assertive with friends and colleagues? If you answered no to any of these questions, this book can help! What often sets successful people apart is their willingness to do things most of us fear. What’s more, we have the false notion that successful people like to do these things, when the truth is that successful people have simply found their own way to do them. According to Andy Molinsky, an expert on behavior in the business world, there are five key challenges underlying our avoidance tendencies: authenticity, competence, resentment, likability, and morality. Does the new behavior you’re attempting feel authentic to you? Is it the right thing to do? Answering these questions will help identify the “gap” in our behavioral style that we can then bridge by using the three C’s: Clarity, Conviction, and Customization. Perhaps most interesting, Molinsky has discovered that many people who confront what they were avoiding come to realize that they actually enjoy it, and can even be good at it. Short, prescriptive, and based not only on the author’s groundbreaking research but on his own quest to get out of his comfort zone, Reach will help you take the thing you are most afraid of doing and make it a proud part of your personal repertoire.

“I wrote this book because I believe that there is a serious gap in what has been written and communicated about cross-cultural management and what people actually struggle with on the ground.”—From the Introduction What does it mean to be a global worker and a true “citizen of the world” today? It goes beyond merely acknowledging cultural differences. In reality, it means you are able to adapt your behavior to conform to new cultural contexts without losing your authentic self in the process. Not only is this difficult, it’s a frightening prospect for most people and something completely outside their comfort zone. But managing and communicating with people from other cultures is an essential skill today. Most of us collaborate with teams across borders and cultures on a regular basis, whether we spend our time in the office or out on the road. What’s needed now is a critical new skill, something author Andy Molinsky calls global dexterity. In this book Molinsky offers the tools needed to simultaneously adapt behavior to new cultural contexts while staying authentic and grounded in your own natural style. Based on more than a decade of research, teaching, and consulting with managers and executives around the world, this book reveals an approach to adapting while feeling comfortable—an essential skill that enables you to switch behaviors and overcome the emotional and psychological challenges of doing so. From identifying and overcoming challenges to integrating what you learn into your everyday environment, Molinsky provides a guidebook—and mentoring—to raise your confidence and your profile. Practical, engaging, and refreshing, Global Dexterity will help you reach across cultures—and succeed in today’s global business environment.

‘This book is straightforward, factual and to the point. Any Leader responsible for business growth should read it! A blueprint full of practical ideas and tools to inspire you into action’—Craig Donaldson - Chief Executive Officer, Metro Bank (RANKED NUMBER ONE IN GLASSDOOR’S HIGHEST RATED CEO 2016) If you asked a cross-section of business leaders, business owners and entrepreneurs what their biggest business challenge is, you would probably hear the same recurring thought: growing their business in a sustainable, predictable, yet profitable way – quickly. It’s a reality that most businesses and individuals never reach their full potential, always yearning for the ‘thing’ that will catapult them into significance, but never really finding it. Whether you’re an entrepreneur starting out, or a director, executive or business leader climbing the corporate ladder, the building blocks of Built to Grow are universally applicable. Developed in the real world laboratory of thousands of businesses in twenty-seven countries spanning over two decades, Built to Grow is a proven, time-tested model to unlock the real potential in your business. Avoid the common pitfalls of a trial and error approach to business growth. Built to Grow is full of practical strategies, tools and ideas, backed up with real world case studies to illustrate what can be achieved - leaving you equipped to transform your businesses performance and drive tangible results. Built to Grow is destined to become your handbook, your ‘go to’ guide, your roadmap to accelerated, sustained and profitable business growth.

Getting stuck in a rut is common. Stepping out of the box means leaving your rut behind and moving outside your comfort zone. However, making the decision to get yourself out of that rut and finding a way to change your routines can be a challenge. It starts with one small step. Then, you need to be consistent and work toward the bigger changes. This book can help with ideas and encouragement to get the process moving. It helps you recognize what can be a good thing in your life already and what needs changed. It also gives a few examples of well-known people who stepped outside the box and found success.

In this New York Times bestseller, Isaac Lidsky draws on his experience of achieving immense success, joy, and fulfillment while losing his sight to a blinding disease to show us that it isn’t external circumstances, but how we perceive and respond to them, that governs our reality. Fear has a tendency to give us tunnel vision—we fill the unknown with our worst imaginings and cling to what’s familiar. But when confronted with new challenges, we need to think more broadly and adapt. When Isaac Lidsky learned that he was beginning to go blind at age thirteen, eventually losing his sight entirely by the time he was twenty-five, he initially thought that blindness would mean an end to his early success and his hopes for the future. Paradoxically, losing his sight gave him the vision to take responsibility for his reality and thrive. Lidsky graduated from Harvard College at age nineteen, served as a Supreme Court law clerk, fathered four children, and turned a failing construction subcontractor into a highly profitable business. Whether we’re blind or not, our vision is limited by our past experiences, biases, and emotions. Lidsky shows us how we can overcome paralyzing fears, avoid falling prey to our own assumptions and faulty leaps of logic, silence our inner critic, harness our strength, and live with open hearts and minds. In sharing his hard-won insights, Lidsky shows us how we too can confront life's trials with initiative, humor, and grace.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What is this place called the comfort zone? Where does the comfort zone exist? Why is stepping outside of the comfort zone so frightening? "The Comfort Zone Illusion" answers those questions by taking you on a journey of discovery to uncover the mystery of the very personal space we call our comfort zone. It is an exploration through the stages of change, beginning with the very first step outside of the comfort zone to exposing the five walls of fear that create barriers to change. This book looks beyond the illusion of comfort to the stark reality of the discomfort of change, and offers strategies to transform fear to energy, break down the brick walls of fear, develop movement habits, and create success enablers. Every breakthrough exercise provides a reflective understanding of your comfort zone, and although the exercises have a specific purpose, each offers a chance to reveal an "a-ha" moment. One of those moments is the turning point, the awakening to move you out of being stuck in the comfort of where you are to where you are meant to be.

Leaving your comfort zone is frightening, and fear can stifle action, inhibit the ability to attempt a new approach, and can create unnecessary stress, making you less likely to welcome change as an opportunity for discovery, growth, and personal development. The author, Susan Neustrom, shares numerous stories about confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and success derived from her life-changing experience of facing her fear of educational failure from being a high-school dropout at sixteen by returning to school at forty-eight to earn a GED and then a doctorate. Susan conveys her thoughts, feelings, and unbelievable discomfort with leaving her comfort zone, as well as many "a-ha" moments, in her personal transformation of abandoning a twenty-two-year career to follow her vision to do work with greater purpose and meaning. Not only does she offer her personal account, she also shares the stories of people in a variety of situations, and from experts who clearly understand change.

If you are stuck in your comfort zone, ready for change, but walls of "I can't" stand in your way, this book shows you how leaving your comfort zone is not so hard after all. "The Comfort Zone Illusion" truly demonstrates that possibilities are endless once you learn how to get out of the discomfort of being in your comfort zone, eliminate fear, and unleash purpose, passion, and potential.

The real-life story of how the world's most famous female long-distance swimmer encountered a grey whale separated from its mother - and how she helped to reunite them. Lynne Cox is the author of 'Swimming to Antarctica', a memoir of her life as a swimmer. From the age of fourteen she has been breaking records for long-distance swimming, culminating in a mile-long swim in Antarctica, in zero degree-temperature water. When Lynne was 17, and on a training swim off the California mainland, she found herself swimming with a grey whale that had lost its mother. For the next seven hours, she swam with the whale - through pods of dolphin, and schools of sun-fish, between the pilings of a pier, and out to the base of an oil-rig, diving down as deeply as Lynne was able to, losing sight of the whale for minutes only to have it return and listen to its strange clicking and singing - in an increasingly desperate attempt to locate its mother. The whale was too young to survive by itself, and Lynne's account of the hours she spent swimming with it, and of the moment when they finally found its mother is remarkable. Heartwarming, beautifully-written, atmospheric and sparkling with descriptions of the ocean and the behavior of the magnificent creatures that live in it, 'The Day the Whale Came' is an unforgettable story of human resilience and natural wonder.

Every one of us has a comfort zone. As a matter of fact, we have multiple comfort zones. Unless you are willing to identify and intentionally move outside them, you will never be able to achieve what God intended for your life.