Students need teachers and school leaders who are at their best- and being your best happens when you know your strengths and boldly use them to empower others. Talent often hides in the most unlikely people and places. Hidden talents serve no one, but when you learn how to spot and release talent, you can make your school amazing for everyone. In Unleash Talent, educator and principal Kara Knollmeyer explains that by exploring the core elements of talent-passion, skills, and personality traits-you can uncover your gifts and help others do the same. It doesn't matter if you are a teacher, administrator, or custodian; your unique talents can make a powerful impact on your school community. Knollmeyer's insightful guide walks you through a powerful process of self-discovery. She notes that scores, job satisfaction, happiness, and teacher retention improve when every member of the school community is encouraged to use their unique gifts. You'll learn . . . Why we should bring our passions to work How to draw out and build on existing skills Why we should embrace our unique and varied personality traits All learners-children and adults alike-have special talents just waiting to be unleashed.

"The vast majority of the workforce in any organization possesses far more talent, intelligence, capability, and creativity than their present jobs require or even allow." - Dr. Stephen R. Covey That's what Talent Unleashed is about—unleashing that unlimited store of potential in people. That's a leader's job. And how does a leader do that job? Through 3 leadership conversations—not just individual events, but ongoing discussions designed to help people give the best they can. In these conversations, leaders trade fear for trust, confusion for clarity, and micromanaging for empowerment. The three vital conversations are: The performance Conversation The Voice Conversation The Clearing the Path Conversation Performance Conversations define roles and set clear goals. Leaders hold people accountable for these roles and goals, thus transforming team members from "managed hirelings" to "trusted partners and teammates." Voice Conversations affirm the worth and potential of each person on a team. Leaders help individuals discover their unique gifts, talents, and abilities and align these gifts, talents, and abilities to the great mission of the organization. It is the process that ignites the inner fire. Clear the Path Conversations turn supervisors into leaders who become sources of help and empower people to succeed in their jobs. Leaders help clear away the obstacles from the success pathway.

Managing Your Scarcest Resources Business leaders know that the key to competitive success is smart management of scarce resources. That's why companies allocate their financial capital so carefully. But capital today is cheap and abundant, no longer a source of advantage. The truly scarce resources now are the time, the talent, and the energy of the people in your organization--resources that are too often squandered. There's plenty of advice about how to manage them, but most of it focuses on individual actions. What's really needed are organizational solutions that can unleash a company's full productive power and enable it to outpace competitors. Building off of the popular Harvard Business Review article "Your Scarcest Resource," Michael Mankins and Eric Garton, Bain & Company experts in organizational design and effectiveness, present new research into how you can liberate people's time, talent, and energy and unleash your organization's productive power. They identify the specific causes of organizational drag--the collection of institutional factors that slow things down, decrease output, and drain people's energy--and then offer a pragmatic framework for how managers can overcome it. With practical advice for using the framework and in-depth examples of how the best companies manage their people's time, talent, and energy with as much discipline as they do their financial capital, this book shows managers how to create a virtuous circle of high performance.

Demystifying Talent Management offers practical advice for all managers, HR professionals, senior leaders, and other employees on how to work together to build a talented and motivated workforce. The book addresses performance, development, coaching, feedback, compensation, and other elements of people management. Using simple, straightforward language, Kim Janson tells you how you can avoid confusion and conflicts when engaging in talent management. You'll learn: What performance is needed and expected: how to translate your company's strategy into individual performance; What it means to measure and track progress, simply and clearly; What you can and should do to help an individual's development; How to narrow your focus to improve a skill, knowledge, or experience; How to take both an individual's profile and the direction of the organization into account in career development and succession planning; How to make compensation (cash, public accolades, feedback, etc.) a true driver of results; How coaching and feedback are essential in bringing all the elements of talent management together. This book will guide you to a deeper understanding of the mechanics of talent management and development success so that all the stakeholders can come together in a win-win-win-win scenario.

Executives are beginning to realize that the most effective way to fight the recession or to conquer competitive challenges is not to retreat, but to optimize every asset under management--especially an organization's human resources. This groundbreaking book argues against historical assumptions regarding managing talent and how human capital should be perceived. Introducing three factors--Alignment, Capabilities, and Engagement (ACE)--this guide demonstrates how ACE forms the framework for optimizing, managing, and measuring the value contribution of human resources to the strategic and operational success of an organization. Answering questions such as Are we optimally using the talent we have acquired? Are we bringing in, developing, and retaining the right talent? and Are we developing leaders effectively? this is the perfect resource for business leaders in companies of all sizes.

If you discovered a new market comprising 53% of the world’s population, would you act to invest in it? There are 1.3 billion people around the world who identify as having a disability. When you include friends and family, the disability market touches 53% of all consumers. It is the world’s largest emerging market. Unleash Different illustrates how companies like Google, PepsiCo, and Nordstrom are attracting people with disabilities as customers and as employees. Replacing “nice to do” with “return on investment” allows market forces to take over and the world’s leading brands to do what they do best: serve a market segment — in this case, the disability market. Business managers will come to understand how taking a charity-oriented approach to people with disabilities has failed, what action is required to capitalize on the world’s biggest emerging market, and how their organizations can grow revenue and cut costs by attracting people with disabilities as customers and talent. Rich gives the reader a peek into how he rose from a Canadian school for “crippled children” to manage $6 billion for one of Wall Street’s leading firms. He makes it easy to relate to the business goal of serving disability — because he has actually done it.

Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) is a look into the mind of one of America's most legendary creative thinkers, George Lois. Offering indispensle lessons, practical advice, facts, anecdotes and inspiration, this book is a timeless creative bible for all those looking to succeed in life, business and creativity. These are key lessons derived from the incomparle life of 'Master Communicator' George Lois, the original Mad Man of Madison Avenue. Written and compiled by the man The Wall Street Journal called "prodigy, enfant terrible, founder of agencies, creator of legends," each step is borne from a passion to succeed and a disdain for the status quo. Organised into inspirational, bite-sized pointers, each page offers fresh insight into the sources of success, from identifying your heroes to identifying yourself. The ideas, images and illustrations presented in this book are fresh, witty and in-your-face. Whether it's communicating your point in nanosecond, creating an explosive portfolio or making your presence felt, no one is better placed than George Lois to teach you the process of creativity. Poignant, punchy and to-the-point, Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) is a must have for anyone on a quest for success.

"Learn how the most accomplished leaders from around the globe have tackled their toughest challenges with Lessons Learned. Concise and engaging, each volume in this book series offers fourteen insightful essays by top leaders in industry, the public sector, and academia on the most pressing issues they've faced. The Lessons Learned series also offers all of the lessons in their original video format, free bonus videos, and other exclusive features online. A crucial resource for today's busy executive, Lessons Learned gives you instant access to the wisdom and expertise of the world's most talented leaders."--Publisher's website.