This book is written for business, government, and non-profit executives and managers who wish to drive performance, productivity, and employee engagement in their organizations by leading with empathy, courage, and confidence in our age of global economic disruption. Structured as a series of 47 practical lessons from the author's career as a Human Resources leader advising executives, this book provides immediately implementable ideas and techniques in easy-to-digest format and a conversational, down-to-earth style.

Michael Ventura, entrepreneur and CEO of award-winning strategy and design firm Sub Rosa, shares “how to unlock our ability to design solutions, spark innovation, and solve tough challenges with empathy at the center” (Arianna Huffington). Having built his career working with iconic brands and institutions such as General Electric, Google, Nike, Warby Parker, and also The United Nations and the Obama Administration, Michael Ventura offers entrepreneurs and executives a radical new business book and way forward. Empathy is not about being nice. It’s not about pity or sympathy either. It’s about understanding—your consumers, your colleagues, and yourself—and it’s a direct path to powerful leadership. As such, Applied Empathy presents real strategies, based on Sub Rosa’s design work and the popular class Ventura and his team have taught at Princeton University, on how to make lasting connections and evolve your business internally (your employees, culture, and product/services) as well as externally (your brand, consumers, and value). “The most neglected fact in business is we’re all human. Michael Ventura makes a powerful argument that empathy is the secret sauce of 21st century business. The more digital we get, the more empathy we need” (Chip Conley, New York Times bestselling author of Emotional Equation). For leaders of all levels, this groundbreaking guide lays the foundation to establish a diverse, inventive, and driven team that can meet the challenges of today’s ever-evolving marketplace. If you want to connect to the people you work with, you have to understand them first.

If your people know you care about them, they will move mountains. Employee engagement and loyalty expert Heather Younger outlines nine ways to manifest the radical power of caring support in the workplace. Here's the thing: most leaders think of themselves as caring leaders, but not all of them act in alignment with what that means for employees. Leaders may not be able to identify the level of care they are extending to their employees, but all employees intuitively know whether their bosses or managers are caring for them. Heather Younger argues that if you are looking for increased productivity, customer satisfaction, or employee engagement, you need to care for your employees first. Genuinely caring for people means that you want to see them succeed for themselves, not just for what they can do for you, your team, or your organization. This book incorporates ten sections with breakout stories and interviews that outline the necessary steps to make all employees feel included and cared for, as well as a call to action for all leaders. Younger states that leaders who have the positive power to change the lives of those they lead shouldn't just want to care for them; they should see it as imperative for the success of their employees and their organization.

This critical resource gives managers, HR, and anyone who may come into contact with someone in trauma—including workplace violence, harassment, assault, illness, addiction, fraud, bankruptcy, and more—the tools they need to be prepared for what lies ahead. This book is crucial for every manager or HR representative who shouldn’t just prepare to one day be faced with a report of a traumatic experience at work, but plan on it. This five-step method will help managers make survivors feel supported and understood. The Empathetic Workplace guides supervisors of any level through an understanding of how stories of trauma impact the brain of both the survivor and the listener, as well as the tools to handle the interaction appropriately, to help the listener, the organization, and most importantly, the survivor. The easy-to-follow LASER method outlined in these pages includes the following elements that all managers should know and understand: Listen-Controlling your own reaction, managing your body language, asking open-ended questions, hearing what is not being said, and winding down the speaker when the conversation becomes unproductive are essential elements in being a good listener. Acknowledge-Once someone shares a difficult personal story with you, it is important to acknowledge that gift. Share-You can help the speaker regain some measure of control by sharing information with him or her about what happened or what happens next, your personal or organizational values, and what you don’t yet know but hope to learn. Empower-You can help the traumatized person by providing him or her with resources that are available to them through the company or outside groups. Return-The final step is to ensure that the traumatized person has a way to come back later when he or she cannot remember all that you said, thinks of more questions, or wishes for updates. The LASER technique can benefit all who are responsible for others, from top-tier managers at Fortune 500 companies to Residence Advisors in college dormitories.

Furious customers? Missed deadlines? Failed products? The problems your business faces may stem from a single issue: lack of empathy. Being empathetic at work means seeing the situation from another's perspective, and using that vantage point to shape your leadership style, workplace culture, and branding strategy. Pairing her knowledge as a branding expert with proven research and fascinating stories from executives, change-makers and community leaders, Maria Ross reveals exactly how empathy makes brands and organizations stronger and more successful. Ross shows why your business needs to cultivate more empathy now, and shares the habits and traits of empathetic leaders who foster more productivity and loyalty. She gives practical tips, big and small, for how to align your mission and values and hire the right people, cultivating a more empathetic--and innovative--workplace culture. Finally, she gives you the goods on building your empathetic brand in an authentic and proactive way, and shows how doing so results in happier customers, innovative work cultures and increased profits. In this practical playbook for businesses of all types, Maria Ross proves that empathy is not just good for society--it's great for business, and may transform you at a personal level, too.

Learn to lead others through adversity with the power of human connection. In Leading with Empathy: Understanding the Needs of Today’s Workforce, acclaimed strategist and business leader Dr. Gautham Pallapa presents an insightful roadmap to leading people through adversity and empowering humans in the workplace, the home, and society. Through this book, the distinguished author examines the impact of recent world-shaking events and how they have impacted us as a species and as individuals. He explores how empathy can help alleviate some of the more harmful effects of hardship and offers key actions that empathic leaders can take to inspire their followers. Finally, the book describes how to transform the way we work by rethinking and reimagining existing processes and innovatively introducing strategic disruption. Leading with Empathy also includes: Stories, anecdotes, and personal musings that grant visibility and validation to the suffering of others Exercises and strategies to reduce stress, anxiety, and improve happiness and positivity Actions that enable leaders to empower people through empathy, collaboration, and communication. An essential read for executives, managers, and business leaders of all types, Leading with Empathy will also earn a place on the bookshelves of military, athletic, and educational leaders who seek to inspire their followers and empower humanity in the face of adversity.

Leadership is hard. How can you balance compassion for your people with effectiveness in getting the job done? A global pandemic, economic volatility, natural disasters, civil and political unrest. From New York to Barcelona to Hong Kong, it can feel as if the world as we know it is coming apart. Through it all, our human spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion. But in hard times like these, leaders need to make hard decisions—deliver negative feedback, make difficult choices that disappoint people, and in some cases lay people off. How do you do the hard things that come with the responsibility of leadership while remaining a good human being and bringing out the best in others? Most people think we have to make a binary choice between being a good human being and being a tough, effective leader. But this is a false dichotomy. Being human and doing what needs to be done are not mutually exclusive. In truth, doing hard things and making difficult decisions is often the most compassionate thing to do. As founder and CEO of Potential Project, Rasmus Hougaard and his longtime coauthor, Jacqueline Carter, show in this powerful, practical book, you must always balance caring for your people with leadership wisdom and effectiveness. Using data from thousands of leaders, employees, and companies in nearly a hundred countries, the authors find that when leaders bring the right balance of compassion and wisdom to the job, they foster much higher levels of employee engagement, performance, loyalty, and well-being in their people. With rich examples from Netflix, IKEA, Unilever, and many other global companies, as well as practical tools and advice for leaders and managers at any level, Compassionate Leadership is your indispensable guide to doing the hard work of leadership in a human way.

Do people see you as the kind of leader you want to be? Are your strongest leadership qualities getting in the way of your greatness? After decades of advising and inspiring some of the most eminent chief executives in the world, Lolly Daskal has uncovered a startling pattern: within each leader are powerful abilities that are also hidden impediments to greatness. She’s witnessed many highly driven, overachieving leaders rise to prominence fueled by well-honed skill sets, only to falter when the shadow sides of the same skills emerge. Now Daskal reveals her proven system, which leaders at any level can apply to dramatically improve their results. It begins with identifying your distinctive leadership archetype and recognizing its shadow: ■ The Rebel, driven by confidence, becomes the Imposter, plagued by self-doubt. ■ The Explorer, fueled by intuition, becomes the Exploiter, master of manipulation. ■ The Truth Teller, who embraces candor, becomes the Deceiver, who creates suspicion. ■ The Hero, embodying courage, becomes the Bystander, an outright coward. ■ The Inventor, brimming with integrity, becomes the Destroyer, who is morally corrupt. ■ The Navigator, trusts and is trusted, becomes the Fixer, endlessly arrogant. ■ The Knight, for whom loyalty is everything, becomes the Mercenary, who is perpetually self-serving. Using psychology, philosophy, and her own experience, Daskal offers a breakthrough perspective on leadership. She’ll take you inside some of the most cloistered boardrooms, let you in on deeply personal conversations with industry leaders, and introduce you to luminaries who’ve changed the world. Her insights will help you rethink everything you know to become the leader you truly want to be.

BRING THE TECHNIQUES OF THE STAGE TO THE BOARDROOM. For more than a decade, Belle Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar have applied the lessons and expertise they have learned as performing artists to the work of their company, The Ariel Group. Halpern and Lubar have helped tens of thousands of executives at major companies around the country and the globe, including General Electric, Mobil Oil, Capital One, and Deloitte. In Leadership Presence, they make their time-tested strategies available to everyone, from high-profile CEOs to young professionals seeking promotion. Their practical, proven approach will enable you to develop the skills necessary to inspire confidence, command respect, build credibility, and motivate others. Halpern and Lubar teach you: • How to handle tough situations with heightened confidence and flexibility • How to build your relationships to enhance collaboration and business development • How to express yourself dramatically and motivate others • How to integrate your personal values into communication to inspire others and become a more effective leader Learning the skills of the true performance experts, readers will understand why Leadership Presence is the key to dynamic and authentic leadership.

What if the emotions of your past experiences continued to secretly control your life today? What if these residual, inner blockages prevented you from truly connecting with, trusting and working with others? What if your life was a continuous loop of the same story being retold with slightly different characters and settings no matter where you are and which people you choose to have relationships with? So many of us have been wounded with emotional pain at some point in our lives and are still carrying this emotional stress with us. It not only affects your emotional strength and intelligence, which influences your ability to make clear, conscientious decisions, but can prevent you from your optimal potential in achieving success, happiness and fulfillment. To define the new era of leadership in your own lives, it's time challenge your thinking. Emotional GRIT establishes a new model of human leadership within and beyond the workforce - to build a more heart-centered, compassionate environment in companies, communities, schools and families - so that you can master your inner-strength and positively impact the world around you. What causes someone's actual transformation, why is it we hide behind our "masks", and what does that say about your current leadership. To achieve authentic happiness we must first uncover what stories are playing themselves out in our lives. How can you shift your own lives as a result once you become more self-aware and practice more compassion and empathy within your own lives to create ripple effects in your world as a result? The process is simple and designed to give you a powerful framework to GROW, REVEAL, INNOVATE and finally TRANSFORM your life and become the compassionate leader you and the world desperately needs, one with true Emotional GRIT.