Triggers. Sparking Positive Change and Making It Last

Positive Psychology and Change explores how areas of positive psychology such as strengths, flow, and psychological capital can be applied to the everyday challenges of leading a dynamic and adaptive work community, and how collaborative group approaches to transformational change can be combined with a positive mindset to maintain optimism and motivation in an unpredictable working environment. Articulates a unique vision for organizational leadership in the 21st century that combines positive psychology, Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and collaborative group technologies Focuses on four specific co-creative approaches (Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, World Caf? and SimuReal) and the ways in which they surpass traditional methods for organizational change Explains the latest theory, research, and practice, and translates it into concrete, actionable ideas for meeting the day-to-day challenges of effective and adaptive leadership and management Includes learning features such as boxed text, short case studies, stories, and cartoons

DISCOVER THE PROVEN PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES THAT MAKE GREAT LEADERS GREAT When some people hear the words «positive leadership» they roll their eyes because they think we're talking about Pollyanna positive, where life is full of unicorns and rainbows. But the truth is that we are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard. As a leader, you will face numerous obstacles, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you and your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That's why positive leadership is essential! Positive leadership is not about fake positivity. It is the real stuff that makes great leaders great. The research is clear. Being a positive leader is not just a nice way to lead. It's the way to lead if you want to build a great culture, unite your organization in the face of adversity, develop a connected and committed team and achieve excellence and superior results. There is a power associated with positive leadership and you can utilize the framework, stories, and practices in this book to start benefiting yourself and your team with it today!

Discover how to help young people “make it” in a rapidly changing world   Author Stephanie Malia Krauss gets it. Every day she works with leaders across the country as they upgrade learning experiences to better equip young people for a changing world. A mother, former teacher and school leader, Stephanie knows firsthand how hard it is to balance school and program requirements with young people’s needs. In  Making It: What Today's Kids Need for Tomorrow's World , she lays out what adults can do to get young people ready for the future. What you learn may surprise you.  With so much changing so fast—accelerated by the impacts of COVID-19—the most in-demand jobs and skills of today may be obsolete by the time our youngest become adults. For kids to be ready for this new reality, they must acquire four critical “currencies” that will serve them well, whatever their future holds: credentials, competencies, connections, and cash. This book focuses on how to prioritize these four key outcomes whenever and wherever learning happens. The author shares research and experience to help you understand and apply a human-centered and future-focused lens directly to your classroom, school, program, or at home. Learn about how the world and workforce is changing, and what that means for the education and preparation young people need Understand how these changes are impacting young people, reshaping their childhoods and transitions into adulthood Glean practical information and ideas you can use to help young people—at every age and stage—to gain readiness “currencies” in the form of credentials, competencies, connections, and cash Challenge your beliefs about what knowledge, experiences and resources are most important for kids to have, and what a college- and career-ready education really requires Discover community-wide strategies that prioritize equity, learning and readiness for the future This book will benefit teachers, counselors, youth workers, parents, school board members, and state education leaders alike. Whether you work in K-12, youth development, or you just want to know how to best support the kids in your life, you will find a timely and useful resource putting young people first and modernizing their learning experiences for the better.

An illustrated business fable that gives you the faith, courage and confidence to win in today's tough economic climate Fear and uncertainty are staples of daily life in today's struggling economy. As bad as things can be, economic downturns also lead to new opportunities. It's easy to worry, give up and let fear paralyze you. However, you have more control than you think you do and how you handle adversity is your choice-and the only choice that matters. In fact, study history and you'll find that a lot of people and organizations made a name for themselves and grew their businesses during recessions and downturns. These successful people and organizations all shared similar characteristics and took similar actions to thrive while others merely tried to survive. You can do the same. In The Shark and the Goldfish, Jon Gordon shares an inspiring fable about Gordy, a pampered goldfish who gets swept out to sea. Desperate for food, Gordy meets a kind shark who teaches him the ultimate lesson-Goldfish wait to be fed. Sharks go find food. Gordy also learns that the difference between a full and empty stomach is our faith, beliefs and actions. In the face of adversity and lean times, this is a business fable that reinforces a proven truth: You can't control the events in your life. But you can control how you respond and in turn this determines the outcome. A business fable that teaches valuable lessons on the importance of working hard, maintaining a locus of control and focusing on positive choices instead of negative voices, Written by Jon Gordon, bestselling author of The Energy Bus and The No Complaining Rule Reveals how change is inevitable-but that you can make it your friend or foe. Provides an action plan filled with tips and strategies to thrive during change and adversity If you're facing tough economic times, The Shark and the Goldfish will motivate you, inspire you, and give you the confidence you need to thrive during changing times.

A book that every academic leader should read and put into practice. —Kim Cameron, associate dean of executive education, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Praise for Positive Academic Leadership « Buller has produced a book that every academic leader should read and put into practice. Positive Academic Leadership pulls together an amazing array of scientific findings and practical guidelines that will be invaluable for academic leaders looking to improve themselves and their institutions.» – Kim Cameron, associate dean, William Russell Professor of Management and Organizations, Ross School of Business; professor of higher education, School of Education, University of Michigan « If I had a magic wand and could make one wish for all of higher education, it would be that we had better institutional leadership. Whether one is a chair, dean, provost, president, or on the Board of Trustees, this book can make a world of difference in your ability to provide that leadership!» – L. Dee Fink, author, Creating Significant Learning Experiences; former president, Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education « Buller's book brings hope for leadership in higher education by emphasizing the importance of a positive approach that empowers and inspires others. Positive Academic Leadership has the potential to transform higher education for the benefit of students, faculty, and ultimately our communities and our world.» – Kina S. Mallard, provost and vice president of academic affairs, Carson-Newman University « Academic leaders who find themselves engulfed in negative thinking and considering only damage control scenarios for pressing issues will want to read this book. Employing what Jeffrey Buller calls 'positive academic leadership' is, I believe, essential to transforming feelings of despair into constructive leadership.» – Mary Lou Higgerson, vice president for academic affairs, emerita, Baldwin Wallace University « I can't recall reading any book on leadership that is more applicable to the work of faculty development. Every academic leader—faculty member, chair, dean, or campus administrator—will benefit from Jeffrey Buller's evidence-based model and practices of positive academic leadership.» – Mary Deane Sorcinelli, associate provost for faculty development, University of Massachusetts Amherst

A powerful study illuminates our nation's collective civic fault lines Recent events have turned the spotlight on the issue of race in modern America, and the current cultural climate calls out for more research, education, dialogue, and understanding. Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action focuses on a provocative social science experiment with the potential to address these needs. Through an analysis grounded in the perspectives of developmental psychology, adaptive leadership and complex systems theory, the inquiry at the heart of this book illuminates dynamics of race and social change in surprising and important ways. Author Max Klau explains how his own quest for insight into these matters led to the empirical study at the heart of this book, and he presents the results of years of research that integrate findings at the individual, group, and whole system levels of analysis. It's an effort to explore one of the most controversial and deeply divisive subject's in American civic life using the tools of social science and empiricism. Readers will: Review a long tradition of classic, provocative social science experiments and learn how the study presented here extends that tradition into new and unexplored territory Engage with findings from years of research that reveal insights into dynamics of race and social change unfolding simultaneously at the individual, group, and whole systems levels Encounter a call to action with implications for our own personal journeys and for national policy at this critical moment in American civic life At a moment when our nation is once again bitterly divided around matters at the heart of American civic life, Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action seeks to push our collective journey forward with insights that promise to promote insight, understanding, and healing.

Commissioned to celebrate the 40th year of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, this book evaluates the role of the critical social scientist and how the point of their work is not simply to interpret the world but to change it Brings together leading critical social scientists to consider the major challenges of our time and what is to be done about them Applies diagnostic and normative reasoning to momentous issues including the global economic crisis, transnational environmental problems, record levels of malnourishment, never ending wars, and proliferating natural disasters Theoretically diverse – a range of perspectives are put to work ranging from Marxism and feminism to anarchism The chapters comprise advanced but accessible analyses of the present and future world order

500 years after the death of Leonardo Da Vinci, Ben Lewis considers the unrivalled legacy of his art through an original biography of the ‘Salvator Mundi’ (Saviour of the World) – the lost Da Vinci painting.In 2017, Leonardo Da Vinci’s small oil painting, the Salvator Mundi entered global popular consciousness with its record-breaking $450m sale in 2017. The Salvator is, in the words of its discoverer, ‘the rarest thing on the planet by the greatest human being who ever lived.’ Only re-attributed to Leonardo in 2011, as the last one that will be discovered and sold, it is widely said to be ‘the Last Leonardo’.In this stunning mix of biography, art history, history and thriller that goes deep into the story of this astonishing picture, not to mention the shady dealings of the contemporary art world, Ben Lewis writes a truly original and gripping narrative history.This book forensically retraces the history of the Salvator Mundi, uncovering a very different narrative from the carefully edited, sanitised and sometimes spurious one presented by the dealers and connoisseurs, who marketed and sold it. The real painting is a prism through which we can understand the highs and lows of the art world, experiencing the passions that drove men and women to own this work, as well as the philistinism that led them to almost destroy and lose it; through which we can track the vicissitudes of the highly secretive and unregulated art market, across five centuries and the intrinsic link between art and the social and political system it inhabits. This story is an opportunity to tell a twisting tale of geniuses and gangsters, double-crossing, disappearances and sometimes dubious attributions, where we’re never quite certain what to believe.The Last Leonardo is an adventure story about art historians and a work of art. It is a book about a search for lost treasure, for something with a totemic power, that existed, until recently, only in myth and legend.

Downsizing, outsourcing and the accelerating pace of change have led to project management becoming one of today's hottest disciplines. Project management is about managing ad hoc, one-off projects instead of ongoing operations. Effective project management delivers better ROI, better benefits realization. Focusing on diagnostics, tangible outcomes and solutions, The Success Healthcheck for IT Projects identifies 8 leading indicators of success, ranging from how the project is set-up, to it's ability to deliver results within the business. The book covers how to assess the likely success of the project using the current IT project portfolio track record and provides diagnostics for a specific project. It shares over 35 real life stories from projects in a direct, pacey conversational style. On the $10,000 project, these methods provide focus. In very large IT based transformation projects, these methods have saved up to $30,000,000 and improved benefits between 20-80%. This is for project team, project manager, portfolio managers, CIOs and the business executives who want business benefits to be realized. This books helps project sponsors and project managers deliver Predictable Accountable Results (PAR) from projects.