Liane Davey

Thoughtload--not workload--is the culprit causing chaos for your team. Be the leader that creates clarity, calm, and greater capacity. In Thoughtload, New York Times bestselling author and team effectiveness advisor Liane Davey tackles today's most pressing management challenges: over-burdened systems, burned-out teams, and declining results. However, contrary to conventional wisdom, Davey argues that the problem is not with out-sized workloads. The root cause of the madness sapping productivity in today's offices is with our excessive thoughtload. Thoughtload is the cumulative and often overwhelming burden of increasing cognitive and emotional demands, worsened by decreasing physical and mental energy. In this brilliant, highly prescriptive guide, Davey lays out the steps for reducing thoughtload, so that you and your team feel more focused--and get more done. The process starts with you. By learning to better manage your attention, you create periods of deep concentration that lead to the outcomes you strive for, and a sense of accomplishment. By processing emotions triggered in the workplace and at home, you gain greater control of your mood and productivity. And by making informed choices about where your energy comes from (and where it goes), you connect with reliable and renewable resources that fuel you to do the things that matter most. Davey then gives you powerful tools you can use as a leader to coach your team members to manage thoughtload for themselves. Doing so, you and your team will feel more focused, less burnt out, and finally free to do more great work. Backed by science and written with the time- and energy-strapped manager in mind, Thoughtload is Liane Davey's potent handbook for a better way to lead. Apply the strategies in this book to create calm within the chaos--so you and your team can perform, produce, and prosper.

In the modern workplace, conflict has become a dirty word. After all, conflict is antithetical to teamwork, employee engagement, and a positive company culture. Or is it? The truth is that our teams and organisations require conflict to get things done. But we avoid conflict and build up conflict debt by deferring and dodging the difficult decisions. Our organisations are paying the price - becoming less productive, less innovative, and less competitive. Individuals are paying, too - suffering from overwhelming workloads, endless drama, and sleepless nights. In The Good Fight, Liane Davey shows you how to create the productive conflict your organisation needs to get along and get stuff done. Drawing on her twenty-year career as an advisor to the C-Suite, Davey shares real-world examples and practical tools to handle even the most contentious conflicts as allies. The Good Fight is an essential field guide for leaders at all levels.

Build your ability to discuss tough topics at work. At times in our careers, we face conversations that bring out tense emotions. Our instinct may be to avoid them entirely, but engaging in challenging conversations can create opportunities to build stronger work relationships, teams, and organizations. This book will help you learn how to communicate productively under stress, offer and accept critical feedback, and ensure teams walk away from challenging conversations feeling united. This volume includes the work of: Amy Gallo Rebecca Knight Liane Davey Joseph Grenny HOW TO BE HUMAN AT WORK. The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master.

Build your ability to discuss tough topics at work. At times in our careers, we face conversations that bring out tense emotions. Our instinct may be to avoid them entirely, but engaging in challenging conversations can create opportunities to build stronger work relationships, teams, and organizations. This book will help you learn how to communicate productively under stress, offer and accept critical feedback, and ensure teams walk away from challenging conversations feeling united. This volume includes the work of: Amy Gallo Rebecca Knight Liane Davey Joseph Grenny HOW TO BE HUMAN AT WORK. The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master.

Reinvent your organization for the hybrid age. Hybrid work is here to stay—but what will it look like at your company? If your organization is holding on to inflexible, pre-pandemic policies about where—and when—your people work, it may be risking a mass exodus of talent. Designing a hybrid workplace that furthers your business goals while staying true to your culture requires balancing experimentation with rigorous planning. Hybrid Workplace: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you adopt the best technological, cultural, and new management practices to seize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of the hybrid age. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more—each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future.

Reinvent your organization for the hybrid age. Hybrid work is here to stay—but what will it look like at your company? If your organization is holding on to inflexible, pre-pandemic policies about where—and when—your people work, it may be risking a mass exodus of talent. Designing a hybrid workplace that furthers your business goals while staying true to your culture requires balancing experimentation with rigorous planning. Hybrid Workplace: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you adopt the best technological, cultural, and new management practices to seize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of the hybrid age. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues—blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more—each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future.

More productivity. Less drama. It all starts with a healthy conflict culture. In the modern workplace, conflict has become a dirty word. After all, conflict is antithetical to teamwork, employee engagement, and a positive company culture. Or is it? The truth is that our teams and organizations require conflict to get things done. But we avoid conflict and build up conflict debt by deferring and dodging the difficult decisions. Our organizations are paying the price—becoming less productive, less innovative, and less competitive. Individuals are paying, too—suffering from overwhelming workloads, endless drama, and sleepless nights. In The Good Fight, Liane Davey shows you how to create the productive conflict your organization needs to get along and get stuff done. Drawing on her twenty-year career as an advisor to the C-Suite, Davey shares real-world examples and practical tools you and your team can use to handle even the most contentious conflicts as allies—instead of adversaries. Filled with strategies you will use again and again, The Good Fight is an essential field guide for leaders at all levels.

Five common problems your team is susceptible to—and the one thing you can do to fix all of them There are so many ways a team can go wrong. Does your team make decisions so slowly that nothing ever gets done, or does it go too fast and miss critical issues that come back to bite you later? Does your team bicker endlessly or smile and nod while avoiding the tough issues? Too often, team dysfunction leads to abysmal productivity and zero innovation for your organization, as well as misery and wasted time for you. Most team members sit and wait, feeling trapped in a team that just isn't working. You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done presents a radical new idea: you can change your team. Author Liane Davey shows how you, from any seat at the table, even without support from your colleagues or your team leader, can transform even a toxic team. It starts with living up to five responsibilities that will change the workings of even the most dysfunctional team. Addresses the five most common ways your team can become toxicGives you a diagnostic to see if your team is at riskDoles out practical suggestions to deal with the crisis in the short-termInstructs you on how to disrupt the patterns that leave you in an endless cycle of dysfunctionReplaces those patterns with positive interactions and even productive conflictGives you the right words to say to change your team for the better—starting todayWritten by Liane Davey, PhD, a highly sought-after consultant and Principal of Knightsbridge Leadership Solutions and the Vice President of Global Solutions and Team Effectiveness Designed for front line employees, middle managers, executives, or anyone who works regularly in teams, You First will help you figure out how to make your team happier, healthier, and more productive.

An organizational guide to assessing, measuring, and building leadership capacity Leadership capacity has emerged as a key source of competitive advantage in today's economy. But many organizations struggle to develop the capacity they need to succeed. This book offers concrete and precise strategies to close the leadership gap. It explains in detail how to conduct a leadership analysis, determining exactly where the gaps are in both organizational and individual leadership; analyzes the challenges a company faces; helps in understanding an organization's leadership deficit; and generates leadership solutions tailored to the organization's particular needs and shortcomings.