Audiobooks narrated by Vanessa Hart

Crafting the Customer Experience For People Not Like You: How to Delight and Engage the Customers Yo

People are more diverse than ever before, and our differences manifest themselves in a number of ways. It may mean differing expectations about speed of information. (instantly, in the next few seconds, or by the end of the day). It may mean differing preferences for communication (texting vs. calling or sitting down to meet with a customer). Even racial, ethnic, religious, generational and geographic differences come into play for satisfying customers service expectations. This book will show readers why a one-size fits all approach to customer service is no longer viable and why a customized approach to working with customers is the new way to garner business, loyalty and create brand ambassadors. Companies, brands and products are struggling to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness and the easiest way to foster long-term loyalty and brand preference is with exceptional customer service. Business owners cannot control the economy, the stock market or the costs of goods and labor. But the one thing they can control is customer service. Its an empowering thought. Its the one thing that is 100% in your control at all times and its more important than ever. Delivering Customer Service will help readers to learn the consumer insights that will help them deliver a better business experience with every customer. Also, core customer groups will be highlighted (women, the five generations - matures, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z), racial and ethnic segments, such as Hispanics and African-Americans, as well as those who are defined by key lifestyle and life-stage attributes.

Kelly Mcdonald (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause

Part real-world survival guide and part nitty-gritty how-to handbook, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide will show you how to hack through the bewildering jungle of marketing options and miles-long to-do lists to clear a marketing path thats right for you and your organization, no matter how understaffed or underfunded. Youll see how to shape a marketing program that starts from where you are now and grows with your organization, using smart and savvy techniques, both offline and online. The Nonprofit Marketing Guide boils down the best of todays nonprofit marketing theories into practical, cost-effective, can-do strategies and uncovers the street-tested tactics that you really can pull off on your own. Youll also find concrete tips on how to sit down and produce nearly two dozen specific marketing publications for your nonprofit and additional resources on the companion website. Combining big-picture management, decision-making, and strategic elements with reader-friendly tips for implementing a marketing program day in and day out, this book will provide a simple yet powerful framework for building a marketing program.

Katya Andresen, Kivi Leroux Miller (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business

The American Productivity s pioneering research and collaboration with some of the best worlds best companies, from every sectorIBM, US Navy, ConocoPhillips, Fluor, Infosys, Petrobras, and dozens of others. Unlike academic or philosophical books about knowledge, this book will capture the best, most practical and innovative practices to ensure organizations have the knowledge they need in the future and, more importantly, can connect the dots and use knowledge to succeed today. This book will answer questions like: (a) Executives are aware of looming knowledge loss as a generation of Boomers retires: how do we get new people up to speed quickly? (b) Millennials are eager to share knowledge differently than prior generations: how do we build or retrofit our organizations to benefit from their new ways of working and talking? Todays young employees want to collaborate and will leave organizations that make it difficult to do so. (c) Employees need to share knowledge and best practices around the globe: how do we overcome organization silos, knowledge hoarding and not invented here resistance? (d) How do Knowledge Management leaders take advantage of emerging technologies and mobile devices to build networks and share knowledge? How can we use and what can we learn from Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon to make our firms and people smarter, stronger and faster? How do we make sure people have access to the information and experts they need when they are experiencing a teachable moment?

Carla O'dell, Cindy Hubert (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

Toxic Workplace!: Managing Toxic Personalities and Their Systems of Power

Most of us as leaders have experienced the frustration and confusion of having an extremely difficult person to deal with in the workplace?a person who debilitates individuals, teams, and even organizations. These difficult individuals have the capacity to completely undermine our sense of well-being. Why? Because in a variety of ways they get under our skin, infiltrate our professional and personal space, demoralize us, de-motivate the team, and ultimately affect our competence and productivity. They are ?toxic.? Unfortunately, like bad neighbors, short of picking up and moving to new venues, it seems impossible to escape the deleterious effects of these toxic individuals?and for some victims, even once the toxic person is no longer there! The topic of toxic personalities at work has been long on history but quite sparse on research. Although there are numerous books on the subject that attempt to guide leaders? thinking and behaviors to preserve their own sanity, Toxic Workplace will be the first to tackle the underlying systems issues that enable the toxic person to create a path of destruction in the organization, often for a very long time and at the cost of losing talented people all throughout the organization. The author's research has revealed the warning signs that indicate a serious behavioral problem before months or even years of lost productivity has resulted. Further, they have identified how this toxicity spreads in systems with long-term effects on organizational climate even after the person has left. Their two-year national research study of approximately 500 leaders provides very specific actions that leaders need to take to reduce both the intensity and frequency of toxic personalities at work. No other book provides this menu of options from a systems perspective with practical relevance in real work situations.

Elizabeth Holloway, Mitchell Kusy (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help--or Hurt--How You Lead

Aspiring and seasoned leaders have been trained to manage their leadership communication in many important ways: how they provide feedback and motivate employees, how they convey the strategy for their organization, how they interact with major clients or partners. And yet, all their efforts to communicate effectively can be derailed by even the smallest nonverbal gestures such as the way they sit in a business meeting or stand at the podium at a speaking engagement or the amount of eye contact they give in a one-on-one meeting. Despite an abundance of leadership development programs and books that focus on effective communication, theres little understanding of how nonverbal communication affectspositively or negativelya leaders success. In The Silent Language of Leaders, Carol Kinsey Goman explains that personal space, physical gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye contact communicate louder than words and, thus, can be used strategically to help leaders manage, motivate, lead global teams, and communicate clearly in the digital age. Drawing on compelling psychological and neuroscience research, she shows leaders how to adjust their body language for maximum effect and offers advice for global business leaders. Some of the advice includes: Avoid shallow breathing while giving a pep talk to employees. Research shows that a shallow breather can make an entire room feel anxious and thus lead listeners to not believe the speaker. When meeting with employees in your organization with whom you dont interact often, give them an eyebrow flashthe rapid raising of the inside corners of the eyebrow. This signal is used mostly involuntarily, for example, when you run into someone you know on the street. But it is also a powerful way to subtly show recognition and interest in someone. At the next business dinner or face-to-face meeting, find a table that allows you to sit at right angles to each other. Research shows that people are more interactive when seated at right angles that when straight across from each other. Next time youre leading a meeting, notice if any audience members cover or block their mouths, which usually indicates skepticism. If you see this gesture, stop talking and address their disbelief: I know some of you have doubts about what Ive just said, or You look skeptical. Can you tell me what your concerns are? Profound changes are shaking up our lives and the kind of leaders the world seeks: sharp economic swings, increasing global competitiveness, new technologies, social and cultural shifts, and the reshaping of our organizations. As the pace of change continues to accelerate, leaders need every tool availableincluding nonverbal skillsto improve their credibility and stay ahead of the curve.

Carol Kinsey Goman (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Plugged-In Manager: Get in Tune with Your People, Technology, and Organization to Thrive

Too often discussions of management practice focus exclusively on managing people and organizational issues. Rarely, however, do they incorporate a discussion about technology or address all three dimensions in a balanced way. When they do, the result is game changing. In our hypercompetitive environment, those managers who are outstanding at being plugged into their people, technology, and organizational processes simultaneously excel at coming up with effective business solutions. The Plugged-In Manager makes the case that being plugged-inthe ability to see choices across each of an organizations dimensions of people, technology, and organizational processes and then to mix them together into new and powerful organizational strategies, structures, and practicesmay be the most important capability a manager can develop to succeed in the 21st century. Step by step Griffith shows you how to acquire this ability. Shows what it takes for business managers to succeed as technology and organizations become more and more complex Profiles exceptional leaders and organizations who are plugged-in, such as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com Offers a fresh look at management issues Filled with compelling case studies and drawing on first-hand interviews, The Plugged-In Manager highlights this often neglected managerial capability and the costs of only focusing on one dimension rather than all three.

Terri L Griffith (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Finch Effect: The Five Strategies to Adapt and Thrive in Your Working Life

A deterioration of the traditional 9-to-5 workforce has turned the job market into daily proof that Charles Darwins theory of the survival of the fittest extends to our professional lives. With more people in the workforce than ever beforeand the global economy changing the needs of businesses in every industrythose wishing to climb up the career ladder are faced with the frightening reality that they need to evolve their strategies or risk extinction. And they need to do it now. In The Finch Effect, career expert Nacie Carson shares a strategy, the finch effect, that allows professionals at any stage of their career to flourish in the professional market of tomorrow. The finch effect was inspired by Darwins finches, the resourceful birds that Darwin encountered on the Galapagos Islands and that, by rapidly adapting their beaks within a few generations to accommodate changes in their food source, thrived unchallenged while their competition slowly died off. The finches survival skills informed Darwins theory of evolution and today provide a powerful message about the value of adaptation for professionals. The Finch Effect distills the best practices of professionals who have successfully evolved to thrive in todays tough market into five steps: · Forge Your New Future · Identify Your Value Proposition · Nurture Your Social Network · Cultivate Your Skills · Harness Your Entrepreneurial Energy By the end of the book, readers will have the tools they need to become lifetime members of the Fittest that exclusive club of professionals who successfully manage to earn big, achieve their potential, and remain at the top of the career food chain in our uncertain world.

Nacie Carson (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mindful Leadership: The 9 Ways to Self-Awareness, Transforming Yourself, and Inspiring Others

Since the fall of 2008 we have seen trillions of dollars disappear from the North American economy. Never in recent history have we had so much and lost so much. At the same time, many have been deeply disappointed in their leaders, whether they are business leaders, government leaders, celebrities, or top athletes. It seems as if the demands of this new world order are beyond the ability of most who occupy leadership positions. At times like these, anyone in a leadership position is scrutinized and put under a microscope. There are countless resources advocating different leadership styles, but these styles tend to be faddish. Leaders searching for solutions often adopt whatever style is currently in vogue; however, then they cease to be authentic. This inevitably leads to inconsistent decisions, confusion, and unhappy employees who recognize that the leader is hiding behind a facade. Mindful Leadership introduces you to Mindfulness Meditation, a tool that you can use anytime, anywhere-no chanting or patchouli required-to achieve focus, clarity, authenticity, and the presence of mind to face the reality of any situation. Mindfulness enables a leader to respond to a situation as it arises, to respond to the reality of constant change from a place of deep calm and focus, and to communicate clearly. Seriously, meditation and business do mix, and Mindfulness is taking over boardrooms everywhere. Companies such as Google, Apple, AOL, Xerox, Toyota, Volvo, IBM, Aetna International, RBC, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Ford already encourage their employees to use meditation to help them become calmer and more effective. Benefits of Mindfulness Meditation in the worlds of business and leadership include: Greater focus and concentration Improved time management Improved judgment and decision making An enhanced ability to anticipate and serve client needs Enhanced team effectiveness Greater innovation and inspiration Greater productivity Better planning for the future while competing in the present Increased ability to deal effectively with stress Mindful Leadership explains the 8 ways in which leaders can incorporate Mindfulness into every aspect of their lives, allowing them to reduce stress, to maintain awareness and focus, and to optimize their effectiveness and decision making, both personally and professionally.

Maria Gonzalez (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

Speaking As a Leader: How to Lead Every Time You Speak...From Board Rooms to Meeting Rooms, From Tow

A leader's role is to move others. To engage them and to inspire them to action. Effective leaders use every speaking opportunity to influence and inspire-in their phone calls, in meetings, in elevator conversations, in presentations, and in their formal speeches. They realize that the true task of leaders is to create believers. Many leaders take time to craft effective formal speeches and presentations, but fall down on the day-to-day communication. For too many leaders, 'informal' is synonymous with 'unprepared' when it comes to informal speaking situations. When people fail to communicate, they fail to lead. Speaking As a Leader puts communications squarely at the centre of leadership and shows how to lead every time you speak-from the biggest stage to the most informal hallway conversation or phone call. It helps readers to meet the enormous challenge of engaging, energizing, and motivating others day in and day out. In today's flattened organizations, leadership opportunities are plentiful and exist in every interaction and for individuals at every level. Speaking As a Leader reveals the leadership moments that exist in even the most informal settings and shows how to: Inspire and influence others, every time you speak Listen effectively, in three dimensions Move from Information to Inspiration Take the 'numb' out of numbers See why you are the best visual and how to avoid 'Death by PowerPoint' Move from Subject to Message Structure your thoughts and message in any situation, using a four-step model Create a leader's presence and show your passion Become a constant leader. Speaking As a Leader offers a four-step model to unlock your leadership potential every time you communicate and help you turn your listeners into followers and believers. You will learn how to mobilize others through the power of your ideas, whether in a formal speech, a presentation to your colleagues, a phone call or a brief conversation. You will learn how to lead every time you speak.

Judith Humphrey (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Re

If you can measure your key business relationships, you can improve them - with powerful results. This book explains simple, step-by-step procedures for measuring customers, social media reputation, influence and authority, the media, and other key constituencies. This book is based on hundreds of case studies about how organizations have used measurement to improve their reputations, strength their bottom lines, and improve efficiencies all around. Readers will learn how to collect the data that will help them better understand their competition, do strategic planning, understand their key strengths and weaknesses, and better respond to customer preferences.

Katie Delahaye Paine (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Google Resume: How to Prepare for a Career and Land a Job at Apple, Microsoft, Google, or any To

People from all industries drool over the perks and salary enjoyed by employees at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and other tech companies: casual attire, free and unlimited sodas (or even food), flexible hours, onsite luxury gyms, and funky offices. The Google Resume is targeted at people from all industries who crave one of the coveted positions at these top tech firms. It instructs students on what to study and how to prepare, and what career paths to seek, and it explains to job seekers, both technical and non-technical, how to make themselves stand out from the hoards of other candidates seeking jobs at a tech company. The book answers questions such as: What should you major in? What can you do outside of work to make yourself stand out? How do you perform well at work and have it show in your next application? How should you design your resume? How much technical expertise do you need? How should you prep for the interview? How can you do well in the interview?

Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Trustworthy Leader: Leveraging the Power of Trust to Transform Your Organization

Trustworthy will reveal the benefits that organizations enjoy when trustworthy behavior is practiced regularly and consistently by their leaders. Drawing from examples from the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Amy Lyman, co-founder of the Great Place to Work Institute, shows leaders and managers at all levels why being trustworthy is such a powerful marker of leadership and how they can engage in trustworthy behavior. Being 'trustworthy,' she explains, means that a leader's behavior is rooted in his or her commitment to the value of trust--not simply an imitation of the practices of others. Trustworthy will make the case that trust is not a panacea: a successful organization needs a sense of purpose, clearly defined products and services that meet a need, and strategies and processes for getting products and services to market. But when this occurs within the context of trust and trustworthy behavior, the organization can be exponentially more successful. Trust is of increasing importance, particularly in the ongoing crisis with respect to leaders' lapses in ethical behavior.We are at a turning point in economic life and being trustworthy offers leaders a strategy that is likely to bring them greater positive recognition; greater acclaim as leaders; greater success in business as marked by revenue growth, innovation and reputation; and greater acclaim among employees as a person of integrity and honor.

Amy Lyman, Hal Adler (Author), Vanessa Hart (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Vanessa Hart