Resources

This New York Times best seller and business classic, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High discusses how to handle disagreements and high-stakes communication. It is written on the premise that when you are stuck in any situation – whether it’s at home or work – there is a crucial conversation keeping you from accomplishing the desired results. Ron McMillan was a keynote speaker at the 2014 QNET Leadership Conference.

New York Times best seller Crucial Accountability. Hold anyone accountable. Master performance discussions. Get RESULTS. Broken promises, missed deadlines, poor behavior–they don’t just make others’ lives miserable; they can sap up to 50 percent of organizational performance and account for the vast majority of divorces. Crucial Accountability offers the tools for improving relationships in the workplace and in life and for resolving all these problems–permanently. Ron McMillan was a keynote speaker at the 2014 QNET Leadership Conference.

The Power of Civility is packed with thought-provoking perspectives on what civility really means, as well as practical solutions for incorporating civility best practices into your work and life. In this comprehensive book, eighteen top civility and etiquette professionals go beyond the typical “please and thank you” conversations about civility and challenge you to think about your personal standards, accountability, values, and what it means to be committed to choosing civility—whether at home, at work, in your community, or in public—at home and abroad. This book provides the tools you need to boost your social intelligence and build your cultural competence, giving you the confidence and poise to go anywhere and be welcomed as a caring and considerate citizen of the world. Discover the power of civility! Local author Lew Bayer is internationally recognized as the leading expert on civility at work and is a regular trainer for QNET.

When a workplace culture is purposely created to be respectful and inspiring, employees are happier, more productive, and more engaged. The Culture Question answers two fundamental questions: “How does your organization’s culture impact how much people like where they work?” and “What can you do to make it better?” Two co-authors Eric Stutzman and Wendy Loewen are regular trainers for QNET.

Great leaders are always searching for new ideas and approaches to their work because they know they must continue to evolve in order to succeed in an ever-changing world. This book explores a variety of leadership insights that will help you meet challenges, respond to opportunities, and nurture a healthy workplace culture in new and innovative ways. In addition to each insight, you’ll find questions for reflection, a practical application idea, and additional resources related to each topic to help spark your own thoughts and discussions among your teams. Two co-authors Eric Stutzman and Wendy Loewen are regular trainers for QNET.

You work hard. You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with “Good Work” that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in “Bad Work”―endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps. Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing “Great Work”―the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Author Michael Bungay Stanier is 2006 Canadian Coach of the Year and was a keynote speaker at the 2016 QNET Leadership Conference.

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Author Michael Bungay Stanier was a keynote speaker at the 2016 QNET Leadership Conference.

If The Coaching Habit says, “here are the seven essential questions to be more coach-like,” The Advice Trap is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behaviour so you stay curious a little bit longer. Taming your Advice Monster is at the heart of this book. But there are also some specific coaching strategies, particularly on how to focus on what matters most. There are tools to make your conversations, coaching and otherwise, irresistible. Author Michael Bungay Stanier was a keynote speaker at the 2016 QNET Leadership Conference.

With a rapidly changing digital economy, new and emerging technologies, increased clutter and a drastically altered media landscape, successful companies are those that are original, creative and innovative. Defining business as art is now a credible school of thought, and the lessons are far more practical than philosophical. Everyone’s an Artist shows how and why the most successful executives and entrepreneurs think like artists. Co-author Ron Tite was a keynote speaker at the 2017 QNET Leadership Conference.

Leadership strategies grounded in reality and focused on results. Recent polls show that 71% of workers think about quitting their jobs every day. That number would be shocking-if people actually were quitting. Worse, they go to work, punching time clocks and collecting pay checks, while completely checked out emotionally. In Reality-Based Leadership, expert Fast Company blogger Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances-one who deals with the facts, clarifies roles, gives clear and direct feedback, and insists that everyone do the same-without drama or defensiveness. Author Cy Wakeman was a keynote speaker at the 2019 QNET Leadership Conference.

More than anything else, you need to understand exactly how your employer evaluates you, and your annual performance review doesn’t tell the whole story. In The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, Cy Wakeman shows how to calculate how your true value to your organization by understanding your current and future potential against your “emotional expense”—the toll your actions and attitudes take on the people around you. Author Cy Wakeman was a keynote speaker at the 2019 QNET Leadership Conference.

For years now, leaders in almost every industry have accepted two completely false assumptions–that change is hard, and that engagement drives results. Those beliefs have inspired expensive attempts to shield employees from change, involve them in high-level decision-making, and keep them happy with endless “satisfaction surveys” and workplace perks. But what these engagement programs actually do, Cy Wakeman says, is inflate expectations and sow unhappiness, leaving employees unprepared to adapt to even minor changes necessary to the organization’s survival. Cy Wakeman teaches you how to hire “emotionally inexpensive” people, solicit only the opinions you need, and promote self-awareness in your whole team. Author Cy Wakeman was a keynote speaker at the 2019 QNET Leadership Conference.

Let this #1 international bestseller teach you:
⁠-The 2-minute morning practice that helps eliminate stress
⁠-What every commencement speech gets wrong
⁠-3 questions that help tell yourself a different story
⁠-The single word that keeps your options open after failure
⁠-Why you need an Untouchable Day (and how to get one)
…and much, much more!

Author Neil Pasricha was a keynote speaker at the 2021 QNET Leadership Conference.

How many countless working hours have you spent on projects, proposals, paperwork, and meetings that felt useless or were ignored or dismissed? Hard work is not the same as real work. Half of the work we do consumes valuable time without strengthening the short- or long-term survival of the organization. In a word, it’s fake. Not only does fake work drain a company’s resources without improving its bottom line, it steals conviction, care, and positive morale from employees, and adds the burden of high turnover, communication breakdowns, and cultural patterns of poor productivity. Fake Work offers solutions that will change the way you view work, including how to recognize fake work and how to get out of it, how (and what) to communicate with your colleagues to eliminate fake work, how to recognize and counteract the personality traits that encourage fake work, and how to close the gap between your company’s strategies and the work that needs to be done to reach the results critical to your and your company’s survival. Author Brent Peterson was a keynote speaker at the 2012 QNET Leadership Conference.