Transforming Communication in Leadership and Teamwork: Person-Centered Innovations

This accessible, highly interactive book presents a transformative approach to communication in leadership to meet workplace challenges at both local and global levels. Informed by neuroscience, psychology, as well as leadership science, it explains how integrating and properly balancing two key focal points of management-the tasks at hand and the concerns of others and self-can facilitate decision-making, partnering with diverse colleagues, and handling of crises and conflicts. Case examples, a self-test, friendly calls for reflection, and practical exercises provide readers with varied opportunities to assess, support, and evoke their readiness to apply these real-world concepts to their own style and preferences. Together, these chapters demonstrate the best outcomes of collaborative communication: greater effectiveness, deeper empathy with improved emotional fulfillment, and lasting positive change.

Included in the coverage:

- As a manager, can I be human? Using the two-agenda approach for more effective-and humane-management.

- Being and becoming a person-centered leader and manager in a crisis environment.

- Methods for transforming communication: dialogue.

- Open Case: A new setting for problem-solving in teams.

- Integrating the two agendas in agile management.

- Tasks and people: what neuroscience reveals about managing both more effectively.

- Transforming communication in multicultural contexts for better understanding across cultures.

As a skill-building resource, Transforming Communication in Leadership and Teamwork offers particular value:

- to diverse business professionals, including managers, leaders, and team members seeking to become more effective

- business consultants and coaches working with people in executive positions and/or teams

- leaders and members of multi-national teams

- executives, decision makers and organizational developers

- instructors and students of courses on effective communication, social and professional skills, human resources, communication and digital media, leadership, teamwork, and related subjects.

Dr. Renate Motschnig is a professor of Computer Science and the head of the Research Group CSLEARN - Educational Technologies at the University of Vienna, Austria. Since her studies in the ’80s, she has been conducting research on the multiple ways in which understanding and significant learning happen, both in education and through life experience. Renate Motschnig has held positions at the University of Technology, Vienna; the RWTH Aachen in Germany; the University of Toronto, Canada; the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic; and the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Renate is an author/co-author of more than 150 peer-reviewed, scientific articles; three books on person-centered communication; and a co-editor of two recent books with Springer on Interdisciplinary Aspects of the Person-Centered Approach. She participated in numerous international events based on the Person-Centered Approach and is applying the resulting insights in proposing and leading major international research projects in the field of constructive communication, teamwork and web-technology. Currently, she is determined to foster a style in management and higher education that is based on person-centered attitudes, our co-actualizing potential, and thoughtful support by web-based technology. She appreciates synergies between presence and distance, cognition and feeling/meaning, and a multitude of disciplines and cultures.

David Ryback, Ph.D., ABPP is an adviser to corporate presidents and trains executives and managers on the advantages of using Emotional Intelligence to create better and more successful companies. His programs and books have been seen and read throughout the world. He is the author of Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work: Successful Leadership is More Than IQ, and three other books. He is an internationally recognized authority on emotional and social intelligence in schools and workplace and remains at the forefront of the latest research on applications of emotional awareness and related aspects of effective communication. A former consultant with Rohrer, Hibler & Replogle in Montreal, Canada, he has also done research and published on such topics as perception affected by mindset, emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, scholastic achievement, and enlightened management. After publishing his book on emotional intelligence, Dr. Ryback founded his consulting and speaking business, EQ Associates International. In response to the demand for his speaking and consulting services, he has traveled across the country, to Canada, Europe, the Mideast and Far East where he speaks and consults. He made a presentation to the National Speakers Association national convention in San Diego and presented a seminar for McGill University in Montreal, Canada on integrating emotional intelligence into the classroom. Dr. David Ryback is a unique speaker with a unique message. Using concepts from his book, Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work, he shows his audiences how to face what is authentic in themselves and others and develop their deeper self, with the help of clearly understood take-away points. As a former teacher, college professor and international consultant, he has the depth of experience for that message.