Lifting People Up: The Power of Recognition - Hardcover

Susan Smith Kuczmarski; Thomas D. Kuczmarski

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0990862518 ISBN 13: 9780990862512

Publisher: Book Ends Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

People are the heart and soul of every organization. They make the place. By tapping into the power of praise and recognition, every leader can learn to lift people up. Discover how to get the most out of people and give them the most in return--a process the authors call peopleship.
Written with empathy and energy, the game-changing ideas and tips found here will motivate you to listen carefully, trust respectfully, and praise authentically starting now!
Lifting People Up is a must read for any leader searching for techniques to cultivate and motivate people, a team's most valuable asset. Innovation consultants and authors Dr. Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas D. Kuczmarski share the secrets of how to become a people leader. You will learn how to:
---Activate six leadership tools--listen, include, free, trust, use rewards, and praise
---Help people unleash their inner leader
---Create a caring, high-performing culture, and just as importantly, engage and encourage co-workers in this quest.
The leadership methodology is practical and easy to implement. The authors weave together dozens of anecdotes that surfaced in their field research, with stories that capture the spirit and theme of lifting up others. You will discover ways to:
---Build strong and effective relationships and teams within an organization
---Foster a culture of innovation and shared leadership
---Create a small start-up mindset within a large organization
---Spread leaders throughout the organization, not group them at the top
---Pay people on performance, not tenure nor title
---Nurture self-discovery, collaboration and recognition.

About this title

About the Author

Lifting People Up: The Power of Recognition is the authors third collaborative book on the topic of leadership. In 1995, they wrote their pioneering Values-Based Leadership, which launched the values in the workplace movement. In 2007, they co-authored Apples Are Square: Thinking Differently About Leadership, which reveals the power of six leadership qualities humility, compassion, transparency, inclusiveness and values-based decisiveness.
Susan Smith Kuczmarski, Ed.D. is a globally recognized authority and speaker on values-based leadership. Her teaching and research focus on: How Values and Norms Impact Culture and Leadership, Building Innovation Leadership, and New Leadership for an Innovative Edge. For the past ten years, she has been a Lecturer in the executive education program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She currently teaches in the Creating and Leading A Culture of Innovation program at Kellogg.
During the course of a career that spans more than three decades, she has taught at nine universities, worked in three nonprofits, including the United Nations, and co-founded the Chicago-based consulting firm, Kuczmarski Innovation, which provides thought leadership on innovation, culture and values.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Kuczmarski has done extensive research on how leadership skills are learned and innovative leadership programs are put into practice. She is the author of six award-winning books, three on leadership and three on families.
She holds a Doctorate in Education and two masters degrees from Columbia University in New York City, where she was named an International Fellow and a Fellow of the School of International and Public Affairs. A lively radio and television guest, she has appeared on the Today Show and is widely quoted in print, including Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, Investor s Business Daily and CNN Money. She has been listed in the Who s Who in the World for 12 years. She speaks on the topic of leadership around the world and on issues devoted to the contemporary family. Her research, writing, books, speeches, seminars, teaching, and innovation consulting have made her one of the top experts in the fields of leadership and family.
Thomas D. Kuczmarski is president and founder of the global consulting firm Kuczmarski Innovation and an internationally recognized expert on innovation. Over the course of his career he has helped hundreds of clients, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 corporations, learn to systematically unlock the value of innovation.
Mr. Kuczmarski teaches product and service innovation at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University where he is Senior Lecturer and Visiting Scholar in the Center for Innovation and Technology. For thirty-eight years, his executive education courses at the Kellogg School have attracted leaders from around the world.
Mr. Kuczmarski is co-founder of the Chicago Innovation Awards, which annually celebrates, educates, and connects innovators in the Chicago region. The awards showcase the creative spirit of the heartland.
He is the author of seven books on innovation and leadership and frequently appears on radio and television, and in periodicals around the world. Mr. Kuczmarski is a highly regarded speaker on innovation management and leadership, and lectures nationally and internationally to a broad range of corporations and associations.
Before founding Kuczmarski Innovation, he was a Principal at Booz · Allen & Hamilton and led the in-depth research of the best practices employed by more than 700 U.S. firms in their new product management processes. He earned an M.B.A. and an M.I.A from Columbia University.

Review

The secret to lifting yourself up is to lift others up. The authors craft a blueprint to create a respectful, caring culture at work.
---Deepak Chopra, Chopra Center for Wellbeing, author of over 90 books
People crave to be recognized and appreciated in their workday lives. This book shows how a company can create a real community of positive feeling and support so that employees will enjoy coming to work each day.
---Phil Kotler, SC Johnson Chair in Global Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, author of 60 books, Father of Modern Marketing.
Having seen them in action over many years, no one knows better how to foster innovation and elevate individuals and organizations than Susan and Tom, and this book thoroughly captures their powerful approach. It offers revolutionary ideas on leadership and specific tangible steps one can take to put these ideas into practice.
---Dr. Mary Ellen Weber, Astronaut
The Kuczmarskis continue to craft examples from and for great leaders on the importance of an innovative culture motivating their people to drive business success. A must read!
---Carol Bernick, CEO of Polished Nickel Capital Management, Chairman of the Board of Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, former CEO of Alberto-Culver
Peopleship takes the definition of leadership to new heights. Leaders are at their best when they serve those that they lead. In the third book of their leadership trilogy, Susan and Tom lay out this concept immaculately for current and aspiring leaders alike.
---Hardik Bhatt, Leader, Smart Cities and Mobility, Amazon Web Services.
Nothing encourages people like praise whether a young child or an adult employee. You can see them swell with pride, and vow to do more and better. How wonderful to have this simple principle codified into actionable steps, creating a workplace atmosphere that breeds inclusivity, commitment and success.
---Terry Savage, Nationally Syndicated Financial Columnist
Most of us look to our work for meaning in our lives. Praise validates our efforts, and is just as important as remuneration. Praise also provides the confidence for originality and flexibility that make work more creative and productive and make the many hours spent on the job rewarding and zestful, giving the employee a sense of partnership and even ownership. As you read this book you will feel a sense of possibility, a way to make things better.
---Mary Catherine Bateson, Cultural Anthropologist --selected

The push for stronger company culture is at the core of Lifting People Up: The Power of Recognition, our Indie Groundbreaking Book for the month of August, 2018. Written by Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas D. Kuczmarski, both experts on matters of business leadership and innovation, Lifting People Up makes a compelling argument for people-centered organizations. The term the Kuczmarskis use is peopleship, which they define as a leadership approach focused on cultivating and motivating people. An organization that implements peopleship can boost morale, energize employees, increase engagement, foster strong employee relationships, solve turnover problems, and more. In essence, Lifting People Up is a book that pays tribute to the overwhelming value of human resources. Organizations, the Kuczmarskis argue, are not defined by their brand names, their products, their assets, or their influence. Instead, businesses live and die based on the strength and quality of the people they employ. Especially in a competitive job market, organizations that neglect their employees are likely to lose those employees. Meanwhile, the businesses that are recognizing the value of their employees in notable ways are going to be the ones that succeed and grow. What makes the book groundbreaking is how the Kuczmarskis advocate for a complete reshaping of business success and how we measure it. Their argument is simple: by paying more attention to people s performance in the workplace and less attention to the financial performance of the company as a whole, businesses can drive success in more organic and sustainable ways. Financial performance will always matter, but in the Kuczmarskis model, monetary success is a product of smart, loyal, engaged, and innovative employees. In other words, if businesses make a point of listening to their employees and rewarding their accomplishments, the financial success side of things should take care of itself. There can be no doubt that the idea of workplace leadership is changing over time. As the so-called gig economy grows, more and more people are being empowered to work for themselves, on their own terms. As this network of freelance and on-demand services continues to grow from Uber to Postmates to Etsy and beyond the concept of having a traditional boss is going to become less and less appealing to most professionals. In this shifting environment, the arguments and anecdotes of Lifting People Up feel especially resonant. One result of peopleship, the Kuczmarskis reason, is that it spreads leadership throughout an organization rather than clustering it at the top. By trusting employees and empowering them to share their ideas and drive innovation, businesses can begin to phase out the authoritative relationship between boss and employee. When everyone is being allowed to lead, in a way, the dynamic of the entire workplace shifts to a more equal and team-focused place. Does that mean the idea of bosses, managers, CEOs, and presidents is going to go away? Probably not. There will always be some degree of hierarchy in any business. However, if the gig economy has shown us one thing, it s that people are ready to take control of their own professional lives. By practicing peopleship, organizations can offer talented people a middle ground between the stability of a traditional workplace and the freedom and creativity of self-employment. A lot of job seekers are going to be looking for that kind of happy medium in the years to come, and with Lifting People Up, the Kuczmarskis have provided a comprehensive guide for how to achieve it. --IP --Independent Publisher, August 2018

Lifting People Up is a business book that combines powerful leadership development advice with sound, actionable tips. Lifting People Up collects practical ideas and tips for building people-centered organizations through praise and feedback. Husband-and-wife team Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas D. Kuczmarski have written a warm, practical guide to providing recognition that engages employees and strengthens workplaces. Relying on their shared decades of experience as instructors at Northwestern University s Kellogg School of Management, the Kuczmarskis advocate for a leadership approach focused on cultivating and motivating people, a process they term peopleship. Among other behaviors, peopleship is aimed at creating collaborative workplaces where workers are driven to succeed because of intrinsic motivators, not because they fear reprisal from management. The book weaves enlightening, down-to-earth anecdotes from a variety of industries and workplaces with the Kuczmarskis original thinking on the importance of self-knowledge, focused listening, trust, mutual respect, and authentic praise and rewards as the foundations of high-performing work cultures. Chapters are short, clearly structured, and end with brief summaries, making their topics easy to follow and digest. Throughout the book, the Kuczmarskis emphasize the need for buy-in and involvement at every level of an organization, including the very top. In their systems-based view of work, developing strong workplace norms and values around recognition isn t solely the responsibility of the human resources department or C-suite, but it does require their explicit support. In addition to exploring the many benefits of recognition, the Kuczmarskis bring their considerable work in the field of innovation management consulting to bear in this book. They argue that recognition should be joined with both constructive, timely feedback and celebrations of smart failures, foundational concepts of design thinking and start-up cultures. They believe that to be maximally effective, leaders must build a culture where the freedom to take risks, experiment, and fail is accepted and convey to their organizations that risk-taking will yield a mix of successes and failures. The final third of the book provides step-by-step guidance on identifying and nurturing workplace values and norms and articulating a vision for an organization. Actual company values from Google, IBM, and more are provided as helpful examples. For organizations looking to get the most out of their people and invest the most back into them Lifting People Up is a business book that combines powerful leadership development advice with sound, actionable tips on inspiring engagement and a shared sense of purpose at every level of an organization. Reviewed by Anitra Budd, January 7, 2019 --Foreword Clarion Reviews

Edition details

• Publisher: Book Ends Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0990862518
• ISBN 13: 9780990862512
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 190