The New York Times bestselling author of Reality-Based Leadership rejects the current fad of engaging employees and the emotional drama of meeting their needs--returning leadership to leaders and productivity to businesses.

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. Rather than driving performance and creating efficiencies, these programs fuel entitlement and drama, costing millions in time and profit.

It is high time to reinvent leadership thinking. Stop worrying about your employees' happiness, and start worrying about their accountability. Cy Wakeman teaches you how to hire emotionally inexpensive people, solicit only the opinions you need, and promote self-awareness in your whole team. No Ego disposes with unproven HR maxims, and instead offers a complete plan to turn your office from a den of discontent to a happy, productive place.

Leadership strategies grounded in reality and focused on results

Recent polls show that 70% 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, bestselling author and leadership expert Cy Wakeman reveals how to be the kind of leader who changes the way people think about and perceive their circumstances. This no-nonsense guide shows you how to deal with the facts, give helpful and clear feedback to employees, and kindly help others focus their effort on their personal contribution, not the rampant workplace drama.

Filled with dynamic examples, innovative tools, and diagnostic tests, Reality-Based Leadership shows you how to become a Reality-Based Leader:

• Uncover destructive thought patterns within yourself and others
• Diffuse drama and lead the person in front of you
• Empower others to focus on facts and think for themselves
• Stop managing and start leading

If you're ready to lead more and manage chaos less, Reality-Based Leadership will empower you to do so!

Based on Cy Wakeman's popular book Reality Based Leadership, the Reality Based Leadership Workshop conveys her candid, humorous approach to organizational dynamics. The Reality Based Leadership model challenges traditional practices and conventional wisdoms in leadership and focuses on Five Core Competencies: reality based thinking organizational alignment capitalizing on change driving results accountability. This Workbook provides exercises and information that walks participants through the stages of the workshop and imbues them with the values and techniques for being reality-based leaders.

• Companion to the Reality-Based Leadership Workshop
• Helps participants understand the principles of Reality-Based Leadership and focus on Five Core Competencies: reality based thinking, organizational alignment, capitalizing on change, driving results, and accountability
• Conveys strategies for bolstering one's ability to lead grounded in reality
• Enables participants to develop an action plan for leveraging leadership efforts to create an environment of peace, sanity, and results in the workplace

As a result of the sessions, and the guidance offered by the Participant Workbook, leaders will return to their workplaces equipped with a facts-based, confident approach, able to free themselves from the frustrations they face at work and transform themselves into a Reality-Based Leader, with the ability to liberate and inspire others.

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. With Cy's clear, straight-to-the-point advice, you can confront and reduce your emotional costliness, become an invaluable member of your team, and even learn to love your job again.

• Reveals a formula for measuring your current performance, future potential, and the biggest detractor, your emotional expense
• Shares real-world advice for quickly boosting your value and becoming a highly-valued, sought after employee and teammate
• Builds on the lessons in Reality-Based Leadership, Cy Wakeman's first book for leaders and managers

The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace is the essential guide for boosting your value, owning your career, and becoming the kind of employee no organization can afford to lose.

A simple shift in thinking can change everything you believe about your own happiness.

By the time we become adults, most of us have joined the religion of suffering, which preaches that unless circumstances are controlled, life will be a mess. We compare ourselves to others and speculate about an impossible-to-know future, holding out hope for an improved life through getting ahead, fulfilling passion, or finding true love. But the idea that happiness comes from putting effort toward altering one's circumstances is harmful and backward. What if we instead learned to understand that circumstances can rarely be controlled, and that life is, and always will be, messy?

From that starting point, we could learn to use our minds to create happiness despite life's ever-changing circumstances and events. Life's Messy, Live Happy by Cy Wakeman is about dramatically changing the level of happiness you feel in your daily life, by learning to disconnect happiness from external forces, stop worrying about the future, and realize that most of your negative feelings are about things that never even happened.

Wakeman is a credible, relatable teacher--a business owner, mother, and community member who has lived her philosophy and achieved profound happiness and success in a crazy, messy life. Filled with concrete daily practices and true stories that are hilarious, painful, and poignant, this book will change everything: your perspective, your focus, and your energy level for everyday life.

Based on Cy Wakeman's popular book Reality Based Leadership, the Reality Based Leadership Workshop conveys her candid, humorous approach to organizational dynamics. The Reality Based Leadership model challenges traditional practices and conventional wisdoms in leadership and focuses on Five Core Competencies: reality based thinking organizational alignment capitalizing on change driving results accountability. This Self-Assessment takes participants in the Reality Based Leadership program through the process of examining themselves in relation to the model and begins their journey into becoming Reality-Based Leaders, capable of liberating and inspiring others.

• Companion to the Reality-Based Leadership Workshop
• Helps participants examine themselves in relation to Five Core Competencies: reality based thinking, organizational alignment, capitalizing on change, driving results, and accountability
• Can be used independently to assess leaders' skills

This Self-Assessment is the first step in the journey of transforming oneself into a Reality-Based Leader, with the ability to liberate and inspire others.

Please note, this is an 8-page self-assessment to be used as part of the Reality-Based Leadership Workshop Training Package.