Work That Makes A Difference

"The work you do reflects, shapes, and defines you-and it's a key way you serve God and love your neighbor. Discover the dignity and importance of faithful work"--

Use your day job to make a difference in the world, with this step-by-step guide to building a successful and fulfilling purpose-driven career.

ECO Guide immerses you in the strategies and tactics that leading edge professionals are using to tackle pressing problems and create innovative solutions.

Making a Living While Making a Difference is a timely and highly informative guide to a working life built on principled choices and an entrepreneurial attitude. It’s about greener enterprises and technologies, socially responsible business, innovative nonprofit work, and reinventing government. It’s really about putting the pieces together with creativity and hope. Working people everywhere are realizing that personal success is interconnected with healthy communities and the environment. We are all looking for our unique “creative edge” with work that allows us to make an impact close to home and in the world. The substantially revised third edition of Making a Living While Making a Difference acknowledges that while the path to finding a life’s work that is satisfying, sustainable, and financially feasible is not easy, there are simple steps to follow. An empowering ten-step program includes: Paying attention to what you most care about Stabilizing your life with regard to time, money, and relationships Assessing your core aptitudes and attitudes Cultivating the entrepreneurial skills to create the workplace you want, whether or not you are in business for yourself With dozens of rich personal stories and a thorough look at the options, this is the comprehensive life and work guide for people who care about their communities and the planet. Melissa Everett is a career counselor, group facilitator, and educator in the field of sustainable development, and is the executive director of Sustainable Hudson Valley.

Do you ever feel like you aren’t connecting with someone in your life? Maybe it’s an employee, a co-worker, a boss, or a business partner. Maybe it’s a spouse, a child, a parent, or a friend. The truth is, at some point, we all struggle to maintain good relationships with the people with whom we live our lives. Healthy relationships don’t “just happen,” but rather are intentionally grown through work, investment, and dedication to connecting with another person where they are. Dr. Larry Little has made it his life’s work to help people cultivate healthy relationships, and this mission led him to write Make A Difference, the first book that inspired the four-part EAGLE Leadership Series. His model of creating self-awareness that leads to “others-awareness” has led thousands of individuals to grow meaningful and positive relationships with the people they love, live with, and lead. Make A Difference is powerful in its simplicity, and will walk you through a proven process of connecting with others by equipping you with the tools that you need to truly begin investing in the important relationships in your life. Dr. Little guides you to lead yourself and others better by choosing to intentionally invest in relationships. You can Make A Difference.

Even the actions of a single person can help to change the world. How? Through simple acts of leadership and compassion. Open up this book, and discover the true stories of people whose actions have caused a chain reaction at work and in their communities. Among them: A manager who gives an employee some supportive praise, and as a result literally saves his life (page 231). A small group of bank tellers who spearhead a movement to raise millions of dollars for breast cancer, making it the biggest fundraiser in North America, and enhancing their company’s reputation (page 213). A sales manager who gets a copy of a groundbreaking book that leads to a transformation of the company’s operations. As a result, hundreds of millions of pounds of carpet waste avoid the landfill, and the company sparks a revolution in its industry (page 12). A “responsibility revolution” is shaking up corporate America. In this provocative and insightful book, bestselling author Tim Sanders reveals why companies must to go beyond making a profit and start making a difference. Every one of us, regardless of title or position, can inspire our companies to change the way they do business, helping them to become a positive force for enriching people, communities, and the environment. When this happens, not only do we help save the world, we help save our companies from becoming irrelevant. We also become part of what Sanders calls the Responsibility Revolution. Companies that don’t participate in this revolution risk becoming obsolete. Today customers, employees, and investors are demanding that companies focus on their social responsibilities—not just their bottom lines. Sixty-five percent of American consumers say they would change to brands associated with a good cause if price and quality were equal; 66 percent of recent college graduates will not work for companies with poor social values. And more than sixty million people are willing to pay a premium for socially and environmentally responsible products. In SAVING THE WORLD AT WORK, Tim Sanders offers concrete suggestions on how all of us can help our companies join the Responsibility Revolution. Drawing on extensive interviews with hundreds of employees and CEOs, and illuminated by countless stories of people who are making a difference in the workplace and in the world, Sanders offers practical advice every individual and company can use to make the world a better place--now and in the future.

A practical, real-world training manual for mid-level management Managing to Make a Difference presents a leadership guide for those in the middle. The C-suite has a wealth of resources for leadership guidance, but middle managers face a quandary: often given little guidance on how to excel, they are also under enormous pressure to do a variety of things other than "lead." This book provides much-needed tools and techniques for building a high-performing team—without letting your other duties suffer. Organized around a coherent philosophy and based on solid research, the discussion offers a roadmap to engagement, talent development, and excellence in management. From difficult situations and organizational challenges to everyday motivation and inspiration, these techniques help middle managers achieve the goals of their organization while empowering their workers to achieve their own. Talent development is probably not your full-time job—yet it drives the engagement that results in high performance. This book shows you how to hit the "sweet spot" of middle management, with a host of tools and strategies to help you help your team shine. Motivate, inspire, and lead your team with confidence Manage through challenges and overcome obstacles Develop key talent and maintain high engagement Adopt practical management tools based on substantiated research Most organizations direct the majority of their development resources to the C-suite, but still expect their mid-level managers to attract, engage, retain, and develop talent; but successfully juggling everyday duties while maintaining team performance and leading around roadblocks leaves little room for management planning. Managing to Make a Difference offers the solution in the form of tools, techniques, and practical strategy for a high performing team.

"Compassionate Careers is filled with examples of people who have meaningful jobs in cause-focused organizations. These stories capture their spirit, intelligence, imagination, and heart. The book is an inspirational guide to finding purpose-driven work and offers advice to anyone who feels that sitting on the sidelines is just not enough"--

Today, more people want to know how to make a meaningful difference to what they care about. But for that, traditional approaches to learning often fall short. In this book, we offer a theoretical and practical way forward. We introduce the concept of social learning spaces for developing both new capabilities and a sense of agency. We provide a rich framework for focusing on the value of social learning spaces: how to generate this value, monitor it, and learn iteratively through the process. The book is a useful extension and refinement of 'communities of practice' for those familiar with the theory. For those who are not, the chapters will lay out a new way to approach learning. This volume is written to serve the needs of readers across fields, including researchers, educators, and leaders in business, government, healthcare, and international development.

Philip Gerard analyses books that make a difference, fiction and non-fiction, classic and contemporary, and identifies the elusive ingredients that work together to produce a book that changes minds and lives.