How to Build a Thriving Workplace: A Leader’s Guide

By: Beth Cabrera, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Beth Cabrera

Multiple studies show a clear link between businesses that attend to their employees’ well-being and the bottom line. In fact, the profit of companies with the strongest focus on employee experience is about four times higher than the average. And yes, you read that correctly - not customer experience, but employee experience. Because if you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers, and your shareholders will do well, too. How to Build a Thriving Workplace: A Leader’s Guide will tell you how to identify and implement relatively simple and inexpensive changes to improve your employees’ work environment and positively impact your bottom line.

Professor Beth Cabrera, organizational psychologist and Senior Scholar at the George Mason University Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, provides a step-by-step guide to creating the best possible work environment for your employees to thrive, based on the relatively new science of positive psychology. She will discuss the benefits of mindfulness training, developing positive attitudes, creating a sense of meaning, work relationships, employee autonomy, and more - and how they lead to a thriving workplace where employees are more creative, engaged, and productive. How to Build a Thriving Workplace: A Leader’s Guide will give you all the information you need to transform your workplace into an attractive and thriving environment. In the process, not only will your bottom line improve, but so will the lives of your employees - and your own life, as well.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 The Great Courses (P)2018 The Teaching Company, LLC

Excellent guide

The guide was excellent in providing leadership tips and very applicable to real life challenges as a leader.

Solid info.

Good detail. Might be known but spoken about regarding team perspective. I get that studies need to back the detail but that feels repetitive and could be in a notes section.

Not what you expect

I have to say i was expecting a course on project management. What I received was a course on interpersonal management techniques. I will be honest i sort of binged it in one go during my work day. However i am going to give it another listen or 3 while taking notes as there were too many good principals on taking care of your employees.

I found myself equating a number of examples to “bad” bosses that i have had over my 25 year career in IT, and I really feel that Beth knows her stuff and presents it in a easy and relatable way.

If you want to be a better leader who gives a darn about your team give this course a listen. If you think it is all a waste of time let me know as I will never work for you.

It's ok

This audiobook is not going to rock anybody's world. It's simply packaging commonly shared advice and studies that many other books have already gone over.

But that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. It's all fairly reasonable advice. This would work well for an undergraduate college course, teaching the basics to young people that haven't already read this advice in other books.

However, it is clearly targeted for decisions makers in the business world - those who have the power to shape the work experience for all their employees. Will this cause them to change and treat their employees better? I'm dubious - but if any leaders do change policies as a result of experiencing this audiobook, then it's definitely worth it.

Good, not Great

Unlike other lectures of The Great Courses, this one is clearly not being recorded from a classroom. The lecturer is reading from her notes and often misreads or loses her place. The result is a more sterile presentation. She brings up good points, but it’s not as pleasant of a listen as it could’ve been.

Good, Not Great

This was a decent lecture series with some meaningful insights. It seemed to focus a lot on the ability to increase productivity through employee wellness, but if a manager or business owner is focusing on tactical improvements in e.ployee wellness solely for the incremental increases in productivity then that is the exact mindset that may end up being counterproductive. This very well may be worth a listen for those looking for ideas on how to improve their workplace, but I preferred the Transformational Leadership lecture series by Michael A. Roberto.

100x better than “Dare to lead”

This course was far better than most business books I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) it makes the book “Dare to lead” look like a joke.

I didn't like it

If Jim Carey and Bette Midler wrote a business book, this is the result I would imagine.