The path to your professional success starts with a critical look in the mirror. If you listen to nothing else on managing yourself, you should at least hear these 10 articles (plus the bonus article "How Will You Measure Your Life?" by Clayton M. Christensen). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles to select the most important ones to help you maximize yourself.

Are your working relationships working against you? To achieve your goals and get ahead, you need to rally people behind you and your ideas. But how do you do that when you lack formal authority, or when you have a boss who gets in your way, or when you're juggling others' needs at the expense of your own?

Every organization has its share of political drama: Personalities clash. Agendas compete. Turf wars erupt. But you need to work productively with your colleagues - even difficult ones - for the good of your organization and your career. How can you do that without compromising your personal values? By acknowledging that power dynamics and unwritten rules exist - and navigating them constructively.

Whether you're managing your first project or just tired of improvising, this guide will give you the tools and confidence you need to define smart goals, meet them, and capture lessons learned so future projects go even more smoothly.

If you listen to nothing else on becoming a new manager, listen to these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to a great manager of others.

When you're fumbling for words and pressed for time, you might be tempted to dismiss good business writing as a luxury. But it's a skill you must cultivate to succeed: You'll lose time, money, and influence if your emails, proposals, and other important documents fail to win people over.

Whether you're a new manager or looking to have more influence in your current management role, the challenges you face come in all shapes and sizes: a direct report's anxious questions, your boss's last-minute assignment of an important presentation, or a blank business case staring you in the face. To reach your full potential in these situations, you need to master a new set of business and personal skills.

Terrified of speaking in front of a group? Or simply looking to polish your skills? No matter where you are on the spectrum, this guide will give you the confidence and the tools you need to get results.

Managing people is fraught with challenges - even if you're a seasoned manager. Here's how to handle them. If you listen to nothing else on managing people, you should at least hear these 10 articles.

Meetings. They hold such promise for moving your business forward but are rarely executed well. We all know what we're supposed to do to run meetings effectively, but we seldom do it. Why? Perhaps we think it's just not worth the time to clarify what we hope to accomplish, craft an agenda, handpick participants, issue pre-work, and send out notes. But preparation and follow-up is time well spent. This guide offers tips to make your meetings easier to prepare for, more enjoyable to run - and more productive.

Can you prepare a breakeven analysis? Do you know the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet? Or understand why a business that's profitable can still go belly-up? Has your grasp of your company's numbers helped - or hurt - your career?

Influencing those around us and supporting our own well-being requires us to be self-aware, know when and how to regulate our emotional reactions, and understand the emotional responses of those around us. No wonder emotional intelligence has become one of the crucial criteria in hiring and promotion. But luckily it's not just an innate trait: Emotional intelligence comprises skills that all of us can learn and improve on.

Are you suffering from work-related stress? Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and short tempered at work - and at home? Then you may have too much stress in your life. Stress is a serious problem that impacts not only your mental and physical health, but also your loved ones and your organization. So what can you do to address it? The HBR Guide to Managing Stress at Work will help you find a sustainable solution. It will help you reach the goal of getting on an even keel - and staying there.

Popular blogger Cal Newport reveals the new key to achieving success and true meaning in professional life: the ability to master distraction. Many modern knowledge workers now spend most of their brain power battling distraction and interruption, whether because of the incessant pinging of devices, noisy open-plan offices or the difficulty of deciding what deserves their attention the most. When Cal Newport coined the term deep work on his popular blog, Study Hacks, in 2012, he found the concept quickly hit a nerve.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The CEO Next Door by Elena Botelho and Kim Powell with Tahl Raz, read by Bernadette Dunne. Everything you thought you knew about becoming a CEO is wrong. You must graduate from an elite college or business school. In fact, only 7 percent of the CEOs of today's companies went to top schools - and 8 percent didn't graduate from college at all. Never put a foot wrong. In fact, people who have become CEOs have on average had five to seven career setbacks on their way to the top.