Discovering Your Career in Business was Butler and Waldroop's first book, and focuses on how to discover what your true interests in business work are by utilizing their proprietary test, the Business Career Interest Inventory. The book was an instant success. With their continued research, they have since added two additional proprietary tests, and brought them all to the Internet resulting in what is now the CareerLeader^® program.

The Twelve Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back is the result of Waldroop and Butler's many years of experience working as leadership development consultants to business executives in a wide variety of industries. It explores the twelve behavior patterns that they have seen in their clients that limit career success, and provide suggestions for modifying those behaviors. The book also describes the four "root causes" that, in different combinations, can fuel the behaviors.

Many times in life, we will find ourselves at a dead end, in our career or personal world. Far from being a sign of failure, these dead ends are in fact a developmental necessity. We have, despite our feelings of hurt, self-doubt, or depression, arrived at a new frontier. Getting Unstuck details a six-step process that leads from the dead end to new possibilities, by learning to recognize when you are "stuck" -- in personal or professional life -- and how to react to that in a positive way.

"The Executive as Coach" was Waldroop and Butler's first article in the Harvard Business Review. In it, they present a model for managers to use when coaching employees whose behaviors are interfering with the effective functioning of the team. They suggest techniques such as active listening, an action-reflection model of behavior change, and scripting and role-playing for managers to use when they are coaching their employees.

In "Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining Your Best People", Butler and Waldroop present a model for employees and managers to work together to "sculpt" the employee's work to better fit his or her deeply embedded life interests with the goal of retaining valued employees. It uses their "eight core function" model of careers in business as the basis for the job sculpting process.

"Managing Away Bad Habits" describes six of the most common behavior patterns that undermine people's careers, as well as the dynamics that underlie those behaviors. It primes the reader to address the question, "Is it worth the effort?" and suggests various ways in which the manager can help an employee change those behaviors that are interfering with his or her effectiveness and success.

Relational know-how comprises a greater variety of aptitudes than many executives think. Because people do their best work when it most closely matches their interests, the authors contend, managers can increase productivity by taking into account employees' relational interests and skills when making personnel choices and project assignments. In this article, the authors discuss the four dimensions of relational work they discovered: influence, interpersonal facilitation, relational creativity, and team leadership. This article explains each one and offers practical advice to managers, such as how to build a well-balanced team and how to gauge the relational skills of potential employees during the interview process.

"Finding the Job You Should Want" was the first publication of Butler and Waldroop's "eight core function" model of careers in business, presented in the form of a self-scoring quiz in this issue of Fortune.

Their article, "Eight Failings That Bedevil the Best," describes eight behavior patterns that can limit people's career success, providing examples of each. Its publication attracted the attention of a number of publishers, and ultimately resulted in the publication of their second book, The Twelve Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back.

Drs. Butler and Waldroop were profiled in an extended interview in Fast Company magazine in "Is Your Job Your Calling?" In the article, they offer advice for making important career decisions. The counsel they provided in 1998 is just as relevant—and valid—today.

"The Art of Work—and the Role of HR in It" addresses the three linked issues of attracting top talent for the particular position being filled, retaining those people through the job sculpting process, and maximizing their contribution to the organization (A-R-M).

"A Function-Centered Model of Interest Assessment for Business Careers" was published in the Journal of Career Assessment, the oldest and most prestigious refereed academic journal devoted to research in the field of career assessment. This article established the psychometric rigor of Butler and Waldroop's first assessment, the Business Career Interest Inventory. Along with their book, Discovering Your Career in Business, this article is a great resources for learning about the validity and reliability of the BCII.

"The Hidden Flaws of Top Executives: How to Find Them Before You Hire Them" suggests different assessments organizations can use to dig beneath the surface when hiring top talent, helping to identify personality characteristics and other issues likely cause trouble. Waldroop and Butler point out the benefits of using the Rorschach Inkblot test, the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, and the NEO PI-R.