Issue No. 624 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting hopes to inspire you to mentor your team members with niche chapters from four leadership books. Plus, click here to see book recommendations in all 20 management buckets (core competencies), and click here for more book reviews. Also, read my recent review of Restoring Our Sanity Online.
Really! The bylaws of Your Weekly Staff Meeting require us to feature this cartoon at least once a year.
Shocker! You don’t need to read every chapter of every book! Instead, mentor your team members with niche books and leverage their strengths with thoughtfully selected chapters.
The late Zig Ziglar wrote, “People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” Ditto—leadership books! As Dick Daniels urges, “Recalibrate your calling every day.” Or…as then 99-year-old Charlie Munger (1924-2023) told the WSJ last year, “I don’t know how to get smart without reading a lot.”
Your leadership and management challenges never plateau. The obstacles and thorny issues change and grow constantly. And learning leadership is not a one-and-done seminar. The leadership book you read last year may not address those keep-you-up-all-night issues that crowded your inbox yesterday.
So here you go—4 leadership books with niche chapters for what may be coming around the bend. Delegate your reading to your direct reports. Ask them to report on a “niche chapter” relevant to their biggest challenges this quarter.
#1. The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out, by Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink, and Ramesh Srinivasan (Senior Partners at McKinsey & Company, Sept. 10, 2024). Order from Amazon. Listen on Libro (7 hours, 51 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy.
Best Niche Chapter: “Everyone Keeps Things From the Boss.” Using in-the-trenches examples from McKinsey’s Bower Forum, the authors mention a CEO who “complained that the people in his organization no longer told him what was really going on. Since he became the boss, he no longer had any peers, and those frank conversations he used to have with his colleagues disappeared. He felt lost and worried that some bad news would eventually blindside him.”
To “Encourage Truth Telling,” the authors give very specific and practical suggestions including how to “foster dissent by actively seeking it.” They mention the classic example from 2006 when Alan Mulally became Ford’s new CEO. He introduced a weekly meeting with red/yellow/green scorecards. In the first meeting, 16 execs reported that every project was green! “Incredulous, Mulally challenged the executives, asking how all the projects could be going well if the company was losing money” (more than $17 billion!). What happened? View “Alan Mulally: The Ford Traffic Light” (7 minutes).
The authors pack wisdom and wit into this chapter. “After one executive retired, she said the best thing about retirement was she no longer had to walk down the halls and when someone said good morning have to think about what they really meant.” LOL!
Bonus Niche Chapter: “Practice Making Mistakes.” What team member needs to read Chapter 11 on adopting fearless learning? “Teams that avoid failure miss the point, because people learn as much, if not more, from mistakes as from successes.” (Amen!)
Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired), author of Make Your Bed, is mentioned in this chapter, as is the “Plan B” culture of Navy Seals. Example: the raid on Osama bin Ladin’s compound—and why you sometimes need to “fall out of love with the primary plan and shift to a backup plan or develop a new one.”
#2. Leading People from the Middle: The Universal Mission of Heart and Mind, by William P. Robinson (Jan. 20, 2010). Order from Amazon. And thanks to Jim Canning for recommending this book.
Best Niche Chapter: “Driven and Rhythmic Leadership.” (Oh, my. This assignment I gave myself is hard work! There are way too many “best niche chapters” in Bill Robinson’s powerful book.) Chapter 7 begins, “Leading is hard work—a lot harder than just being in charge.” I’ve never read such a compelling chapter on the leader’s rhythm.
The author was the president of Whitworth University (1993 to 2010) and concludes his seven-page chapter with this: “I’m not all that sappy, but once in a while the smallest thing will just overwhelm me.” He adds, “Sometimes I wonder if God made me for the singular purpose of hanging around with collegians. I don’t know, but here’s what I do know beyond any doubt: our students have made me a better leader than I was every meant to be.”
Bonus! Honest—the preface and introduction are meaty. Learn why this 2010 update of his 2000 book is both shorter and better. He defines “leading from the middle” and uses a memorable three-point outline: “Can’t, Can, Must.” He writes, “First, you can’t lead the way I lead. You wouldn’t want to and the people you lead wouldn’t want you to either. The best leaders lead from their strengths.”
#3. Lead Bigger: The Transformative Power of Inclusion, by Anne Chow (Sept. 10, 2024). Order from Amazon. Listen on Libro (7 hours, 56 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy.
Best Niche Chapter: Check out the three “Bigger Conversations."
• Gen. Stanley McChrystal: “If You Want to Win”
• Arianna Huffington: “Taking a Whole-Human Approach to Well-Being”
• Adam Grant: “If You’re Not Inclusive, You’re Not a Leader”
With endorsements from Stephen M. R. Covey and Liz Wiseman, this book has niche chapters on “Beyond the Daily Grind,” “Deliver Results and Impact,” and “Dimensionality: Expand Your Understanding of People.”
In the author’s conversation with Gen. McChrystal, author of Leaders: Myth and Reality and Team of Teams, McChrystal said that, as a major, he had three different U.S. Army bosses in three years. Boss #1: fairly inclusive. Boss #2: more elitist. When the “cool guys” were in the room, McChrystal was not invited. Boss #3: “incredibly inclusive.” McChrystal notes that those three years were a “…whipsaw effect, but it was a great way to remind me how someone in my role feels when it’s good and when it’s not good. That variable changed my outlook on the job completely.”
#4. Attentive Church Leadership: Listening and Leading in a World We've Never Known, by Kevin G. Ford and Jim Singleton (Foreword by Ed Stetzer, April 2, 2024). Order from Amazon. Listen on Libro (10 hours, 6 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy.
Best Niche Chapter: “How Do We Create Community in a Narcissistic World?” If the co-pastors of our home church asked me to recommend one chapter from this important book—I’d urge them to read the whole book, but affirm that they are doing many things well, especially: 1) creating community, and 2) serving with humility. Yet this reminder:
The authors quote Tom Nelson, author of The Flourishing Pastor. “The crowd need not be big nor the stage prominent for the celebrity pastor to emerge. Celebrity is not necessarily tied to the size of the audience, but rather the size of the ego to be stroked.” Ford and Singleton add, “An inflated ego is not only found in megachurch contexts; it can reside in any human heart.” (See also The Leader’s Palette and Let Us Prey.)
By the way, my “Page 25 Rule-of-Thumb” played out again. Jim Singleton describes on page 25 the insurmountable barrier that faced Whitworth University in 1991-1992. Then he relates how the “identify of Whitworth was revived” when Bill Robinson arrived (see Book #2 above).
4 BOOKS…and 48 niche chapters. Watch for additional reviews of these four books and more of my favorite niche chapters.
2) What are two or three of your “Reading 101 Principles” for getting the most out of a book?
3) Name a “niche chapter” you have recently recommended to someone. Why?
Note: These questions are included in “The Book Bucket” chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit.
Mastering 100 Must-Read Books
Part 17: “Nonprofit” Is a Tax Designation, Not a Management Philosophy!
Book #94 of 100: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom (2nd Edition)
For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #94 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.
Mastering the Management Buckets:
20 Critical Competencies
for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
by John Pearson
Books #92 through #96 spotlight five helpful books for nonprofit CEOs, senior staff, and board members. Shocker! You don’t need to read every chapter of every book! Instead, mentor your team members with niche books and leverage their strengths with thoughtfully selected chapters.
• Read reviews from others here and here.
• Order from Amazon.
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson).
OK, I’ll confess again to hyping one of my books—but please keep reading. How would you coach a team member on the following?
• A rookie manager needs to learn the importance of affirming team members.
• A senior leader has a faulty “sequential” view of priorities (God first, family second, church third, career fourth).
• Due to continued workplace dysfunction, trust has been broken in the finance department.
• A board member has workaholic tendencies and an imbalanced life.
• A department head is a “reader,” but her direct reports are all “listeners.”
Read the core competency in Chapter 5,“The Book Bucket,” and then explore how to mentor team members with niche books and niche chapters. (You do have a massive management library and purposeful book culture, right?)
See also: Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.
Song #35 of 45: "Love's in Need of Love Today"
Listen to "Love's in Need of Love Today," by Stevie Wonder, Song #35 of 45 in our blog series, Johnny Be Good. Read why Stevie Wonder said, "I think most songwriters are inspired by an inner voice and spirit. God gave me this gift, and this particular song was a message I was supposed to deliver.”
Reminder: Guest bloggers invited! More info here.
12 Niche Chapters on Influence
Good luck landing on your favorite niche chapter in this book. It's impossible. Bill Butterworth delivers 12 nominees on the theme of "The Secret Sauce for Greater Influential Effectiveness." Perfect topics for your next 12 weekly staff meetings. Read my review. And for more book reviews, visit the Pails in Comparison Blog.
Join John Pearson on Oct. 18, 2024
The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board
While space remains, The Barnabas Group/Orange County invites nonprofit CEOs and board members to their board governance seminar, led by John Pearson, Oct. 18, 2024 (Friday 7:30 - 11:30 a.m.) in Irvine, Calif. The complimentary seminar includes a continental breakfast and the 100-page workbook, The 4 Big Mistakes to Avoid With Your Nonprofit Board (3rd Edition): How Leaders Enrich Their Ministry Results Through God-Honoring Governance. More info here.