Quite frankly, I struggled most of my time as a leader because it’s a hard job. REALLY HARD.
It was a cycle of mistakes, self deprecation, impostor syndrome, and short-lived euphoric moments. Repeat. There are no courses out there on Dance Leadership 101 or How to Make 40+ Dancers Happy (spoiler alert: you can’t) that prepared me before jumping into that role.
But I was determined to be better so I turned to books.
So if you’re a psycho like me who likes to endure the craziness of being a leader, here are 7 leadership books that every dance director must read along with my favorite quotes.
1. You Win in The Locker Room First
The 7 C’s to Build a Winning Team in Business, Sports, and Life
Research from the HeartMath Institute (heartmath.org) shows that when you have a feeling in your heart, it goes to every cell in the body, then outward—and other people up to 10 feet away can sense feelings transmitted by your heart. This means that each day you are broadcasting to your team how you feel. You are either broadcasting positive energy or negative energy, apathy or passion, indifference or purpose.
2. The Coaching Habit
Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
This is why, in a nutshell, advice is overrated. I can tell you something, and it’s got a limited chance of making its way into your brain’s hippocampus, the region that encodes memory. If I can ask you a question and you generate the answer yourself, the odds increase substantially.
3. Tribal Leadership
Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
It is literally true, Burke’s groundbreaking arguments suggest, that if people change their words (or, more accurately, their words and their words’ relationships to one another), they change their perception of reality. As they change their reality their behavior changes automatically. Instead of people using their words, they are used by their words, and this fact is unrecognized.
4. The Culture Code
The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it. Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet.
5. Radical Candor
Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Make sure that you are seeing each person on your team with fresh eyes everyday. People evolve, and so your relationships must evolve with them. Care personally; don’t put people in boxes and leave them there.
6. The Energy Bus
10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
Positive energy and positive people create positive results. There is certainly a lot of negativity in the world and choosing positive energy helps us deal with the negative people and negative situations that can knock us off course.
7. Mindset
10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
These books helped me gain new perspectives on, not only how to be a better leader, but also a better person.
Many of the lessons I learned from these books I still carry to this day at home, with friends, at work and whenever I’m teaching classes or workshops.
If there was one thing I’d love for you to get out of this blog post, it is to be patient. This s**t is hard. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. But when you do, forgive yourself, then learn. Repeat.
Which of these books intrigued you the most?
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Have you read any of the books I mentioned prior to reading this blog post?
Do you have a book in mind to add to the list?
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.
