I realize that might title is a bit redundant.
A great leader IS a great teacher and vice-versa.
In industries, like internet marketing, where the amount of information doubles every 8 months, the ability to teach your team may be the single most important aspect of leadership.
So with that in mind, if you want to be a leader on one of my teams, these are the 3 books you need to read and live.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
by Carol Dweck
If there was a single book that taught you how to be a great teacher and thereby a great leader, this is it.
Each day we are all faced with success and failures and we respond in 1 of 2 ways:
- Fixed Mindset – Each mistake is validation that you aren’t smart, talented or good enough. Conversely, every success tells you that you are innately “gifted” which is very dangerous because then you stop looking for challenges where you might fail and therefore not validate your “gifted” status.
- Growth Mindset – Each failure and success are a means of learning. You either learned what you wanted (i.e. succeeded) or you didn’t (i.e. failed). Either way, you have more to learn, further to go and higher mountains to climb. Your mind is ever-expanding and intellect can always grow.
Our team has summarized this in our Culture Statements as:
Learning from other’s successes is extremely valuable however sometimes learning from our own mistakes is more memorable. We embrace our mistakes, learn not to repeat them, and therefore are constantly pushing the limits to get better.
If you only have time for one leadership or teaching book, Carol Dweck’s book is it!
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.
by Daniel Coyle
It wasn’t blind luck that the greatest concentration of artists, sculptors and painters of all time just happened to live in the same area of Italy over a 60 year time frame in the 16th century.
It’s also not chance that the small, dingy school where Anna Kournikova learned to play tennis, at one time produced 4 of the top 50 greatest players in the world.
It’s by design that the Dominican Republic has an unmatched density of great baseball players and, amidst abject poverty, Brazil has produced some of the world’s greatest players and teams consistently for nearly 50 years.
There’s a system and a code to “talent”. It’s not merely innate and it’s not simply about working for 10,000 hours on something. It’s about mindset, commitment, and breaking down the skill or talent to it’s essentials.
Daniel Coyle tells you exactly how and it’s as inspiring a read as you may ever encounter.
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
by Daniel Goleman
Think for a second of the tests that you may have taken to measure your intelligence.
- IQ Tests
- SAT’s
- ACT’s
- College Exams
- High School Exams
Of the tests listed above do you know which one most closely predicts success in life?
None of them. None can be correlated to job, income, happiness or any other measure of success.
But there is a test that can.
It’s called the marshmallow test.
Put a 3 year old in a room. Give her a marshmallow and say, “You may eat the marshmallow. Or you can wait a few minutes until I come back and I’ll give you 2.”
If she waits, she understands the value of delayed gratification – working hard and sacrificing now to receive something better in the future – and it will predict her future success more accurately than any other test.
That’s one of hundreds of examples that illustrate that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is more important in our lives than IQ.
Goleman also provides great examples of how to teach 3 to 93 year olds how to improve their Emotional Intelligence and better empathize with those around us.
Those were listed in the order of importance so start at the top and work your way down.
To your success in becoming a great, teaching leader,
Bryan
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