326: Ditch the Decorative Bookshelf: How to Use Leadership Books for Real Growth!

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, your favorite duo gets real about leadership books. You know, the ones piling up on your nightstand. They chat about using books as tools, not just decor, and share tips for matching your reading style (audio, visual, or hands-on) to the right format.

Kate and Carrie also recommend practical reads like It’s Lonely at the Top and spill the beans on upcoming conferences. If you want to grow as a leader without feeling overwhelmed, this episode is full of friendly, resourceful advice just for you! 

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Transcript

Kate Woodward Young (00:05)
Do you have a ton of books sitting on your nightstand?

Carrie (00:09)
Well, yeah, of course I do.

What kind of person would I be if I didn't have a ⁓ TBR list? You got to have a TBR list to be read. To be read. No, that's a whole you're obviously not on book talk. You are not on book talk. I'm on book talk.

Kate Woodward Young (00:18)
To be read? Okay, hot luck. TBR.

Definitely

not on book talk, but today we're going to talk about all those leadership books. You've probably got a few. I got a few behind me. ⁓ These are books that maybe you have read or you've thought about reading. I've got books on there I read in my 20s and probably should have read again since then. And there's new ones that pop up all of the time. And so today, we, Carrie and I are going to have a conversation about, well,

Carrie (00:55)
Why?

Kate Woodward Young (00:56)
There's really, we don't

use them quite the way we should. ⁓

Carrie (00:59)
Yeah, why the

way you're using it is not moving the dial for you. Yeah, I mean, if you want to just have them decorative, like there are those people on booktop, who their entire bookshelf is just based on these are the ones with blue spines. And these are the ones with pink spines and orange spines. And if you're going to the bookstore, or you're going to Amazon just to find something with a pink spine, because you got a hole in your bookshelf.

Kate Woodward Young (01:05)
You mean decorative?

Carrie (01:28)
then it's really not gonna help you up level your game. But we have a pink book if you need it. If you need a pink book, we have one, it's called, ⁓ From ⁓ Shit to I Got This, but the I in shit is an asterisk.

Kate Woodward Young (01:43)
And what's even better is it comes in hardback, so it'd be perfect for your bookshelf one. ⁓

Carrie (01:48)
for your decorative picture. But

if you actually are wanting to get something out of those books that will help propel you forward in your leadership journey, buying it based on the color is not the best way to go.

Kate Woodward Young (02:07)
do have a bunch of them. We've got some that we've helped folks with that are purple, that are teal, ⁓ different shades of blue. So why are we bringing this up? Well, let's be honest, right? So if you don't already know, Carrie and I have written a few books. We do help folks who want to write books or have written a book and want to publish a book. ⁓ So we also bring books to conferences. So we have something called the Director's Bookshelf by Child Care Conversations. And we are...

collaborative. We've got authors from all over the country who kind of chip in to get this booth and then Carrie and I basically show up in Manit. And so we would love to see you at conferences this spring. We will be in Memphis.

in March, we will be in Reno in April, and we will be in Providence, Rhode Island in May. So more of that can be found on our website at childcareconversations.com. But let's get to why we're here. How should we be using these books if they're not for decorative purposes?

Carrie (03:08)
Well, it depends

on what kind of learner you are. So figure out whether you're kinesthetic, visual, auditory.

Kate Woodward Young (03:16)
So if I'm kinesthetic, I'm just supposed to use it for exercise.

Carrie (03:19)
Yeah, definitely so that you can get your

kinesiology degree from the university. So I think that if you're a kinesthetic learner, like both Kate and I are primarily kinesthetic, ⁓ you should have a pen, a highlighter, some post-it notes. ⁓ You can have all three of those or just one of them. It depends on the book as to whether I want to have a pen, a highlighter, or post-its.

or if this is a book I feel like I need all three. I also really like an audiobook. So I'm kind of weird in that I love to listen to an audiobook while I have the physical book so that I can underline. They do not ding anymore and that is very sad because that was that was definitely one of my favorite things as a kid.

Kate Woodward Young (04:03)
Do they ding when you gotta flip the page? ⁓ Carrie, what's the point?

Carrie (04:14)
And that's probably why I like to listen to an audio book as I'm reading the physical book ⁓ is because I listened to Aladdin and the magic lamp that way. I listened to the Billy Goats Gruff that way. I had a good number of those growing up. So that's probably why. So I'll frequently get a book in two different formats. I'll get ⁓ if I think I'm going to need to take notes, I'm going to get a physical copy.

If I'm just going to read it because I need the information for a project, I sometimes just get it as a Kindle. But if I really want it, if I think it's going to change the way I function, I'm going to get the audio book and the physical book.

Kate Woodward Young (04:58)
Okay, so let's talk about that. So leadership books. mean, first of all, everybody seems to have a leadership book. Heck, we have a leadership book. However, that doesn't just reading the book doesn't necessarily do anything, does it?

Carrie (05:13)
Well, you know, are you a leader or are you a duck? It is a valid question. Are you a leader or are you a duck? If you are walking and there is nobody following you, you're a duck.

Kate Woodward Young (05:25)
Okay,

so could you be a little Peabody Duck?

Carrie (05:29)
you could and then you're going to Memphis and you're gonna come to our booth. ⁓ I don't know where I found that or where I heard the whole are you a leader or are you a duck? But I love it and I've become very.

Kate Woodward Young (05:32)
AHAHAHA!

Well, that sounds like a great

podcast. Can we put a pin in that and come back to that for the next episode?

Carrie (05:46)
Maybe. I think

you've done that episode actually, but I think that if you are reading a leadership book, you need to know how you retain information the best. If you're an auditory learner, get you the audio book. Do not buy the physical book because somebody shamed you and said, you don't really read, you just listen. You're reading. That's how most people consumed books.

for the first like thousand years of books was that you listened to a book. So, uh-uh. Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (06:22)
You listen to a storyteller. Absolutely,

absolutely. okay, so you figure out your learning style, you match whatever book it is based on your learning style. I think one of the things that I'd really want to make sure that folks are thinking about when you are trying to decide, do you read this leadership book? What do you do with it? You've showed up at a conference, the keynote has a book, you get it. Or maybe you walk by a booth and you pick up a couple. Can help you with that. ⁓

I want you to think about even, you you don't have to read it necessarily cover to cover and you don't have to necessarily go everything in this book is a hundred percent how I feel or I want to change. I think that's the big thing is that you have to go, you know what? I'm going to think of this as kind of like, you know, I am trick or treating. I am going to go find, I'm going to go get a whole bunch of candy and then I'm only going to actually eat the ones I like. I don't need to eat them all. And most,

non-fiction books, like a leadership book, you can probably go through the table of contents and you'll probably see topics in there that probably resonate with you and you don't necessarily have to read the book from front to back.

Carrie (07:38)
because some of those chapters are butterfingers and we don't need those.

Kate Woodward Young (07:41)
I was thinking like, you know, those black licorice things. We don't need no jelly beans.

Carrie (07:46)
Okay, we don't need that either. And I know that some people like

the Black Licorice and some people like the Butterfinger. They can be wrong all they want. And they can read those chapters of the book. But from my perspective, they're wrong. So you don't have to be a completist when it comes to reading a book. And again, it doesn't matter if it's a physical book, a Kindle book, an audio book, consume it the way that it's going to work for you. But I think

the other part of it is having some way to record your takeaways. And that can be that you do a voice note on your phone or you tell your phone, hey phone, using whatever app it is, send me an email with this content. Or it can be, again, those post-it notes, you can have a voice recorder, you can have a physical notebook, but having some way to write down the things

that are particularly interesting to you or impactful to you. One of my favorites and I've only done this once was to write myself a postcard and mail it to myself because I was sure I would remember it and this was a way to see if I remembered it in about a week.

Kate Woodward Young (08:48)
Okay.

It's interesting that you say that because I think one of the things that works really well for me, and again, this comes back to how do you learn and process information? I love a good discussion. Now, it can be a book club. mean, we know that professional book clubs are becoming things. I think we even had an episode on how to do a book club as part of staff development for your organization. So absolutely can be something as a way to read it.

even as a whole program, but being able to discuss with somebody else who read the book, even if the person didn't read the whole book, even if they just, I don't know, listen to a TED Talk by the person who wrote the book. Because I mean, that's also a really great kind of tip with leadership books is, that author still alive and have they done a TED Talk? Because that might give you the perfect

Carrie (09:54)
Yeah.

Kate Woodward Young (09:57)
amount of information to know if this is a book you really want to buy and read. ⁓ Even if it's not the same topic but by the same author, right, you'll get an idea if their personality matches yours. I think that being able to have a conversation and apply it to where I am right now and in what industry. And to me that is the biggest thing to consider when you are reading a leadership book or any book for professional development.

even if they weren't written for early childhood educators because we are all leaders and we are all in business.

Carrie (10:36)
I mean, I think another thing is just because you read it 20 years ago doesn't mean you shouldn't reread it. I have read The Secrets of Childhood by Maria Montessori multiple times, and I'm not a Montessorian. I don't run a Montessori school, never have run a Montessori school. But going back and rereading it, I loved her take on it, and that's one of her earliest books.

And so it's while she was still in a state of discovery and learning about how children learn and what you should, what you could put in the environment and how it would affect kids. So you can go back and reread a book that was instrument and it could have been six months ago, but you've changed from where you were six months ago. And so rereading that book,

sometimes gives you a really interesting view on yourself and where you have gone and how you have developed. And occasionally, in my case, it makes you really, really mad because that book is out of print and nobody's written another book that is that good about that thing. So that made Kate and I write a book last year.

Kate Woodward Young (11:50)
Absolutely. So I have two books that are on my bookshelf that kind of fall into that category.

One is How to Win Friends and Influence People, and one is As a Man Thinketh, which are both books that I read the first time over three decades ago. And every time I refer people to them, what I do now as a middle-aged woman is I also tell people who wrote the book.

Because I think that that is really really important and when was the book written? Because to me these are also big factors in whether or not you're going to agree and I think it's really important and okay to Disagree with the author, you know, even though these books are classics. It doesn't mean that everything in them I agree with I've got all kinds of authors on my bookshelf that are men, but

have worked really, hard to get leadership books by women in the last 20 years. And that actually takes concerted effort because they're not the ones everybody talks about.

Carrie (12:56)
Yeah.

I mean, so like Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich is one of those books that if you've been in leadership for more than a year or two, somebody has probably recommended that you read. But it was written by a kind of misogynistic guy in the 1950s. And Kate is now showing it for those of you who are listening on YouTube. But

It was written by a kind of misogynistic guy in the 1950s who had a huge amount of privilege. And knowing that, if I'd have known more about him and his life before I started to read it, I probably wouldn't have thrown it as many times as I threw it. Because I only read that book in the past five years because I was tired of people saying, have you read or you know, wanting to talk about it and I'd never read it.

And I didn't read it because I was like, I don't need another book by an old white dude who's dead. But I did and I got some good useful information out of it. But knowing that he was a misogynistic guy in the 1950s would have helped me read it through that frame before I started to read it. So I'm glad you're telling people if you're having them read like what color is your parachute or something like that that happened.

you have to look at it from its historical place in time, and then go, okay, what is still true that was true 80 years ago? Is that right math wise?

Kate Woodward Young (14:31)
But I think what's interesting though with all of them, regardless

if I'm reading...

you know, Brene Brown or I'm reading Dale Carnegie, I don't have to agree with everything. And I think that I also, now I am not a front to back book reader. ⁓ I used to be in my twenties. I would sit down and I'd read the book and you know, my first husband and I both always read the same book and it was great because we could then talk about them and we did. We talked about them a lot in the car.

But as I've gotten older and I had kids, I didn't find myself having the ability to sit down and really read a book. And so I became the table of contents shopper. And I would look at the titles in the table of contents and I'd think about where I was at that moment. And it's actually how, you know, there's a lot of people that read religious texts that way. Very few people sit down and read the Bible on page one. Okay. Okay. Carrie, maybe.

Carrie (15:30)
That

Kate Woodward Young (15:30)
But a lot of people do not read their religious texts that way, right? They open them and they're inspired

Carrie (15:32)
was me. you

Kate Woodward Young (15:38)
by something or maybe they're looking for a solution. Well, I take that same approach when it comes to the business books and the leadership books that I read because I don't need all of them all the time. If I am in a setting where I've got some employees, I might read some employee books from a very different perspective because of what's going on right now in my world.

So if you are in leadership and you're struggling with something, find the books that have parts of that that match that. we've got some books that, you know, they're 300 pages. Well, you may not want to sit down and read 300 pages. Even if you like us, you may not want to sit down and read 300 pages, but there might be one topic in there where you're like, oh, I definitely need this one because it's on onboarding staff.

Well, if you need that onboarding staff chapter, then just read that chapter. You don't have to read the previous 10 because that's not where you are at the moment.

Carrie (16:39)
Absolutely. So hopefully we might have given you a little bit of inspiration to go and get a business book or a leadership book.

and give it a try in a different way because you're not a cover to cover reader and you're like I like something about the length of a BuzzFeed article. Okay that is a short chapter so go read yourself ⁓ something that is more like that and so Kate is once again showing for the five people who go on YouTube instead of re-listening. It's lonely at the top.

Kate Woodward Young (17:14)
Here's all

the reasons why you need to come see, you need to go to the YouTube channel and periodically watch an episode.

Carrie (17:21)
Yeah, so It's Lonely at the Top by Summer Pia is one of those books that if you like to read sections that are more along the lines of a BuzzFeed article, her chapters are short, and it is very action oriented. I mean, it was like, you're going to get something out of each of those chapters. ⁓ And we think Summers, you know, the bees knees, so you should read her book.

Kate Woodward Young (17:48)
I've reviewed her a couple of times. There's some episodes you could go listen to summer. Maybe.

Carrie (17:52)
Maybe

that would presume that we remember to put those links in the show notes. Yes, she'll be with us in Memphis. She'll be with us. She'll be there at Memphis and ⁓ and then she'll also be at ⁓ childcare business growth in Miami. Fort Lauderdale. Okay. Anyway, she'll be at that one also.

Kate Woodward Young (17:57)
She's gonna be at the conference with the ducks. She's gonna be in Memphis presenting.

It's in Fort Lauderdale this year.

Carrie (18:19)
So those are two times you can see her and breathe the same air, but you can get some inspiration from her by reading the book. And then when you see her, you have something to talk about.

Kate Woodward Young (18:30)
love that. So who wouldn't want to have a conversation with a published author about their book? That would be something. So if you ever, if you're going to conferences in the next four months, if you aren't, and you aren't really sure where to go, if you go to childcareconversations.com, you can grab our quarter two, 2026 field guide that'll tell you from our perspective.

Which conferences are perfect for leadership for owners? It gives you kind of a little bit. Is this an emerging conference? Is this a long standing conference? ⁓ Make sure you look past whatever month it is because a lot of these do involve travel and advanced reservations are required. ⁓ We're telling you because A, we've probably been to them. Otherwise, we're not going to tell you about them. Or we know the people putting them on. so we are really excited about half of them we are attending. The other half are either ones that we are like,

Carrie (19:06)
you you

Kate Woodward Young (19:23)
you need to go or there are people who we love who we think you need to go to. So with that, if you have not already

signed up for our newsletter, newsletter comes out twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays about the upcoming episode. ⁓ Join our mailing list at www.childcareconversations.com.

Carrie (19:46)
Talk to you in a few days.

Kate Woodward Young (19:47)
you