“How does reading turn us into leaders?”

Mark Stover, dean of California State University, Northridge’s Delmar T. Oviatt Library, posed this question to the audience during his opening remarks for the second installment of the Read to Lead series on Feb. 24. Launched in November 2014, the program is a partnership between the library and CSUN Athletics to promote the value of reading. Enlisting the participation of leaders from across the campus, people can hear firsthand about how books have impacted those university notables’ leadership skills.

“Reading awakens, enlarges, enhances and refines our humanity in a way that almost nothing else can,” Stover said. His words helped set the tone for the second Read to Lead session.

Like the first event, there were four presenters who are leaders on campus. This time, the participants were: Dean of the Michael D. Eisner College of Education Michael Spagna, Valley Performing Arts Center Executive Director Thor Steingraber, CSUN Women’s Golf Head Coach Gina Umeck and Associate Vice President of Financial Services Deborah Wallace. Reprising her role from the first event was Lynn Lampert, the associate dean of the library. These leaders all shared insights into how their chosen books impacted them.

Spagna talked about The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould, noting that he felt the book actually “found” him. The dean shared a story from his graduate school days at the University of California, Berkeley, recalling a time when he heard a woman weeping in a hallway. When she had composed herself, the woman shared that her son had been described using a derogatory term because he’d been diagnosed with special needs. Spagna said the encounter inspired him to read the book, which solidified his awareness of how terminology impacts people and their perceptions.

“This book is all about the misapplication of labels,” Spagna said. “In our work as leaders at the university, this happens all the time. I challenge myself every day to not fall into the human habit of categorizing people. In my career, this book is meaningful as a watershed, to think about that difference every day and celebrate that difference.”

Wallace chose the book The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, which she first came across early in her college days. Wallace pointed out that the edition she has is not the original one she purchased, as that one had become so tattered and worn that it had to be replaced.

One of the great lessons she learned from the book emphasized not doing so many different things, but “the right thing,” Wallace said. She pointed out that working with finance, the days for her and her staff can become very “transactional” in nature. Drucker notes the importance of keeping one’s priorities top of mind, she said.

“Sometimes we lose that real insight, the real reason why we’re here. We’re here to serve students,” Wallace said. “I have to remind my staff, ‘We all get caught up in the small things. As the saying goes, we don’t sweat the petty things, and we don’t pet the sweaty things.’

“Drucker encourages that. He said to write down a plan, and how you will accomplish that plan. That’s being an effective leader.”

Steingraber chose the book House of Stone by Anthony Shadid, which chronicles the author’s move to Lebanon to claim his ancestral home that had been his great-grandmother’s. Shadid, a journalist who would later die while on assignment in Syria, shared how he overcame the difficulties of moving to the Middle East.

“His moving back to Lebanon was not to the Lebanon of his great-grandmother,” Steingraber said. “His moving back was not to a place where he’s accepted as an insider — he’s now a Westerner. Everything about trying to accomplish that very simple thing, reclaiming his ancestral home in the face of everybody’s opposition, really spoke to me as a leader.”

Umeck made the unique choice of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, and she quickly pointed out that the famous work became her personal “constitution.” She quoted the stanza:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch.

The golf coach pointed out that those words related to her profession because in coaching, she has to deal with student-athletes from different backgrounds. She added that some of the leaders she most admired displayed a “stoic cynicism,” and sought to display this quality as well. Umeck said there was something else she learned from Kipling’s prose.

“Life’s going to take us a long way,” Umeck said. “You’re going up and going down. This poem forces you to look from above, and that’s something, more and more, I try to do.”

CSUN Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Brandon Martin closed the proceedings by relating the importance of reading to his young children, ages 5 and 2.

“As we read these children’s books, it’s not just about reading the books,” Martin said. “It’s about what dreams emerge, what values emerge.

“It’s that obligation that I have to give my kids. It’s impactful.”

Martin said the next Read to Lead session will take place in the fall in The Matadome, and it will feature Men’s Basketball Coach Reggie Theus as one of the speakers. Martin went on to quote the famous writer Aldous Huxley: “Every man who knows how to read, has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.”

Martin added, “The questions that I pose to you all are, how do we magnify ourselves to advance the mission of CSUN? How do we multiply our knowledge to better serve our students and the campus community? How do we use reading to enrich our lives with more meaning, purpose and substance?

“We’ve learned about the power of it. It’s our job to seek comprehensive excellence in all aspects of our lives.”

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