Dancing with Monsters: A Tale About Leadership, Success, and Overcoming Fears

by Todd Dewett PhD

Overview

Is fear limiting your leadership potential? Dancing with Monsters will inspire you to overcome your fears and optimize your key relationships by leveraging humility, authenticity, and kindness.

Fears and discomfort slow us down and sometimes completely derail our personal progress. As leaders at work, we can similarly be knocked off course by the conflict, personality differences, motivational issues, and performance problems within our teams.

These obstacles are the monsters in our lives.

In Dancing with Monsters, globally recognized leadership educator, author, and speaker Todd Dewett, PhD, offers an enthralling, fast-paced fable that examines how to embrace those monsters in order to harness you and your team’s true power.

Joe is a depressed vampire at risk of losing his monster status due to poor performance. He is tasked with leading a group of misfit monsters who lack confidence. Sheets, Mum, Wolfy, and Z have not yet learned to do the one thing all monsters do: scare kids. Dancing with Monsters tells the story of their collective efforts, missteps included, toward connecting with their authentic selves.

This captivating story plus Dewett’s discussion and reflection prompts add up to a must-read guide to reclaiming your better self by learning to dance with your monsters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637743270
Publisher:	BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Dr. Todd Dewett is a globally recognized leadership educator, author, and speaker. After working with Andersen Consulting and Ernst & Young, he completed his PhD at Texas A&M University in Organizational Behavior and enjoyed ten years as an award-winning professor. He’s delivered over 1,000 speeches around the world and created a library of courses enjoyed by millions of professionals in nearly every country on earth. His clients include Microsoft, IBM, GE, Pepsi, ExxonMobil, and hundreds more.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This exciting, quick-moving fable has all the important lessons of a 300-page textbook many leadership and business programs would assign to their students . . . But Dr. Todd Dewett doesn't stop with the fable. He closes with practical advice leaders in all industries and levels need to take seriously and leaves us with helpful reflection questions to guide our discussions on this book, unpack the lessons, and plan out our future leadership solutions.”  
—Chrissy Roth-Francis, Ed.D., Director of Talent Development, LinkedIn  
 
“Todd is an authentic storyteller! I started reading it and couldn’t stop! He talks about the fundamentals of leadership in the most engaging way! I can see Dancing with Monsters becoming THE business book for workshops and coaching interventions and that’s how I am personally intending to use it. He talks about the psychology of fear without becoming psychological and how it can be a leader’s Achilles Heel.”
—Dr. Maria Katsarou-Makin, Founder, Leadership Psychology Institute
 
“This book is an incredibly fun yet deeply insightful journey into understanding these dynamics, along with a very pragmatic point of view on how to move forward from where you are. Todd’s ability to cut through the surface and get to the root of leadership derailers comes through in his writing here as well as he does in his live seminars.”  
—Bob Kalka, Global Vice-President, IBM Security, and Author of The Emotionally Authentic Christian
 
“Todd’s written a playful, powerful book on how we can address our fears to embrace authentic leadership. Find me a leader who doesn’t have fears and self-doubt—this book tackles them head on . . . I appreciated his call to action on realizing the power of now and opening up to share your own vulnerabilities in order to bond with and motivate your team—and accomplish more together.” 
—Jolie Miller, Director of Content, Business & Creative at LinkedIn Learning
 
“Through an engaging story, Todd shares a practical framework for personal and professional growth. The value of candor, collaboration, courage, and commitment come to life. He reminds us that great progress can be made when we embrace our imperfections, face our fears, and try new things.”
—Victoria Di Santo, Director, Organizational Development & Effectiveness, Brother International Corporation
 
“Dancing with Monsters provokes deep thought and reflections around some key questions: ‘What do you want?’, ‘Why do you want it?’, and ‘What are you afraid of?’. I would recommend any seasoned, new, or aspiring leader read this book and invite answers to those questions. We’re all afraid of something and we all have hopes and dreams in the clouds.” 
—Charles Newnam, Strategy Principal Director, Accenture
 
“Success begins with your story. And when you change your story, you change your results. Join this journey of discovery about how the monsters we encounter along the road to success can be conquered in a simple sentence. Thanks to Dr. Dewett, your once-upon-a-time starts now.” 
—Karen Mangia, Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author & Vice President Customer & Market Insights, Salesforce