Leadership: Building a Self-Sustaining Team

Kenji Nagao: Educator and Manager (July 7, 2022)

A book by manager Kenji Nagao, who dramatically led the traditional powerhouse Takamatsu Commercial High School to a V-shaped recovery after a long period of stagnation.

Books of this genre often lean heavily toward being how-to manuals for baseball coaches to learn coaching theory. However, this work begins with a bitter experience from Nagao's early days as a new junior high school teacher, when a student attempted suicide in his classroom and he was berated by the parents, who shouted, 'Never stand at the podium again!' This structure creates the illusion of reading an autobiographical novel, which I believe makes it so compelling that even those who are not baseball coaches will find it hard to stop turning the pages.

Furthermore, throughout the entire book, Nagao's stance as an educator first and a baseball manager second is depicted, and there were many parts I resonated with.

It is a book that reaffirms that works which discuss the parts one would rather not touch or talk about are the ones that truly captivate the reader.