The Real Reason to Read
Read for these three fundamental aspects of leadership.
“How extraordinarily rare are those that have the Gift, is little guessed. To read not as a receptacle but as collaboratory; to read not merely to be amused or shocked or anaesthatized; to read, in short, to resensitize One’s Self — this is an achievement. It cannot and dare not happen too often.”
— Christopher Morley, 1940
The signature line in every communication from the Timeless & Timely family of publications is the same: “There’s so much to learn.”
Why?
Because there is so much to learn. Lest anyone think that they have all the answers or that no one has experienced the same failures, lost loves, or societal collapses before them, we should recall the wise words of Goethe:
“History is our inheritance. He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living hand to mouth.”
Of course, there is more to learn than history, and leaders are interested in learning about other things. Obviously, they need to know about the current realities of their business, industry, and the world around them. To do so is to be informed and prepared when making decisions.
The ability to seek out, take in, and process new information is a habit usually built in childhood, based on being curious. Curiosity typically manifests in asking many questions and finding the resources to answer them.
T.H. White captured our need to learn perfectly in The Once and Future King:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
Even the all-wise and powerful Merlin knew there’s so much to learn.
Reading Is Fundamental
Almost 60 years ago, Margaret McNamara founded the nation’s largest childhood literacy program, Reading is Fundamental (RIF).1
The goal of the program is to connect children with the joy of reading to spark imaginations and possibilities.
The possibilities from books are endless: they are passports to times gone by and transportation to places yet unseen.
““Read to live,” says Flaubert somewhere in his letters, and I take him at his word. Books I regard as voyages of discovery, and with an author I admire I gladly book passage to any and all points of view or destination—to Rome during the lives of the Caesars, to Shakespeare’s London, to Berlin and Harlem in the 1920s. I don’t go in search of the lost gold mine of imperishable truth. I look instead to find the present in the past, the past in the present. To discover within myself the presence of a once and future human being.”
— Lewis H. Lapham, 2020
More than the places you’ll go, books help you meet such interesting people They help us meet people we would never otherwise experience — the once and future human being Lapham refers to.
And that is the true benefit of reading:
We learn about other people. And in learning about them, we find ourselves better prepared to understand them.
Harold Bloom addressed this beautifully when he answered Charlie Rose’s question about why it mattered to read things by Chaucer and Shakespeare:2
“In the first place, I would say cognitive power. That is to say, an increase in one’s own ability to think and one’s own ability to talk on the basis of that thinking. And the next would be rhetorical power, the ability to understand better the uses of metaphor, which, according to Aristotle, was the special mark of genius in every one of us.
But beyond all that, a real capacity for apprehending otherness. For, on the one hand, realizing that we are trapped inside our own mortality, and on the other, that our only hope of getting beyond that trap of mortality is to have some real sense of other selves. We read many books, is the ancient adage, because we cannot know enough people. One discovers as one gets older that it’s difficult to get to know more and more people.”
We read to get to know people. And in doing so, we are able to behave with more empathy — to care about people.
Alan Mulally’s Working Together™️ Leadership & Management System (WTLMS) begins with two fundamentals, both based in empathy:
Seek to understand before seeking to be understood
People first love ’em up.
Leaders learn to make decisions with the needs of others in mind. Customers, shareholders, employees, vendors, the community — all of these matter. And while you’ll never meet every one of them, you can begin to understand them by reading about similar people on the printed page.
While it may not be a substitute for meeting them, it certainly provides an approximation of who they are and what motivates them.
“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.”
— Clifton Fadiman, 1941
Reader, Know Thyself
More than learning about other people, reading gives us a chance to reflect on scenes and stories, gauging our own reaction. In particular, we learn more about ourselves when we take the time to read, reflect, and revisit favorite books.
Content is everywhere today. The media come in every color of the rainbow, with colors flavors suited to virtually every form of preference.
Reading still holds a very special place among them, helping us expand our thinking and worldview while turning inward to examine ourselves.
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
― Christopher Morley
Bibliotherapy
Books can be like a balm to us, helping us to grieve, to adjust, and to get through difficult times. Books don’t just teach us… they tend to us. (Psyche)
Peter Drucker’s bookshelf
If you’d like a look at what was on the bookshelves of management guru Peter Drucker, you’re in luck. You can take a virtual tour of his home in , California. See what informed Drucker’s thinking. Literature, poetry, philosophy, and more await. Just take a left at the fireplace. (Drucker School of Management)
“Whatever the cost of libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
— Walter Cronkite, 1995
Show Up for Our Libraries
After the White House announced the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the American Library Association issued a statement saying “our nation’s 125,000 public, school, academic and special libraries deserve more, not less support.” Especially since it only makes up 0.003% of the federal budget. (ALA)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
One of the most powerful things anyone can say when a question is put to them is: “I don’t know.” It signifies an acknowledgement of the limits of our knowledge, a sense of vulnerability and self-awareness, and creates an incentive to seek out an answer. AI is weakening our cognitive skills by spoon-feeding us incomplete information. (Psychology Today)
“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.” So wrote General James Mattis, in his 2019 best-seller Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. Extraordinarily well-read himself, Mattis was raised in a household with no television and was considered an intellectual among his peers in the Army, with a particular penchant for military history and world history.
From our Archives
Leaders Are Readers - If you want to be taken seriously, get serious about reading.
The Gift - Do you read as a receptacle or as a collaboratory?
Words Matter - Making a case for leaders to be good writers — and readers
To Read is to Live - Write down your thoughts and plans
Worth reading? Leave a comment.
There’s so much to learn,
In May 1966, Margaret McNamara has an idea to get free books into the hands of Washington, DC students: books they would choose, take home, and keep as their own. Source: https://www.rif.org/about-us/our-history
Via @philosophical.ramblings on Instagram
Yes, Mr Monty, your post is a brilliant and compelling analysis. My parents were readers, which influenced my sister and me greatly. Instead of watching television, we read of an evening. This habit or necessity has served me well. My childhood best friend, who lives in Japan, sent an email to me asking what I " heard " while reading. Surprised, my reply was different voices of characters, and differing aspects of the narrative including emphasis on certain facts or suppositions. My friend informed me most people do not have that gift. Do not have that gift? It was staggering and monumental in it's scope. Now, I understand other people's experiences. My question is can we help anyone acquire the gift? It is priceless, after all.