My mother read me lots of books and taught me how to read before I went to Grade One. I loved reading so much that I read anything I could find.
The story I remember most from my childhood is Dr. Goat, the 1950 story of a kindly doctor whose patients turn the tables and care for him when he falls ill. Later, I loved reading The Hardy Boys series. I had about a dozen books of their detective adventures and borrowed many others.
Throughout elementary school, I looked forward to getting the monthly book club catalogue and choosing a book that fit my modest budget. I loved the smell of a new book and the anticipation of a fresh story. On Saturday mornings, my mother took me to our local library, where I loved roaming the stacks and picking out books to borrow.
We read to our kids to nurture their love of reading. It’s great to see our kids now reading to their kids and filling their homes with books. I love reading to our grandkids. They’re captivated by stories and will likely become lifelong readers.
As I now look after my mother, we occasionally talk about Robert Munsch’s powerful picture book, Love You Forever. It’s a story of parental love and the circle of life that still chokes me up.
Whether you read fiction or non-fiction, detective stories or business biographies, I believe reading is essential to our personal and emotional development. Books and stories created our world, preserved our histories and identities, and continue to model how to learn and grow. They have much to teach all of us – especially leaders.
Nothing can prepare leaders for all the problems, conflicts and opportunities they will encounter in their careers. But reading widely, and often, builds the broad understanding and imagination required to recognize patterns, identify common themes, build relationships and develop new creative solutions.
As a voracious reader, I usually have three or four books on the go: a spiritual, a novel, a book on personal or leadership development, and a book of history or biography. I use Kindle readers because they allow me to read at any time in any light, highlight key passages, and then add them to my searchable database. The books I love are never far away.
Irene Vallejo’s Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World, about the impact of books on history, shows how the written word — from clay tablets to papyrus scrolls to bound paper — has transformed history across cultures and millennia. She’s an engaging storyteller, drawing us in with fascinating stories about the history of the written word, and its impact on humanity’s growth and development.
My Kindle version of Papyrus is full of yellow highlighted passages. Here are a few on the power of books:
- If the ideas, scientific achievements, imagination, laws, and rebellions of the Greeks and Romans survived, we owe it to the simple perfection books had achieved after centuries of searching and experimentation.
- The invention of books was perhaps the greatest triumph in our tenacious struggle against destruction. With their help, humanity has undergone an extraordinary acceleration of history, development, and progress.
- Somehow, mysteriously, spontaneously, the love of books forged an invisible chain of people – men and women – who, without knowing one another, have rescued the treasure of the greatest stories, thoughts, and dreams throughout time.
- Books help us survive major historical catastrophes and the small tragedies of our lives.
- Neither wisdom nor literature fit completely into a single mind, but thanks to books, each of us finds the door open to all the knowledge and stories in existence.
Sovereign’s Capital co-CEO John Coleman’s wrote a 2012 Harvard Business Review article entitled “For Those Who Want to Lead, Read.”"Deep, broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness," writes Coleman. “Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers… Reading increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept and articulate communicator. Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, allowing a leader to better work with and understand others.”
In a survey of 208 Fortune 1000 CEOs, 84% described themselves as voracious readers when growing up. Good books fire our imagination and expand our horizons. The best books provide stairways to personal growth and development. Early on, Socrates spotted the value of book, advising his readers to “employ your time in improving yourself by other’s writings, so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
Of course, not all books are equal. With as many as 86,000 books published every month (according to Papyrus), there are some great books out there, many mediocre books, and lots of garbage. Occasionally, when I am asked to review a book and contribute a “cover blurb,” I agree with American satirist Ambrose Bierce, who complained of one book he read that “the covers of this book are too far apart.”
Jim Clemmer is a speaker on leadership and culture development, a workshop/retreat facilitator, team builder, author and executive coach.