Books or Food – A guilt free approach to a leaders reading

Twice in the past week I’ve recommended books to different friends, because I thought the book would feed into subjects that I knew they were interested in. Both friends responded with a similar reply – “Great. I’ll put it on the pile of the 17 other unread books by my bedside”.  My heart sunk for them. I imagined the guilt, frustration and helplessness they experienced as they climbed over the enticing, yet condemning pile and into bed.

If leaders are to lead, they have to be fuelled daily by new thoughts and new ideas. If they aren’t, then they will be bringing yesterdays thoughts and ideas to todays and tomorrows challenges.  They will bring stale air, rather than fresh, inspiring air into their thinking and their conversations.  Salman Rushdie captured it perfectly when he said, 

“Those who do not have the power of the story that dominates their lives – power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it and change it as times may change – truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts”

How does a leader fuel new thoughts? Thoughts and ideas that have the power to overcome todays challenges, re-imagine the future, flex in changing times and bring critical perspective, to seemingly intractable problems?

Maybe you thought I was going to answer…. ‘reading!’

But I’m not.

My answer is ‘ideas’.  

Reading is not an end in itself, it’s a means to an end. The end is new ideas, enlarged perspectives and new thoughts, as Rushdie called them. The means these new thoughts come through are often reading and listening, through podcasts, talks etc, (reading is actually just another form of listening). Reading and listening give us the space to let others tell us their stories, their ideas and their thoughts, which in turn stimulate our own new thoughts.

When reading is our goal, our approach typically looks like a computer game, where you have to fight to overcome challenge A, before you are allowed to progress to challenge B.  In this strategy reading becomes a linear process. 

You read Book A from beginning to end. You put it on the shelf and pick up Book B. You read this to the end. Put it on the shelf and pick up Book C.  

What happens is more like this.

We may complete Book A, after an exhausting exertion of self-discipline. We then start Book B, but it doesn’t particularly excite us, but we feel we should finish it. Our reading momentum is then lost and eventually dries up. We daren’t just dump Book B and go on to Book C or D or E, because….. because……because? Because that’s not how you are supposed to read books; that’s not good self-discipline. Who said? Who wrote the ‘rules’ of reading books that you are following?  From Primary School onwards we were always taught that you have to slog to the end, whatever you felt – that’s what being a good reader demanded.  

If we change not only the rules of the leaders reading game, but change the very game itself, we create a dynamic engine for generating new ideas and thoughts.  The food of leadership thinking and inspiration is not the book, it’s the ideas, the thoughts, within the book.  If we make it our goal to focus on feeding, or nourishing our leadership thinking, then we can approach all books and podcasts with a new freedom, with literally unstoppable energy, interest and momentum.  

 Rather than view the pile of books like eating our greens, where we weren’t allowed ice-cream until we’d eaten all of our sprouts, we can see them like a sumptuous buffet of ideas, thoughts, insights, learnings and inspiration; a source of mind and soul and spirit nourishment.  Looked at it this way, the pile of 10 books by the bedside are suddenly all in play at the same time, rather than sitting patiently on the substitutes bench waiting for the call-up that may never come.  If I add up all of the books and podcasts that I am currently drawing from right now, that are feeding me, my list of ‘players’ on the pitch is easily 12, not 1. My pile of books is a living pipeline that is producing new leadership ideas and personal growth.  It now looks more like this.

I always have a lot of books in play. I constantly feed the learning-pipeline with books and podcasts that, like a Magpie, have caught the attention of my head or heart. I then follow the energy and the interest in each of them for as long as it lasts – a page, a chapter, or a whole book.  Some books need some perseverance and some don’t. It’s trial and error. But keeping the momentum is everything. You being in charge of your reading is crucial. Freedom in reading is essential.  

Once you stop reading, you stop the pipeline and flow of new thoughts. I started a podcast the other day and after five minutes I said to myself, ‘this isn’t giving me anything that I need right now. I’ll come back to it later’, so I scanned my podcast list and chose another one that absorbed me for the next 90 minutes.  I start books because they catch my mind, or heart’s eye. I’m happy to buy a book and discover that there is only one gem of a sentence in the whole book, because that one gem brings new thoughts with it, that may have an exponential impact in my work. I’m happy to start and not finish a book, start and finish, pick at chapters in the middle, read the summary pages. I will do whatever it takes to keep the learning engine alive, fed, generating new thoughts.  If it’s doing that, then your reading is fruitful.  Getting bogged down and stopping reading doesn’t serve anyone, including you and your leadership, or your inspiration of others. To inspire simply means to breathe fresh air/life into others and we do that when we are constantly breathing fresh life into ourselves.

The key to the reading and listening is Focus.  Focusing on the goal of books and podcasts, not the means. Focus on the questions that guide our learning.

§  Am I energised by what I’m learning from this book/podcast?

§  Is this book/podcast giving birth to new thoughts and ideas?

§  Am I growing through what I’m reading/listening to?

If you are bored or bogged down with a book, then there’s no oxygen there for you. Put it down. Note it, for when you are ready to pick it up again, (over 50% of the books that I read in 2020 I had read before, but judging by what they were giving me, they felt like I was reading them for the first time). Move on to what is calling to you from your pile. Keep the whole pile in play, not just one of them. And if there is nothing there that has energy in it right now, then go for a wander through a podcast channel, a local bookstore, or the recommendations of a reading-inspired friend.

Maybe it’s time to have a team talk with all those books by your bedside.