“Leaders are readers.” You’ve probably heard that before.
But is it true for reading fiction?
A long-time reader sent this article from Harvard Business Review: “The Case for Reading Fiction.” Why is reading literature showing up in a respected business journal?
This is ground we have covered before: The ancients were so good at culture-building that we are still living in their “Western” culture. And part of the secret: schole, the Ancient Greek word for school … and for leisure.
Leisure is not putting your brain in neutral. It is being still long enough to think about the important things. We desperately need to slow down in our workplaces. We’re too busy.
My podcast partner Mike recently blessed me with some dialectic–another classical gift!–around what value any of this classical stuff brings to the workplace. We “wrestled to the truth.” Here’s some of what I told him.
Microwaves aren’t healthy
In classical thought, reading can be hard work. That is on purpose. Slowing down to understand ancient books and their ideas is worth the wrestle. It’s why I say “wrestle and grow.”
Some of us WANT to slow down: making coffee the old-fashioned way, using brushes to shave, sitting down to a vinyl record, etc. These people see value in these things because the quality is higher … but it is slower.
Our microwave culture has infected families and churches and schools and workplaces. It’s why Mike has written “Coaching Amplified,” to help managers stop yelling at, or commanding in impatience, their employees. It’s why much of Mike’s work has involved keeping things simple for the short attention spans we all struggle with in our distracted era.
There are benefits of microwave culture. A microwave will always be faster at warming food. And a conventional oven requires preparing ingredients, watching the stove, cleaning pots, etc.
But the food is better. And better for you. And the experience is rewarding. And if you’re at a gathering of some kind, people always congregate around it—it’s communal.
Perhaps most businesses aren’t interested in paying for that. But some businesses–certainly some of their employees–want it: more fulfilling work, longer-lasting results, a sense of community.
Some know they want to slow down and wrestle.
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Desiring more of this? Stay tuned: We have another Workplace Book Club coming up in a few weeks on the podcast. You can catch all Book Club episodes and download free discussion guides for your team here on our Resources section.