There’s a quote attributed to Harry S. Truman that I keep coming back to: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
Margaret Fuller put it even more simply — “Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.”
Both of them are saying the same thing, really. If you want to lead, you’ve got to read. And the reason is pretty straightforward: reading lets you learn from other people’s wins and losses without having to live through them yourself.
Think about that for a second. Someone spent thirty years building a company, made every mistake along the way, finally figured out what works, and then wrote it all down. You can absorb the lessons in a weekend. That’s an absurdly good deal.
It’s the habit of reading, reflecting, and being exposed to all kinds of ideas that quietly builds a leader. Not every reader becomes a leader, sure. But just about every great leader I can think of is a reader.
So, why does reading matter so much?
What should you actually read?
How should you go about it?
And how often, and where?
Pull up a chair…
Why read…
Here’s the thing, reading does a lot of work on you at once, and most of it happens quietly in the background.
It stretches how you see things. Leaders make decisions all day, usually without enough information. Books hand you ready-made mental models for situations you haven’t faced yet. Read a biography, a memoir of a CEO turnaround, or a campaign history, and you’re basically borrowing someone else’s lessons.
It makes you better with people. Reading enhances the ability to sense what someone on your team is actually feeling, not what they’re saying, but what’s underneath. This is backed by work done in 2013, where researchers found that reading literary fiction improved people’s ability to read others’ emotions and intentions.
It calms you down. This one surprised me when I first read it. A 2009 study at the University of Sussex found that just six minutes of reading reduced stress levels by 68%, more than music, more than tea, more than going for a walk. Six minutes. If you’re a leader, you’re carrying stress most of the time. Anything that helps that much, that fast, deserves a spot in your day.
It keeps your brain sharp for the long haul. Another study by Rush University found that older adults who kept their minds active with things like reading experienced about 32% slower cognitive decline. Leadership is a long road. A mind that ages well is one of the best investments you can make.
And it lets you rehearse the hard moments. When you read about how Andy Grove pivoted Intel away from memory chips, or how Jacinda Ardern responded after Christchurch, you’re rehearsing crisis decisions in a safe space. When your own version of that moment comes, you’ve already thought about it. That’s a huge advantage.
What to read…
A common trap is thinking “leadership reading” means stacking your nightstand with business bestsellers. Some of that is fine, but it’s a pretty thin diet on its own. The leaders who read best tend to graze across a few different areas:
Biographies and history. These are basically leadership simulators. You can watch someone operate over decades through their biography.
Literary fiction. I know, I know, his one feels like an indulgence. But it’s actually the genre with the strongest evidence behind it for building empathy. Reading Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is perspective-taking practice. Former President Barak Obama has talked openly about how much novels shaped his thinking in the White House.
Your own field. Whatever industry you’re in, read its best thinkers and its sharpest critics. Whether is Tech, Finance or Design, be unmistakably literate in your own world.
Stuff that has nothing to do with your field. This is where the interesting ideas come from. The marketing leader who reads behavioural economics, the engineer who reads philosophy or the hospital director who reads systems theory, those are the people who bring fresh thinking to a room full of people who all read the same trade journal.
Long-form journalism. Newspapers and Journals with pieces long enough to actually argue something instead of just announce it.
And one more thing, don’t feel like you have to finish every book. If a book isn’t earning its place after fifty pages, put it down according to Naval Ravikant. You’re trying to learn, not collect badges.
How to read…
How you read matters almost as much as what you read.
Read like you mean it. Highlight things. Scribble in the margins. Keep a notebook somewhere, whatever works. Then capture the three or four ideas from each book that actually changed your thinking. If you can’t sum up a book in a paragraph a week later, you didn’t really read it. You just looked at it.
Read with a question. Going into a book with a real problem on your mind, like how do I have hard conversations,how do I approach this or how do I keep a team motivated through a rough quarter? This turns reading from passive consumption into focused detective work.
Talk about it. Discussion is what makes things stick. Start a small book club with a few colleagues, swap recommendations with mentors, just ask the people you respect what they’re reading. There’s even research on the impact of talking about books. The Liverpool Health Inequalities Research Institute followed a reading group of people diagnosed with depression for a year and found their mental health improved as they got better at discussing meaningful ideas together. Talking about books works.
Mix it up. Audiobooks for the commute or the gym, physical books before bed and e-readers when you travel. Find what fits your life.
How often…
You’ll see a stat floating around online claiming that Fortune 500 CEOs read four to five books a month. That one’s an urban legend. Someone traced it back to a 2013 blog post with no actual study behind it. So, take it with a grain of salt.
A realistic target for a busy leader is somewhere between 20 and 30 books a year, plus daily reading of good long-form journalism. That’s about 30 to 45 minutes a day. If that sounds like a lot, remember, even six minutes does measurable work on you.
What’s more important is consistency. Consistency beats intensity, every time. Twenty minutes a day, every day, will turn you into a different person in three years. Two hours every other Saturday won’t.
Where…
Where you read makes a bigger difference than people think.
Have a spot. A chair, decent light, your current book sitting face-down on the side table so it’s the first thing you reach for. That little bit of friction-reduction is underrated. It’s the reading equivalent of leaving your running shoes by the door.
Use the in-between minutes. Commutes, queues, fifteen minutes before a meeting, the quiet half hour before everyone else is up. The Kindle app on your phone means you’re never actually without a book; the only question is whether you reach for it instead of Instagram.
Get away from screens. A reading spot that’s physically away from your notifications so that deep focus can turn reading into learning. A lot has been written about how much context-switching costs your brain. Reading is one of the few things that pays you back for not multitasking.
Read in public sometimes. Libraries, cafés, parks, trains. The mild accountability of being seen with a book in your hand can keep you on the page instead of doomscrolling.
Finally…
In sixty minutes with a good book, you can borrow someone’s decade of hard-won perspective, build an empathy muscle, lower your stress, and tuck another mental model into the leadership toolkit you’ll reach for the next time something hard lands on your desk.
You don’t need to read 52 books a year. You don’t need a private island and a think week. You just need a book within arm’s reach, twenty minutes a day, and the discipline to keep turning the page.
“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” I say Margaret Fuller had it right!