How Reading Outside Your Industry Makes You a Better Leader

With the high stakes business environment, leadership is being viewed as a practice that needs to be mastered with extensive study of theory of management and trends in the market. We are informed to read the biographies of the Silicon Valley giants, learn by heart the tactics of Fortune 500 leaders, and stay on the tip of our respective industry. Although this information is not necessarily bad, it is not complete. The best leaders realize that innovation hardly exists in a vacuum. It occurs when concepts of different disciplines clash leading to sparks that spark whole new thinking.

If you strictly follow the standard advice on how to be a better leader, you might find yourself trapped in an echo chamber. You are reading the same case studies as your competition, you are attending the same conferences and the inevitable is that you end up thinking like your competitors. To escape such homogeneity, you have to turn to other places. The wide variety of books you can read through fiction, history, psychology, and even biology enables you to apply an inventive and nimble creativity to problems that cannot be brought to bear through industry-specific knowledge.

The Issue of Tunnel Vision

You become rather tunnel-visioned in your thoughts when you only read about the stuff in your discipline. You are a professional at what and how in your industry, but you can forget about the bigger why. This entitlement may be harmful. It results in a strict thinking process in which possible solutions are refused since they do not comply with the norms of your industry.

Excellent leadership must have the capacity to interpret patterns where there is havoc. Berkshire Hathaway late vice chairman Charlie Munger also praised his success as the result of a latticework of mental models. His belief was that one could superimpose the basic tenets of different fields, such as physics, biology, psychology, and achieve better resolutions to business problems. When the best practices of your industry have been placed as your mental models, then your latticework is full of holes. A general reading serves to address those gaps, and this way you would become a holistic leader, rather than a specialist manager.

The Budget Traveler and the Vodou Priestess

Among the strongest positive effects of diverse reading, one must mention the ability to develop creative problem-solving. Innovation can simply be described as the act of simply bringing a tested idea in one setting and implementing it in a new setting. Indeed, software engineer may discover a solution to a thorny problem of coding architecture not in a book on computer engineering, but in a book about the organic form of the ant colony.

This is where the role of reading in business becomes truly transformative. It is not merely about getting facts, but it is about educating your brain to create cross-connections later on. In reading history you get to know about strategy and the nature of man when under stress. When one reads philosophy, they wrestle with morals and reason. These do not represent distractions of your work; they are the gasoline to your work. A breakthrough can be caused even by picking up a novel. You may be engaged in reading a fast-paced thriller or a drama saga, and you may realize the character dynamics throws light on a conflict resolution plan to your team.

Take a look at the world of fiction. It will enable you to play out social experiences and emotional landscapes that you might not have come across in the boardroom. In a recent study published in the journal Science, it was discovered that reading literary fiction enhances the mental state of reading about others and the way they feel, i.e. Theory of Mind. It is a very essential negotiation and team management skill. On one such platform such as FictionMe, you may be absorbed in a mafia love story filled with intrigue of the various hierarchies and loyalty systems of the characters. Although the environment is very different, which is an office-corporate-level, the questions of trust, betrayal, and power are applicable anywhere.

Improving Cultural Intelligence and Empathy

People are a final concern of leadership. Being a good leader, you have to know what drives your team, your clients, and your stakeholders. The non-fiction books for entrepreneurs usually consider human behavior as a variable in an equation, yet the literature shows it in all of its sloppy, emotional, convolutions.

Moreover, cultural intelligence is increased through reading cross-cultural and inter-temporal stories. Knowledge on how to comprehend different views is a competitive advantage in a globalized economy. It not only helps you make more inclusive and adaptable teams by eliminating personal assumptions formed on the basis of your limited experience, but also enables you to do so. Whether you read stories online during your commute or curl up with a paperback at night, you are actively training your brain to be more receptive and understanding.

The Key to Developing a Diverse Reading Habit.

The need to introduce different reading in a hectic program is deliberate. It is simple to revert to the most recent business bestseller but you will have to go out of your way to find something different. The first step is auditing your reading list. And unless the past five books you read were all on marketing or finance, your next book should be a biography, a book on science or a novel.

This can be facilitated by making use of technology. Apps and online libraries enable instant access to the content of the world. You can read stories online while waiting for a meeting or during your downtime, turning idle moments into opportunities for growth. Sites such as Fiction Me provide an easy means to get to a myriad of genres with a press of a button on your phone. A library in your pocket, eliminates the friction that is involved in discovering new material; you can now more easily leave your comfort zone.

There is no need to be afraid of dropping books that do not appeal to you. It is meant to explore, not to survive. When a book is not inspiring you or making you interested, then close it and get another one. Read the way a business likes to invest in his or her portfolio- expand on what you have.

Summary

The road to being a visionary leader is lined with books that do not relate to your industry. Going beyond the cozy boundaries of business literature, you open the door to fresh thoughts, historical trends, and emotive levels beyond the view of the specialist.