by Addison McLamb
I recently spent an hour looking at lists of “top leadership books.” There were a few books on psychology, some on strategy, and some on decision-making. Most were published in the last 5-10 years. None of the lists included any fiction or poetry.
Unfortunately, these lists reflect the norm: prioritizing nonfiction and expository books (“professional reading”) above fiction and poetry (“pleasure reading”). I’ve seen many recommended reading lists from army commanders and business leaders over the years, and–with few exceptions–they too are heavy on non-fiction and lacking fiction or poetry.
In some ways, this makes sense. Books are declining in popularity. Free time is scarce. Because of this, most reading investment tends toward 1) transactional knowledge extraction in the form of nonfiction, and 2) imitative repetition, where the same few titles become like merit-badge reading, buoyed by a circular cycle of popularity. Only after picking through this group—and only if afforded the luxury—are we allowed the low-brow “pleasure” of good fiction and poetry.
But I don’t think there are higher or lower tiers of books. Good books are good for professional development, genre aside. In my experience, fiction refocuses the mind on people and stories over things and ideas, and adds a welcome seasoning alongside the technical content of most nonfiction.
Below I’ll provide a few reasons to make my case, and also scatter in a few favorite titles. In brief, reading fiction has helped me to:
- Perceive the deeper narratives behind our actions
- Deepen cultural connection and webs of meaning
- Appreciate beauty to ground my perspective
Perceive the Deeper Narratives Behind Our Actions
The Nobel prizes of Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler are grave markers putting an authoritative end to old school economists’ view that people are rational actors. Their research in behavioral economics revealed how wildly unpredictable we as people are. Far beyond logical analysis, people make decisions for all sorts of reasons that may make sense to them and no one else. And part of the reason we’re able to justify these “irrational” decisions is through an instinctive response to the stories that shaped us. Alasdair MacIntyre phrases this idea well in After Virtue: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”
Good fiction—more so than other forms of storytelling—goes layers deep into a person’s mind, working its way into their inner monologue as they make decisions. In a story, we see how characters often don’t reason analytically, but live out an idealistic or egotistical vision that flows from unique starting points. What’s more, they do all this in scenarios where other characters are acting with different information to solve for different outcomes, in similar but distinct conditions. It gets intense! Master and Margarita and Ulysses still blow my mind.
Formalizing this, Rene Girard’s popular writing on the concept of mimesis comes directly from his experience as a literature scholar. Girard believed we are fundamentally imitative, or mimetic, in decision-making, and that what we imitate is largely a product of the stories we consume. Rather than making decisions with blank-slate rationality, we’re actually acting out our own personal narrative, fundamentally constructed by the other narratives we’ve downloaded into our minds over the course of life. Grapes of Wrath and Flannery O’Connor’s short stories are full of characters playing this out.
The practical takeaways from this idea are twofold. First, teams approach similar sets of conditions with different reference points and personal narratives—in which they’re all the main character! It’s important to account for that in counseling, conflict, and development. Recognize that your teammates’ seemingly “irrational” decisions are probably motivated by reasons and stories deeper and more powerful than logic alone—but which are also knowable if you take the time to learn.
Second, do not assume your opponents will make “rational” decisions based on a red-teamed logic tree or competitive analysis. You could be better off learning the stories and mythologies motivating their struggle.
Deepen Cultural Connection and Webs of Meaning
Society is likewise shaped by the stories we collectively consume. These stories then shape our shared vocabulary and meaning. Religions and mythologies and tales are examples of this, but so is our “literary canon” and works of great poetry. Lots of debates surround what works are canonical, in large part because choosing them is choosing which stories will shape our larger cultural narrative. Think back to how the term “scarlet letter” is now fairly commonplace, introduced first by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, or how “catch-22” came from Joseph Heller’s military satire.
Though most of us were introduced to some of these canonical titles in high school, I’ve reread certain books many times since (the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, and the Divine Comedy stand out). Oddly enough, I’ve been motivated to go back to those books because of nonfiction reading and learning. After seeing a wide range of philosophers and thinkers cite and praise great fiction, it pushed me to revisit classic stories I hadn’t touched since high school (in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, the famous psychologist Carl Jung included a full section on his favorite novels). The more I saw these sorts of thinkers refer to canonical fiction in their writing, the more I felt inspired to understand how those stories added such a foundational level of meaning to our cultural conversations and academic focus. It also helped me understand why I was “forced” to read them in the first place!
In a practical sense, knowing these stories has helped me connect more easily with people across different backgrounds. Fiction isn’t an all-inclusive way to achieve this—a large part comes from engaging with culture in other ways, like movies, music, media, and art. But knowing the iconic stories, characters, and references from the canon is powerful for fusing different webs of meaning across diverse teams. It allows us to reason by allegory and archetypes instead of analysis alone, and gives people a model to reference. Starting from cultural commonground can often be an effective way to describe the ideal or goal we’re working towards.
Appreciate Beauty to Ground My Perspective
So far I’ve talked about reading fiction as a means to certain ends—like understanding others’ stories and connecting meaning across cultures. I’ll end with talking about beautiful writing as an end in itself, and a great form of art. In How Fiction Works, James Wood writes:
Fiction does not ask us to believe things, but to imagine them. Imagining the heat of the sun on your back is about as different an activity as can be from believing that it will be sunny. One experience is all but sensual, the other wholly abstract.
Great fiction doesn’t just tell a story, it tells it with memorable style and feeling (Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is my favorite in this regard).
In thinking about what humans all share—what he called our “transcendentals”—the great St. Thomas Aquinas specified beauty as critical for understanding meaning and truth. In my own life, seeking out beauty for its own sake helps ground my sense of perspective about what matters and what doesn’t. Different people are moved by beauty in different forms, but the way that good writing is explicit and objective (compared to visual art) and goes deep into a person’s inner thinking (versus movies and music) resonates a lot with me. Good writing helps me reframe thinking in ways that are not only powerful to read, but also grounding in how they engage a different part of my mind to consider new perspectives.
For instance, think back to the last time you saw a news article about a city’s downtown needing to be improved. The article probably identified challenges, gave facts or examples, and described various plans. But now read these stanzas from William Blake’s London:
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear…
It hits different! Words like Blake’s not only offer a new way to seek beauty, but help us consider reality from unique and descriptive points of view.
The Need for Mental Sandpaper
All books can add value, including all the ones on leadership sites. But part of developing a foundation for creativity and growth means widening our learning beyond the well-trodden path. Including books written for narrative and aesthetics can be a great form of mental sandpaper to round out the technical edges that reading nonfiction alone can create.
Expanding my reading habit to include more fiction and poetry has helped me refocus on people and stories over things and ideas. It’s helped me understand how narratives affect decisions, how culture and meaning interact with stories, and how beauty is foundational for helping build new perspectives. The ends of reading fiction and poetry are worthy, but so is the process itself—a wonderful way to pass an hour or two, engage with the world in a new way, and step back from the page with a new lens on what we thought we already knew.
Addison McLamb is a former Army intelligence officer, serving with special operations forces and brigade combat teams across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. He now works in technology and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
