The Leader’s Forgotten Habit – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

What would your life look like if you started this habit today?

Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to read. I’ve written several times about the power of this habit, and a whole section of my blog is devoted to it. This year also started with a big goal for me: one book a week. With Harry Truman’s powerful line in mind, "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers", I decided to devote this post to what I call "the forgotten habit". Read on.

We talk and hear about leadership in every corner of the planet. One reason among many is that we urgently need transformative initiatives, whether to stay afloat, climb out of a crisis or, at best, unlock all the physical and intellectual capabilities of people, organizations and countries. That clearly calls for leadership, commitment and dedication at every level. Yet in all that talk about leadership, we take one habit for granted: reading.

Reading is a universe as boundless as human imagination, and it is and always will be timeless. The hunger for answers, the act of choosing a subject and the effort of full concentration to absorb every bit of knowledge haven’t changed and won’t. Today, more than ever, we need a clear, focused vision that gives meaning to all we do and, above all, answers that let us act effectively.

In an age of information overload, judgment is essential. The glut of information is a given. The old challenge was "making decisions with incomplete information". Today we’re saturated, so the real skill is "making decisions when you’re drowning in information".

That makes critical thinking essential, along with the judgment to know which reading will give us the concept or idea we need to move forward as we look for solutions and decide where to put our resources. Leadership, in all its forms, looks for solutions and answers to get out of tight spots that need immediate fixes or, at best, to anticipate and build the future in a balanced way.

In a volatile world, we need focus. Reading trains deep attention, which is already a form of meditation with well-proven benefits. And if everything comes down to how we spend our energy, it’s wonderful to picture a book worth investing time in and getting the most out of.

Forgotten as it may be, reading never goes out of style. It holds the answers we’re looking for and can spark any creative process. It also builds empathy, sharpens communication, broadens vision and, at best, leads us to a purpose.

What was the last thing you read?

Warm regards and my very best wishes,

Rodrigo Baccaro

This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: What happens in our brain when we fall in love. My takeaway: thirst and hunger follow the same primitive pathway in the brain as love, with dopamine playing the same role.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Summa contra Gentiles by Saint Thomas Aquinas. My takeaway: the importance of demonstrative reasoning and of answering objections against the truth.
• What I’ve been Reading: The Fountainhead. A friend strongly recommended Ayn Rand, along with Atlas Shrugged. At the time I was, as always, buried in other books and kept putting hers off. This time I finally got my hands on this powerful book. It’s now on my list of "must-read" books everyone should get to at some point. I wish I’d read it at 15, but everything happens for a reason.
• What I’ve been Learning: The art of managing emotions. One powerful question stood out: "Tell me about a time when you outdid yourself and even surprised yourself with how well you did." It puts us in a deeply inspired place, and the possibilities for building from there are endless.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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