the leadership benefits of reading

Broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders and can catalyze insight, innovation, empathy, and personal effectiveness.

Note how many business titans are or have been avid readers. According to The New York Times, Steve Jobs had an "inexhaustible interest" in William Blake; Nike founder Phil Knight so reveres his library that in it you have to take off your shoes and bow; and Harman Industries founder Sidney Harman called poets "the original systems thinkers," quoting freely from Shakespeare and Tennyson. In Passion & Purpose, David Gergen notes that Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein reads dozens of books each week. And history is littered not only with great leaders who were avid readers and writers (remember, Winston Churchill won his Nobel prize in Literature, not Peace), but with business leaders who believed that deep, broad reading cultivated in them the knowledge, habits, and talents to improve their organizations.

The leadership benefits of reading are wide-ranging. Evidence suggests reading can improve intelligence and lead to innovation and insight. Some studies have shown, for example, that reading makes you smarter through "a larger vocabulary and more world knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills." Reading — whether Wikipedia, Michael Lewis, or Aristotle — is one of the quickest ways to acquire and assimilate new information. Many business people claim that reading across fields is good for creativity. And leaders who can sample insights in other fields, such as sociology, the physical sciences, economics, or psychology, and apply them to their organizations are more likely to innovate and prosper.

Reading can also make you more effective in leading others. Reading increases verbal intelligence, making a leader a more adept and articulate communicator. Reading novels can improve empathy and understanding of social cues, allowing a leader to better work with and understand others — traits that author Anne Kreamer persuasively linked to increased organizational effectiveness, and to pay raises and promotions for the leaders who possessed these qualities. And any business person understands that heightened emotional intelligence will improve his or her leadership and management ability.

Finally, an active literary life can make you more personally effective by keeping you relaxed and improving health. For stressed executives, reading is the best way to relax, as reading for six minutes can reduce stress by 68%, and some studies suggest reading may even fend off Alzheimer's, extending the longevity of the mind. 

John Coleman

For Those Who Want to Lead, Read. HBR Blog Network. Harvard Business Review. August 15, 2012

mortality works

For several years I was assigned to home teach an older sister in my ward. She did not have an easy life. She had various health problems and experienced a lifetime of pain due to a childhood accident on the playground. Divorced at age 32 with four young children to raise and provide for, she remarried at age 50. Her second husband passed away when she was 66, and this sister lived an additional 26 years as a widow.

Despite her lifelong challenges, she was faithful to her covenants to the end. This sister was an avid genealogist, a temple attender, and a collector and writer of family histories. Though she had many difficult trials, and without question she felt at times sadness and loneliness, she had a cheerful countenance and a gracious and pleasant personality.

Nine months after her passing, one of her sons had a remarkable experience in the temple. He learned by the power of the Holy Ghost that his mother had a message for him. She communicated with him, but not by vision or audible words. The following unmistakable message came into the son’s mind from his mother: “I want you to know that mortality works, and I want you to know that I now understand why everything happened [in my life] the way it did—and it is all OK.”

Brook P. Hales

"Mortality Works!" General Conference October 2024

a mark of rebellion

I believe it pleases our Creator when we do our best to care for His wonderful gift of a physical body. It would be a mark of rebellion to deface or defile one’s body, or abuse it, or fail to do what one can to pursue a healthy lifestyle. At the same time, vanity and becoming consumed with one’s physique, appearance, or dress can be a form of rebellion at the other extreme, leading one to worship God’s gift instead of God.

D. Todd Christofferson

"Burying Our Weapons of Rebellion", General Conference October 2024

invest in relationships with other people

Ari Shapiro of NPR: ...If people could change one thing in their lives to be happier, what should they choose, according to the data?

Dr. Robert Waldinger, one of the authors of The Good Life: Lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness: They should invest in their relationships with other people. We found that the strongest predictors of who not just stayed happy but who was healthy as they went through life - the strongest predictors were the warmth and the quality of their relationships with other people.

SHAPIRO: Does it matter whether we're talking about friends, spouses, coworkers, other kinds of relationships?

WALDINGER: It doesn't matter. We get benefits from all of those kinds of relationships, including the person who makes our coffee for us in the morning, including the person who delivers our mail. We get little hits of well-being in all these different kinds of relationships.

Author Interview: What's the #1 thing to change to be happier? A top happiness researcher weighs in. Ari Shapiro and Robert Waldinger. NPR. January 10, 2023.

keeps men and women young and handsome

Brother Thomas considers himself very aged and infirm, and you can see that he is, brethren and sisters! What is the cause of it? He left the gospel of salvation. What do you think is the difference between his age and mine? One year and seven months to a day; and he is one year , seven months, and fourteen days older than Brother Heber C. Kimball. ‘Mormonism’ keeps men and women young and handsome; and where they are full of the Spirit of God, there are none of them but will have a glow upon their countenances; and that is what makes you and me young; for the Spirit of God is with us, and within us.


Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. V., p. 210 as quoted in Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.168

most richly blessed

Perhaps no prayer written on the Civil War battlefield had such lasting resonance as the one recovered from the body of a dead Confederate soldier, found in Devil’s Den after the Battle of Gettysburg.

I asked You, God, for strength that I might achieve,
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey;
I asked for health that I might do greater things,
I was given infirmity that I might do better things;
I asked for riches that I might be happy,
I was given poverty that I might be wise;
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men,
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God;
I got nothing that I asked for,
but everything I hoped for;
I am among all men most richly blessed.


One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America by James P. Moore, Jr. Doubleday, 2005. p.176

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.


Doug Larson

Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.


Edward Stanley

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.


Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

...A new study shows an apple a day keeps the calories at bay. People who ate an apple about 15 minutes before lunch consumed almost 190 fewer calories than when they didn't have the apple....

"This suggests that eating something like a piece of fruit that's low in calories before your meal might be a great strategy for reducing calorie intake," says Julie Flood, a researcher at Penn State....

Barbara Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State, says the findings add to the knowledge that foods low in calories, such as soup, salad or fruit, at the beginning of a meal gives you an extra course, and you end up eating less....

Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, N.Y., says, "This is great evidence that it's not the calories, but it's the effort of eating that tricks us into thinking we're full."


Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY 10/23/2007, Apple a day keeps the calories at bay

A vigorous five mile walk will do more good for an unhappy, but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

Paul Dudley White