Copyright Forbes
Ask UCL professor Colin Fisher and he’ll tell you that the best coaches ask more questions than they answer, and the most effective leaders inquire more than they instruct. The principle sounds deceptively simple, yet it explains why exceptional leadership is so very rare. As leaders rise higher, the ratio of curiosity to certainty often inverts, simply by design. The higher the rank, the fewer the questions, and the more narrow the inputs to our own cognitive excellence. Part of this is structural. Senior leaders are rewarded for making decisions, not for endlessly inquiring about which fork in the road to take. Another part is cultural. The higher the title, the more intimidating it becomes to admit ignorance or that there’s something we haven’t learned yet. And finally, there is time pressure pure and simple. A CEO with fifteen meetings a day does not get rewarded for reading deeply outside their field, full stop. The irony is that the marginal return of learning is often highest precisely when leaders explore beyond their specialty. In economics, marginal return measures the added benefit from the next unit of effort. Applied to knowledge, it suggests that the next hour spent reading a new discipline may pay far more than another hour reinforcing what you already know. So the real question for leaders is not whether to learn, but where to find ideas that are worth listening to, and how to protect space for that learning. Leadership as readership Books remain the most underutilized leadership tool known to mankind. They are, to borrow a concept Warren Buffett uses to describe businesses that earn high returns and invest them back in, the most consistent compounding machine available. Unlike a briefing memo or a board pack, books are written with the benefit of time. They allow leaders to interact with decades or even centuries of thought on their own schedule, at their own pace. MORE FOR YOU Research has shown that we comprehend more deeply when we read books of the tangible, in-your-hand-and-heavy, kind. The physical act of pausing, reflecting, and re-reading allows for the integration of ideas in ways that scrolling a feed never will. Books demand what digital content actively discourages, our sustained attention. For starters, leaders who read reclaim the ability to focus in a world that monetizes distraction. But the benefits of casting leadership as readership goes much further than that. Adam Witty, founder & CEO of Advantage Media, has built a career helping executives build authority through publishing. He notes that while many leaders dream of writing, the best begin by reading. “The goal is breadth, not ego,” he says A leader who reads widely has more vantage points, more metaphors, and more models to draw upon when navigating complexity. ”The best leaders in the world understand this instinctively,” Witty continues. “They read, and they read broadly and they cultivate their leadership through the act of reading.” Reading widely is how they expand their capacity to think in systems, to borrow ideas across domains, and to build bridges between disciplines. The practice is visible at the very top. Barack Obama’s annual reading lists became a cultural event because they demonstrated the range of his intellectual diet. Bill Gates’s summer book lists became required reading for the technology world. And the cycle tends to reinforce itself. As Witty observes, “Most authors are readers first. The impulse to write comes only after years of learning.” Here, we see reading compounds into authorship, and authorship compounds into leadership authority. As Witty explains, “authorship is empty without authority and knowing where the world is going, and that is hard to get without reading broadly yourself.” Laura Baldwin, president of O’Reilly Media, offers another angle that supports the same argument. While the number of physical books in circulation may be lower than in decades past, engagement with knowledge is expanding. “Beyond the AI rush that necessitates more knowledge to be poured into the heads of leaders, there is a humanity aspect here, we need more authors who meet the moment, because leaders are hungry for more at a faster pace” What Baldwin identifies is a cultural shift where leaders want more knowledge, faster, but they cannot afford superficiality. Books are still the one format that offers depth to those who demand it. Baldwin has seen this shift firsthand in the area of thinking more clearly about AI in particular. “Some CEOs are thinking at the outset about replacing, not enabling people, even though the growing consensus is on the latter when it comes to experts who think and write about the topic” she warns. Her broader concern is that in the rush to adopt new technologies, leaders risk narrowing their thinking instead of expanding it. “We still need a human in the loop, and that includes on both sides of the book, writing and reading them” she reminds Books, with their demand for reflection, are one of the few mediums that keep that human loop intact. Taken together, these points argue for a simple change in mindset. Leaders must see themselves not only as decision makers, but as readers of the great works and thoughts of others. And not readers in the leisurely sense, but readers as an essential act of leadership. As Laura Baldwin reminds us, “In the end, the leaders who last are the ones who keep learning. The pace of change will only get faster, but the wisdom to guide it still comes from those willing to sit with a book, to think longer than the next quarter, and to let ideas reshape them before they reshape the world.” The early advantages that compound Habits compound over time and success in leadership is never the product of a single moment of brilliance. Instead, it is what results from the accumulation of daily choices that strengthen or weaken over decades. Reading is one such habit. Robert Siegel, Stanford professor and author of The Systems Leader, has studied resilient leaders across industries. His research highlights one trait again and again: the ability to expand inputs. “The smartest leaders seek out diverse perspectives to challenge assumptions,” he explains Leaders who build this into their daily practice early have an advantage that compounds with every new responsibility they take on. Siegel frames this as a systems mindset. “Stop firefighting. Think beyond the now,” he argues, pointing out that the leaders who thrive are those who balance immediate demands with long-term innovation Most leaders spend their careers rewarded for reacting quickly, but those who succeed over the long haul are able to step back and see patterns. Or as Siegel’s book reminds us, they see the world through the lens of systems. They identify connections others miss and they notice when a change in one part of the system will ripple across the whole. This is part of the reason why Siegel stresses that leadership today is no longer command-and-control. “The old model of leadership doesn’t work anymore. Geography, technology, and global shocks have changed the game,” Siegel says, before noting how “the best leaders create psychological safety, admit uncertainty, and problem-solve together.” And this requirement to adapt is only growing stronger with time. “Never stop leveling up,” Siegel emphasizes. Leaders who cultivate reading and reflection as a habit give themselves the raw material to evolve ahead of their industries. The insight is not confined to the Bill Gates and other leaders of large enterprises alone, mind you. Small and mid-sized businesses may have even more to gain. Jacob Bennett, CEO of Crux Analytics, describes how small business owners face ambiguity daily. “What they are really looking for is a trusted advisor who can help navigate challenging times, build their business, and thrive as entrepreneurs,” he says. For leaders of smaller organizations, exposure to different fields provides models to borrow from, especially when facing uncertainty. The pace of change makes the need for smarter advisors even more urgent. “Things are changing so quickly, the first to feel this is going to be the small business,” Bennett explains. Inflation, tariffs, and shifting regulation can squeeze margins overnight. Leaders cannot always see these pressures coming, but they can make sure they are ready to react to them. Siegel adds that even seasoned leaders benefit from studying how systems operate elsewhere. “Sometimes the systems leader needs to see the system in play elsewhere first” This act of comparative learning becomes a shortcut. Leaders do not need to wait until they face a crisis. They can study how others have faced it already. The lesson here is clear, and easy to adopt. Leaders who start the habit of broad reading early benefit from a compounding edge. The leadership as readership loop As with anything worth pursuing, the challenge is often with getting started. Leaders live in a world of scarce time. Travel, meetings, and decisions compete for every waking hour. The act of reading must therefore be structured as a practice, not a luxury. A useful loop is to keep three books in rotation at all times. The first is an identity book, usually an autobiography or memoir that models the person you want to become. The second is a practice book, something directly relevant to your current role, whether strategy, negotiation, or industry-specific. The third is an exploration book from a field you have never studied before. The point is not to necessarily finish them. In fact, completion is irrelevant to learning from the writing of others. The act of keeping them present and reading at least a page a day is the habit that matters. Leaders often underestimate the cumulative power of a single page. Over a year, it becomes hundreds. Over a decade, it becomes thousands. And the act of sustained exposure shifts the way the mind works. Even forgetting what you read can be part of the process. Cognitive science shows that forgetting is essential to learning. What matters is not perfect recall, but the ability to integrate fragments into new patterns. The goal is to keep the habit alive, not to recite. And above all, the goal is to never stop learning.
