a photo by ~ Phil Moore on Flickr
Colleen Dilenschneider has written an interesting post entitled How to Lead with Empathy: Read Fiction where she suggests that reading fiction has positively impacted on all the great change-makers and business leaders, saying
“readers make better leaders“
Here are her five reasons to read fiction and improve your leadership skills:
- fiction helps you understand other people’s emotions - readers of fiction score highly on tests of empathy and social reasoning, abilities which enable connections and engagement between people on an emotional level
- fiction increases social ability in that readers of fiction gain an ability to relate to people and groups in differing social situations by providing information on how and why people react, and it challenges the readers’ own perspectives
- fiction enriches brain functioning - we need to keep the brain nourished and stimulated as it a life-long learning organ, and reading is an active brain-enricher, rather than, for example, watching tv or a movie
- fiction makes you more creative in that the unexpected stimuli we encounter when reading fiction teaches our minds to think and act creatively, enhancing our problem-solving skills
- fiction makes you smarter - reading increases vocabulary and exposes the reader to different cultures and time periods
Source: Know Your Own Bone
