For Those Who Want to Lead, Read

 

by John Coleman 

When David Petraeus visited the Harvard Kennedy School in 2009, one of the meetings he requestedwas with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Petraeus, who holds a PhD in International Relations from Princeton, is a fan of Team of Rivals and wanted time to speak to the famed historian about her work. Apparently, the great general (and current CIA Director) is something of a bibliophile.

He’s increasingly an outlier. Even as global literacy rates are high (84%), people are reading less and less deeply. The National Endowment for the Arts (PDF) has found that “[r]eading has declined among every group of adult Americans,” and for the first time in American history, “less than half of the U.S. adult American population is reading literature.” Literacy has been improving in countries like India and China, but that literacy may not translate into more or deeper reading.

This is terrible for leadership, where my experience suggests those trends are even more pronounced. Business people seem to be reading less — particularly material unrelated to business. But deep, 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 (PDF), 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.

Reading more can lead to a host of benefits for business people of all stripes, and broad, deep reading can make you a better leader. So how can you get started? Here are a few tips:

• Join a reading group. One of my friends meets bimonthly with a group of colleagues to read classics in philosophy, fiction, history, and other areas. Find a group of friends who will do the same with you.

 

• Vary your reading. If you’re a business person who typically only reads business writing, commit to reading one book this year in three areas outside your comfort zone: a novel, a book of poetry, or a nonfiction piece in science, biography, history, or the arts.

 

• Apply your reading to your work. Are you struggling with a problem at work? Pick up a book on neuroscience or psychology and see if there are ways in which you can apply the lessons from those fields to your profession.

 

• Encourage others. After working on a project with colleagues, I’ll often send them a book that I think they’ll enjoy. Try it out; it might encourage discussion, cross-application of important lessons, and a proliferation of readers in your workplace.

 

• Read for fun. Not all reading has to be developmental. Read to relax, escape, and put your mind at ease.

 

Reading has many benefits, but it is underappreciated as an essential component of leadership development. So, where have you seen reading benefit your life? What suggestions would you have for others seeking to grow their leadership through reading?

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/for_those_who_want_to_lead_rea.html

Number of children reading for fun has fallen since 2005, study reveals More than a fifth of children never read in their own time, according to research

 

Three in 10 children read daily in their own time, down from four in 10 in 2005, the study found. Photograph: Alamy

The proportion of children reading for pleasure has declined as their time is crowded with other activities, and more than a fifth never read in their own time, according to research published on Friday.

The study, which finds a clear link between reading outside class and high achievement in school, reveals that fewer children are reading comics and magazines.

The research by the National Literacy Trust was based on a study of more than 21,000 children carried out last year.

It finds that text messages are the most commonly read material outside of class.

The proportion of children reading magazines has declined from over three-quarters in 2005 to 57% last year.

When the survey was first conducted in 2005, four in 10 children said they read daily in their own time. That figure is now around three in ten.

The research found that young people were shunning books in favour of TV – 54% of those questioned said they preferred watching TV to reading.

The National Literacy Trust’s director Jonathan Douglas said: “The fact that children are reading less than in 2005 signals a worrying shift in young people’s literacy habits.

“We are calling for the government to back a campaign to halt this reading decline and to give children time to read in their daily lives.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “The findings of this survey come as no surprise and show that we need to continue our drive to encourage young people to develop a love of reading. In a world of so many distractions for young minds, the place of literature is more important than ever.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/07/children-reading-fun-fallen-study

Review of Poetry of the Taliban

Book Review: Poetry of Taliban

Will the Taliban’s war poetry be accepted as a literary find, lending voice to a deeply conflicted movement?

Reviewed by Razeshta Sethna

IN the 1980s, the Afghan mujahideen were photographed as bearded, rugged fighters with Kalashnikovs and Stinger missiles, surrounded by mountains. They made

romantic subjects under the caption ‘freedom’. I vaguely remember an American photographer from that time, recuperating in Karachi after travelling with these fighters as they attacked Russian convoys. Mesmerised with their ‘heroism’ and desire for freedom, their passion for reciting poetry and singing at night, he had taken hundreds of photographs.

Those years were witness to few reports on the mujahideen’s brutal hold on power, the infighting among warlords surviving on CIA dollars, the rape of Afghan women. Their Western benefactors ignored all of that — until the rise of the Taliban, when Mullah Omar’s regime was severely ostracised for its medievalist rule and treatment of women. Under the Taliban (1996-2001), severe punishments were the norm for daring to go against their edicts

banning music and dance.

Alex Strick Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, the editors of an English-language anthology of 235 poems titled Poetry of the Taliban, try to

provide a window into this ‘other’ world known only for its violent insurgency. With translations of Pashtu and Dari poems written by the Afghan Taliban, the book has stirred the emotions of many, with some decrying it as “self-satisfying propaganda”. In their introduction, the editors claim that these are uncensored voices allowing the reader to “appreciate those who comprise the Taliban as human beings (regardless of what actions they might have taken)”. Mostly poems selected from the Taliban’s official website, this anthology also comprises older verses taken from magazines, newspapers and recordings dating back to the 1980s and 1990s; some are not written by those associated with the Taliban and only one poem is by a woman.

As much as one might want to agree that this is not a political undertaking but a lyrical project, the often dark and desperate outpourings of sorrow, anger and accusations (directed at the West) and the expressions of love, war, nationalism and religious zeal contradict that reading. It is also hard to forget that the poetry (or at least some of the poems) belongs to Taliban insurgents who continue to pose a longstanding threat to secularism and democracy with their version of Islam.

The introductory note points to an interesting contradiction between official Taliban

edicts preventing the playing of music, except taranas or ballads, on Afghan radio stations between 1996 and 2001 and Mullah Omar’s

personal preference for playing songs by Saraji, his favourite Taliban singer, while riding in his SUV. Neither this preference, nor the centuries-old heritage of poetry and music, eased the ban on musicians until after 2001. But the editors remind us that hosting poetry and music sessions in the southern provinces is welcomed, adding that Mullah Omar would “sing after battle during the 1980s jihad”.

Focused on the conflicts that have shaped Afghanistan for the past three decades, these poems would have been recited to motivate fighters. With diverse themes and emotional appeal, they instantly draw the reader. The use of pastoral imagery and references to Afghan warriors from history are common to most of them. Political messages couched in repetitive verses urge Afghans to expel foreign occupiers in the religious and nationalistic poems mostly written after 2006. Others are love poems where the grieved poet talks of bombs, graves and revenge. Written as classic war poems for the most part, using regional poetic forms, they talk about modern war tactics.

“The Trench” draws on Taliban war songs. Fighters write about experiences from the frontlines, saying goodbye to families, descriptions of the enemy, of night raids, drone attacks on weddings, the loss of comrades. Most poets are critical of the changes brought through the sociopolitical structure supported by the international community. They critique the dollar inflated economy: “This is the land of Muslims/This is the land of great Afghans/This has the mark of the paradise/This is the land of the holy Quran/Don’t sell yourselves to the Americans”; condemn the role of non-governmental organisations: “Most people who broke with the government move to NGOs/ The reason is, salaries are in dollars/How many are the NGOs!”; decry the ‘Western’ influence on Afghan women and their dress. They deride the corruption of the Karzai government, often making direct references: “Don’t spread your dollars around/I have a revolutionary religion/You best be leaving now/I have sons born of Malalai”.

Written in December 2008, in the poem “Good News”, the young mujahideen is

advised to take revenge for night raids that ‘disgrace’ Afghan families. Other poems — with descriptive titles such as “The Message of Devoted Mujahid”, “O Eid of the Trench”, “The Cries of Forty-One Countries Reach the Sky” — confirm the Taliban’s conservative worldview while glorifying nationalism and bravery in war. They make direct references to suicide bombers, RPGs and jihad as a legal obligation: “We are happy when we are martyred for our extreme zeal and honour/That is the reason we strap bombs around our waists/ We have properly identified the puppets and servants of the foreigners/We circle their names in red on our lists.”

The poems express determination that the most recent foreign invaders — referred to as 41 countries — will be sent packing, just like the Russians and British occupiers before them. A chilling compliment in an undated poem that reveres the mujahid for “playing football with the heads of infidels” and for “[sounding] out the Islamic kalima to the world” could be a reminder about the beheading and stoning of alleged spies and those accused of ‘immorality’ in Kabul’s Ghazi stadium between 1996-2001.

Today, the official face of the Taliban does not openly reflect its anti-culture, anti-women, anti-West past, with ‘reformed’ members occupying key ministerial positions. But the reality is not much different from what happened during their regime. Earlier in the summer, a young woman was shot by Taliban commanders in Parwan province on the outskirts of Kabul on the pretext that she had committed ‘immoral’ crimes. Spectators gathered to witness the execution. And as recently as last week, Taliban insurgents beheaded 17 civilians, including two women, in Helmand province, a long-time Taliban stronghold; some reports state they were part of a music and dance evening while others explain the men were informers for the government.

Such incidents reflect that the Taliban’s ideology remains unchanged. Poet Nasery laments that, “We did all of this to ourselves”. But his is a solitary line in a collection where those “Heroes of the Maiwand battles/Those strict Pashtuns” are eulogized as fighters on a religious mission.

Poetry of the Taliban is full of admonitions, complaints against ‘infidels’, disgust at Afghans earning dollars, descriptions of suffering at the frontlines and the loneliness of widows, orphans and mothers, but without reference to engaging meaningfully with the outside world or even with the government to find a peaceful solution to the future. The solution for most lies in fighting the invaders until they leave. The poem “Slave” satirises the Karzai-Bush

alliance, accusing the former: “Karzai! You sold the country for a few dollars.”

As much as these poems may explain the reasons behind the Taliban’s unrelenting ideology and their resentment towards foreign occupiers, there is  still that lingering question of whether they merit the space accorded to them. Should the Taliban’s political ideology of violence, perpetuated under the guise of religious belief, be circulated? Moreover, when a shooting or a beheading is recorded to the soundtrack of a tarana and that same tarana is used for propaganda

videos showing attacks on American and Afghan forces, one is left wondering about the contradiction: violence to the tune of music. Has their ban on cultural activities and music always been selective to suit political purposes and to show the world their dogmatic façade?

Last year it was reported that the Taliban have about 40 singers on their payroll, each producing an album a month. These songs, explains a Taliban spokesperson, “give a lesson in bravery, manliness and protecting the country from the invaders”, a familiar theme in this collection. Today, most Afghans travelling out of Kabul have insurgent songs about suicide bombers and teenage martyrs on their cell phones because if stopped at a Taliban check post with Indian or Afghan ring tones, their phones would be smashed and they would be beaten. If the Taliban privately recite poetry, listen to music and even resolve to change — “We are not animals/I say this with certainty/But/Humanity has been forgotten by us/I don’t know when it will come back” — is there space for that? Or is Poetry of the Taliban another publication revealing more of what we know about a resilient insurgent movement?

The reviewer is a staffer at the monthly Herald

Poetry of the Taliban

(POETRY)

Edited by Alex Strick Van Linschoten

and Felix Kuehn

Translated by Mirwais Rahmany and

Hamid Stanikzai

Hurst & Company, London

ISBN 1849041113

247pp. Rs1,595

 

Influence of classic literature on writers declining, study claim

Modern authors are stylistically influenced by their contemporaries rather than writers from the 18th and 19th centuries, according to word-frequency study of classic literature.

 

‘I no longer have the patience for long philosophical digressions’ … Lionel Shriver. Photograph: David Azia/AP

Harold Bloom famously dubbed it the “anxiety of influence” (paywall): the effect which the literary canon has on writers. Less today than it did in the past, according to a mathematical study which analysed thousands of works written over the last 500 years.

American mathematicians, led by the chair of Dartmouth Collegemathematics department Professor Daniel Rockmore, set out to investigate “large-scale” trends in literary style. Using digitised works in the Project Gutenberg library, they processed 7,733 works from 537 authors written after the year 1550, were looking for the frequency at which 307 “content-free” words – such as “of”, “at” and “by” – appeared. They called these words the “syntactic glue” of language: “words that carry little meaning on their own but form the bridge between words that convey meaning”, and thus “provide a useful stylistic fingerprint” for authorship.

“When we consider content-free word frequencies from a large number of authors and works over a long period of time, we can ask questions related to temporal trends in similarity”, they write in their new paper,“Quantitative patterns of stylistic influence in the evolution of literature”.

After finding that authors of any given period are stylistically similar to their contemporaries, they also discovered that the stylistic influence of the past is decreasing. While authors in the 18th and 19th centuries are still influenced by previous centuries, authors writing in the late 20th century are instead “strongly influenced” by writers from their own decade. “The so-called ‘anxiety of influence’, whereby authors are understood in terms of their response to canonical precursors, is becoming an ‘anxiety of impotence’, in which the past exerts a diminishing stylistic influence on the present,” they write. This could, they suggest, be explained by the modernist movement, in which authors “reject their immediate stylistic predecessors yet remain a part of a dominant movement that included many of their contemporaries”.

There are also, they point out, more books available to read these days. “One hypothesis is that there is so much more to read now and more kinds of ‘important’ work that if we believe that style is influenced by what one reads, then it is less likely that people generally devote the preponderance of their reading to the older ‘classics‘,” said Rockmore. “This is not unrelated to the acknowledged gradual diminishment of a canon in literature. If one believes that writing style is significantly related to spoken language, then it might be traced to the rapid evolution of that form of communication.”

The paper only covers works written up to 1952, because of copyright issues, but Rockmore believes the decreasing influence of the canon will only have continued in the authors of today. The Orange prize-winning novelist Lionel Shriver agreed this was probably true in her case – and suggested it was likely to apply to her contemporaries as well. “About all I can do is confess that while I myself devoured classics in my teens and 20s – even 30s, come to think of it – I now read contemporary fiction almost exclusively,” she said. “I feel ambivalent about this evolution, but between reviewing, blurbing occasionally, and keeping up with what’s out there on general principle I don’t often get around to touching base with the literary canon. When I have tried to, say, reread a Dostoevsky novel, I’ve discovered that I don’t have the patience any longer – for the long philosophical digressions, for example. I bet I’m not alone in this reduced tolerance for the stylistic traditions of the past.”

Rockmore said he hoped to talk to literary colleagues to investigate if the mathematicians’ formulae could be applied to literary criticism. “I do believe it is an interesting approach to literary analysis,” he said. “We are hopeful that we can engage some colleagues expert in those areas to find what the interesting questions are. That is a necessary first step and we look forward to collaborations to those ends.”

Article from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/may/14/writers-no-longer-influenced-by-classics

Books are a tonic for the Brain

Reading is not just another leisurely activity or a way of brushing up your literacy skills and factual knowledge – it acts as a tonic for the brain too.

Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield suggests that reading helps to expand attention spans in kids. “Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end – a structure that encourages our brains to think in sequence, to link cause, effect and significance,” she says.

“It is essential to learn this skill as a small child, while the brain has more plasticity, which is why it’s so important for parents to read to their children. The more we do it, the better we get at it,” Greenfield added.

Reading can enrich our relationships by increasing our understanding of other cultures and helping us learn to empathise, the Daily Mail reports.

“In a computer game, you might have to rescue a princess, but you don’t care about her, you just want to win,” explains Greenfield. “But a princess in a book has a past, present and future, she has connections and motivations. We can relate to her. We see the world through her eyes.”

John Stein, emeritus professor of neuroscience at Magdalen College, Oxford, says reading is far from a passive activity. “Reading exercises the whole brain,” he explains. Reading stories to children will help their brains develop the ability to analyse the cause, effect and significance of events

In 2009, a brain-imaging study in the US showed that reading about landscapes, sounds, smells and tastes, activates brain areas tied to these experiences in real life, creating new neural pathways. Simply stated, our brains simulate real experiences, which doesn’t happen when you’re watching TV or playing computer games.

In 2009, University of Sussex researchers showed how six minutes of reading can slash stress levels by more than two-thirds, more than listening to music or going out for a walk.

http://books.hindustantimes.com/2012/08/books-are-tonic-for-the-brain/