Why Leaders Need Novels

I’ve written exhaustively about the challenges I’ve faced over the past year. There were moments when I thought to myself…prepare yourself as this next comment will be nothing short of dramatic, but I grew up as a performing arts kid…

There were moments when I thought I would never again feel at peace. You know, the kind of peace where you lay your head on your pillow and when you wake up, there isn’t a heavy feeling of foreboding waiting to gobble up your subconscious within seconds of opening your eyes.

We all have little escapes that bring us closer to that peace. For me, it’s being poolside on a sunny day, lost in a novel. Specifically, an easy to read love story filled with imperfect and complex characters who somehow find their way to a happy ending. I remember telling someone at work that this is the only thing I longed for this summer.

I spent this past weekend poolside. I sought refuge from 99 degree temps with a delicious iced tea while losing track of the time as I devoured a book that my kind teacher-friend, Karyn Toms recommended, The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center. It occurred to me as I lost myself in this adorable book that I had gotten back the one thing I wanted this summer: to peacefully sit uninterrupted in my lounge chair while reading a book poolside.

Sure, I have stacks of self-help non-fiction books, leadership books, education books too. And yes, I will get back to reading some of those.

But it wasn’t until this novel-ended that something occurred to me. I was going to miss the imperfect yet lovable characters. I was going to miss little details about them. I was going to miss rooting for them and feeling compassionate when they struggled. It dawned on me that this is how it’s supposed to feel.

This is how life is supposed to feel.

The feeling of community and connection and the noticing of little details…we are supposed to find ourselves rooting for the deeply flawed yet lovable people around us because we’ve invested time in their character development and complex lives.

This seems to be what we are losing. True connection with others. Flaws and all. There was an article in The Atlantic that my friend and co-director of the Ohio Writing Project shared with me, “The Anti-Social Century” which explains so perfectly how more than ever, we choose to not be around others. We have our groceries delivered. We pre-order our coffee and grab it on the go. If we are church goer, we don’t have to go anymore, many of us stream it from home. This has lended us a life of convenience and yet many of us are spending more time with our pets than actual humans. Don’t get me wrong. I love my cats and many days, I might say that I love them more than people and yet, this is troublesome. This may not be all of us. And if it’s you, I don’t share it to make you feel badly. It’s me too. It is, however, a cause for concern.

Because if this continues to be our new reality, will we lose the very thing that separates us from advancing technology? Will we lose our humanity?

Perhaps Katherine Center said it best in her author’s note, “Pro-social behaviors’ are ones that benefit ‘another person, group, or society as a whole.’ Love stories can be built out of infinite plots involving almost anything—ghosts, murder, pirates, movie stars, firefighters, whatever—but one inevitable truth about them is that, no matter what, the behaviors that drive the story toward its Happily Ever After are pro-social ones. Our lovers might not be good at love when they start out. But if they want that happy ending, they damn well better figure it out. And so, over the course of the story, they master the many arts of listening, and connecting, and nurturing, and caretaking, and trusting, and appreciating, and savoring, and sharing, and empathizing. They have to overcome their prejudices, learn to apologize, forgive each other, and sacrifice. When we read love stories, we get to see kindness in action. And human compassion. And connection made visible. And people choosing to be the best versions of themselves in the face of it all. Love stories show us people getting better at love—in real time.”

I just have to wonder if what leaders, all of us really, need more than anything right now is more pro-social behavior. Since many of us are more out of practice than we realize, a safe place to relearn may be through fiction. So many of us, myself included, may think we don’t have time for fiction. We have plans to write, organizations to optimize, and goals to reach.

But are we losing our humanity in the process? I’m often pondering what our vision is for our school district. It’s easy to be drawn toward being the best by traditional metrics or shiny innovations.

But over the past year, I think I’ve realized that if there is anything that needs more attention and impacts all else, it’s what Simon Sinek calls our human skills. Some call them soft skills and America Succeeds calls them “durable skills.” Whatever we call them, it’s our ability to truly be with each other. Our ability to listen deeply, engage with those who disagree with us, and to hold space for two opposing views at the same time as we ponder what we believe in the presence of dissonance and at times new information.

Fiction softly and gently slows our world down and makes space for this. Fiction also allows us to imagine not only the world as it is but as it could be. It’s why our students need to continue reading fiction. It’s why they need to keep writing it too. It’s why narrative writing still needs its valued place in our schools and in our curriculum.

It’s why we as leaders need to read stories. Fictional stories.

Katherine Center explains, “Witnessing other people doing good makes us want to do better ourselves. And don’t forget: We learn by watching.”

Kids are watching teachers. Teachers are watching principals. Principals are watching district office. And in this watching, there is opportunity for others to bear witness to people doing good.

If we spend all of our days receiving complaints and trying to solve problems, then it’s easy to believe that problems and complaints are all that there is to this world. If problems and complaints are all there is, then what does that say about people? The people we work with, the people we live with, the people we encounter by sheer chance? People no longer become people at all but rather potential problems and complaints.

As I say in the conclusion of Legacy of Learning, “Let’s be educators who make others feel like they can expand beyond what they ever dream possible.”

In order to do that, leaders, you must slow down and make space for your own humanity and the humanity of others. And it may seem ironic to run to a novel to relearn how to do this, but in this anti-social century, we must return to the most primitive form of learning – storytelling.

If you find yourself thinking I can’t risk losing time to reading fiction, I’m begging you to consider whether you actually can’t afford not to read a novel. Listen, I get it. The pressure of unfunded mandates and state report cards never goes away. I’m not saying we stop pursuing excellence in academics or quit building efficient systems and processes. Systems are a love language of mine.

No, what I’m saying is that the system has been designed to give us what it’s currently producing. So, if we look around and we see a lack of kindness and compassion or we see people who are disengaged with the work or each other then we need to ask ourselves what about our system is producing this output?

We must create pro-social systems. Space for connecting and reflecting during PD days without having every minute booked. We must go out of our way to spend time in teacher’s classrooms, lending a helping hand and celebrating the good we see. We need to greet each other and our students at the door before class. We need to write down little details we learn about others in our noticing notebooks and follow up on those details.

We must practice being human.

I will leave you with this from Katherine Center:

“Let’s spread out a picnic blanket, and eat cupcakes, and drink something fizzy. Let’s let the sun warm our skin, and the wind ruffle our hair. Let’s immerse ourselves in hope, and joy, and goodness—and just read and read and read.”

Leaders, find your way into a novel. And find your way back to hope, joy, and goodness. Then show up that way and create systems that make it possible for others to do the same.

This may be the most obvious but underrated way we change our schools, our communities, and ultimately the world.