Do This One Thing and You’ll Rise Above Your Peers
By Donald Miller
When I graduated high school, I’d not read a single book. If I didn’t graduate last in my class, I was certainly close. In fact, one teacher protested I shouldn’t graduate at all, and it was only a coup from counselors that got me out of high school.
It wasn’t until I attended a rather academic camp in Colorado that I started reading. The camp aimed to prepare kids for college, and as such emphasized reading books, lots and lots of books. They must have said a thousand times that readers are leaders. I believed them. I started reading that summer (I was probably 18) and I kept reading, book after book for the next fifteen years. These days, I’m embarrassed to say, I read less than I have since then. I may tackle thirty books each year. I read blogs and articles on the internet, and I watch too much television. I write some sort of article or blog entry almost every day, which is a terrific discipline for a writer, but I’ve slacked off on reading.
That said, though, if it’s true leaders are readers, than it’s easier than ever to be a leader. In fact, if you’ll commit to reading a single book, you’ll be, approximately, in the top 50% of all Americans. I’m not kidding. If you’ll read just one more book before you die, you’ll leave half the people around you in the dust.
According to Para Publishing, 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. And 42% of college graduates follow suit. 70% of U.S. adults have not stepped into a bookstore in the last 7 years and 80% of American families did not purchase or read a book last year.
About the time I started reading, I bought a book of poems for a friend. The book was Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson. But I never gave the book to my friend. I began to read Emily’s letters and found her economy of words magical. I couldn’t understand how anybody could say so much with so few words. What I was experiencing as I read the book was the gap in literacy from her life in Amherst to mine in Texas nearly one-hundred years later. Noah Webster would frequent the Dickinson home, and he would sit in the parlor talking to her father about a new project he was writing, a list of words and definitions that would later become Webster’s Dictionary. She read novels rather than watch movies. She read short stories rather than watch television. And at the tender age of thirteen, her letters to her brother Austin were mesmerizing in their descriptions and fluidity.
I memorized a few of Emily’s poems, and I found my own writing improved the more I tumbled her words around in my head. From Emily I memorized Rudyard Kipling and then Robert Herrick (To the Virgins to Make Much of Time!) and Longfellow and Byron’s She Walks in Beauty. I started reading Shakespeare, even though I didn’t understand him. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand him, because I could understand parts, and the parts were worth the reading of the whole. To this day, when young writers ask me for advice, I tell them to memorize poems. I tell them to never let me encounter them again unless they have an index card in their pocket with a few lines written on it that they are committing to memory.
But my point is this: If you want to be a person of influence, or if you want to lead, or for that matter if you want to succeed, start reading. These days, you have less competition than your parents had, or their parents for that matter. If you read as few as fifty books, you’ll be considered a genius. Subscribe to the Economist and read a handful of articles each week and your friends will wonder when you intend to run for congress.
Turn off your television and read two books a week next year and you’ll be counseling the Pope or the President. It’s true what I learned all those years ago: Readers are leaders.
SHARED VISION
Vision, has become the pet word in the circles of leadership for a long time and rightly so. It is clearly biblical, educational, and sheer common sense that if there is little or no vision there is no forward progress.
I believe that the root of all non-growth situations both in the business world and the church is lack of communicated vision. When it comes to effective ministry and leadership, vision is a foundational building block. George Barna said, “Vision is the single most important dimension of successful ministry.” I believe that anyone who is praying and seeking God in leadership has a certain amount of God inspired vision. I personally can’t see how one could communicate with the Creator and not have vision or direction. The problem comes into play when it is not given out or projected to those following. The greatest vision in the world is useless if left behind closed doors at the office. Somewhere along the way it has to become public, available to those who are following. If this doesn’t happen failure is certain.
In Proverbs 29, the wise man Solomon is writing many wise truths about life. Holman entitles this chapter as “Observations on public and private governments.” There are many wise truths given here. In the mist of this chapter he says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish…” KJV. There is more here than just telling people to attain purpose in their personal lives. Looking at it in its original text, the verse has more to do with leadership. The word vision comes from a word that means to gaze at, to mentally perceive in a prophetic fashion. The word itself means a dream or revelation. The word perish gives us a totally different meaning than we often use, it means to loosen, dismiss or absolve. One translation uses the words, “Avoid, bare, go back, make naked, set at naught.” In short, where there is not prophetic revelation, no perceived dream, the people loosen, go backwards and are set at naught. The NKJV puts it like this, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint…”
How many of our problems and the things we face as leaders could we list under the word perish? No, I don’t believe Proverbs 29:18 is a fix all scripture however, it is clear much of what we deal with, people going backwards, losing commitment, or being unconcerned, could be changed if there is a clear direction before them. People want to be led; this is the way God created us. A majority of the people on board would be willing to pull their weight and more if they have a sense that the ship is going somewhere.
Yes, I do agree that prayer, seeking God and having a word form the Lord for your life is important but don’t leave it in the office or your prayer closet. Map out your God inspired vision, position it so everyone can see it; then step to the helm and let everyone help you get there. I promise the ship will set a course and that sure beats wandering aimlessly in the middle of a sea of complacency with nothing in sight.
Ask yourself:
Have I communicated my vision and given clear directions?
Does this organization know where we are going?
Do those following me know the next step?
Do those on board with me have a sense of my direction?
If not, are the people following me wandering about, losing commitment, and becoming unconcerned? Where there is no perceived direction the people go backwards and lose commitment.
Yes, vision is important yet to be effective the vision will have to be shared.
Without vision the people really do perish.
