“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.” – General James Mattis
I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. My father wasn’t much for the GI Joe (with the Kung Fu grip) or the other toys my friends had, but he was generous when it came to books. He never said “no” when I wanted a book.
So I read, and read a lot.
Over time, Dr. Seuss gave way to Edgar Rice Burroughs. When those books ran their course, J.R.R. Tolkien carved a path to Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Ursula Le Guin. College brought classic literature and a fascination with history. By the time I commissioned into the Army, my reading tastes continued to develop – military history, biographies, (gasp) Army doctrine, and a steady stream of brain candy (fiction).
Reading, after all, is fundamental.
The Warrior Monk
Over the years, reading lists became as common as the timeless notes of Reveille in the early morning hours. With each passing year, intense debates would rage over these lists, which inevitably devolved into “bookshelf measuring contests” where leaders would compare the size of their libraries. Someone would be disappointed that I found Once an Eagle to be pedantic or shocked that I would spend so much time reading and rereading Sun Tzu.
At the same time, a common refrain I’d hear among my peers was that they were too busy to read. “You can lead a horse to water,” the saying goes. Then in 2003, an email exchange between General James Mattis – who was commanding 1st Marine Division in Iraq – began to circulate that addressed this head on. “The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience, i.e., the hard way,” he wrote. “By reading, you learn through others’ experience.”
Mattis, whose combat reputation was second to none in the Marine Corps, treated reading not as a hobby but as a professional obligation. His perspective – one that he unambiguously defined in his 2019 book, Call Sign Chaos – was that combat leadership without wide reading is reckless. Reading is essential to vicarious learning, because no one lives long enough to personally experience every problem that war presents.
His email exchange emphasized three key points on the relationship between reading and leading:
1. Reading substitutes for experience you haven’t lived yet.
Mattis argued that history allows a leader to “borrow” the experiences of others who faced comparable dilemmas, compressing decades of hard-won lessons into a few hours of study. Facing a decision for the first time in real life, with lives at stake, is a failure of preparation.
2. Reading guards against overconfidence and repeated mistakes.
Mattis was blunt. Those who don’t read are “functionally illiterate” as leaders, because they’re doomed to rediscover, the hard way, the solutions that others have already worked out. Reading broadly — not just doctrine, but history, biography, and even fiction — builds judgment and humility.
3. Reading must be paired with reflection and applied thinking.
Mattis saw reading as an exercise in active engagement. He emphasized synthesizing multiple sources, cross-checking narratives, and actively relating historical cases to present decisions. In his mind, the objective was sharply honed judgment, not trivia.
Mattis’s own reading habits reinforced this perspective. Even in combat, he carried a personal library. Considered by many to be a quintessential warrior monk, he reportedly read thousands of volumes across his career, treating professional reading as inseparable from professional competence. As he wrote in that exchange, “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before.”
Reading and Leading
Mattis’s point was all too clear: Reading is indispensable to effective leadership. While his email certainly validated that fact, it’s a truism many of us already inherently understand. As my tastes matured and I spent more time leaning into vicarious learning – what Mattis was really talking about – especially as it applied to leadership. I wanted to understand how others approached leadership, what tools and techniques worked best, and how they dealt with crucible moments.
Finding good books on leadership or leadership-related topics isn’t that difficult. There are more books published each year on leadership than any other subject, and few of those books ever hit the bestseller lists. As a result, narrowing that list to something meaningful is always the challenge. The list of leadership books that struck that chord this year is short, but good.
1. The Power of Positive Habits.
Leadership is built one small habit at a time, those enduring daily habits that compound into lasting changes in how you think, live your life, deal with stress, and lead others. Jon Gordon takes this one step further: a leader’s habits are contagious… by building your own habits first, you exponentially elevate those around you. And that’s what leadership is all about.
2. Genuis at Scale.
How do you scale innovation? The book identifies three distinct leadership roles necessary for this: the architect, who shapes culture and capabilities for internal cocreation; the bridger, who builds cross-organizational partnerships through influence rather than formal authority; and the catalyst, who galvanizes entire ecosystems of stakeholders to drive innovation beyond any single organization’s walls.
3. Strategy is Attitude.
Finding the balance between audacity and analysis proves challenging to many leaders. Drawing on Genghis Khan’s leadership as a historical case study, Ganzorig Ulziibayar argues that leadership development should focus as much on developing individual attitude – audacity, confidence, discipline – as building the analytical toolkit. That’s what separates strategic success from repeated failure.
4. Our Best Work.
What if the norms that guide us every day actually hold us back? Nilofer Merchant identifies 24 hidden organizational norms – rooted in hierarchy, control, and the past – and explores how leaders can replace them with concrete practices that unlock innovation, performance improvement, and self-development. If you truly want your team to be all they can be, this is where you start.
5. Best Practice or Pitfall?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Success is built on a bedrock of systems and processes, the boring stuff that strengthens accountability, sharpens execution, and translates good intentions into measurable results. Closing the gap between good intentions and proven leadership is the focus of Greg Mickelsen’s book. Charisma and snappy slogans will only get you so far.
Everybody loves a good leadership story. Hannibal’s march on Rome. Chamberlain’s bayonet charge at Little Round Top. Moore’s first boots on the ground at LZ X-Ray. But those moments are truly rare in life. For the rest of us, we spend our days honing our skills and preparing for what’s over the horizon. Each of these remarkable books is a step on that path.
