Dive 105: The Greatest Leaders are Critical Readers
Hey, it’s Alvin!
Do you know what separates good software developers from The Greats?
The greatest software developers—heck, the greatest leaders—do not just focus on what’s directly in front of them.
To show you what I mean, we need to look at a counterexample. This is a post I found on X/Twitter:
For context, this message targets software engineers who haven’t accepted that learning never stops. Or it targets those looking to become software engineers. Is it true?
As someone who’s been developing enterprise software for over a decade, I can say the message is valid and decent for its target audience. But it’s also not how the most successful developers think. The message is quite limiting.
It’s true that the best developers never stop learning. But they don’t learn just for the sake of learning or knowing things.
And yes, they’re interested in and excited about their jobs. But their interests and excitement aren’t limited to their jobs either. Novelty doesn’t excite them as much as how a new technology can help them achieve greater goals beyond the work in front of them. What’s the most common greater goal?
Helping people.
I used to have a mentor who became a CTO at another company. He was a technical/team leader when I worked with him. On the surface, he just loved tech. He was the one who dove deep into a new business intelligence tool we had to integrate with our data sources for reporting. He volunteered many late nights getting this tool to work. But that’s not all…
When I struggled to get the tool to extract the right data, he avidly jumped in to help. To an outsider, he seemed fascinated and excited by this reporting tool. But I knew it wasn’t really the reporting tool that excited him…
No. He loved helping people.
He was always happy to help whoever reached out to him. Me, our teammates, our manager, the executives, the administrative assistants. Anyone and everyone. But the only way to help others by making the most of a technology is to dive deep into how it works.
was right when he said that the learning never stops because there’s always something new, which makes software engineering exciting. But I bet most people would read that and assume the excitement mainly lies in the novelty itself.In fact, all the mentors I had who were promoted the fastest always saw new tech as just a way to achieve greater goals. Their excitement in new things is just a spillover from their desire to help others more than anything else. In fact, this is also why my most marvellous mentors are all curious about a wide range of subjects. They don’t just lock their eyes to their screens reading source code and manuals all day. There are reasons for this…
Problem Solving
If you want to help people, you have to be skilled in solving problems. But sometimes we get stuck. Turning to other domains opens us to new perspectives that can get us unstuck.
The Wright brothers designed, built and flew the first successful airplane. But they didn’t focus on the physics of flight. They looked at biology.
The Wright brothers succeeded, partly because they spent time carefully watching buzzards (huge birds) soar gracefully above a river valley. And they noticed the birds didn’t just roll their bodies as they turned through the air.
The brothers noticed the birds adjusting the feathers on the outer trailing edge of their wings to start their turns. Their study of birds helped them design a plane that could turn in the air. The Wright brothers are just one of many examples of how exploring other domains opens our minds to new perspectives. It opens us to better solutions to problems we’re stuck on. But taking an interest in other subjects has another benefit, too.
Building Relationships
If you want to help people, people need to trust you.
Having a wide range of interests lets you better connect with others to build trust and rapport. Because even if you have ideas on how to add value to others, your ideas must still be marketable. And building relationships well helps you sell your ideas, so others are more receptive to them.
Selling and building value gives you visibility. The more value you sell and build, the more people will pay you to sell and build for them. This is one way to boost your career. But it’s also a way to live an enriching life. Building friendships that last a lifetime? Yes, please.
Building relationships and solving problems helps you help others. Having breadth of knowledge helps with that. It’s why the greatest leaders I ever worked with never just focused on one niche, like software development. They were always fascinated by life and the world around them. An extension of their fascination with helping others. It wasn’t just their job they found interesting and exciting. The greatest leaders have a zest for life that they bring INTO their work.
I liken this to two types of reading.
Some people just love reading for the enjoyment of reading. They like imagining the picture painted by the author. Feeling the emotions and sensations described by the writer. And leave it at that.
Some people like to read more critically. They go into a book with questions, looking for answers. They connect all they read to their own knowledge and life experiences to better understand what’s written. And they apply what they gained from their readings into their lives to make the most of it. This is what I call Critical Reading. And you can learn more about it in Dive 35.
The Greatest Leaders are Critical Readers.
I mean in a broad, metaphorical sense. Because the greatest leaders are excited by the greatest goals. Usually, helping others. That excitement spills over into specific subjects. So, on the surface, it can look like they’re only fascinated by the subjects themselves. When, in fact, what we’re witnessing is their passion for life. Their fascination with the world and the people in it.
Fernando said that “you must accept that learning never stops.” But he never explained how. Especially if there’s something you have no interest in learning.
Start with what you’d like to achieve. Then dive into the subject you thought you had no interest in and ask yourself how you can make the most of it to achieve your goal(s). This is one way to make all kinds of random subjects fascinating. And if you have no meaningful goals, start by helping others.
Reply to belowthesurfacetop@gmail.com or click “Message Alvin” below if you have questions or comments. I’d love the hear from you.
Be sure to check out Dive 35 below to brush up on what it takes to read critically:
Thank you for reading this dive. Get excited about life. And I’ll see you in the next one.