Want to be an effective leader? Get into the daily habit of reading. Effective leaders are avid readers.

In fact, I’ve often thought, “Find a good leader and you will find them reading a good book.” (Possibly many good books all at once.) Effective leaders possess an insatiable hunger for knowledge. They crave to learn and grow and gain a greater understanding of the things around them. They often want to know how, understand why, and they’re really good at taking what they absorb and translating it into their life, as well as, sharing with and impacting those around them from the abundance of what they’ve gleaned from others.

For a leader, reading is a tool, and a powerful one at that. Reading stimulates the mind and is a catalyst for thinking and for solving. It can crack open the windows of the brain to things and opportunities we never even knew existed before. Oftentimes, reading helps us to understand things fuller, see things clearer, and speak things better. And eventually it all pays off. In fact, there are powerful correlations among reading, vocabulary, and being successful. Studies have shown that people’s earnings are in direct proportion to their vocabularies. Therefore, those who read more often have larger vocabularies, and those who have larger vocabularies tend to earn the most money.

You see, great things result from reading good books. To read is to empower. Yourself and then others. Are you this kind of a leader? Are you growing yourself every day? If you want to maximize your influence and be all that you are capable of being, become a voracious reader.