Literary Fiction And Leadership

The Impact of Literary Fiction on the Development of Leadership Behaviors Among

K-12 School System Directors and Superintendents in Tennessee

In recent years, a growing body of research has focused on the influence of reading literary fiction on a range of human behaviors, including a number of traits frequently associated with effective leadership. Those benefits of value to leaders at all levels include empathy, stress reduction, increased creativity, strengthened memory, and even enhanced Theory of Mind (Mar et al, 2009; Kidd and Castano, 2013). As a high school English teacher with nearly 30 years of classroom experience trying to promote the benefits of reading great fiction, I found this topic particularly intriguing. A few months

To test this hypothesis, I propose surveying school system directors and superintendents in the State of Tennessee. In fact, the Director of my school system expressed interest in this topic during a recent conversation and offered to help by providing contact information for fellow directors across the state. I would like to devise a relatively simple survey that would begin with a series of objective questions aimed at determining the subjects’ fiction reading habits over an extended period, including quantity of novels read and preferred genres. Next will follow a limited number of broad, subjective questions, such as favorite novel-length works of fiction read over their lifetimes and whether they considered those works influential in their personal and/or professional development as leaders. The survey would then narrow, asking them to recall either specific characters, events, or themes that they considered most impactful in those works and why. Finally, they would be asked about specific leadership behaviors that have been shown to be influenced by reading fiction and the extent to which their experiences with works of fiction might have shaped those behaviors. Finally, the research would seek to determine if there are any commonalities in the types of fiction preferred by these school leaders (genre, theme, character archetypes, etc.), and whether those preferred works of literary fiction could become a component in the training of future education leaders or, for that matter, leaders in