Thoughtful Thursdays: Leadership Lessons from Fiction: Melanie Bell's Journey in Fostering Growth and Empathy

Melanie is the Founder of Leaders Who Fiction, an online book club and community that offers a unique way for people to acquire and develop leadership qualities through reading and discussing novels.

On this fast-growing platform, leaders meet on the last Wednesday of each month for intellectual, business-oriented conversations centered around a selected novel.

Melanie is also the Co-Founder of Strategic Piece, where she works with C-suite executives at growth-stage companies to deliver exceptional revenue growth by bringing together their marketing, sales, and service teams around an information-driven customer experience built on the HubSpot platform.

She has been an entrepreneur for almost a decade and witnessed what works and doesn't work in leadership and how reading fiction equips leaders with the skills they need to achieve their professional goals.

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieabell/

https://LeadersWhoFiction.com

 

Summary

Introductions and reading habits @ 0:00 Michael and Melanie discussed their love of reading novels which faded during busy periods but was rediscovered, finding fiction teaches valuable life lessons better than textbooks. Fiction novels teach leadership lessons @ 3:38 Michael argued novels show complex human interactions better than business books, citing how Star Trek addressed 1960s racial issues through diverse crews solving problems together. Reading reduces stress and improves focus @ 8:14 Studies found just six minutes of reading significantly reduces stress versus other activities, with focus allowing clarity to solve problems. Leaders Who Fiction aims to prioritize this stress relief. The value of getting 'lost' in a story @ 8:38 Getting fully immersed in a story transports the mind creatively, helping forget stresses as pages turn eagerly to discover outcomes, paralleling life's journey over destinations. COVID increased humanity in remote work @ 10:57 Pandemic blurring of work and home made video calls more "human" as families joined, normalizing interruptions rather than masking imperfections. Leaders Who Fiction book club @ 14:13 Melanie founded the free monthly Zoom book club to motivate busy leaders to read fiction through accountability and discussion of novels offering career value beyond "black-and-white" business stories.