GROW: Literacy for Legacy

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Issue #109, November 4, 2025: Literacy for Legacy

Welcome back, G-Tribe!

If you're a new reader, welcome to G.R.O.W. (Guidance Redefines Our Way), the weekly newsletter from A Few Good MENtors.

As we step into November, the new month brings with it a fresh focus for A Few Good MENtors: the core value of Education. Education isn't just about degrees; it's the continuous sharpening of your mind and character. This month's theme, "Literacy for Legacy: Why Reading Still Rules," is a deep dive into the most fundamental tool for personal power: literacy. It’s the essential starting line for building a life of impact and meaning.

November is also a time to recognize several important observances that affect the lives of our mentees and mentors, including Native American Heritage Month, Diabetes Awareness Month, and Movember (Men's Health Awareness Month). We encourage you to use this month to seek knowledge, advocate for your health (Prostate Cancer, Testicular Cancer, and Mental Health), and honor the diverse histories and cultures that make up our great nation.

Real men don't just chase trophies. They build character, one choice at a time, one mentee at a time, one example at a time. Here's to playing the game the right way.

Growth Spotlight: Books Build Literacy as Liberation

Hey G-Tribe,

Let’s talk about freedom, not just the kind that comes with fireworks or flags, but the kind that begins in the mind. The kind that helps you break generational cycles, challenge false narratives, and build a life rooted in purpose.

Too often, reading gets boxed in as a school task or a test-taking tool. But here’s the truth: for anyone trying to grow, lead, and leave a legacy, literacy isn’t just a skill. It’s power. It’s protection. It’s the beginning of real transformation.

Books aren’t just pages; they’re portals. They let you explore the world beyond your zip code, your situation, or your current understanding. They show you what’s possible, not just where you’ve been.

When someone reads a story like Sundiata, the West African hero who couldn’t walk or talk as a child but still became king, it doesn’t just inspire, it instructs. It says, “No matter what you’re up against, your condition doesn’t define your destiny.”

That same message shows up in Scripture, too. Moses wasn’t born free, but he was educated in Pharaoh’s house. And with that knowledge and divine purpose, he led people out of slavery. Jesus, too, modeled what it means to lead with wisdom. He read in the synagogue, taught through parables, and challenged systems not with brute force, but with deep understanding.

This is what literacy does it arms you with insight, awareness, and strategy. It moves you from surviving to leading.

When you engage with stories that reflect your identity, challenge your thinking, and open your heart to the bigger picture, you begin to shift. You start to lead differently.

Think about Arthur Schomburg, who dedicated his life to documenting the brilliance of people of African descent. Or Lewis Henri Michaux, whose Harlem bookstore became a hub for revolution through reading. These weren’t just book lovers—they were freedom fighters armed with knowledge.

Literacy lets you question what’s handed to you, dig for the truth, and rewrite the story for yourself and your community. It’s how you move from passive consumption to conscious leadership.

You’re not just reading to get by, you’re reading to get free.

Every page you turn is a step toward becoming a more empowered, informed, and intentional version of yourself. That’s not just personal growth, it’s collective liberation.

Your Challenge This Week:

Choose one book that makes you think deeper, love harder, or lead better, and read it with intention. Then, please pass it on. Please share it with a young person, a mentee, or someone in your community. Literacy multiplies when we treat it like a legacy.

Because when you open the right book, you’re not just gaining knowledge, you’re claiming your power. 

Professional Growth Gateway: The CEO's Edge: Trading Soundbites for Substance

Let's be real: In a world of ten-second videos and endless scrolling, it's easy to think you can lead by just skimming the headlines. You grab the quick summary, drop a quick comment in a meeting, and call it "leadership." But that fast-food diet of information creates leaders who are great at reaction but empty on foresight.

The real secret weapon for any successful leader, what we call the "CEO's Edge," isn't a new app or networking advice. It's simply choosing to read deeply and trading surface-level soundbites for intellectual muscle.

Your decisions are only as smart as the information you feed your brain. If you're only eating snippets, your view of the world will be small. When you commit to reading complex, long-form stuff, whether it’s history, philosophy, or a detailed book on strategy, you're forcing your mind to expand. This practice, called nuanced thinking, is exactly what separates a top-tier executive from someone just moving paperwork. It trains you to handle the messy, contradictory challenges that leadership throws at you.

Strategic Foresight and Empathy: The Two-Way Win

Deep reading gives you two huge advantages:

1. Strategic Foresight: History books are basically a huge cheat sheet database of human behavior under pressure. When you read about leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela, you're not just reading a cool story. You're downloading their life's work, seeing their long-term vision, and getting a blueprint for handling ethical dilemmas. You learn the patterns of success that have worked for centuries, letting you spot problems long before they come close to your desk.

2. Empathy and CQ: Reading is the ultimate empathy machine. When you dive into a biography or a novel, you literally step into someone else’s shoes. This is how you develop Cultural Intelligence (CQ): the skill of adjusting your communication to different people. For instance, if you're leading someone from a deeply family-focused culture, reading about that culture teaches you that pushing only "self-reliance" might actually kill their motivation. Their loyalty is tied to their network. That kind of insight, the ability to lead with deep respect rather than impose your own way, is priceless.

Look, a serious leader has a "global code of ethics." Their integrity doesn't change, but the way they apply it does. The commitment to deep reading isn't a hobby for your downtime; it’s a non-negotiable part of becoming the most effective leader you can be.

🎯 Action Point

Stop Skimming. Start Synthesizing.

Your next great idea isn't waiting in your social media feed; it's waiting in a book. This week, we challenge you to replace 30 minutes of screen time with 30 minutes of deep reading on a topic completely outside of your expertise. Try a biography, an economics book, or a philosophy text.

That 30-minute investment in yourself is how you hire a free, world-class consultant for your leadership journey. Get started today!

Success Spotlight: Literacy Champions

Forget the stat sheet for a minute. The real MVPs are the people who used a book, not a ball, to change the game. This month, as we focus on education, we want to celebrate leaders who have proved that literacy is the foundation of legacy. They didn't just read; they used what they read to rebuild the world around them, literally.

Take Congressman John Lewis. Before he was a Civil Rights icon marching for justice, he was just a person in rural Alabama. But as a young child, Lewis had a playful, powerful approach to education. His passion for reading and learning was so strong that he would preach to the chickens on his family's farm, using play and his imagination to practice his potential vocation as a great speaker and leader. This story is a powerful reminder that the dream exploration that starts with a book, or even a conversation, can lead to monumental change. The pages they read gave them the voice they needed to challenge a nation.

Another champion is Lewis Henri Michaux, who owned the National Memorial African Bookstore. His entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to the intellectual advancement of Africana people showed that literacy could be a powerful engine for community and business. His bookstore became a place where reading was connected to revolution, entrepreneurship, and dignity.

These champions didn't rely on luck or a fluke play; they built their success on the solid ground of reading and critical thought. They show our young people that the power to overcome any situation and achieve greatness comes from hard work and, most importantly, the knowledge you choose to absorb. Literacy is not just a school subject; it’s a form of liberation, and these MVPs proved it.

🎯 Action Point

Mentors, use the texts that enable. The books you recommend and discuss should be "mirror" books that celebrate your mentee's identity. Ask them what they are reading and why it matters to them. Your goal is to show them that reading is not a passive task, but an active way to build a roadmap for being, doing, thinking, and acting in the real world. That connection is the key to unlocking their legacy.

Community Corner: AFGM's Proposed Literacy Resource Guide

A sneak peek at our upcoming guide featuring culturally responsive, "mirror" books that reflect the identity of young Black people, providing them with critical texts for a healthy self-identity and developmental approach to agency.

Our mission at A Few Good MENtors is to equip our mentees with the tools they need to build their character and claim their leadership role in the world. As we've discussed, the most critical tool in that arsenal is literacy. But literacy only works as liberation when the content reflects the reader. A young person needs to see their own history, their own struggles, and their own potential for greatness mirrored in the books they read.

This is the driving force behind the proposed AFGM Literacy Resource Guide. It's not just a book list; it's a carefully curated resource that puts books directly into our community's hands. We know that students' ability to become proficient readers depends on their engagement with texts that celebrate their cultural and academic identities and feature them as central characters.

What makes a text "enabling"? These are the books that do more than entertain; they focus on the collective struggle of African Americans, promote a healthy psyche, reflect an awareness of the real world, and most importantly, serve as a roadmap for being, doing, thinking, and acting. An enabling text provides readers with a deep sense of identity, helping them understand and navigate traumatic experiences they may face outside of school.

For example, our guide will feature authors and works that build positive self-identity. We’ll highlight the work of Derrick Barnes, whose book Crown: An Ode To the Fresh Cut details the rich, powerful experience of the Black barbershop and the impact of a haircut on a person's dignity and self-personhood. We'll also include books like I'm a Brilliant Little Black Boy! and Chocolate Me, or historical works like Kwame Alexander's and James Patterson's Becoming Muhammad Ali, which shows the journey of an icon and provides historical context for greatness. The goal is to move past deficit views and showcase texts that characterize Black people as hopeful, developing self-control, and brilliant, not just "at-risk".

This guide is meant to be a living document for mentors, parents, and community leaders. We believe that by mediating these texts—by reading and discussing them together—we can help our mentees engage in complex, nuanced literary practices that teach them how to navigate, critique, and transcend the turmoil they may face in their lives. Historically, literature circles have been important within the African American community, and our guide seeks to revive this tradition, recognizing that enabling texts cannot fulfill their true potential without the chance to discuss them. Your personal library isn't just a stack of books; it's a source of power, identity, and generational wisdom. This guide is your key to unlocking it, ensuring that our next generation sees that their brilliance is undeniable.

🎯 Action Point

Help Us Build the Ultimate Roadmap!

We want this Resource Guide to be a collective effort of the G-Tribe. Do you have a book, a work of fiction, a biography, or a historical text that fundamentally changed your outlook or helped you build your character? Send an email to [email protected] with the subject “Resource Guide” and include your recommendation. Let's make this legacy of literacy together!

Michael’s Hot Take: Leaders Who Don’t Read, Don’t Lead

There’s a dangerous delusion that plagues modern leadership: the belief that your accumulated experience is enough. That your IQ will always win out, and you can skim the headlines for the next big move.

I have a blunt message for that mindset: Leaders who don't read and don't lead —they react.

Leadership requires the ability to see around corners, to understand others' motivations, and to make decisions that honor both the bottom line and the human element. You cannot cultivate this kind of foresight if you are only living within the echo chamber of your own experiences. Reading is the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to download the entire life’s work and wisdom of the greatest minds who have ever lived, across every field imaginable.

The Ultimate Example: Winston Churchill

Consider Winston Churchill. He was a complex, flawed, and ultimately legendary leader who guided Britain through the darkest hours of World War II. Churchill was a notoriously voracious reader and a prolific writer, consuming books on history, strategy, philosophy, and biography, often reading late into the night. His strategic genius during the war didn't come from a flash of luck; it came from an internal database of historical knowledge he built through reading. He had studied every major conflict and political crisis for decades. When faced with the threat of Nazi Germany, he didn't rely on instinct alone; he drew on the wisdom of past leaders, anticipating Hitler’s moves based on the patterns of history he had deeply studied. His life proves that your ability to lead under pressure is directly proportional to the depth of knowledge you’ve banked in peacetime.

When you refuse to read, you are succumbing to arrogance, the opposite of true humility. The warning I often share with leaders is that we tend to rely too much on our own knowledge and wisdom. We assume we understand the context, the culture, or the challenge of the person in front of us. This is a failure of integrity. You become a leader who imposes your own single, unexamined cultural lens on others, confusing your personal values with a universal truth. You cannot effectively lead what you do not genuinely seek to understand.

Think about the complexity of our modern, interconnected world. You need Cultural Intelligence (CQ), the ability to adapt your behavior and communication to diverse cultural contexts, far more than rote knowledge. For instance, if a mentor from a highly individualistic background tries to lead a young person from a strong, collective culture (like Filipino culture) and only preaches "self-reliance," they'll fail. They've imposed their values without understanding the mentee's roots.

The humility to learn is your most powerful leadership tool. It’s about having the courage to admit, "I don't know, but let's figure it out together," which is one of the most powerful things a mentor can ever say. That admission of not having all the answers creates a space for the "impossible to become possible," because you are opening yourself to a new, fresh process of thinking.

This month, unleash your curiosity instead of trying to develop a "better version" of yourself. Seek out a perspective, a culture, or an experience you don't fully understand. Ask genuine, open questions. That willingness to learn is the real power move that builds trust, and it's how you truly earn the right to lead.

Join A Few Good MENtors:

• Be a Mentee: Learn what championship character looks like beyond the court.

• Volunteer as a Mentor: Teach young people that integrity matters more than any stat line.

• Share G.R.O.W.: Forward this newsletter to someone who needs to understand that authentic leadership isn't about the scoreboard.

Real leaders don't just chase trophies. They build character, one choice at a time, one mentee at a time, one example at a time. Here's to playing the game the right way.