The Easiest Book Club

I love work book clubs! They help me stay motivated, show me new perspectives, and create a shared point of view to reference in my working relationships. Here’s my favorite book club format. It’s super easy. You just read and show up.

Difficult Conversation is my favorite book club for managers.

1. Write an email calling for interest. Describe why you chose this book, why this audience, and include a link to the book. If possible, get pre-approval from your company to make the book expensable.
2. Limit book club to 3–5 people for the purposes of a rich discussion. If there is high interest, split into multiple groups, each with its own facilitator to manage the logistics of the group.
3. Create recurring calendar event for book club. This works very well during lunch. Include assigned chapters in title of each calendar event so the assigned homework is obvious.
4. Be under ambitious about how much people will read. I recommend meeting every other week and assigning 1–2 chapters per meeting.
5. Meet right away while there’s momentum. Assign something easy like the introduction or the Amazon description and have a group discussion about what everyone expects and wants out of the group and book. This can help set the tone for the group and gives everyone an easy win for the first reading assignment.
6. Meet regularly as scheduled. Have unstructured conversations. Allow members to come if they haven’t read the book. However, not if it becomes a habit.
7. Learn cool things!