In a rushed society where most things are moving at the speed of light, most professionals cannot find the time to digest all the books that they need to, to keep on top of their jobs. This year, the blending of ideas and concepts should be top of mind. If you have been reading The Invisible Mentor blog for awhile, you already know about peer-mentors, which is a group of people who are at the same level, who offer support to each other. Peer-mentors assume the role of mentor and protégé and teacher and student.
Book clubs have been around for a long time, but are not as popular in a corporate setting. Imagine how you could accelerate your professional development, if you created a book club within your organization with a group of your peers, with the aim of teaching each what you have learned from the books you have read.
The “corporate book club” would work the same way that other book clubs work, but the difference would be that the books you read would assist you to perform your job more efficiently – teach you new concepts, help you to generate ideas…. And each month the group would be reading more than one book.
So for instance, if there were 12 peer-mentors in the “corporate book club”, four people would read one book, so each month, three books would be discussed. And the books do not have to be business books. You can learn a lot from reading biographies and novels.
Each group should teach the major points of the book to their peer-mentors, and offer ways that the knowledge can be applied. You will be helping your peer-mentors with their professional development while doing the same for yourself, and by teaching others what you have learned you will be cementing the information into your long-term memory.
How can you adapt this idea in your workplace?
