Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups
I am not a member of a book club, but a few years ago, three of us got together to discuss a book we had agreed to read. Two of us were entrepreneurs and the third person was a lawyer. You could say we were hosting an informal professional book club. Many of my friends have been in the same book clubs for many years. My hesitation for joining a book club is that I host the Strategic Reading Challenge to learn the skills you need to thrive in the future. A big part of the reading challenge is to also read books to help you to develop intercultural awareness.
People who are participating in the reading challenge expect me to give them book recommendations. Since I am also learning the skills, most of the books I am now reading satisfy the requirements for the Strategic Reading Challenge. Because of my interest in reading challenges, I have been doing research on professional book clubs. I think professionals who expect to succeed must read more books that can help them to perform their jobs better.
I have been playing around with a concept called profit reading. My hypothesis is that if you read the right books, apply the ideas, then you can profit from your reading time. I am interviewing people to test my hypothesis, and based on the responses so far, I think I am on to something. I still need to conduct more interviews. Organizations that want to become a learning one should create professional book clubs for their employees. Managers often miss this career development opportunity to educate their direct reports.
Have you read?
Become a Skilled Reader: Read More of the Right Books in 2019
What is a Professional Book Club?
A professional book club is a book club that focuses on books that can grow the business. The books members read would help them to become more valuable to their employers and themselves. They would meet regularly like any other book club and discuss the book they are reading for the month. Participants exchange ideas and opinions and it is a way to build community because it is a shared experience. Another outcome of the book club is that employees implement the ideas they learn from the books they read.
Reading More Books in 2019
A common resolution for many professionals is to read more books. But few ever follow-up to achieve the resolution. According to US News, 80 percent of resolutions fail by February. Most people do not live up to their resolutions because they do not have a plan in place. And a resolution of reading more books is no different from other New Year’s resolutions. If you are part of a professional book club, the members hold each other accountable.
If you meet every month, you will read 12 books that will help you to become more valuable and marketable to yourself and your employer. If you meet every other week, at the end of the year, you would have read 26 books – more books than most people read. According to a study by Pew Research:
“Overall, Americans read an average (mean) of 12 books per year, while the typical (median) American has read four books in the past 12 months. Each of these figures is largely unchanged since 2011, when the Center first began conducting the surveys of Americans' book reading habits.”
Source: Pew Research, Nearly one-in-five Americans now listen to audiobooks, March 8, 2018
Being an active participant in a professional book club will allow you to read more books in 2019. If there is no professional book club at your place of work, start one.
Professional Book Club Norms and Practices
- Rotate who chairs each book club meeting.
- The chair is responsible for creating discussion questions. One method for meaningful book discussions is to use the shared inquiry method.
- Each person is expected to read the book before the book club meeting.
- Each person shares ideas and opinions about the book during the discussion.
- Discuss the relevance of the book to the company. You could also discuss the relevance of the book to your role.
- Respect other people’s opinion and ideas and listen to what others have to say..
- For each book, set aside 15 hours to read the book, take notes, review notes, highlight ideas and opinions to discuss, and time to discuss the book at the meeting.
How to Start a Professional Book Club
If you like informal processes, get five colleagues to join the Strategic Reading Challenge, and meet regularly to discuss the books. You will learn the skills to thrive in 2020, but you will also get ideas that you can use to help grow the company that you work for.
To spice things up, members of the Strategic Reading Challenge Professional Book Club would read different books. For instance, if you are are reading a book to learn problem solving, members could read different books on problem solving, write a summary based on his or notes and use that as discussion points during a presentation at the book club meeting.
If book club members read different problem solving books, at the professional book club meeting, you could allocate time to look at the books in relation to each other. Imagine how each participant will grow intellectually by being exposed to different authors and ideas.
I created this program and you will learn how to pick out the ideas from the books you read; how to combine ideas to make them more encompassing, and how to evaluate the ideas to test their feasibility.
Have you read?
How to Cheat at Reading More Books
Next Steps: Start an Informal Book Club
Here are the action steps to take to get the most from an informal professional book club.
- Choose people who you would like to be a part of the informal professional book club.
- Finalize members of the book club. It’s unlikely that everyone you approach will want to join. Do not have more than six people in the book club because each person needs time to present on the book he or she reads.
- Join the Strategic Reading Challenge.
- Read How to Cheat at Reading More Books.
- Read Become a Skilled Reader: Read More of the Right Books in 2019.
- Spend some time on the Great Books Foundation website learning about shared inquiry.
If you do not want to join the Strategic Reading Challenge, spend time as a group choosing the books that you would like to read. In Part II of this post, I will list the steps to start a more formal professional book club. Although I declared at the start of this article that I not not part of a book club, I do have some experience in being a part of an informal professional book club.
A few years ago, I attended Toronto Pursuits where professionals attended an event where you discussed readings and parts of books for a week. I had the honor of chairing one of the readings using the shared inquiry method. I am also working on book profiles for an organization. The project includes reading the books, writing an opening and closing, and creating discussion questions.The book profiles are for book clubs to use.
Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading GroupsHow to Get IdeasDevelop Your Idea!
