Practical ways to engage your team (or leadership book club) as you read Courageous Cultures together.
One of the real joys of being authors is hearing from leadership book clubs and teams who are reading our books together.
We love learning about what’s resonating, and most importantly, how teams are applying what they’re reading as they grow leaders and encourage courage and innovation.
And, you don’t get better at leadership or building culture just by reading a book. You’ve got to do something with what you read. We write all of our books so the techniques are easy to apply. We also make it easy for teams to read together and discuss what they’ve learned.
5 Ways to Improve Your ROI of Reading Courageous Cultures With Your Team
So if you’re considering reading Courageous Cultures with your team or leadership book club, here are some ways to spark deeper reflection, better conversation, and most importantly, action. You can also download (or listen to) the first chapter and the foreword from Amy Edmondson.
1. Download the Executive Strategy Guide
The Courageous Cultures Executive Strategy Guide is a free fillable PDF workbook where you will find the First Tracks templates, additional discussion questions to engage your team or leadership book club, and more detail about the tools, best practices, and approaches you can use to build a Courageous Culture in your organization.
You will find the guide here (scroll to the bottom of the page at this link.)
2. Leverage the “First Tracks” Tools and Conversation Starters
As your team or leadership book club reads Courageous Cultures, you will likely encounter ideas and techniques that feel like you’re in unchartered territory. If you’re a skier, it might feel like you’ve ridden the first lift up the mountain after a great fresh night of show and you get to make the first tracks in the deep powder.
Or perhaps you had a similar feeling as a child jumping in the wet sand and making prints for your friends to follow. Beginning in chapter 5, we conclude each chapter with a “First Tracks” exercise. These work great for book group conversation starters.
For example, chapter 5’s First Tracks exercise is a Courage Map to reflect on your own moments of courage. You could have each person in your leadership book club or team complete their map and come ready to discuss the questions in the guide. Questions like: “As a leader today, where would it be helpful to show up more like this or with these values?”
3. Complete and Discuss the Courageous Leadership Reflections Assessment
One of the tools our clients tell us is useful as they read and discuss Courageous Cultures self-assessment. You can do this at the beginning, and then again at the end of your book group discussion.
4. Own the U.G.L.Y. and/or Share an I.D.E.A.
Over the last few years, we have been using our I.D.E.A. Incubator process with teams all over the world to apply the tools to strategic business challenges and come up with practical, remarkable, usable ideas.
We would love to come work with you in this way. You can learn more about our Courageous Cultures strategic team innovation programs here.
And, in the meantime, you can also do this yourself. You can download our FREE I.D.E.A. Incubator Guide which guides you through the process.
5. Experiment with Practical Ways to Be More Daring
You can also have your leadership book group pick an experiment from these Practical Ways to Be More Daring.
6. Supplement Your Conversation with Multi-Media Discussions
In any team or leadership book club, you’re going to have people who absorb information in different ways. Courageous Cultures is available on Audible (read by us). You might also consider including some supplemental videos like my recent TEDx Talk: The Secret to Getting Remarkable Ideas You Can Actually Use which contain new insights since the book was first published. You might even invite each member of your leadership book club to find one fun way to share a key insight from the book.
A few ideas of how your team can share a big takeaway:
- A short fun video highlighting a key point
- Have each member bring an object to your meeting that represents something they learned
- Invite people to draw a picture of a Courageous Culture
- Or, if you want to get fancy, like this team at Amazon, use Legos
- Divide your leadership book club into smaller groups and each group teaches back a main point
- Have your team share images of where they’re reading Courageous Cultures.
7. Watch the Recording of our Courageous Cultures Book Group Event.
- Learn about the research that grounds Courageous Cultures and what we’ve learned applying these techniques with teams over the last few years.
- Explore a few of our favorite Courageous Cultures tools and how you can apply them with your leadership book group or team.
If you missed our Leadership Book Club Event: How To Read Courageous Cultures with your Team – you can watch it here now. (or click on the image below).
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