Episode 232: Are You Missing Out on Team Building Opportunities? Discover the Power of a Leadership Book Club

Written By Erin Diehl
 
 
 

Yes, you know what book clubs are. You’ve seen them in action, been a part of them, maybe even organized them on your own. 

 

But what if we told you that a book club was how improve it! began? 

 

In today’s episode, Erin tells the story of the book club she joined early in her career and how the first book they read changed her life and helped her build improve it! from the ground up. Erin also shares her 7-step method for creating your own book club and details on how to join improve it!’s own virtual book club. 

 

If you’re looking for how to start experiencing books and watching them play out in your daily life instead of just “reading” them – this is the episode for you. 

 

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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. 

This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. 

When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl. 

You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online! 

“I love this podcast and I love Erin!!”

If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing this podcast! This helps Erin support more people – just like you – move toward the leader you want to be. Click here, click listen on Apple Podcasts, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with 5 stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let Erin know what you loved most about the episode! Also, if you haven’t done so already, subscribe to the podcast. That way you won’t miss any juicy episodes! Thanks in advance, improve it! Peeps :)

 

Episode 232 Transcription

Erin Diehl (08:06.708)

energy of people and it's managing learning and professional development and it's managing team building so come up with something catchy and fun. That's step one.

Erin Diehl (08:22.356)

you and your team. So I would say what we did at my former organization was we got a book the beginning of a month. So let's say we started a book in January. We had the entire month of January to read the book. And then we would meet for book club in February, about six weeks after getting the book. And then we would get a new book in the beginning of March and do the same thing in the middle of April. So decide a cadence that works.

for your organization or your team. And then go to step three. This is the most important part. You want to get buy -in from the team on what they want to read or learn about. I think that's what makes book clubs so enticing is that people are showing up because they are feeling a part of the process. So either pick...

five or six titles to begin with and share those with the team and have those team members choose one of those five books and the one with the most votes wins or have people submit ideas and see if there's a simple theme coming up and maybe that theme is leadership or maybe that theme is time management or maybe that theme is stress management and then you choose a book that helps with that theme. So decide what that looks like for you but make sure you get that buy -in from the team. That's step three.

Step forward. Now when I did a book club in my former company, our leadership purchased the book for us, which I think was really helpful. So you can decide as an organization, do you have budget to purchase a book or you can encourage people to get the Kindle version, which is super nominally priced, or even the Audible version if they have access to Audible or you could purchase hard copies of the book for the team or encourage them to rent from their local library. But,

Step 4 is start with one book and give the team 4 weeks to read it. Now here's the deal. 4 weeks is 30 days or 28 days if you were to do the actual math. If you do more than this, it becomes deprioritized. But you can generally read a 200 page book in 28 days if you read 10 pages a day.

Erin Diehl (10:43.476)

you can finish that book in 28 days. So anything longer becomes deprioritized. And one good idea here is to start with the book, send out the email to the team or communication, however you prefer that communication, and say, here's the book you have until X date to read it. Halfway through those four weeks, send another email. Just a reminder, we are gonna do book club in this date.

and I need you to be almost done.

Erin Diehl (11:32.628)

scheduled.

So you've already established your cadence. You know when this meeting is going to be, but you want to get even more specific than that. You want to decide is it in person or Zoom? Who is leading this? And one general idea that I love here is to appoint a different person to lead the book club every month or every time you meet because it gives ownership. It gives people an opportunity to speak and to facilitate. So decide who is leading.

and then have that person create an outline or an agenda. My team and I have a theory, no agenda nor no attenda. So having an agenda or an outline for the flow of the book club is gonna be really important. And then step six, conduct that meeting, baby, okay? You are gonna meet and make it interactive with either breakout rooms or partner discussions.

and have each individual talk to a partner because that way they're going to retain information more because they're thinking about it out loud, and then collectively debrief those questions. Make that a part of the agenda process, making this extremely interactive. Finally, here is step seven. You're going to gather feedback with an anonymous survey.

So after the book club takes place, whoever is your coordinator, champion, cheerleader of book club will send out an anonymous survey. And the survey could even include three books to choose from for the next book club so that you can get buy -in. But in that survey, you're going to ask questions like, what was the most engaging part of book club? What is something that we could do differently for book club next time?

Erin Diehl (13:28.884)

And then if you have any more specific questions to your organization, you can include things like, how does this book leverage how we see ourselves at XYZ Company? How are you going to implement what you learned in today's book club and move it and put it into your career trajectory? Questions like that, because you want to see what people are taking away from the experience, how you can improve it and what they liked.

Then my friends, you're gonna rinse and repeat steps one through seven for option A. And I'll repeat those really quick. Step one, define your goals. Step two, develop your monthly cadence. Step three, get buy -in from the team. Step four, start with one book and make it four weeks or less. Send out communication in the beginning, middle, and end. Step five.

Schedule the meeting and get a leader or a point person who's going to create an outline or agenda. Step six, conduct that meeting baby and make sure you have interactive components inside. Step seven is you're going to gather feedback and you're going to give options for the future book club so that you're getting buy -in from the team again and you're seeing what's working and how you can improve it pun intended. That's option A.

And I gotta tell ya, you do those steps and you get more involvement. The more people who start coming and you make it engaging and tangible and something that they can use in their jobs and outside of their work, and the more that that conversation spreads, the more people are gonna join. And what if you had a book club for your entire organization? I mean, how freaking cool would that be? So I know everybody listening is coming from all different sizes of organizations, companies, what have you.

Start small and expand from there is my suggestion. Okay. Don't try to go everybody at once. Start small, get feedback and continue to add and improve it as you go along. Now here's option two, my friends. This is improve its virtual book club. So here's how it works. Once we have this live, which will be coming up soon, you will be able to.

Erin Diehl (15:51.028)

have a virtual book club with your team using ICU as the guide. Essentially, you will have a page on our website that you can go to where you can purchase this book club for your team. This is one of our most nominally priced service offerings. We'll send your team.

50 copies of the book, which is included in the price, or 50 Kindle versions. There's two options, a Kindle version or a hard copy option.

You'll give your team time to read it, and then you'll have a live one -hour guided book club virtual session with me, the author, and an amazing Improve It! facilitator. This live session includes breakout sessions, guided activities, and access to our resource guidebook as well as a guided Q &A all about I see you a leader's guide to energizing your team through radical empathy.

This is our most nominally priced option for up to 50 participants. And if you want to experience what this looks and feels like, you can see it for yourself on April 17th at 11am Eastern. There is a link to this in the show notes all you need.

is a purchased copy of the book, and either Kindle, Audible, or hard copy to attend. It is free in attendance with purchase of the book. So that's option two, and I can show you what an interactive session looks and feels like, and you can go back and rinse and repeat it for your team by trying Book Club here with us virtually. I'm so excited for this.

Erin Diehl (17:42.612)

This is such an opportunity for me to see how the book is impacting people in a real way. It's also an awesome opportunity for people to talk about empathy and to bring this message to life and for people to really see themselves walking this walk instead of just talking this talk. So whether you do option A or option B, your own version or improve its version,

Just know that a book club is an amazing team building activity with so many tangible outcomes. Truly, my book club for my previous job changed my life. And I know for a fact that with help of option A's steps one through seven, you could change the lives of your team through this experience or through option B by having them actually interact with the author who wrote the book.

I'm so excited for this. I know it's going to be of service to so many people and that's what I'm here to do is to bring this message of love, compassion, and empathy back to work. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, sign up for April 17th free virtual book club. You'll find the link to that in our show notes at 11 a .m. Eastern time. I hope to see you there. And here's the deal. You know what I'm going to say. I want you to keep failing.

Keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time.

 

 

Erin Diehl
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