HR and L&D leaders
How do we run a management book discussion programme?
Done badly, a book discussion programme produces a book club where well-intentioned people have an interesting conversation and nothing changes. Done well, it produces a shared language, honest conversations that wouldn’t have happened in any other setting, and — if the book is right — a framework managers can use the Monday after the session.
The difference is almost never the book. It’s the design.
Framework: Brian Hartzer’s Leadership Star · Practices: All five practices
Why it works when it works
Books create psychological safety for conversations that feel risky in other formats. When a manager says “I think I’ve been getting Clarity wrong,” they’re reflecting on something in the text. Nobody’s confessing anything. That small distance makes honesty available in ways that a standard team meeting or performance conversation rarely does. The best sessions I’ve seen surface problems that would have taken months to surface otherwise.
The basics
Group size: six to ten. Fewer and you lose the diversity of experience. More and some people never speak.
Prepare real questions, not summary questions. “What are the five practices?” is a summary question. “Which of the five do you find hardest, and why?” is a real question. The discussion only gets interesting once people are answering from their own experience — and it stays interesting only as long as the questions demand that.
Give it three sessions, not one. The first session covers what people noticed reading the book. The second covers what they tried. The third covers what stuck, what didn’t, and why. Behaviour change shows up between sessions. You can’t see it in a single sitting.
Put the senior leader in the room. If the CEO or Group Executive is there, the group treats it as meaningful. If a facilitator runs it while the senior leader “checks in at lunch,” people read that signal correctly.
Questions that generate genuine discussion
For The Leadership Star specifically:
- Which of the five practices do your direct reports most notice you doing?
- When did you last have a genuine conversation with someone about their development — not their performance review, their development?
- What is the biggest obstacle your team faces that you have the power to remove and haven’t?
- Who on your team doesn’t know what great looks like in their role?
- When did you last recognise someone publicly for something specific?
The conversations that follow those questions — in a group of managers who trust each other enough to be honest — are worth more than most formal leadership programmes.
After the discussion
Every session should close with one individual commitment per person, named aloud. “I will have a development conversation with [name] before the end of the month” is a real commitment. “We will improve our recognition culture” is not.
Where judgment matters
A book discussion programme works best when the book is actually good. Don’t run one for a book you’re not willing to defend in the room. Managers will notice if the senior leader is fielding questions they can’t answer from their own experience.
In your last leadership session, how many participants left with a specific, named commitment — and who is following up on it?
Books for your team
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