Best Selling Author Creates Questions for Discussion
Daniel H. Pink, author of The Power of Regret, supports Fieldstone Leadership Reading Group with a Gift of Questions
While Fieldstone’s Leadership Reading Group is officially a 10-month program, many of our groups continue to meet in some form or fashion to discuss leadership using literature. Our first group, LRG 1 has been meeting monthly for almost seven years! In February, some members of the group gathered at the Central Library to hear from best selling author Daniel H. Pink as he discussed his recently released book, The Power of Regret. Mr. Pink signed our books and was gracious sharing his time in conversation well after the program had ended. LRG1 member Jeff Rowland asked Mr. Pink if he would provide one question for our group to use when we met to discuss his book at our upcoming meeting. He agreed. But when the time came, Mr. Pink generously provided a slate of personalized questions just for us! The questions, as you can imagine, were insightful and provided the foundation for an inspired conversation from a leadership perspective.
With a goal of creating well-read nonprofit leaders while imparting facilitation skills and building trusted relationships among nonprofit leaders, the Leadership Reading Group offers a unique opportunity to study and develop leadership in a communal setting. Research has shown that reading has always been an essential component of leadership development (HBR, Feb. 2016). However, even with the best of intentions, it is often difficult to get to or finish all of the books competing for our attention. Being in a reading group helps one to stay committed to reading the book and to reading books across a wide array of interests and type. Being in a reading group breaks one out of their personal pattern of reading and provides an opportunity to explore concepts and theories with others.
In addition to the monthly meetings, Fieldstone’s program also includes an annual Author’s Insights event. Author’s Insights is an opportunity for members of our Reading Group Program to delve more deeply into leadership concepts with an author whose book was read in the program. Following the tradition set by American Booksellers Association in 1938 to provide a forum for authors to speak about their work, Author’s Insights is uniquely focused at furthering our understanding of leadership by furnishing members with a unique and intimate environment to explore the leadership concepts featured by the author in his or her book. Members are invited to examine the leadership theories posited by the author in a trade book or probe the leadership which was or was not exercised by an author’s characters in a work of fiction or non-fiction.
And now, even when an author can’t join us in person, we have the occasion where they can gift us personally crafted questions for us to consider. The learning opportunities of the Leadership Reading Group continue to evolve and present themselves to us in very meaningful ways.
LRG 1 highly recommends The Power of Regret. If you choose to read the book, let us know…we have some great questions for you to consider!
The next Leadership Reading Group will begin in September 2022. Registration will begin in May.