Book Circles for Deeper Learning – Episode 49

In this episode, host Beth Cougler Blom talks with Theresa Destrebecq about her work facilitating book circles and how she creates deeper learning experiences for people through these book-based communities.

Beth and Theresa also discuss:

  • Theresa’s career shift from teaching to coaching to facilitating
  • Why her company’s motto is “read deeper, not faster”
  • Balancing experiential learning and personal connection in book discussions
  • Strategies for engaging participants in book circles
  • Using sketchnotes and accountability partners to support learning

Engage with Theresa Destrebecq

Links From the Episode

Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose Podcast

Connect with Beth Cougler Blom

Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions

Show Transcript

[Upbeat music playing]

[Show intro]

Beth 00:02
[Show intro] Welcome to Facilitating on Purpose, where we explore ideas together about designing and facilitating learning. Join me to get inspired on your journey to becoming and being a great facilitator wherever you work. I’m your host, Beth Cougler Blom. [Episode intro] Hi there. Thanks for coming back to the podcast.

This is Beth, your host, and I’m excited to bring to you the start of the new year and, of course, more wonderful conversations about designing and facilitating learning with my upcoming guests. In this episode, I’m talking with Theresa Destrebecq.

Theresa’s company is called Emerge Book Circles, and what she does is bring people together in book circles or book learning communities to read deeper, to build stronger connections with themselves and others, and then to create new ways of living, working, and leading from the ideas they first read.

It was great to have this conversation with Theresa, because any time I can kind of nerd out on talking about books or talking about reading, that’s a good day. If you feel that way too, this might be a great episode for you to listen to. Enjoy the show. [Episode start] Theresa, great to see you and great to have you here. Welcome.

Theresa 01:18
Thank you so much, Beth, I’m super excited to be here.

Beth 01:20
I’ve been looking forward to this for a while because I’m a big reader, and I was reflecting on this before we met, and I thought, oh, I don’t really get a chance to talk about reading a lot with other people, you know? Because it’s something I do myself, and occasionally I’ve gotten together with other people, but I tend not to talk about reading so much, so I’ve been really excited and looking forward to this. Thanks.

Theresa 01:48
Yay. Of course. [Beth chuckles]

Beth 01:50
I thought we could start with who you are as a reader. I’m assuming that you’ve been a lifelong reader, correct me if I’m wrong, but what has reading meant to you in your life so far? Can you share a little bit about that to start?

Theresa 02:03
So, this can be a very simple answer, or it could be a very complex one. I think that my love of reading came in due to the dynamics in my family. So I am the last of five children. And there are two girls who used to hang out together and fight, and two boys who used to hang out together and fight, and then me.

And so, there were often times where I didn’t feel included in the play that was happening. My sisters were six and eight years older—well, they still are six and eight years older than me—and so I was too young for them to really get involved. And then my brothers, sometimes I would be invited in, and sometimes I was not.

And so, reading became an outlet for me when I didn’t have anyone to play with. And I fell in love with reading young, and then also it developed a lot through school. I was part of a gifted program when I was young, which I eventually, like, I left because I didn’t want to be associated with the other people. I was kind of judgmental against the other people in my program. [Laughs]

But that also developed this love of learning. And so, like, how could I access that love of learning without being part of this program? And I found that it was through books, and then falling in love with teachers that taught English. I really, you know, so I got really into reading fiction very young. And then over time, as I was developing…so my first career was in teaching.

And so, I was always learning, like, how can I become a better teacher? How can I reach my students? How can I do this? How can I understand their lives? And one of the easiest ways for me to access that was through reading people’s stories. And so, it’s like books have always been where I go to when I can’t be in conversation with someone and learn about their lived experience.

I can learn about it through books. And so, that’s how it’s developed over time.

Beth 04:14
Thank you for sharing that and for your personal story sharing as well. I appreciate that you started there and then it became something you brought into your work, especially in your work as a teacher as well. I know it’s a big story probably, but can you tell briefly what was it that led you to go from teaching to what you’re doing now and then tell us what you’re doing now around book learning circles?

Theresa 04:36
Yeah, so my first career was as a traditional school teacher. I taught middle and high school. I started actually in high school and then I moved down to middle school. I think I was too young to teach high school like straight out of university.

I actually had one student who was older than me at one point because at the time in Boston, the students who had been coming from other countries and potentially were refugees were allowed to stay in the school system longer. So at one point, I was 21 and I had a student who was 23 and he asked me to marry him [they laugh] so that could have green card status in the United States.

Beth 05:08
Oh no.

Theresa 05:08
Yeah that’s not going to work.

So I worked in education, traditional education. I moved into educational leadership. I became an assistant school director or assistant principal. And then I hit a wall and I ended up leaving education, but I think the educator in me was still always there. And eventually I transformed.

I had part of a year of like, I had no idea what I’m doing and I did odd jobs and I shadowed and I was like, ah, education’s been my whole world. What do I do now? And I didn’t want to go into corporate training. That didn’t seem like me. And I got into coaching. To me, that was not educating, but it was almost a way for people to educate themselves because all I was doing was asking questions.

And this is when I fell into like personal development and my own growth because I also had left traditional education with a little bit of bitterness in my mouth and I had to let go of that. And so now my work is centred around working within organizations, but not as a trainer.

Theresa 06:10
And so instead I facilitate book-centred learning communities where a group of employees or a team of employees will read a common book together. So they have the shared content and a little bit of shared context together. And my role is to facilitate them to connect more deeply with themselves and the ideas so that they can create new ways of working individually and or together.

Sometimes when we read a book, we read it, we underline it maybe, and then we put it back on the shelf, that becomes what I call shelf development. So the learning stays on the shelf. And so my role now is I’m not teaching them, the teaching’s in the book. I’m not training them, but I’m facilitating them to actually activate that learning so it becomes more impactful.

So it’s a bit of my coaching background, a little bit of my education background, and then a lot of community building within the organizations that I work with.

Beth 07:16
Well, first of all, let me say thank you for sharing a story of being a teacher and then going in to do something else. Because I think I’ve heard stories like that over the years of teachers wondering what the next thing is when they come out of a formal teaching, you know, we would say K-12 environment here in Canada. And it is possible, isn’t it, to go into something that’s similar?

I mean, coaching, we’ve already had an episode on this podcast around how facilitation and coaching are very related professions or skills. And yeah, just showing that there’s something that you can take all of those skills and weave them into this new, exciting path. But let’s talk about book circles.

The one thing that struck me when you told us about what they were, first off, is that I think you said something about it’s about themselves. You’re helping them connect to themselves, which might be surprising to some because you might think, oh, it’s a book circle, it’s about a book, and we’re going to connect to the learning that’s in the book.

But tell me more about how book circles, the way you run them, help them connect to themselves.

Theresa 08:19
So, we live in this really fast-paced world where there’s so much content, there’s so much noise, there’s so much everything. I mean, there’s almost too much content, you could say, out there. When we consume this content, we can think automatically, okay, I can just use that. But we are all unique individuals.

And so what worked for someone might not work for me or for you, Beth, or for somebody else.

And if we don’t have that moment of connecting and looking at how does this idea relate to me, how does it relate to my values, how does it relate to who I am as a human being, how does it relate to the culture in which I live, how does it relate to what I want to do in the world, what I want to change, and how I want to impact it, then anything that we try to do will potentially not work, or we’ll get discouraged.

And then we’ll be like, ah, why should I read more books? Because they’re telling me the wrong things to do. So it’s really important that we take that moment to pause and not just see something and say, oh, that’s a really cool quote. Why is it really a cool quote? What does this quote mean for you? What does this idea mean for you? What can you do with it? How can you change it?

When will you change something? When will you change your behaviour? And that takes a moment of pause. And we often don’t even do that.

Beth 09:44
It’s true. I think we so often, as you say, we’re faced with a lot of information all the time. And there’s even like a bit of pride or something sometimes around how many books you can finish and so on. I mean, I post all the books I read on my personal Instagram, but I try not to say, oh, I’ve read X number of books a year or, you know, it’s not really about that for me.

It is—because I’m a learning professional like yourself—it’s learning for me at the heart of the activity that really you’re helping people get down to that. Like what is the learning in the book, but as it relates to our own lives and our own circumstance. I like that you’re saying like you’re not saying take what’s in the book on face value either.

You’re saying change it, you know, make it work for you if that’s what you need to do.

Theresa 10:34
One of my, well, I guess the motto of my company is read deeper, not faster. And so it’s really about looking at it from that deeper standpoint. And I don’t think that many of us take the time to… We think of professional development as something we need to do out there, right?

I’m going to read this leadership book and it’s going to give me some checklists of some things to do out there with other people. But I don’t think that that out there can change unless we start inside. And they are very much interrelated. And so we have to take that moment to reflect for ourselves before we can look at how we’re influencing or impacting the world around us.

Beth 11:14
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you say what you do isn’t like what we might think of as a book club.

Theresa 11:20
No.

Beth 11:20
It’s deeper than that. Can you share and illuminate how that happens? Why is it not a book club? [laughs] What are you doing that’s different?

Theresa 11:27
I mean, I think book clubs are kind of an Anglo-Saxon kind of thing. So in Canada, in the UK, in America. So if anyone’s listened to this who’s not in one of those … a traditional book club, from my experience, is everyone reads the book. And then we meet for an hour and we talk about the ideas. It’s a very intellectual pursuit.

There’s often not a facilitator or a moderator, and it can go off in lots of different tangents.

Beth 11:55
Sure. And sometimes there’s wine or food which can really impact what’s going on. [They laugh]

Theresa 12:00
Yes! So and often book clubs are focused on fiction. So that’s the one differentiator as well. So a book circle in my way of leading them. So A, I use a circle specifically because for me, a club has negative connotations because a club is, we’re allowed in and you’re not allowed. So there’s a sense of, at least that’s how I felt when I was in high school and we had all these clubs.

Like you were in the club or you were not and you felt like you were, you didn’t belong. So I wanted to erase that idea of unbelonging. So I use the circle because there’s not a sense of hierarchy and I’m a part of the circle just as much as everyone else. I’m not there to tell them how to use this book. I’m just there to create the space for them to create what they want from the book.

So that’s the one difference. It’s nonfiction, it’s professional development, personal development kind of books.

Theresa 12:54
Secondly, is we take the book and we divide it up into sections. So we read each part and then we meet for each part. So we might read chapters one and two, then we read chapters three and four, and then five and six, and then seven and eight, for example.

So in each session is an hour and a half and we spend, yes, a little bit of time talking about the book. So usually they have kind of a turn to your neighbour moment or like meet in a what impacted you, what was insightful, what questions are you, do you have, what are you still thinking about from what we read? So that just gets kind of their thinking about the book.

And then the whole rest of the session is designed around connecting the ideas to their heart and their hands. So how do we experience the ideas in a way that we will remember them? It will be sticky and we can actually implement them and use them.

Theresa 13:52
For example, on Monday I was with a group of engineers and we were talking about how the chapter we were reading was from a book by Adam Grant and it was around how to transform mundane tasks and to kind of reconnect to some of the work. And so I brought in some other work from Dr. Stuart Brown around play and we talked about the different play personalities.

So I introduced these play personalities. They kind of self-reflected on theirs. We shared what were our top play personalities and how they show up in our lives. And then we actually played. So I divided them into teams and we created a little competition and they had to redesign different tasks that were using some of these play personalities. And there was a winner.

So this is one of the play personalities is around being a competitor. So I brought that in. So I try to design activities that address the ideas but also get them to play with the ideas in new ways so that it becomes more memorable. So they will not be like, oh yeah, we had this conversation about play and they are theorizing about it.

Oh yeah, we talked about this, but they can actually engage with it in a real way.

Beth 15:05
Yeah, because otherwise it might just go poof out of their brains and you go on, you get back to work and you forget all about it. Yeah. So you’re bringing in that experiential learning component. (Theresa: For sure.) And do you get them to reflect? Like, do you integrate that piece where you help them realize what they’re taking out of those play moments or whatever the activity happens to be?

Theresa 15:22
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Theresa 15:25
Yeah, so, you know, every session is around like, what was most valuable? What are you taking from this? What actions do you want to take? What questions do you still have? So at the end of every session, there’s a link that they’re making an action—this is the coach in me—around what are they doing based on this session. And then we come back to it in between.

And they also have accountability partners. Not every group does. It’s kind of, it’s a voluntary, I don’t want to force people into it, but they will connect with somebody else because I really believe that we learn better in community with other people. I don’t think learning is meant to be solo.

I mean, I read all the time and I learn solo, but I learned so much more and so much better when I’m in community with other people. So the more that I can create this community, both inside our sessions and in between our sessions, I think the better off for the people who participate.

Beth 16:14
Yeah. And that’s the deepening, I think, that you talked about too, right? I mean, sure, we can read alone. You and I both do that all the time, but we can be more deep about it in community, as you’ve said. Now, what about the pitfalls?

Because I was part of a, we won’t say book circle, it was an informal group of people who came together to read Adam Kahane’s Facilitating Breakthrough book a year or two ago. And it was a good experience, but it was a bit ad hoc for sure.

And one thing I noticed was, and I didn’t facilitate, I think we kind of rotated it around as I imagined, or if I remember. One thing was that, first of all, sometimes people didn’t come because they hadn’t read it. And, you know, or life, well, I should say work got busy, and they just couldn’t, you know, a client thing came up or a employer thing came up and they couldn’t come.

Or they did come and they hadn’t read the thing they were supposed to read. So these are the, it’s like the busy work and busy life getting in the way. Do you have tips for either people in your book circles to be able to make time and space to prepare and to actually come? And that is useful for just all of us who may not be in your book circle, but how do we make time for it? And stick to that.

Theresa 17:30
So, I think there’s two questions there that I could answer. So the one is, what do I do in order to make it so that people can still come? I tell them that you don’t even have to read the book. So the very first session, we have no content.

It’s just about connecting and meeting one another, especially if they’re not an intact team. Learning, touching in on some of the ideas, people who are new, like this is how this whole thing works. I say right from the outset, you do not have to read the book. There is no ‘behind’ in this. Come no matter what. I mean, unless you can’t make the time to come to our hour and a half, but please come.

And I also create sketchnotes. So I make little sketches, and this is also for me, because otherwise I’m like, probably like you, I underline in a book, and then I’m like, put it back on the shelf, and then I’m like, okay, but and I’m reading seven books at the same time. And I’m like, wait, which one is it? So I make sketchnotes. And so I send those to my clients.

And I say, if all else fails, you can look at the sketchnotes five minutes before we start, and you’ll get an idea of what we’re doing. And I’ve had people who have admitted, I didn’t even read the book at all, I’ve gone through all eight sessions, and I never read the book. And so I design it in a way that if they haven’t read it, it doesn’t matter.

And that’s where the experiential learning comes in, because we’re not theorizing about the book. We are experiencing the ideas of the book.

Beth 18:51
Yeah. And they can do that whether or not they’ve prepared and read the book or not. I love that.

Theresa 18:55
Exactly.

Beth 18:55
I actually, I saw the short video on your website and I wondered if that was your sketchnoting that was in the video.

Theresa 19:00
It was not!

Beth 19:00
It was not? Oh. [laughs].

Theresa 19:01
It was not! [In a high voice]

Beth 19:01
But you do it. You do it for this.

Theresa 19:05
I do do it. Yes, but I do it for fun and I do it for my clients, but I’m not … I decided to outsource that because I thought that it would just be faster for somebody else to do it. It wasn’t a priority for me.

Beth 19:15
Yeah. It looked good and I should say I liked the video because it does explain quite well what you do in these book learning communities. So I recommend that just as an aside for people to go and check out your website and watch that video. [Theresa: Yeah, yeah!] Yeah.

Now, what about the rest of us who, when we’re not in your book learning communities, how do we make time and space and because we will have to read the book if we’re doing this alone, I suppose. Any tips on how you’ve done this for yourself. Like, how do you make time to read and what do you tell yourself around that?

Theresa 19:42
Part of me created this whole company so that it’d be accountable to my own reading. Well, I’ll just say that. So I knew that I was reading a lot and not implementing myself either. So I created that. Not saying that anyone should go out and necessarily create a competitor to my business, but if you want to, feel free. As I said earlier, social learning is really important.

So essentially, even if you’re not reading the same book, you could every Friday have a connection with Beth or with whomever and say, hey, can we just check in for 30 minutes about what we’re reading and make it a weekly appointment that you have with a partner.

So you have a learning partner, just like I have within my book circles, and you connect and you have a little virtual coffee or an in-person coffee and you talk about what you’re reading. There is something to be said about social pressure that supports us. Even if we don’t want, we want to think that we can, we’re very independent and we can do it all alone, that social pressure helps.

Theresa 20:36
I think the other thing is to connect with your values. I do this exercise a lot with organizations around prioritizing and things like that, if it’s part of a book circle. What do you value and how is it showing up in your calendar? So if you value learning, where is it in your calendar? Show me. Oftentimes it’s not. And reading can be part of your calendar. You can actually block it off.

So I would read an hour to three hours a day, maybe. I know that sounds like a lot, but sometimes I don’t. So far today I haven’t read anything and it’s 4:30 for me, PM. So making it a priority, putting it in your calendar, and I think being flexible around the methodology you use for reading. So I quote read a lot, but I also listen a lot too. So I walk the dog and I bring my book with me.

If I’m out in nature, in the mountains, I’m not listening. But if I’m doing a city walk and it’s actually, if I tie listening to a book with walking the dog, so I almost have it stack. So if I want to listen to my book, I have to walk the dog at the same time. So then I’m getting two benefits at the same time. So those are little tricks that I do to be able to read as much as I can.

Put it in my calendar, connect it with walking the dog or something that I’m already doing. So it could be washing the dishes. It could be whatever it is, connected with that, and then having accountability for yourself with social component to it.

Beth 22:15
Yeah, I like the accountability part for sure because I have done the calendarization part and then I think it sometimes goes away. You know, we have very good intentions sometimes and put those things in our calendar and then, you know, work gets busy or whatever. And that’s the first thing that comes out is what I’ve noticed with my own self.

But having that other person, kind of like going to the gym, if you’ve got that gym partner that you know is going to be there and you’re going to meet and you’re going to do the thing, you often do go and not kind of skate out of it like you might if you were alone. [chuckles] So yeah, thanks for helping me remember that accountability partner. That’s important.

Theresa 22:52
Mm hmm.

Beth 22:54
Let’s go back to the piece you mentioned around the head and heart and hands, because sometimes we wouldn’t think, oh, reading, you know, a heart-centred activity. Maybe some people do, but especially in a work context, what does that look like and can it be initially scary for people when they hear that word? What do you do around the heart-centred piece?

Theresa 23:13
I can’t think of a specific way, so it depends very much on the context. It depends on the book. It depends on the group. And yes, sometimes people feel uncomfortable, but I also think that there’s opportunity in discomfort. And I think it’s David Rock.

He’s some centre for neurology, whatever, but he talks about how in order for learning to be really impactful, there needs to be some discomfort involved. And so when I talk about connecting the heart, I’m not saying that we’re all getting together and crying together or anything like that, but it’s about connecting to the meaning in what we’re doing.

And this goes back to what I said earlier about having that sense of connection to what we’re doing. If we read something and we don’t spend that time to connect with it on an emotional level at all, then we might as well be reading the manual for our dishwasher. So a lot of it is in the questions that I ask, in the activities that I create, in the invitations to share stories.

I try to bring in a lot of storytelling because that’s how we connect between our humanity. And so telling stories around what we’re reading, or that are tangential to what we’re reading, can get us into that heart space without us even recognizing it. And I’m not saying, okay, everyone, let’s put our brains away and we’re going to connect to our heart.

I’m not saying that, but it’s like these subtle invitations throughout our sessions together that bring it in. And then the hand part is, you know, I’m always inviting them to get into action around whatever it is that we’re reading. So again, it doesn’t become shelf development, it becomes implementable, it becomes engaged, and we can see it in what happens at work.

Beth 24:52
What do you think this has done for you as a facilitator? I mean, you were a teacher, you moved into this, well, coaching, and then this new role of facilitating book learning communities. Has it changed your facilitation practice? Have you noticed yourself changing in any way or are you just implementing all the skills you already had as a facilitator all along?

Theresa 25:12
When I first got into doing this, I didn’t call myself a facilitator. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I think it was one of my first or second clients, when I invited them to give me feedback they were like, oh Theresa, you’re such a great facilitator. I was like, is that what I am? [smiles; Beth chuckles] Is that what I call myself? I had no idea!

There’s a lot of parts of facilitation that I think came from my teaching and came from my coaching. I don’t think that I could have pinpointed what those skills were. I think this is something that you said earlier about sometimes when teachers decide to leave the profession, they’re not exactly sure how their skills are transferable. I don’t think I saw that. Now, I definitely see it.

Theresa 25:58
Some of it is not activity-based or how I design. It’s more just in the presence that I have and how I hold myself in a group. There’s a sense of confidence that I think that I developed through my years of teaching, through my years of leadership that really supported me in terms of being a facilitator.

That being said, I’ve taken basic facilitation classes and been like, I had no idea that this was part of facilitation. Or I’ve taken classes and been like, oh yeah, I didn’t know that was called, but yeah, that’s what I do. There’s still definitely gaps. I am a self-taught, self-proclaimed facilitator. I have a certification in coaching. I don’t have any certification in facilitation. I just do it.

Beth 26:50
Yeah, neither do I. I, like you, have learned along the way, and I wrote a book about it, and I never had [laughs], you know, I did a master’s education, so that there’s that, right? [Theresa: Me too.] But that’s just theory, right? Yeah. So it’s the practice piece that has taken years and years and years and just getting out there and doing things and learning from them.

And that’s always been the best teacher—and reading about it, as you’ve said, too, like always reading and watching other people and so on. But yeah, I wouldn’t say you need to be certified as a facilitator either, because it’s never been something. And no offense to the people who are certified. There’s lots of people who really value that. And I, I think that’s great.

But is it necessary or not? Not necessarily.

Theresa 27:33
Yeah. I think one thing that’s also supported me is being part of a community of other facilitators and experiencing other people’s facilitation, because I think that can be really inspirational and it can also help you ground you in like, oh, this is my style of facilitation. And I don’t think that we can ever copy somebody else’s facilitation style.

We might be able to borrow tweaks from it and I call it the Theresa twist. So sometimes I’ll get inspired by an idea or an activity and I’ll twist it so that it fits with who I am as a facilitator and the group in which I’m working with.

Beth 28:07
And I saw that even recently I was sharing on LinkedIn about just a little cautionary tale about using dots for dot voting. That the traditional red, yellow, and green ones I think we usually have are, you know, if you can’t see colours you can’t see the difference between those three dots. So even just seeing how people shared what they were doing in the responses and all they were sharing pictures of all the different dots that they had. And their personalities were coming through even in just the dots that they were choosing. It was hilarious actually.

Beth 28:35
So I really appreciated seeing we don’t all have to be the same because even in the way we choose materials can be so different to reflect our own personalities. But you know what it says to me too in that when you come in and facilitate these communities with organizations it probably, correct me if I’m wrong, makes it feel to them that they could continue without you after you’re gone. I mean maybe you work with companies for long long periods of time but can they look at you facilitating a book circle and think okay we know how to do this now. We think we can do it because it looks … you probably make it look easy, but it’s doable. Does it look doable for them can they continue on without you

Theresa 29:19
I think they probably could because sometimes I look at what I’m doing and I’m like, I can’t believe somebody’s paying me to do this. [Beth laughs.] But I also think it goes back to my years of practice in doing it. I have actually worked with an organization teaching how I lead book circles. So I’ve done two rounds where I’ve trained the trainer, train the facilitator model.

In doing so, so there’s a couple days of training and really this is how I do it, this is how I organize it, a little bit of the theory and then practice. And then they pair up and they facilitate a book circle session, just one session. So there’s usually eight trainees and they pair up and they do four sessions of a book circle. And then we have a debrief at the end.

And in watching them and participating, so I’m a member of the book circle, they’re facilitating and then afterwards we debrief at the end. And I’ve had two, I’ve done it twice and I’ve had two very different groups. One group was like, go off and conquer and be a facilitator and do your book circles and it will be magical. And I’ve had another group that I was like, what did I miss?

Theresa 30:26
Like, what did I not transmit in my training or my teaching? And so I definitely don’t think that what I do, it’s not rocket science, but I also think facilitation is not just about going online and finding a bunch of techniques and recreating them for some group. There’s a lot about your presence. There’s a lot about who you are.

There’s a lot of emotional intelligence involved because when you’re facilitating a group, you have no idea what’s going to come about. And sometimes there are things that come up and you have to stop and you have to pause and you have to let go of your agenda and you have to deal with the emotions that are in the room. I think there’s a lot of mindset involved.

In the second group, there was one person who was very much used to being a teacher and used to having the answers. As a facilitator, I am not the expert. I’m creating space for their expertise and their wisdom to emerge. And so if you go into it thinking that the light is shining on you, then you’re not being a great facilitator.

So you very much have to take your ego out of the room when you facilitate.

Beth 31:37
And some people aren’t ready for that, are they? And it’s not to say that they may not be later. And I think you call your circles emerge, don’t you? [Theresa: Yes.] It’s like an emergent thing, isn’t it?

I don’t know how you chose that name, but it occurs to me that there’s somewhere where we all start and if we want to get better at it and we listen and pay attention and develop that self-awareness, that emotional intelligence, I think it will happen. But if there’s a block there in some ways and some people can’t get over some of those things or have the desire almost to learn some of those skills, then it might be very different and difficult.

Theresa 32:12
Yeah. And I think about one, a recent book circle that I did, like every activity, I’m like, you can do this with your own teams, like steal this and do this, right? And so I’m constantly encouraging them to. And a member of a book circle then came to me and said, I could do book circles. I feel like I could, but I don’t want to. And I have a team of people who don’t necessarily read.

So can you lead book-inspired workshops for my team so people don’t have to read? So essentially I just bring in ideas from a book, do like a two-minute to three-minute, like teaching of an idea and then we do something experiential with it. So they don’t have to read. They still see that I have a gift, I guess, for lack of a better word that I can bring to the organization. And I do that.

And it just happened once again. So another person, I did a team book circle, they did their big offsite in September. And I just had a conversation with them on Friday. We see gaps in our team. Can you do a workshop on essentially like finding and aligning our purpose, which is not directly related to a book, but I can pull like four books that I can bring in and I can design a workshop for them. No reading involved.

Beth 33:24
And I will say to everyone that even before we turned on recording, Theresa recommended a book for me [laughs] about something that we were talking about. So it was a nice way to start our informal conversation before we turned on recording. It does seem very part and parcel of your existence. And do you really read seven books at a time? Do you always have that many on the go?

Theresa 33:45
I don’t always have seven on the go. I usually have at least four. So I have a Kindle book. I have a French book. I have a paper kind of professional development book or two. And then I have an audiobook. So I guess that’s five. So minimum five. And it also depends on what the organizations that I’m working with are reading. So right now, I’m doing a whole bunch of book circles on books I’ve already read.

So I’m not actually reading anything new. But sometimes an organization, usually we decide on a book together, and I try to offer a book I’ve already read. But sometimes they’re like, hey, we’ve heard of this book. Can we read this one? And it’s not one that I’ve read. So then I am reading that one on top of everything else that I’m reading.

Beth 34:36
And you mentioned the sketchnoting piece. Do you sketchnote or use other kinds of tools to be able to capture that learning for yourself or is it always sketchnoting?

Theresa 34:47
Sketchnoting is one. I underline when I’m reading, and I ask the author questions in the margins, even though the author is not there. So I’m having a conversation with the author, and they don’t even know it.

And then I’m also, as I’m reading, even if I have no book circle in mind for this book, I’m always like, exercise, E-X-E-R, period, like, and then I’m writing down how I could turn this idea or this paragraph into some sort of exercise that we can do. So I’m always kind of ideating around that. That’s what I do.

I know that there’s a brain coach by the name of Jim Kwik, and he talks about getting a notebook. And I mentioned this to the book circle participants if they want to—if they want to journal around what they’re reading—to on one side of the paper, so on the left side of the paper, capture what it is that the author wrote, and on the right side of the paper, write what they’re going to do with it.

So it’s kind of the what, now what? So what the author said, and now what am I going to do with it? So it takes it a little bit into that, how am I connecting to this idea, and how am I going to use it?

Beth 35:57
Yeah and that’s a skill they can take home with them and use it forever, basically. I’m wondering about how fiction works into this. You know, I try to read both nonfiction and fiction, and sometimes we can learn as much from fiction probably as nonfiction because we see connections or it just, you know, a character does something or whatever. So do you think in terms of fiction that way?

Do you make the same margin annotations in fiction? Or do you just let it ride and use that for fun?

Theresa 36:27
Fiction is definitely for fun. But I also think that I choose fiction also as a learning tool. So a lot of the fiction that I read are by authors that didn’t have my same experience. So I read a lot of fiction written by people of colour and people who did not grow up in the United States or in Canada.

So that is always my goal when I’m reading fiction is to really try to understand somebody else’s perspective. And even if it is fiction, it’s supposedly not true, there’s a lot that can come forth and a lot of learning that can happen. And so for me, fiction is a way for me to again, understand the lived experience of other people that are not like me.

Beth 37:12
I totally agree. And actually, my parents were just visiting and my mom and I got talking about A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, I want to say. It was written years ago and it was about, can’t remember the story, but I know it was set in India. And it was just one of those pivotal fiction books that really made me see something happening in another culture that wasn’t my own. It was really eye-opening.

Yeah. So I totally agree. Sometimes I make the easy choice just because it’s a busy time. And I don’t really read beach reads, but just something that’s a little easier. And then often I’m making the same, you know Indigenous authors for sure here in Canada, or folks who don’t look like me, don’t have the same background as you said. Yeah, a little bit of everything.

Theresa 38:02
Do you know the work of Richard Wagamese?

Beth 38:05
Yes, I do. I’ve read a couple of his books for sure.

Theresa 38:08
He’s also got some great books of meditations. And then there’s another book of his that he never finished before he died. And that’s really around like creating space and creating connection to the earth in different ways.

Beth 38:21
I think I did see that one. Here, when we take the BC Ferries because I live on Vancouver Island and we’re always on some ferry to get back to the mainland, you know, to go to Vancouver. BC Ferries actually has a great book section of British Columbia authors and I’m pretty sure I saw that book come up at one point, but I don’t think I’ve read that one, but I’ve read a couple of others.

Can you share what you’re reading right now? I know you probably don’t have them sitting on the desk beside you. Is there anything you can share about what you’re reading right now?

Theresa 38:49
I’m reading a book called Unbound, A Woman’s Guide to Power, which is written by a woman who was training to be a Taoist nun and at the same time working as a dominatrix.

It’s all about her relationship between domination and submission and how that can show up for women in the world and the way that our society has conditioned us to be more submissive, but then how we’re not accepted as being dominant either. And so how can we find that balance and that congruence between the two?

So that one I’m reading right now, it’s fascinating. But it’s interesting because I went on Goodreads and I read a lot of the people who didn’t like it as well because I think it’s important to understand other people’s perspectives. So I have that one going.

Theresa 39:42
I just finished a book called The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which is about writing and storytelling, but it’s also about his lived experience coming to Senegal and visiting the sites where African slave trade originally started. There’s a bit of a story around one of his books being banned in South Carolina and him going and supporting the English teacher around that and going to the board meeting and all of that.

And then there’s a really big section around he spent 10 days in Palestine and his experience and how it connected to his family’s experience in the United States, Jim Crow and all of that and the connection between the Palestinians and their relationship with Israel. So that one’s going on.

I’m reading The Covenant of Water, which is a book that takes place partially in India and also mostly in India. That one’s a fiction book. I think it was maybe on Oprah’s Book Club, but I have no idea. So that one, a book called Right Within, which is written by a Black American author. And it’s all about healing from racial trauma within the workplace, which is not something that I’ve experienced.

I’ve definitely experienced trauma in the workplace. But not racialized trauma. And I’m reading it so that I can better connect with members of the book circles in which I participate because I work with a lot of women’s networks. And I can’t understand deeply their lived experience.

So this is, again, a way for me to learn about it without asking them directly, Oh, so when was the last time you experienced this? So I can kind of have a learning that’s around around it, but not directly to them.

Beth 41:33
That’s such an important point. I’m so glad you said that because I was just reminded about that this week when, you know, there’s something that we want to do where we would need to impress upon our friends who are not white, who are, you know, people of colour or Indigenous communities or whatever, but we can’t impress upon them all the time. They shouldn’t do that. They don’t have time to do that.

It’s not their responsibility to teach us. We know this, right? So it’s, books can be such an excellent way to go and educate. And you’ve said this a couple of times too. So thanks for coming back to that because it’s so important and we need to create time and space for that. Thanks for that. [Theresa: Hmm mm.]

Theresa, is there anything that you haven’t said yet about the importance of learning through community and reading that you want to say now before we close?

Theresa 42:26
I’m going to mention one additional thing, and this was a big wake up for me. Before I left traditional education, one of the reasons that I left was because I was in conflict with my manager. I turned to books in order to help me through that situation, and they didn’t.

The reason why they didn’t is because they allowed me to just stay in my story and reinforce the beliefs that I already had in some way. I was very easily able to like, oh, well, this doesn’t apply to me, but this really does apply to me. I think that there are limitations to reading alone, especially when you … in my case, there was a conflict, right? And I needed somebody else to read with me to call me on my BS and to really shine a light on how I was being in that relationship. That’s one of the reasons also why I choose to do this work. It’s almost because I have to go back and recognize, oh gosh, books did not save me. So I think that books are amazing, but they are not going to be the only source of change.

And so having other people is really important, and you have to be willing to question yourself. And that goes back to what I’ve said around this connection and reading deeply. It starts with the book and you and that relationship and then extending it out to others.

Beth 43:55
Thank you so much for that. It makes me think about when I was writing, happens in reading, but it happens in writing too. So when I wrote my book and put it out to beta readers, one of my friends who is in the field called me out on a story that I was going to put in. And it was around my own privilege. And I ended up taking it out.

And it’s not like I want to hide the way I’m privileged, but did I need to have it in there to perhaps have someone feel something that I didn’t want them to feel? No, I didn’t need to have it in there. So she called me on it and made me see what I had not been able to see yet. So it happens in reading and it happens in writing too, if we reach out to our communities and ask for feedback.

So thanks for reminding us of that.

Theresa 44:39
Mm-hmm.

Beth 44:40
Thanks for being part of my community. I’m so happy that we met through MyFest and through Maha Bali and the others who are doing great work over there in Egypt. And I know you facilitate with them as well. So nice to chat with you and talk about reading, [Theresa: Yay!] as I said when we began.

Beth 44:58
Yeah, thanks so much for being with me.

Theresa 44:59
Thank you so much, Beth, it was a pleasure.

Beth 45:04
[Episode outro] It was such a great conversation that I had with Theresa, and don’t worry, all of the books that she mentioned and I mentioned during the episode are going to be in the show notes. So go to facilitatingonpurpose.com or wherever you’re listening to this podcast, check the show notes and find all those great resources there.

I know I appreciated this episode and what Theresa had to say because I am a reader. I told you that in the beginning and I love to learn from books and sometimes I don’t find enough time in my schedule to be able to do it, but it is something I keep coming back to over and over again. And this actually encourages me to think about how to do it in community a little bit more often.

But I loved how Theresa stressed that reading is something that we do to connect with ourselves as well as to then connect with others, if we choose to be part of a book learning community or a book circle such as what Theresa facilitates. So remember, in her words, don’t let your learning sit on the shelf and slow down.

Reading isn’t about doing it as fast as possible to get through as many books as you can throughout the year. It’s about actually taking the time to sit with your ideas, sit with what’s coming up that the author has presented to you and be intentional about your learning and make it stick for yourself.

It was a great pleasure to chat with Theresa about learning and about books in this episode and I thank her again for being with me in this conversation.

Beth 46:34
On the next episode of the podcast, I talk with Mary Chan. You may have heard me mention Mary’s name before. She’s actually the editor for my show. Mary is a podcast strategist, a voice coach, and a voiceover artist.

She’s got all sorts of hats that she wears, of course, in her own business other than just being my audio editor, but she does a great job for me. I’m so lucky to have her. Mary and I are going to talk about using our voice to lead and facilitate. So catch us next time on the show. Until then.

Beth 47:05
[Show outro] Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice to. To find the show notes, give me feedback, or submit ideas for future episodes visit FacilitatingOnPurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode. Happy facilitating!

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