Theme: Communication skills

We all know the feeling. The conversation that went sideways, the feedback we softened until it lost its meaning, the point we never quite made. Communication is the skill we most assume we have and most often wish we were better at.

For our second meetup, the club voted to lean right into it.

We'll be reading around two books that take on the conversations we tend to get wrong:

• Difficult Conversations by Bruce Patton, Douglas Stone, and Sheila Heen

• Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

You pick the one that draws you in, or dip into both.

But the reading is only half of it. The real value is the room. You'll spend the evening with people from across HR, work, and culture, comparing how these ideas hold up against the messy reality of actual conversations. What worked for someone. What backfired. What you'd never have thought to try. That exchange is the thing you can't get from reading alone, and it's the heart of why this club exists.

Come whether you've finished the books or barely started. Come to talk, or come to listen. Either way, you'll leave with a little more than you walked in with, and a few new people who take this as seriously as you do.

How We Roll

You choose which book(s) to read
We'll always run two books per round, so you choose the one that speaks to you. Same theme, two ways in.

You choose the theme and the books.
Recommendations are shared by members and the decision is reached by voting on preferences.
This club is shaped by the people in it, so the theme and the reading list are yours to build.

Read as much as you can.
Finished the whole thing? Wonderful. Got through two chapters? That's great.
And if you didn't get to it at all, come anyway and just listen in.

Conversations, not presentations
This is your space and therefore conversations are not built around templates.
We will share what we took away from the book(s) and we may not always agree.
Differing views are the good part, so we're here to understand each other, not to win the point.

What's shared here stays here.
People often bring real work stories tied to what they've read. So we keep those in the room, and treat each other's honesty with care.

Come and go as life allows.
Miss a session? That's fine! Come back when you can.
There's no catching up to do and no guilt to carry. The door is always open.

Support the venues that hosts us.
We meet in venues that give us the space for free (or almost free). So please order a drink or two while you're there. It's a small way to say thanks and keep us welcome.