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Organizational Culture and Leadership book club questions
Here are 12 book club questions for Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. Copy them, print them, or bring them up one at a time.
Organizational Culture and Leadership is Edgar Schein's foundational text on how culture forms, how it functions, and what leaders can actually do about it.
Edgar H. Schein · 1985 · 8h 0m
Full summary and key takeaways →The 12 questions
- 1.
Using Schein's three levels, what is the most powerful basic underlying assumption operating in your organization right now? How do you know it's there?
- 2.
Where does your organization's espoused culture most obviously contradict its actual behavior? What assumption might explain that gap?
- 3.
Think of a founder or early leader in an organization you know. What did their specific behaviors and decisions teach the culture to believe?
- 4.
Schein argues that culture is adaptive when it's working and a constraint when the environment changes. Is your organization's culture currently adaptive or a constraint?
- 5.
What is a belief your team treats as common sense that people from outside the organization consistently question or find strange?
- 6.
Where do you see subculture conflicts in your organization — between functions, levels, or generations — and what assumptions are in collision?
- 7.
Schein's concept of psychological safety predates Edmondson's by a decade. What practices in your team make it safe or unsafe to surface uncomfortable truths?
- 8.
When has an organization you've been part of successfully changed a deep assumption? What made that possible?
- 9.
Schein says leaders are simultaneously products of their culture and shapers of it. Which direction does the causality mostly run in your experience?
- 10.
What does your organization do when it faces a genuine crisis? Does the response reveal assumptions that are different from what the stated values would predict?
- 11.
If you were an anthropologist studying your organization for six months, what would you write about what the artifacts signal about the underlying assumptions?
- 12.
Schein wrote the first edition in 1985. Which of his ideas feel more true today, and which feel less applicable to contemporary work environments?
How to run the discussion
- Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
- Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
- Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
- Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.
Themes worth steering toward
If the conversation stalls, these are the threads that usually restart it.
Common questions
What are good book club questions for Organizational Culture and Leadership?
Here are 12 book club questions for Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar H. Schein, ordered to open easily and end somewhere worth arguing about. The strongest openers ask what each reader noticed rather than what they concluded, and the discussion usually turns on organizational culture, leadership, change management.
How long should a book club discussion of Organizational Culture and Leadership last?
Most groups run 60 to 90 minutes of actual discussion. That is roughly six to eight questions, not all of them, so pick the ones that suit your group rather than working down the list in order.
What are the main themes in Organizational Culture and Leadership?
Organizational culture, Leadership, Change management, Group dynamics, Assumptions. Those are the threads most likely to divide a room, which makes them the useful places to steer a discussion that has gone quiet.
Picking the next one? See books like Organizational Culture and Leadership or questions for other book club picks.
