Why reading together changes us

How books become more powerful when they are read, reflected on and worked through together.

I read a lot. I always have and for most of my reading life, I have done it alone, which is, for most people, how it goes. A book, a comfy chair, a quiet hour if you’re lucky.

I have also spent most of my professional life offering books to people. Reading lists have turned up in almost every leadership program I have facilitated, in most coaching relationships I have held, and in the kinds of professional conversations that happen between sessions or over coffee. Not as homework, but because I genuinely believe that the right book, at the right moment, can do something seriously meaningful.

Reading matters, and the evidence is more interesting than many people realise. Regular reading has been associated with a reduced risk of long-term cognitive decline, stronger cognitive performance, enhanced mental wellbeing, and even measurable differences in brain structure. But the study I keep returning to is Carney and Robertson’s 2022 research on fiction, recall and discussion. They found that reading books could improve mood and aspects of mental health and that recalling and discussing what had been read appeared to strengthen the effect. The conversation after the reading is often where the real movement happens. Not because the book wasn't doing something on its own, but because other people’s readings of the same material can show you things you may not have seen yourself.

Someone in the room names a thing you had felt but had not quite found words for. Someone else pushes back in a way that makes you realise your thinking was only half-formed. Another woman reads the same chapter and finds something completely different there and suddenly the book is larger than it was when you read it alone. You leave the conversation holding the book differently than when you arrived.

Putting people together with a book does not automatically create any of that. I have been in enough rooms to know. The conditions have to be right. Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety shows that learning behaviour in teams depends on whether people believe it is safe to take interpersonal risks, to ask a question, admit uncertainty, challenge an assumption, or offer a thought that is still finding its shape. Without that safety, something subtle happens. People say what they think sounds 'right' rather than what they actually believe. The half-formed idea, often the most interesting thing in the room, stays unspoken. The group performs rather than inquires. And most of what could have happened, does not.

This is why the room matters as much as the book. A woman might read a chapter on boundaries and recognise herself immediately. Alone, that recognition may stay private. It might become a note in the margin, a folded page, a quiet ache. But in a well-held room, that same recognition can become something else.

One woman says, “I think I have confused being easygoing with never quite naming what I need ...” Another says, “I know exactly what you mean, I call it being flexible, but really I am avoiding the discomfort of saying no.” Someone else asks, “What would a clean no actually sound like?” And suddenly the book has become language, .rehearsal, practice. A way of seeing a pattern and trying something different. That is the difference between consuming an insight alone and integrating it together.

Nancy Kline’s Thinking Environment work, which I have drawn on in my own facilitation for many years, arrives at a similar conclusion, from a practitioner’s direction. Kline argues that the quality of someone’s thinking is profoundly shaped by how they are being treated by the people around them while they are trying to think. That idea has stayed with me because it is both simple and demanding.

The quality of attention in the room changes what people are able to think, which means holding a room well is not incidental to the work. It is the work.

This is why shared reading, when it is properly held, can become more than discussion. The book gives the language, the conversation, the perspective and the room enough safety and challenge to test what the idea might mean in their actual lives. Not as theory nor inspiration that evaporates by the next morning, but as something they can recognise, speak about, practise and begin to live differently with.

That is what Kith Salon is built around, a room where the books are chosen with care, because they give the conversation somewhere worth going. A room held to a standard, because the quality of thinking together matters. A space where women are not performing insight, but practising it.

The research makes a compelling case. In my experience, it mostly confirms what anyone who has ever been in that kind of room already knows. The right book can change what you see. The right room can change what you do with it.

References

Carney, J. and Robertson, C. (2022) ‘Five studies evaluating the impact on mental health and mood of recalling, reading, and discussing fiction’, PLOS ONE, 17(4), e0266323. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266323

Chang, Y.H., Wu, I.C. and Hsiung, C.A. (2020) ‘Reading activity prevents long-term decline in cognitive function in older people: Evidence from a 14-year longitudinal study’, International Psychogeriatrics, 33(1), pp. 1–12. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1041610220000812

Edmondson, A. (1999) ‘Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Kline, N. (1999) Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind. London: Cassell.

Sun, Y.J., Sahakian, B.J., Langley, C. et al. (2023) ‘Early-initiated childhood reading for pleasure: associations with better cognitive performance, mental well-being and brain structure in young adolescence’, Psychological Medicine, 54(2), pp. 1–15. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291723001381