Read it together. Change something together.
A free discussion guide for book clubs, leadership teams and company reading programs. Four sessions, questions for every theme, and one reflection exercise to close it out.
Run You Are Capable of More as a four-session team read, one session every week or two. Each session covers one part of the book’s framework (Own It, Rise and Lift), asks five or six discussion questions, and ends with one action each person commits to. Close with the reflection exercise in session four. Groups of six to twelve work best; larger teams can split into tables with a facilitator at each.
Ten principles. Three movements.
You Are Capable of More: A No-Excuses Guide to Becoming Your Best Self is part memoir and part playbook. Its ten chapters sit inside a simple framework, and this guide follows that framework rather than page order.
Own It
Taking full responsibility for your results, your time and the voice in your head. Nothing changes until you do.
Time Is Your Edge
Train Your Inner Voice
Rise
Moving past the comfort ceiling, where most people stop. Discomfort becomes a signal of growth rather than a reason to quit.
Relentless Improvement
Seek Truth. Not Praise.
Unlock Your Hidden Gear
Finish What You Start
Lift
Leading yourself first, then leaving people better than you found them. The point was never only you.
Leave People Better
The book closes with a Playbook, not a conclusion.
That is what makes it work as a team read. Every principle can be run through the same four steps, and this guide uses them at the end of every session.
Reminder
A truth to anchor you.
Reflect
Where it shows up in your life and work.
Decide
What needs to change.
Act
One step, taken this week.
How to run a four-session team read.
- Pick a facilitator, not a teacher. Their job is to ask the questions, keep time and make sure quieter people get heard. They do not need to have the answers.
- Set the reading before each session. Session one covers the Own It chapters, two and three split the Rise chapters, and four covers the Lift chapters plus the Playbook.
- Keep it to an hour. Ten minutes to open, forty minutes of discussion, ten minutes on commitments. Leave people wanting more rather than tired.
- Agree that what is shared stays in the room. The best conversations happen when people talk about real situations, including at work.
- Open each session with last session’s commitments. A quick round of “did you do it, and what happened” turns a book club into a habit.
- Leaders go first. When a manager answers honestly, especially about where they have fallen short, everyone else follows.
Four sessions, with questions for each.
Use as many of the questions as you have time for. You will rarely get through all of them, and that is fine.
Own It
The book starts with ownership: trading excuses for accountability, treating time as something you use rather than find, and recognizing that the voice in your head is either trained by you or training you.
Discussion questions
- Where in your work right now are you waiting for circumstances to change before you act?
- What is one result you have been explaining rather than owning? What would owning it look like this week?
- Look at how you spent last week. Where did your time actually go, and does that match what you say matters most?
- What does your inner voice say to you when something goes wrong? Would you speak to a colleague that way?
- As a team, what is one thing we blame on outside forces that is at least partly within our control?
- Which idea in these chapters was hardest to hear, and why?
Rise, Part One
These chapters are about the point where capable people stop growing: the comfort ceiling, learning from the past instead of being trapped by it, and choosing people who sharpen you over people who flatter you.
Discussion questions
- Where have you settled into comfortable? How would you know if you had stopped growing?
- What is a discomfort you have been avoiding that might actually be a signal you are close to growth?
- What is a past mistake you still carry? What did it teach you, and what would it look like to let it teach rather than trap you?
- Who in your life tells you the truth when it is hard to hear? Do you make it easy or hard for them?
- On this team, do people feel safe telling leaders the truth? What would make it safer?
- What is one skill you would improve if you committed to getting a little better every week?
Rise, Part Two
The second half of Rise is about the moment you want to stop. Most people do not fail, they leave too early, and the moment that matters most is usually the one where quitting looks reasonable.
Discussion questions
- Think of a time you kept going when you wanted to stop. What made the difference?
- What is something you started this year and have not finished? What is really in the way?
- How do you tell the difference between a goal you should let go of and one you are about to give up on too early?
- Where does our team tend to lose energy on projects? Beginning, middle or end?
- What would it look like to finish one important thing completely before starting the next?
Lift
The book ends with other people. Nobody is coming to lead you, so you lead yourself first, without waiting for a title. Then the measure becomes who is better because of you.
Discussion questions
- Where could you lead right now without a title or permission?
- Who has left you better than they found you? What did they actually do?
- Whose growth on this team are you responsible for, formally or not?
- What is the difference between success and significance in your own words?
- Looking back over all four sessions, which principle will you return to most often, and why?
- What is one thing this team will do differently because we read this together?
Run one principle through the Playbook.
Take ten quiet minutes at the end of session four. Choose the one principle from the book that you most need right now, and write a short answer to each prompt. Keep it somewhere you will see it.
Bring the author into the room.
Many organizations open or close a team read with Chris in person. A keynote at the start gives everyone the same language before they read. A workshop at the end turns the commitments into a plan the team owns together. Formats are a keynote, a half day or a full day.
You Are Capable of More
The keynote the book is built on. A strong kickoff for a company reading program.
Team Keynote & Workshop
Your Team Is Capable of More
For leadership teams and offsites, built around a standard the team writes together.
Leadership
You Are Capable of More: Leadership
For manager cohorts reading the book as part of leadership development.
Author Event
Author Talks & Signings
A talk, open Q and A and a signing line for book clubs, libraries and companies.
Order copies for your team.
Bulk pricing on You Are Capable of More starts at twenty five copies, in paperback, hardcover, digital and signed hardcover. Purchase orders are welcome, and a keynote plus books is quoted as one number.
Running a team read.
Is there a discussion guide for You Are Capable of More?
How long should a team read of the book take?
How many people should be in a discussion group?
Can we order copies for the whole team?
Can Chris Sund speak to our team as part of the read?
Does this guide work for a book club outside of work?