26.294 – Keep the Principle; Loosen the Performance

“A first step for such managers might be to explore what types of behavior are currently being rewarded.”

Steven Kerr, On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B (1995, p. 13)

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Looking at What Gets Rewarded

Steven Kerr, a management professor who also worked in leadership development, examined why organizations sometimes encourage the very behavior they hope to change.

In his essay, first published in 1975 and updated in 1995, he described a familiar mismatch: an organization can ask people to work as a team while rewarding them for individual success. His advice in the opening quotation follows from that problem. To understand what people are doing, look at what the organization gives them credit for.

We can bring that question into the groups we gather with outside work, where recognition takes less formal shapes. A contribution draws an eager response. Someone asks to hear more. Over time, we may develop a sense of what the others admire and which parts of ourselves we feel comfortable showing them. Approval is one of the pleasures of belonging, though it can also influence what we choose to say or keep to ourselves.

A book club offers a familiar place to explore this. People come together because they enjoy reading, but the conversation may leave someone feeling that enjoyment alone is not much of a contribution. She wants to have finished, noticed something interesting, found the words to explain it. For a reader arriving after a crowded week, the prospect of a pleasant evening can begin to feel like another task she has fallen behind on. One alternative format makes room for the reading itself.

An Hour With Your Own Book

At the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, dozens of people gathered one Sunday afternoon to talk, have drinks, and read. As Sneha Dhandapani described in a June 6, 2026, CNN report republished by KTVZ, about half an hour into the gathering, conversation gave way to an hour of silent reading. Conversation resumed afterward. This was a local Silent Book Club meeting.

The format grew out of a frustration with earlier book clubs. In their account of how Silent Book Club began, founders Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich describe reading together at a San Francisco wine bar in 2012. Previous attempts at book clubs had fizzled. They mention the scramble to finish an assigned book and the pressure to have something smart to say. Their alternative dispenses with assigned reading. People bring their own material, read together, and can choose whether to socialize afterward.

For someone who has struggled to open a book during the week, putting reading time inside the gathering changes what arriving unprepared means. There is no shared assignment to catch up on. The book still waiting to be read is a reason to come along. That seems to me the most useful invitation in this format: people can make time together for an activity they have been missing.

Shared preparation has pleasures of its own. A friend persuades you to try a novel you would never have chosen. A deadline carries you through a difficult opening; another reader notices something you missed. People who want that sustained exchange would lose something valuable if every meeting became an hour of separate reading.

A host choosing between these formats has to decide what the gathering is for. Reading and companionship can happen without everyone completing the same book. A detailed discussion of one work needs more common ground. Trouble arises when a group promises an easy welcome while quietly expecting a level of preparation it has never made clear.

The reported gathering shows one way to arrange a reading group; it cannot tell us how every participant felt. It does prompt a question about more familiar arrangements: what might a person miss when they decide they are not ready to attend?

What Counts as Taking Part?

Imagine a reader at a different book club, one that meets to discuss a chosen novel. She likes the people and wants to go. This month, she has read fewer than fifty pages. She opens the group message to check the meeting time, sees a lively exchange about the ending, and decides to stay home. No one has told her she cannot attend.

Her hesitation leaves something unresolved. Has the group agreed that members should finish before attending? Have jokes about incomplete reading made her reluctant to explain herself? Or would the others be surprised to learn that she thought she had to stay away? Her decision makes sense to her, but the host has only an empty chair to go on.

Asking about her absence would give the host more to work with than an assumption that she had lost interest. A clear invitation might be enough. A history of teasing would take more effort to address. And a group deliberately organized around close discussion could reasonably keep that commitment while acknowledging that it will not suit everyone every month.

There is another possibility: the group’s expectations have drifted without anyone quite deciding to change them. An original interpretation attracts enthusiasm. Difficult books become a point of shared pride. Gradually, a member may feel she has less to offer when all she can say is that she enjoyed the story. Nothing in the invitation has changed, yet the conversation has taught her what seems to count.

The preparation can gradually become a way of proving that you belong. Someone who speaks confidently about literature may love it deeply; someone who reads carefully may be giving the group a real gift. But when those are the only contributions that receive a welcome, there is less room for the reader who has a hesitant question or wants to listen while an idea takes shape. She may care just as much about the book and struggle to show it in the way the group has come to expect.

A community devoted to curiosity can become protective of its reputation for being insightful. Members may still care about learning, yet admitting confusion now risks their standing among people who value understanding. A question goes unasked because everyone else seems to know the answer. From the outside, the conversation may look unusually assured. Inside it, someone has lost a chance to learn.

The same discomfort can arise in a personal development circle when you are asked how your week has gone. You have made an effort, but nothing has resolved itself into a useful lesson. You consider describing the part that sounds like progress and leaving the rest out. Before assuming the group requires that edit, you can look for evidence: how did people respond the last time someone admitted they were stuck?

For someone who feels at home in the group, that hesitation can be easy to miss. When the admired contributions come naturally to us, the customs surrounding them may seem effortless. We can assume that others have the same freedom we do. A host who enjoys speaking without preparation may need to ask what the evening feels like to someone who rehearses a comment and still decides against making it.

Which Requirement Can Change?

A host choosing what to change needs to understand what the expectation protects. Preparation may be essential to the conversation people came for. A familiar ritual may simply have survived because nobody thought to question it. Asking participants what they value about the meeting can help separate the two, especially if the host makes room for answers from people who have stopped attending.

For the club with the unfinished novel, welcoming a member who has read only part of it would need to work for those who have prepared as well. They should still be able to discuss the whole book. The host could make the spoiler policy clear in advance and ask anyone attending to respect that agreement. A more flexible invitation would then preserve the conversation people came for.

The host could also ask whether members still want the same kind of evening. Their answers might support keeping the discussion format, trying a reading session, or alternating occasionally. Asking does not commit the group to every preference. It gives people a chance to explain what they would miss as well as what they would welcome.

A reflection circle faces a similar choice when it values openness. Speaking about a painful experience can become the recognizable way to demonstrate that value. A person who prefers to listen may find that declining to share requires more explanation than sharing would. The group could make passing an ordinary option and welcome questions or reflections that reveal less about someone’s private life. Agreements about confidentiality and respectful responses would still be essential.

The facilitator’s response would help determine whether passing became a workable choice. Returning repeatedly to someone who declined would keep the pressure in place. Moving on comfortably, and engaging just as seriously with a question as with a personal account, would give participants a different experience of the agreement. The group could ask after a few meetings whether people had felt free to choose.

Making participation easier also involves checking who will do the work. Preparation can protect other people’s time, and some activities require competence to keep people safe. Shared chores keep a gathering from depending on one exhausted organizer. Before removing an expectation, the group needs to find out who will absorb the consequences. A relaxed evening for most participants could mean more work for the person arranging it.

For those of us attached to a group’s traditions, even a modest revision may feel personal. We may have invested years in becoming the sort of member those traditions recognize. Being prepared, articulate, generous, or open may have earned us a valued place. It can take some honesty to notice that a proposed change threatens our familiar role as well as raising practical questions. We can acknowledge that attachment without making it the deciding vote.

That attachment becomes easier to examine when we help with the change. Someone who has always enjoyed leading the discussion could help try a quieter format, then listen when others describe how it went. Members wanting less preparation could offer to arrange the venue or clear up afterward, according to what they can manage. The group would still need to agree on a fair division of work.

For the imagined reader, the next invitation could say that she is welcome with an unfinished book and that the discussion will include the ending. She can decide whether to come. If she does, the host will have a chance to ask about the pages she has read, without making her account for the ones she has not.

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Practice: What Are We Asking People to Prove?

Objective: Examine one expectation in a group you belong to and identify whether it helps people participate in the activity you value. Time: 15 minutes.

Choose a group and write down what you hope it makes possible. Be concrete: time to read, a thoughtful exchange, reliable help, or room for reflection. Then name one behavior that tends to earn recognition there. You might notice who gets thanked, which contributions receive attention, or what people seem reluctant to admit.

Separate what you have observed from what you suspect. Record an actual rule, remark, or response if you can. If your concern rests on an expectation you have never checked, identify a question you could ask. Leave room for an answer that changes your interpretation.

Consider what the expectation protects and what it costs. Include the people who organize, prepare, and maintain the group. Propose one adjustment small enough to discuss or try, along with any responsibility that must remain. If changing the rule is outside your role, make the next step a conversation with someone who can help.

Outcome: Finish with one specific proposal and one way to assess it. You could ask participants whether the revised invitation was clear, whether discussion still worked, or whether work shifted unfairly onto someone else. Set a time to revisit the experiment before declaring it a success.

Scientific Summary

Kerr’s essay examines mismatches between stated aims and rewarded behavior. It is an illustrative management argument, not an experiment on reading groups. Applying it to informal recognition and belonging is an interpretation developed in this essay.

Research on motivation adds a narrower caution. In a meta-analysis of 128 studies, Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (1999) reported that rewards contingent on engagement, completion, or performance reduced freely chosen engagement on average. Positive feedback increased freely chosen engagement and reported interest. These findings concern the conditions studied; they do not establish that informal approval in a book club has the same effects. Nor do they justify treating encouragement or preparation as inherently harmful.

Neither source establishes that silent reading groups produce better relationships or greater enjoyment than discussion groups. The CNN account supplies a reported example of a different format, while the founders’ account explains its origins and intended design. The essay’s practical proposals are suggestions to examine with a particular group, rather than outcomes demonstrated by those accounts or by the motivation research.

References

• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627–668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627.

• Dhandapani, S. (2026, June 6). Silent reading clubs are giving like-minded bookworms a brain boost. CNN. CNN Newsource republication consulted at KTVZ.

• Kerr, S. (1995). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Executive, 9(1), 7–14. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1995.9503133466.

• Silent Book Club. (n.d.). About Silent Book Club. Retrieved October 19, 2026.

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