Reading Joe Massengale’s Six Lessons for Six Sons will challenge you to consider your definition of success, character, family, and the American Dream, discussing what you’ve read with others will allow you to share these profound considerations.

A conversation about this book will necessarily get personal as each participant shares examples from his or her life. An open, respectful environment will ensure that you have a lively discussion. Referring back to Six Lessons for Six Sons as much as possible – bringing your discussion from the personal back to the Massengale’s personal stories and inspiring lessons in the book – will enrich your discussion experience.

We’ve provided a series of discussion questions on several key passages in Six Lessons for Six Sons to help you focus your discussion. You may decide to move through these questions one by one, or you may decide to skip around a bit and tackle questions as they arise. The questions are here to provide a road map, to help you regain direction if your discussion veers off track, and to help you get where you’re going: to a clearer, deeper, and more satisfying understanding of Joe Massengale’s remarkable book.

In addition to using the following questions to direct your conversation, we recommend that you begin your meeting by introducing yourself to the other members of your group. What brought you together to discuss Six Lessons for Six Sons? What do you hope to get out of your conversation? To be sure that each person gets what he or she wants, we suggest this simple exercise:

	Get yourself something big to write on so everyone can see—a poster-sized paper taped up on the wall, for instance, or a poster board propped up against a chair or table.
	Choose someone, maybe your hostess or discussion leader, to act as secretary. Then go around the room and ask each person to contribute one specific aspect of the reading that he or she would like to discuss—a particular passage, a question left unanswered, a positive, negative, or neutral observation. The secretary should record these discussion points on the board.
	Each time you notice you’ve discussed a new point from the list on your board, give the person who chose this topic a chance to expand on her question or observation.
	Ask one member to keep an eye on the clock and call time once you have only fifteen or twenty minutes remaining before the end of the meeting. The discussion-board secretary can then check off each of the topics that you’ve already hit upon and see if there are any big or burning issues still left unaddressed.