Recommended Reading: The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
I’ve been refreshing my read of Priya Parker’s guide to better gatherings and doubling down on intentionally applying the lessons in both personal and professional spaces. It’s one of the books I find myself regularly recommending to friends, colleagues, and clients.
While I absolutely recommend reading The Art of Gathering cover-to-cover (I have more notes than I can reasonably share in a blog post of manageable length), there are a few high-level tenets that remain top-of-mind for me. Here are three big ideas from the book that are easy to start implementing right away:
1) Define a clear purpose. Parker calls it a “disputable purpose,” which she describes as “a meaningful reason for coming together.” I love this because it’s aligned with the approach I take with all my clients: purpose comes first.
Whether we’re talking about a monthly business review meeting or a social gathering, it’s worth asking “What’s our purpose here? Why are we gathering?” Is it just to review numbers? Or is it to look for ways where we might improve? To shape our strategy for the next month? Are we getting together to hang out and catch up? Or are we wanting to celebrate something, cultivate community, or feel support from our people? As a colleague I admire likes to ask, “What are we up to here?”
Being clear on purpose can help us make decisions and reshape the structure of our gatherings to better serve the intention, sometimes in simple, straightforward ways.
One of my consulting clients asked for help restructuring meetings, as they didn’t feel their current setups were providing much value. They asked me to observe a meeting that was a monthly review of one of their lines of business, which the CEO and President described as an opportunity for the relevant VP to take ownership of their work. Imagine my surprise when the VP in question was an observer during the meeting, looking on with everyone else while the COO presented the numbers.
When I highlighted the mismatch, the CEO and President identified the fix immediately. They sat down with the VP and COO, explained what it was they wanted, and the next month the VP worked with the COO to prepare but presented the monthly numbers on his own.
2) Name the dynamics you want in & out. What Parker refers to as “pop-up rules” help create a specific environment and let people know in advance what to expect. Telling people what this gathering is for (and what it’s not for) gives them the opportunity to opt in or out and to know how to show up in the space together.
Here’s an example from an invite for a gathering I was part of recently - notice there’s a clear purpose and it lets people know what to expect if they choose to attend:
3) Invite intentionally. Parker encourages us to resist the sometimes-trap of “the more the merrier” thinking and not invite everyone to everything. Her advice to curate the group in service of our purpose is perhaps the suggestion that requires the most courage, but might also have outsized rewards.
Two questions Parker offers for deciding who to invite to gatherings are particularly powerful:
Who not only fits but also helps fulfill the gathering’s purpose?
Who threatens the purpose?
Sometimes, exclusion can be a gift. How many times have you left a meeting or event thinking, “I really didn’t need to be there” or “There’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back”?
Gatherings can be an opportunity to exercise leadership. When designed with intention, they can help us pursue a specific purpose with our time together, whether that’s making business decisions or building community.
If you want to dive deeper, I suggest spending some time on Parker’s website and her newsletter is one I’m always excited to open.
If you’re ready to explore how to redesign your gatherings to make progress on what matters to you, get in touch and we’ll build something better together.