I can't imagine worse timing for reading this book than during August of The Great Corona Lockdown, when the only gathering I'd seen in months was a bunch of people crowding around a bagpiper on Beacon Hill. A few months later, I understand that there could have been a method to my reading madness - disruption is often the first indicator of opportunity, and I can't think of a more disruptive catalyst in the context of gatherings than the pandemic. When life finally returns to normal we will surely gather together once again, but the time spent in near-isolation will have undone many of our habits and assumptions about how we define success for a gathering - it's an opportunity to rebuild rather than restart, and those with a clear vision will play a critical role in helping their organizations, communities, and social circles get the most out of the time they spend together.
The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker (August 2020)
Parker is a professional facilitator whose career involves helping clients create meaningful gatherings. Her main idea in The Art of Gathering is that most of us gather without thinking too deeply about it, preferring instead to rely on templates, routines, and norms rather than confronting an important question - why are we gathering? The book generally reads like an informal how-to for us imitators interested in raising this question with our gatherings. I enjoyed the way Parker guided us through her philosophy, liberally supporting her ideas with examples from her career, and I felt that this book would be especially helpful for anyone tasked with designing a gathering in a business setting, though of course her lessons are broadly applicable.
One common consequence of organizing the gathering before defining its purpose is a meeting defined by process, which guarantees nothing about achieving an objective. I'm sure almost anyone can relate to this thought from personal experience, particularly with recurring meetings and their highly predictable processes; Parker regularly notes that routines often become the enemy of great gatherings (1). The advised approach is to instead establish a clear purpose that you can use as a benchmark to ruthlessly reject any idea that doesn't bring the gathering closer to achieving its objective. Parker offers various tactics to help readers translate this idea into action, but perhaps the most immediately helpful is her broad guideline for determining meeting size based on the objective - eight to twelve for a lively and inclusive discussion (with new blood, if possible, for its invigorating effect on conversation) but slightly fewer if a decision is necessary.
Some of her broader recommendations will prove invaluable in all kinds of contexts. Parker encourages asking speakers to share experiences rather than ideas to help the audience better connect with them, reminding her readers that a good story is never just about what happened, but also about the protagonist's decision. I liked her observation about Barack Obama's technique of sometimes taking questions from a young audience in alternating fashion - boy, girl, boy, and so on - to ensure participation wasn't limited by the social pressures that discourage girls from speaking up in public; this method can be tactfully refitted by a leader in any type of gathering. I also want to highlight Parker's advice to never start or end a gathering with logistical details - it throws away critical opportunities to connect people to the purpose of the gathering. This also speaks to an observation she made about groups in general - the weakest link is never in an individual, but rather in a connection between two members; a facilitator who accepts this reality should have no trouble understanding the importance of constantly seeking ways to connect participants to purpose of the gathering, and thus to each other.
TOA Rating: Three agendas out of four.
Readers interested in what I identified as the most helpful recommendations may enjoy poking through my book notes.
Footnotes
1. Changing culture often means changing routines...
This leads her to make an interesting observation about the role of the recurring meeting during a period of cultural change. An adjustment to the roster, timing, or length of a regular gathering may seem like a small difference on the surface, but the underlying effect is to reinforce the mentality that any and all routines should be given greater scrutiny.
