The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters (A Summary)

This holiday season, will you extend an invitation you don’t really want to extend for the sake of being “nice?”

Or, will you accept an invitation to that dinner, holiday party, or pot luck when you don’t really want to go?

We’ve all been there, and it happens a lot around this time of year. Long lost cousins we don’t know or get along with get invitations to Thanksgiving dinner because we “feel bad” leaving them off the list.

This doesn’t just happen during the holidays. It happens all day, every day, in homes and companies all around the world. The guest list is one of many elements that can affect the outcome of an event adversely. In her book, The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker discusses what we should factor into our event to make it the best it can be. Priya uses examples from her real-life work and shares what made those events successful, and in some cases, what made them flop.

Below I summarize a few takeaways I walked away with, but if you’re responsible for planning meetings at work or if you enjoy planning events personally, I recommend you grab a copy for yourself.

Now, let’s review all the ways to ensure your event doesn’t suck:

1. Decide on the “why” – Don’t just have a quarterly meeting because it’s 4^th quarter and that’s what you’ve always done. Don’t invite friends to happy hour just because “it’s been a while.” The happy hour can be planned because a few of you in the friend group made it through major health scares this year and you want to get together and celebrate each other and life. The quarterly meeting at work isn’t just an update – it can be time the team uses to select top priorities for the next quarter and clarify roles within each of the priorities. Your gatherings should have an actual purpose. To help you define a purpose start with the desired outcome – what do you want to have happen because you gathered? Use the answer to this question as a guide.
2. Protect the guest list – The guest list should directly support the purpose. Think of your desired outcome, and decide who would contribute to that goal, and who would not. It’s easy once we take feelings out of it. In the words of Priya: “Inviting people is easy. Excluding people can be hard.” But if you invite people who threaten the purpose of the gathering, you do a disservice to everyone else who actually belongs there. I’ve been following this rule lately in my personal gatherings and have seen the benefit. Instead of inviting all the people all the time, I invite some of the people, some of the time based on what it is I want everyone to get out of the gathering.
3. Don’t be a chill host – this was easily my favorite chapter. Sometimes we plan events at work or home and decide we don’t want to be overbearing by mandating guests to do this or that. We choose to be “chill.” Well guess what: The success of your event depends on you NOT being a chill host. Make rules and stick to them. In this section, Priya also discusses the importance of connecting guests. Whether it be through well thought out introductions or a game, find ways to connect the dots for your guests so that when you step out the room, the conversation still flows.
4. Cause good controversy – Do you believe the topics of sex, politics and religion should still be off limits to discuss in group settings? Priya says that rule is rubbish. The magic happens in the controversy. If everyone remains respectful, your gatherings should be a safe place for hot topics to thrive. This Thanksgiving, don’t let the elephant in the room sit in the corner. Invite him to the table. I recently hosted a small gathering of friends. I pulled out two games – a safe one and another one which I labeled as “inappropriate.” Everyone voted on the inappropriate one (because that’s how my friends roll) but I resisted and put them through a few rounds of the safe game. The results were flat, and we eventually ended up playing the game I was hesitant about. It was perfect. It forced us to discuss topics we hadn’t discussed before and helped us learn/confirm a little something about each person there. The purpose of the gathering was for us to connect before the busy holiday season rolled around, and the risqué game allowed us to connect – and laugh! In short, a little controversy ain’t never hurt nobody.

5. How to close the event – Just as you shouldn’t start an event with logistics, you also shouldn’t end with logistics. The close is your opportunity to leave an imprint on the minds of your attendees. Do you want their final memory of your event to be instructions on how to validate parking tickets? Trust me, you don’t want that. Not only should you be intentional about wrapping it up (don’t let it just fizzle out) – you should end by reflecting on what happened at the event and discuss the meaning of the event. This is when you circle back to your purpose to remind everyone why you gathered in the first place.

These are just a few learnings I walked away with. It’s a quick and dirty list of some elements to keep in mind, but Priya goes much deeper in the book. And in her Ted Talk, 3 steps to turn everyday get-togethers into transformative gatherings, she shares tactics to help event planners turn their gatherings – work or play – into meaningful, transformative occasions.

To close, I’ll leave you with these thoughts:

• Imagine if you had a dollar for every excruciatingly dull corporate meeting you’ve ever attended.
• Add another dollar if you’ve ever gone to an event and wondered why you were invited.
• And another dollar for events that didn’t start on time, or seemed unorganized.
• And yet another buck if YOU’VE planned meetings or events and invited certain people out of guilt.

The list of event planning faux pas goes on. If we tallied up all our transgressions, we’d have a decent amount of dollar bills. As someone who’s planned many corporate meetings and events, I’m glad to report some of them have turned out great – but some were on the opposite end of great. Sometimes the reason was budget, other times it was because the stakeholders involved weren’t open to trying new things. When you’re in that position you can’t always control the creative process of planning a meeting. But as much as possible, let’s collectively commit to adding meaning and purpose to the event experiences we shape.  *Insert pinky swear here*