This article is the seventh in a series called “Looking Ahead: the Future of Communications for Good,” produced in collaboration with the Communications Network. Look for additional pieces every other Wednesday, and add your thoughts in the comments section. Read the other articles in the series.
As the Communications Network celebrates its 40th anniversary, it is collaborating with the Chronicle to figure out what’s coming next.
Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, believes too many people in the foundation and nonprofit world don’t see events and gatherings for what they truly are: a communications vehicle to share ideas, information, culture, and connection. Carrie Clyne, deputy director for events and community at the Communications Network, recently sat down with Parker to hear her advice for the sector as we look ahead. A lightly edited transcript follows.
In your book The Art of Gathering, you discuss how to create more purpose-driven events. How do you think this applies to leaders in the social sector?
Gathering is a form of power. It’s a form of influence. It’s a form of invitation into a conversation. And, yes, it’s also a form of communication. Because people who work at nonprofits have limited time and resources, every time you gather, every time you choose to convene, it’s deeply important that it’s not only strategic but purposeful.
Each institution has to ask these questions of itself: How do we gather? Who are we inviting? What does who’s in the room say about what our values are? What is the composition of our boards?
Gathering is a unit of time with a beginning, middle, and end. We should use it as an opportunity to ask, “What are the conversations that we think we never have time to have?”
In your book, you talk a lot about how meaningful gatherings don’t just happen — they need to be designed for; there is a rigor and strategy needed to make them meaningful. Can you tell us what you mean by that and share tips on practicing it?
The number one communication tip that will help all of your meetings is to give them a name. That will help from the perspective of how they actually run, how people show up, what they’re expecting to do or not do, whether they think they should be there, whether they want to be there.
And a name that actually means something, not just “Quarterly Meeting” but something like “Why Last Quarter Was Such a Disaster.” Or rather than “Gala,” describe who it’s for. Find playful or informative or bold or specific language. Use the name not just to block people’s time on their calendar but to prime people to understand: What is the social context of this gathering? What is this about? Who is this for? Do I need to be there?
What do you think most people misunderstand about gatherings?
Most of us take the majority of gatherings for granted. We’ve relegated the function of the convener into a logistical job. When you realize that gathering is a form of strategy and is a form of culture change, then you also realize that we often start with the wrong questions, which are the logistical questions. We actually need to start with the strategic questions. The most effective organizations, from a gathering perspective, are the ones that start further upstream. I know that an organization values gatherings when the people in the room at the beginning of the planning session are the CEO or the managing director or the decision makers.
How do you measure the return on investment of meaningful gatherings? Since we’re a metrics-obsessed world, what kind of metrics exist for measuring the impact of gathering?
When you gather well, one of the outcomes is you create a sense of belonging. When you create a sense of belonging, you increase your retention rates. You decrease burnout. I’m not saying gather more, I’m saying gather better. For many people, it’s actually gathering less. So in terms of ROI, if you’re gathering better, you’re gathering less and you’re giving a lot of people their time back.
A lot of things that we gather for we shouldn’t be gathering for. They should be put in an email. And by doing that, you give people time back to work on the projects that they don’t need to be in rooms with other people for.
If we have a certain set of people together for a specific period of time, why are we bringing them together? To what end? What is our unique capacity and ability as a convener? And not only what do we want the output to be but what do we want the outcome to be? What is the impact we want to have by bringing people together in a specific way?
Can you tell us more about what someone might do on the front end before a gathering to help set people’s expectations and prime them for what’s going to happen?
A gathering begins when people discover its existence. It doesn’t begin from the moment they walk in the door. So you’re actually hosting people from the moment they realize they’re invited to this thing. The name of the event should explain to people what this thing is for, what the role is that you are wanting them to actually play in it. Think about where you actually want to host this. So rooms come with scripts.
Say you send out one or two or three emails as you build up to the moment, think about and prime them psychologically. So in the context of the email, explain where you actually are at this moment of your life in the organization and why it is important for them to be there. Give them homework or assignments that they do ahead of time, even if it’s just to come thinking about this or read these two articles.
Even if they don’t read the articles, it helps them understand what you are all thinking about. Everything you put into an email is signaling the ethos, norms, and inputs and exports of who you are but also what you’re expecting them to be doing in their free time. Every time you’re sending out anything to a guest, you’re giving them implicit or explicit instructions on how you want them to show up. Most of us squander that opportunity.
We use “events,” “meetings,” “convenings,” and “gatherings” as synonyms. Could you talk a little bit about how they’re different?
The words you use to describe your event can mean very different things. They give different frames in people’s minds of what the social contract of this gathering is and how you are asking them to show up. What role are you asking them to play?
In English, many terms carry the functions of the meeting within them. Think about a brainstorm versus a barn raising versus a workshop versus a hootenanny versus a laboratory, right? All of these different things implicitly carry within them not only what the vibe is but also some level of orientation.
If it’s a laboratory, are you willing to come in thinking like a scientist? For a brainstorm, are you ready to come in and help your community?
How do roles and group size define the success of gatherings?
It’s important to begin with who shouldn’t be there instead of who should. Part of the dynamics with group experience is that the group size really matters, and you don’t want to over-include because the number of people in the room changes the dynamics of what you are trying to do. So who needs to be there? Who is neither here nor there but would add body count? And who would actively undermine your purpose?
What is the role of a host? How do you connect your people? How do you take the authority that you have as a convener and use it to focus people on the subject at hand?
You can create dynamics that create temporarily social equality, but you need to bring people along. Everybody comes together and says, “We realize that we want to think about doing this in a better way.” Or, “We realize that often the best ideas are from the people lowest in the hierarchy.”
Also, most people are in several meetings a day, back to back to back to back. When you’re hosting your 60 minutes with your team, how do you make it distinctive from the other five meetings they’re at that day? What are your norms? How do you start your meeting? Do you start in a way that is different from everybody else?
What are we getting wrong about gatherings?
You don’t have to have the fanciest gala or the most expensive this, the most technologically savvy that. The art of gathering is actually about deeply honoring, and, frankly, simplifying a lot of the stuff we tend to spend our time focusing on. It’s about getting people to focus for a specific moment of time, connecting the topic in front of them to the purpose of the work they’re doing.
Organize your group in a way where they can collectively focus on the topic at hand, which could either mean removing the obstacles between them or creating more meaning and connection between them. And doing that in a way that pushes forward a common goal.
What’s the most brilliant opening question that you ask a group of people to help them connect with each other and to connect with the topic at hand? One example I love is from a global pharmaceutical company that was bringing together a group of people who were reviewing maternal mortality metadata. They were bringing together people with varying levels of power, and they have to figure out in the course of the day how to connect these people — with different roles, who don’t all know each other — in a meaningful way to each other and to the topic.
The opening question the facilitators asked was, “What is something about your mother that people wouldn’t know by looking at her?”
Why is this a great question? First, it temporarily equalizes everybody. For a second, you’re inviting everybody to remember that they are a child of somebody. And so is everybody else in the room. Second, it’s not gratuitous. The topic is maternal mortality, it’s reminding people this is about somebody’s mother. But then the third part of the question is something you can’t tell by looking at her. They were looking at metadata. The danger of metadata is you take all of the qualitative data and you put it into this hugely collective data set, which can create biases, and you can forget that not everything is as meets the eye.
I love this opening question because it’s a question of emphasis. What would be a question that we ask that would quickly change the dynamics of the room for our purposes? Again, strategic communication.
Is there a difference between a gathering and a community? And what is the relationship?
I think of a gathering as a unit of time with a beginning, middle, and end with three or more people. I think a community is something that is continuous over time. A gathering is a happening. A community is a more nebulous source of identity and belonging. Gatherings can result in a sense of community. But a gathering is an act of intervention.
In today’s hyper-connected digital world, it seems that there’s an emerging sense of urgency to connect in real life and in-person. Can you talk a little bit about how in-person connections and gathering people in person versus online can create a different sense of meaning?
I think you can create community and meaning offline and on. I think you can gather people in person and not build community. I think you can gather people in person and it not be meaningful. And I think similarly you can gather people online and have it be meaningful and build community. So I don’t think that they are mutually exclusive.
That said, one of the best ways to build meaningful community is through conversations that elicit stories that complicate the individual, stories that don’t make people flat or static. I think it’s much more difficult to do that online. How do I actually express myself as I type or over a video conference where I can’t see people or I don’t have access to the mute button? So any gathering is set by the constraints of that form.
Some people say that technology has made gathering in person obsolete. What do you think of that?
I think in person, when you are creating a gathering, are you doing it in a way where each person who comes actually makes a difference to the room? Are you designing it in a way that the outcome is different because of who’s in the room, what they say, how they speak, and how you are tapping into them? The more likely the gathering is set up so that your guests are an audience, I would say the less important it is that they are in the room. The more that they are participatory contributors, the more important it is that they are in the room.
You say we need to have good controversy at gatherings to make them meaningful. What does that mean? How do we do it?
Good controversy is different than controversy. So it’s not saying do controversy for gratuitous reasons or to make people pay attention. It’s basically asking a question, How do we make sure that what we are gathering around has burning relevance?
We think of events as a form of communication. What do you say to someone who thinks events are separate from strategic communications? Are gatherings a form of communication?
I think they are deeply a form of communication. They communicate what your values are, what you think is worthy to gather around, what you think is worthy to mark or not, how bold and brave you are, and what questions you are willing to have out in the open and in the “public square” versus quietly behind closed doors.
Gathering is a communication tool. We’ve talked mostly about gathering and communicating with your guests, but as an organization, the things you gather around each year are also signaling to the rest of the world what you are about, how you gather, if you need to raise a certain amount of money, and if you’re inventive about how you do that.
The way we gather is the way we live. And all I’m asking is for people to do it more consciously, more strategically, and in ways that actually embody their values and that push forward the questions of the field. Gathering can be thrilling, and most of the time it’s not.
How do you think we can make it thrilling? Is it by having more strategy and rigor around planning them?
It’s by centering. It’s by realizing that having people in person is the most valuable real estate you can ever get. Questions that are the most relevant, complicated, burning, controversial, and illuminating for that set of people for a common need, around a common need.
