The Gathering Effect
Leading others through change that lasts
Can people change? This is the question I’ve been mulling over for 15 years. Change has been a central theme in my work across three disciplines: entertainment, education, and business. Whether it’s the behavior of television characters, employees or entire organizations, I’ve explored what propels someone or something to change. What spurs or sputters it? What gets in the way? How do people and groups get from A to B?
When it comes to change, one practice is universal in its intent to facilitate or spark movement in others. This practice seems to be the most efficient way to reach a large number of people at once — a gathering.
Why We Gather
What is gathering, anyway? When I mention the term ‘gathering’ to people in a corporate context, it’s often met with a knee-jerk reaction, like tax season or the Kardashians. Everyone has an example because it’s such a normal part of organizational life. There are town halls, workshops, training sessions, leadership development classes, retreats, team-building sessions, conferences, meetings, and more. They’re used to share information, elicit a reaction, or ignite motivation.
I define gathering as bringing people together to match a message with the moment.
On their own, each of these gatherings is a tool for change.
As a whole, these gatherings represent something more. They are a clue to understanding our larger challenges around organizational change. Therefore, to evaluate the success of our change efforts, we can start by examining how we gather.
I’ve been gathering people for almost two decades. First to entertain, as a comedy writer in Hollywood, then to educate for companies like DreamWorks Animation and McKinsey, and now to transform as an organizational psychologist and the Head of Talent Development for successful Silicon Valley companies like Zendesk and Credit Karma.
I’ve not only experienced a wide spectrum of gathering quality as an employee, but I’ve also measured the impact of these investments in my work. Organizations want a change to take place, and they look to me to help. I’m often asked to help ‘boost morale’, ‘decrease silos’, ‘bring a team together’, ‘increase leadership skills’ or ‘get people engaged and excited about where our company is headed’. The place people most often want to start is with a gathering.
Gathering Mistakes
Gathering can be the most powerful form of communication and connection. Yet, when we gather in a room, we don’t always maximize our time together. We pull people together only to have our efforts fall flat. We invest time and money and then wonder why the change didn’t stick. Subsequently, very few of these gatherings go beyond the short-term impact to create the real change or commitment that was addressed in the room. Why?
How do we mobilize and motivate others around an idea or a new way of working that sticks and spreads?
What would take gatherings from simply ticking-the-box to truly transformational?
With these challenges in mind, I searched for ways to educate others on a practice that is very common in organizations yet commonly misused and misunderstood.
I created a model based on my learnings and research. It acts as both a diagnosis and an action tool.
When we think about the gatherings that we have all been a part of, they tend to fall on a spectrum, from pull to push (control), and from one size fits all to personalized (uniqueness).
For example, the town hall where the new talent assessment model is rolled out (push) to all employees (one size fits all) feels very different than the interactive workshop (pull) that helps leaders build career paths for their team members (personalized).
What do we need from the people we’re trying to affect? How should we lead others through this change? We can make different choices within the same gathering (for example, a manager training class) to produce dramatically different outcomes. Each quadrant is appropriate for specific situations.
A New Path Forward
Instead of leading with the tool or making choices based solely on content we want to share, we can make choices based on the outcomes we want our gathering to have.
By starting with the outcome instead of the tool, we can understand and intuit why our gatherings might be viewed as either a hindrance or an enabler for positive change in our organizations. Then, we can adjust accordingly.
You can apply the model in two ways:
- Design a gathering
- Assess how participants perceive it
The way change is communicated determines people’s level of ownership and commitment. Often what seems ‘pull’ and ‘personalized’ to those leading the change is ‘push’ and ‘one size fits all’ to others. This is why many organizational change efforts often feel as though something is being done to us instead of with us. That’s where they fall short.
Pull and personalized gatherings are additive and multiplicative. They engage people not just in one moment in time but often, beyond. These are the gatherings that ignite movement, commitment, and positive change in individuals, groups, and often, entire organizations. They do so by focusing less on the content they share and more on these five conditions they create:
- See and recognize your audience
- Make it just for them
- Give the audience ownership
- Connect to a universal concept
- Allow agency and choice
When we are a part of a gathering that transforms us, it’s rarely because of the content alone. It’s how we connect to it. We do that by creating the conditions for that to be possible. The same goes for our change efforts.
While there are many books and advisories on gathering techniques and tools, they stop short when it comes to understanding the strategy and how to maintain the momentum and buy-in necessary to create lasting positive change in individuals, groups, and entire organizations.
I teach organizations and their people how to harness the power of an in-person experience to lead others through change with tangible and actionable take-aways, including
- Key leadership lessons on change and motivation no matter the size or scope of your work
- A common language to describe why, how, and if to gather
- More efficient and streamlined communication practices
- Public speaking techniques applicable across audiences and subjects
- Engaged and committed followers — you’ll learn how to get others to advance your ideas
My teachings and model is supported by organizational behavior and adult learning theory and research, and best practices from three disciplines I know well: business, education, and entertainment. These professions use different tools but share the same outcome. Each helps move people through an experience they remember — whether as a boss inside an organization, a professor at an institution, or an entertainer in a theater. When we’re in these rooms with these people, why do we feel more connected and more affected?
In a world where material is everywhere, these are masters at not just the material, but the moment. They deeply understand human behavior and how to help people move from A to B. They seek to create a genuine connection with their audience and leave them changed for the better. If we gather well, this is only the start.
This work is for those who see and seek possibilities in the power of a group. It’s for leaders, employees, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, and those wishing to be more effective in bringing people together instead of apart.
We all gather. Let’s get more out of them.
Lindsey Caplan has been gathering people for over 15 years — first to entertain, as a comedy writer in Hollywood, then to educate for companies like DreamWorks Animation and McKinsey, and now to transform as an organizational psychologist as the Head of Talent Development for successful Silicon Valley companies like Zendesk, Credit Karma, and Flexport. She earned a Master's Degree in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Film and Creative Writing for the Media from Northwestern University. She helps companies drive organizational change by applying lessons in gathering from entertainment, education, and business. Lindsey is currently writing a book on “Gathering”.
