Is there Art to Running Meetings?
Book Review: The Art of Gathering: How we meet and why it matters by Priya Parker
The end of some events fills us with gratitude and relief. Difficult dinners, awkward dates, pointless meetings, dull conferences. But sometimes we feel real loss as the end approaches — we don’t want the experience to end, we don’t want to come down from the mountaintop to the real world.
And it’s the same with reading business books. Appropriately enough, Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How we meet and why it matters, which is about creating mountaintop moments, is itself a mountaintop read. I found myself slowing down as I read the final chapter, unwilling to finish. First of all, it’s quite simply a beautiful book. It makes me happy every time I look at it. But more importantly, it’s a gift to the reader: beautifully written, thoughtfully considered, well structured, practical and profound.
Some of her points are obvious, though elegantly made: it might be clear to you that you need the right people in the room, but you might not have fully realised the importance of NOT having the wrong people in the room (Parker calls them ‘Bobs’ — ‘Bob is perfectly pleasant and doesn’t sabotage your gathering. Most Bobs are grateful to be included…. The crux of excluding thoughtfully and intentionally is mustering the courage to keep away your Bobs… the people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it.’).
Others are less obvious, but equally powerful. She talks for example in no uncertain terms about the destructive impact of the ‘chilled’ host: ‘Chill is a miserable attitude when it comes to hosting gatherings…. If you are going to host, host. If you are going to create a kingdom for an hour or a day, rule it — and rule it with generosity.’
Her argument about the power of rules to liberate is another example: while many gatherings rely on etiquette, unspoken rules of a tribe that often confuse and wrong-foot those outside the tribe (and therefore work against diversity and creativity), rules that are constructed purely for the duration of the gathering — ‘pop-up rules’ — have the power to surprise and democratize, and facilitate creative experimentation.
Perhaps her most profound point is that all gatherings must end, and in those endings we sense our own mortality. This too shall pass. As leaders responsible for gathering people, once we have gathered them with purpose and facilitated connection and creative transformation, we are also responsible for helping them come to terms with the pain of ending. Don’t end on logistics (don’t begin with them either, come to that); get the admin out of the way and then end with purpose, honouring your guests: ‘It is your job as a gatherer to create an intentional closing that helps people face, rather than avoid, the end.’
Whether you’re organizing conferences or simply chairing team meetings, this book will change forever how you go about gathering.
The Art of Gathering is available from Blackwell’s here.
Alison Jones (@bookstothesky) is a publishing partner for businesses and organizations with something to say. Formerly Director of Innovation Strategy with Palgrave Macmillan, she hosts The Extraordinary Business Book Clubpodcast, regularly speaks and blogs on publishing, business and writing, sits on the board of the IPG, and is the author of This Book Means Business (2018).
