After being recommended Priya Parker’s “The Art of Gathering” all year, I finally read it in the waning hours of 2020. It is remarkable!
Parker’s expertise is in something that may seem like it should be intuitive—people gathering together. But her insight is transformative, and it centers around the idea that we should always gather for a purpose.
In our current meeting culture, the “purpose” of a gathering is likely to be “we have a standing staff meeting at 8 on Tuesdays.” Parker argues that in order for a gathering to be successful and meaningful, it needs more meaning than that.
As many of our gatherings continue to happen virtually, we have an opportunity to reimagine them, to infuse them with purpose and intention. And I’ll go further, to say that our virtual gatherings suffer from a profound lack of environment. As I’ve been saying for months, we have to figure out how to recreate the container a physical space naturally gives us. Thus, intention and purpose are even more crucial.
If you’re a person in charge of hosting virtual gatherings of any size, I urge you to read her book. The payoff in engagement and time well-spent is so worth it.
https://www.priyaparker.com/thebook
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