Priya Parker is a professional facilitator, and before that she spent her childhood navigating the differences between her mother's Indian family and culture and her father's conservative rural family and culture. She thinks she may have been destined for peacemaking just because of her biography.
This book gives a lot of tools for interesting, meaningful gatherings. Example: think about how you want to end it. Give announcements, thank yous and logistics second-to-last, and then think about a summary or something that wraps everything together.
Parker also recommends as a key component of a good gathering that you have a clear purpose, that you not rely on the established cliches for what a party is supposed to be about. So for example, for her baby shower she asked her husband and male friends not to come. But afterwards she realized that a party that had been about helping both of them transition into parenthood would have been much more valuable than the more traditional purpose of bringing the mom a lot of gifts to help defray the cost of having a baby (the underlying assumption being that mom is going to do most of the parenting work).
This seems easier than it is. I'm thinking of our family's upcoming birthday party/housewarming party. Definite mission creep there.
As part of defining the purpose or helping clarify it, paying attention to the guest list is an important step. There are people who need to be there, people who definitely shouldn't be, and then there are Bobs. This would be someone's friend Bob, who's a perfectly nice guy and who you'd like to do something nice for, but the gathering isn't for him, and getting him caught up will take away from the time and needs of the rest of the group.
The room and the setup of the space are both extremely important in getting the right dynamic. After reading Parker's book, I listened to a podcast by some stand-up comedians talking about bad shows, and usually the start of the bad show would be that the room they were in was way too big for the crowd that had gathered - 30 people in a room with a 100-foot ceiling, for example. And any laughter just floats away in to the ether, rather than echoing and multiplying. Parker recommends deciding the purpose of the gathering first, then choosing the space with that purpose in mind. And, don't be too full or empty in your space.
Parker also talks about gatherings that have odd, temporary etiquette. This allows them to be more inclusive, because we're not relying on WASP etiquette or some other "objective standard." Instead, the party rules are for that time and space only, and so everybody knows what they are and also they don't have to abide by them after the gathering. So for example, in a gathering intended to help entrepreneurs get advice from a panel of creative people, the rule was not to talk with one another about work, or to share last names until near the end of the meeting at a "Big Reveal." This allows the room to be focused on the person coming for help, not on impressing the people around you.
Last thought - in a different gathering called "15 Toasts," Parker mentions that to elicit intimacy, the facilitator has to share something early on at the depth of vulnerability that they are looking for. If you want it to go deep, you can't tell a surface story. Gatherings are a tremendous source of energy, and this practitioner is creating amazing ones!
No comments:
Post a Comment