LINKCast

The Art of Gathering. A personal reflection by Emily Andre

Episode Summary

This episode of Reflections by LinkCast features the endlessly resourceful Emily Andre. Emily serves as a Knowledge Management Coordinator on Policy LINK where her role focuses on the organization, storage, and sharing of knowledge across all projects. She is part of Policy LINK’s global team where she contributes to curriculum design, staff development, project recruitment, and startup operations. Emily’s professional experiences include research and learning, community development, project management as well as facilitation. With a cultivated interest in both domestic and international peacebuilding, she is passionately curious about how and why people gather.

Episode Transcription

Reflections with LINK Cast. 

These solo casts allow us a window to interact with partners, counterparts, and occasionally, LINK staff, as they reflect on mindsets and facilitative approaches to better Leadership, Collaboration, and Learning.

On this Episode Emily Andre, the Knowledge Management Coordinator on Policy LINK takes you along as she reflects on how and why people gather.

• I live in Washington, DC, and like most other people who live on the east coast of the US, a few months ago I encountered the long-awaited emergence of the Brood X cicadas. While I’m just a Knowledge Management Coordinator, and not an entomologist I understand that this year’s species of the cicada insect is special since they have been burrowed underground for 17 years, tunneling and feeding beneath the soil. Cicadas are creepy-looking bugs, they are big, fleshy, and have large red eyes that bulge out of their heads and if you step on one on the sidewalk they make this crunching noise. And speaking of noise, their most distinctive feature is probably the very loud and constant buzzing noise they generate at nearly all hours of the day and night. A cicada’s mating call or ‘buzzing’ can clock as loudly as 96 decibels, which is equivalent to a jet-engine airplane passing overhead. 
• Most people would think that the invasion of billions, quite literally there were BILLIONS, of these bugs would not be a reason to gather, but to me, this was a once-in-every-17-years opportunity that deserved celebrating! Periodical cicadas only occur in the eastern United States; they don't occur anywhere else in the world. While they might look vicious, they’re not harmful to animals or people, and in fact, they often do good for gardens. When the insects emerge from the soil, they create holes that increase aeration and water penetration. Over the cicada life cycle, exoskeletons and dying adults will fall to the ground, breaking down into organic matter and nutrients that feed the soil. They’re also an indicator species for measuring things like climate change—their scheduled emergence every 17 years is marked by cycles of cold winters and warm summers, so if these insects start emerging earlier (maybe every 5 or 6 years) instead of 17 years we’ll know that climate change has worsened.  
• So what does this have to do with the book I read (which by the way was Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering)? Well, like I said this invasion was an occasion of rarity! The cicadas appeared in June 2021, and at that time many people in the US had just been able to get the COVID-19 vaccine and be fully inoculated, and for the first time in over a year, be able to start socializing in person with friends again. We now might be in a different place with the Delta variant, and until everyone globally is able to access the vaccine, we are all still at risk of continued mutations of this virus. But at the time, June, many of my friends had started reaching out to me about seeing one another again. So, I knew what I had to do: throw a cicada party. 

To do so, I implemented 3 of the takeaways I had from The Art of Gathering

• The first thing you learn from Priya Parker’s book is that to have a successful gathering you need to fully understand what the purpose behind the gathering is. Often, Parker points out, we tend to focus on the mechanics. We focus more on logistics like table decorations and menu choices more than we think about why we’re bringing people together. The more I thought about it, while I was parading around with my invites talking my friends’ ears off about cicadas and eagerly looking forward to drinking the cicada-themed punch I planned to make—the real purpose was to see friends again after a long time apart. 

• The Art of Gathering teaches that to best understand your gathering’s purpose, you should reverse engineer an outcome: Think of what you want to be different because you gathered, and work backward from that outcome. So the outcome I wanted to achieve was an evening where all my friends, both those that knew each other well and those that may only be acquaintances, had a good time and feel comfortable gathering again. To go even further, I think my purpose was to break the ice of any awkwardness there might be from having not hung around other people in over a year—to make this first-party an easy-going one that would encourage my friends to host parties and gatherings in future. 

• The second major takeaway I had from The Art of Gathering, is a concept that, at first, seemed strange to me. This is the idea that by exercising exclusion, you can create a more meaningful gathering. At first, glance that seems backward—the old saying “the more the merrier” was ringing in my head and Parker even mentions in her book that the impulse to include is one of human nature, yet when done tactfully can lead to more meaningful gatherings. She argues that while exclusion may feel impolite, the inclusion of the wrong people is a form of impoliteness to the other people involved in it. In deciding who to invite to your gathering Parker asks herself three questions: 
  • Who not only fits but also helps fulfill the gathering’s purpose?
  • Who threatens the purpose?
  • Who, despite being irrelevant to the purpose, do you feel obliged to
    invite?
• Answering those first two questions is somewhat straightforward—who fits in with the purpose of the gathering, and who might challenge it. But that third question is tricky and really makes you think about the purpose. What would be wrong with someone who’s irrelevant to the purpose of attending the gathering? Priya Parker says you know, ‘What’s wrong with inviting Bob? Every gathering has its Bobs. Bob in marketing. Bob is your friend’s girlfriend’s brother. Bobs are perfectly nice people who are just grateful to be included. They sometimes bring extra effort or an extra bottle of wine. I know for a fact I’ve definitely been the Bob of some of the parties or meetings I’ve attended. But achieving inclusion through exclusion is about summoning the courage to keep away your Bobs. Parker says, “it is to shift your perception so that you understand that people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it. This is because once they are actually in your presence, you (and your guests) will want to welcome and include them, which takes time and attention away from what you’re actually there for. Particularly in smaller gatherings or meetings, every single person affects the dynamics of a group. Excluding well and purposefully is reframing who and what you are being generous too—your guests and your purpose.”
• Parker mentions this metaphor of “freedom of the wolves often means death to the lambs” and while I’m certainly not implying anyone LINK works with (or anyone I invited to my cicada party) are wolves, it’s important for the host of a gathering to understand the dynamics that various pairings of people may create. Perhaps this means that meeting with stakeholders individually, or in very specific settings, means that they will best be able to express themselves and their needs—which ultimately may help you work towards whatever your purpose may be. While you might think that putting everyone in a room altogether to work on something is as easy as coordinating schedules, there’s a lot of thought and intentionality that may go into any given gathering of stakeholders so that you can produce the results you’re looking for. As Parker says, “Gatherings crackle and flourish when real thought goes into them, when the often invisible structure is baked into them, and when the host has a curiosity, willingness, and generosity of spirit to try.”

• This brings me to my last point: something called “generous authority.” Often you might be at a gathering, whether it be something casual like a party or something formal like a work meeting, and the host of the gathering may be hesitant to tell people what to do. Rather than following a hands-off approach to hosting, it’s better to embrace generous authority. That means running events with authority, but selflessly, in the interests of your guests. One way Parker says this authority can be exercised is through rules. Rules, you might be thinking, sound appropriate for a meeting or some sort of specific ritual or tradition, but at a party? With my friends? Actually…yes! The Art of Gathering discusses how enforcing ‘creative’ rules at your gathering can actually unleash experimentation, playfulness, and truly meaningful interactions among your guests. While most party organizers want to be thought of as “the chilled host”, being a good host is actually more about being a good facilitator. 
• In terms of my cicada party, I thought about how I might impose some sort of rule that would work towards the purpose of my gathering. My purpose is a way to get my friends comfortable with socializing again and using the guise of an insect-themed party to do so. So, along with the invitation, I informed my guests that they had to attend the party somehow incorporating the theme—I told them that they could interpret this rule as imaginatively as they’d like, but that it’d be required. Did I have a friend or two tell me I was being “over the top” – yes? Did I have a friend make fun of me saying that I had given out a “homework assignment” to come to a party? Also yes. But upon my guests' arrival, and upon their inevitable awkwardness of having not gone to a party in over 12 months, it was a comfortable way for guests to start a conversation with one another, or fall back on when the conversation was at a standstill. I had a guest bring a dish that they thought would be as “crunchy” as a cicada might taste. I had a friend wear bug-related jewelry, another friend who decorated small bottles of alcohol to look like cicadas that he then passed out to all the guests and encouraged them to drink all at once. I even had one guest who, seemingly did not bring an element related to the theme, but when asked said that the t-shirt they were wearing was 17 years old! The same shirt they would have worn in 2004 when the last brood of cicadas had emerged (no wonder their fashion sense had seemed a little questionable that night!). Imposing rules, or being authoritative over a gathering, can have a bad reputation, but when done generously (and even better, when done playfully!) can work in your favor of achieving your purpose.
• Generous authority is a concept that all good facilitators learn to exercise since it not only acts as a glue to hold the structure of your gathering in place, but it also serves as a means to get your guests to think differently than they might normally. Policy LINK’s core purpose is to support individuals and organizations to work better together by strengthening leadership, collaboration, and learning. Every meeting, every co-creation, every webinar or series we put on is carefully crafted using much of what The Art of Gathering advises. I was able to read this book through Policy LINK’s internal book program that encourages staff to develop themselves professionally by reading books and listening to podcasts that relate to Policy LINK’s principles and goals. I highly recommend this book, I highly recommend learning more about Policy LINK on our website policylinkglobal.org, and I highly recommend making all your friends gather in celebration of a very rare bug species. 

Thank you for joining us on LINKCast. Be sure to subscribe and listen for more in-depth conversations on the software of global development. 

This episode has been made possible by the generous contribution of the American people through USAID’s Policy LINK.