I was recommended this book this summer by Priya Parker called The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. And after reading it, I can recommend it to you as well. This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it to be incredibly relevant to so many aspects of life and work given that gatherings are taking place all the time.
What I loved was the author’s relentless commitment to treating human gatherings as sacred times and spaces. Her pursuit of meaning and the moments that make that meaning resonates with much of how I think and why I often am frustrated at so many gatherings.
A long time ago I was leading a large event and in response to part of the vision I was casting for the event, a supervisor told me to just follow the formula because it works and the event was going to do what it was going to do. How unspiring and at the time disillusioning! What we do when we gather – in big or small contexts matters and this book unpacks some great perspectives and insights from how to plan and prepare to how to end a gathering. The book is a guide for hosts and planners, but it’s not really a book on hosting only in that I see this as a leadership book integrating organizational behavior, environmental design, and some common sense.
The only beef I would have with the book is that most of its examples come from high soceity or elite contexts given the worlds the author operates in, however, it’s only a minor complaint. There’s implicit assumptions that gatherings have similar access to budgets. However the principles are not restricted to the rich and famous – they may just have more time to think about hosting gatherings.
But I learned a lot, it’s helped me think about meetings, classrooms, trainings, small groups, and a variety of gatherings I tend to be a part of and I’m excited to keep applying some of the wisdom gained from this book into some of these environments.
But chances are you have some gatherings in your life that can be made much better with a little bit of thought and planning. This is a book full of ideas that offers the kind of big picture thinking often lacking as well as the depth that comes with meaning making. We all need more of that in our lives!
