Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, speaks on the function of gathering and its importance in contemporary culture Monday in the Amphitheater.
NORA SMITH
Staff Writer
For 153 years, Chautauquans have gathered together in Western New York each summer to share in conversation and companionship. 10:45 a.m. Monday in the Amphitheater was no different as Chautauquans listened to Priya Parker, facilitator, strategic adviser, educator and author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, deliver a lecture on how and why people gather.
Born in Zimbabwe to an Indian mother and a white midwestern father who eventually divorced and remarried, Parker said she toggled between two entirely different worlds: her mother’s Indian, English, Buddhist, progressive and vegetarian family and her father’s white American, evangelical Christian, conservative and meat-eating household.
“I’ve always been interested in where and when and how we come together, and also when and where and how we come apart,” Parker said. “I became a dialogue consultant, that became my profession, and so much of what I was taught about how we create a connection, I realized it was not taught in popular culture.”
Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic produced a notable absence of community gatherings and, consequently, an opportunity for a vulnerable reexamination of the act of gathering.
“By taking gathering from us, the pandemic began to actually make us look and ask first-order questions, which is when and where and how and why we should be gathering,” Parker said.
As a conflict resolution facilitator, Parker said she knew when a community is willing to ask those questions, a bigger question follows close behind: “Is how we gather how we want to gather? And if not, what might it look like?”
She said in workplaces, people are gathering too much, and the contrary is true of people’s lives outside of work and within their communities. She said in 2000, people reported attending a gathering eight to 14 weekends per year, and that statistic has since fallen to less than two per year.
“I am worried about how we gather, and there’s so many different reasons for why we’re not gathering,” Parker said. “We’re busy. We’re distracted. We also are different from one another.”
One reason people are gathering less frequently, she added, can be attributed to the prioritization of individualized help.
“I want to popularize group-help as much as self-help and normalize the skills of, ‘How can anyone learn how to host a great gathering?’” Parker said. “You don’t need a fancy house. You don’t need to be an extrovert. You don’t need a fancy degree. You just need to know a few little steps and the courage to try.”
Parker said one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming the purpose of the gathering is obvious instead of pausing to ask each time, “What is the purpose of this gathering?” or “What is the need of this gathering?”
Parker presented an example of a time she assisted someone who hosted a dinner party for fellow worn-out moms; this gathering, she said, was born out of her asking, “What is the need in your life?”
Then, to give the gathering some form, Parker asked that the host come up with “a pop-up rule,” which she defined as a shared goal to foster a shared experience. So, in the dinner party invitation, the host clearly stated the pop-up rule: If the invitees were to talk about their kids, they would have to take a shot of tequila.
Parker referred to a gathering’s invitation as a sort of contract that poses the question: “Do you want to do this?” For example, first and foremost, invitees knew that if they attended the dinner party and talked about their kids, they would take a shot of tequila.
Parker said because gatherings often involve a variety of different people from different communities who practice different etiquette, it is crucial that a gathering has these shared goals.
“[In modern life] we don’t have shared etiquette, and so part of a pop-up rule, it’s a way for people to have a shared experience without all having to be the same,” Parker said. She gave the example of collecting everyone’s phones in a pile at the center of a table at a dinner party. The rule is that the first person to check their phone must pay the bill.
Further, Parker said the first 5% of the gathering and what she considers to be the “temporary alternative world that you get to create” is often when people ask, “Do I belong here? How do I behave here? What are the norms here? How do I be successful?” The start of a gathering, she explained, sets the stage for success and can increase feelings of warmth and belonging.
Parker said another important aspect of gathering is handling ever-present power dynamics and considering, “At what point do you accept those and have that be an understood part of the gathering? And at what point do you try and mutualize those power dynamics?”
When taking on the role of the host, Parker said it is important to ask oneself what exactly one is inviting people to do and, therefore, what one is holding them to. Often, she said, there is a lack of boundaries set by the host, which can result in it straying from its original purpose.
“One of the roles of a host is to practice what I call ‘generous authority,’ which is to use your power as a host to also protect your guests from each other and to temporarily equalize them,” Parker said. She said it is important to create rules and enforce them continuously to keep the gathering on course to its original purpose.
In addition to generous authority, Parker said “generous exclusion” is also important.
“Often, we overinclude in our gatherings because we haven’t actually paused to think about what the purpose is, and gathering is line-drawing; it’s the temporary creation of a world to figure out what’s the purpose and given this, who’s in, who’s out this time,” Parker said.
She said most hosts tend to say yes to everyone who may want to attend their gathering, but this weakens the overall purpose of a gathering, which is crucial to protect.
“Start practicing what I call ‘group intelligence,’ to really step all the way back and first ask, ‘What is the purpose? And who needs to be there? But also, ‘Who threatens the purpose and how do you … develop some skills for healthy heat?’ ” Parker said. “To be able to have a conversation to say, ‘No, you can’t come. I love you, but not this time.’ ”
One example Parker gave was Pixar preserving the purpose of a creative meeting by not letting the CEO sit in on it. She said it would have led employees to act a certain way and affected the atmosphere. Another example she used was someone who hosted a gathering to teach school-aged kids how to write but needed to enforce boundaries, limiting the gathering to older children only. She said younger children would distract from the intended purpose of the gathering, inhibiting the experience of all who were involved.
Parker’s upcoming book, The Art of Fighting, focuses on how healthy disputes are crucial for building long-lasting communities. She said she learned early on about healthy disputes following her parents’ divorce, but she said their lack of fighting comes with a great loss in avoidance.
She emphasized the importance of discernment in healthy conflict and the distinction between unhealthy peace — which she defined as never having important conversations — and unhealthy heat — which she defined as domination and abuse.
“There’s very few places in our public life where we allow conflict, rituals for conflict,” Parker said. She added that it is important for groups to have healthy heat, and she is curious about how places like Chautauqua foster it.
On a similar note, Parker spoke to the value of reexamining a tradition or ritual that may no longer serve its original purpose. She listed traditional family gatherings as an example.
She compared potential changes to gathering traditions to house renovations. She said it is important to first ask, “What do we keep? Then, what do we stop? Then, what do we change?”
Parker said, “We often have to see, ‘Where do our rituals serve us? And where are they no longer relevant or even hurting us?’”
At the end of her lecture, Parker spoke about maintaining “good controversy” to help one another move forward and “holding the heat together.” She said it can be helpful to host “hot take parties” and defined a “hot take” as a strongly held opinion about something small and inconsequential. For example, “Thursday is the best day of the week,” or “There should be only one type of pasta.”
Inviting these debates on topics deemed unimportant can help people feel comfortable enough to have the discussions that need to be had.
“It’s like lambs learning to walk; these are skills, but we’re learning,” Parker said.
