Priya Parker and artful gathering

by Robyn Engel, AIA

In September, I attended my first Women’s Leadership Summit. It was an incredible, invigorating experience that infused me with inspiration and the feeling that I was surrounded by my people. There were over 750 women in attendance, over 20 educational sessions, and copious wellness and social activities. Debbie Millman was the consummate host, punctuating summit logistics with wry humor and heartfelt sentiment.

Priya Parker was the headliner of Day One and led a smaller-scale fireside chat with more intimate content, scale, and conversation. Parker is a conflict resolutionist by trade and author of the best-seller “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters.” Founder of Thrive Labs consultancy, she comes from an organizational design, public policy, and political and social thought background. She has used interdisciplinary synthesis in examining race relations at American colleges and universities and facilitating peace processes in the Middle East and elsewhere.

At a gathering of architects and designers, Priya had a unique perspective on the way we relate to one another and how we effect change in our personal and professional lives. An ardent fan, I’ve been focusing on several concepts from her keynote, her fireside chat, and “The Art of Gathering” that I feel are most applicable for designers today. Recently, I presented a version of these ideas in a round-robin happy hour for the Women In Design organization in Pittsburgh. These concepts are:

1. The Passover Principle
2. Generous Authority
3. Pregaming is Important
4. Face Your Life
5. Good Controversy
6. The End

I loved learning about our first concept, the Passover Principle, because I had never read about a Jewish holiday as a philosophical concept and it’s a perfect fit. Passover is the retelling of Exodus and is centered on one main question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” If you look up the Merriam-Webster definition of a gathering, it directly references “An assembly or meeting, especially…one held for a specific purpose.” The heart of this first concept is that a good gathering must have a clear intent and purpose. This agenda must come first because the way you craft each aspect of your gathering reinforces the message you determine in this stage.

Second, we have Generous Authority. An important prerequisite to this concept is the distinction between “authority” and “leadership.” Someone can be in a position of authority but not be a particularly good leader — similarly, someone can be a fantastic leader but not have a formal rank in the hierarchy. Parker eloquently describes the benefit of this approach, saying “Generous authority is not a pose. It’s not the appearance of power. It is using power to achieve outcomes that are generous, that are for others. The authority is justified by the generosity” (Parker, 84). Key components of generous authority are that as host, you must be respectful, strong, confident, and selfless — plan your gathering around your intent, and ensure you’re looking out for your guests.

In looking out for your guests and priming them for success, we reach Concept 3: Pregaming is Important. According to Parker, “Your gathering begins at the moment your guests first learn of it. … The intentional gatherer begins to host not from the formal start of the event but from that moment of discovery” (Parker, 145). This means that as soon as your guest receives the invitation in the mail, or the Outlook invite, your job has begun. In that invitation, you can add pieces to get your participants thinking about the intent of the meeting — a quote, an article, or even a homework assignment — these are small ways you can support the mission of your gathering.

Concept 4 gets more introspective. One question in the fireside chat was, “As a host and a leader, how do you achieve a healthy balance of intimacy and authority?” Parker said that as humans, and particularly as women, we face dueling needs: the desire to become, or to obtain self-realization and power, and the desire to belong, or to see the holistic collective and love. To work toward peace between these priorities, Parker advises, “Face your life, your past, your fearful pieces, your shame, and you make your peace with it. Take full responsibility for your life and your choices, even in small, silly ways.” In reconciling our individual, complicated identities, we can better be selfless with others. In the words of Nick Cave, who wasn’t at the summit (although that would have been amazing!), “vulnerability is the engine of compassion.”

Our penultimate idea is Good Controversy. In “The Art of Gathering,” Parker describes this situation in terms of “heat.” “Issues have heat when they affect or threaten people’s fears, needs, and sense of self. And when they poke at a sense of power” (Parker, 237). This is a classic definition of an adaptive challenge, which is what so many of our design organizations are facing today. The opposite of an adaptive challenge is a technical challenge, that is, a challenge that is a logical question and a rational answer. Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, revolve around issues of identity and culture — and infusing a gathering with this level of controversy can give it a higher meaning. Often, grounding a gathering with frank conversation can be an antidote to the cult of positivity that frequently pervades our professional and personal lives. The biggest benefit is that this line of focus is generative rather than preservationist and can help push us in a positive direction of change.

Just as the opening of a gathering has power, so too does its conclusion. This brings us to Concept 6, The End. Parker teaches that a meaningful ending has two components — first looking inward, then turning outward. The former is a reflection on the event and a point of pause. The group can take this time to look back and evaluate what went well, what went poorly, and what opportunities there were that the group didn’t have enough time or resources to fully explore. This reflection unifies the group in the sentiment of “this is who we were here,” and as Parker states, “tribe-making is vital to meaning-making.” Next, turning outward sets the stage for taking the seed you formed in the gathering and planting it in the outside world to flourish. A real-world example of this in simple terms is a party favor.

Here, instead of an actual party favor, are parting words. Priya signed our books with an imperative: “gather boldly.” She proclaimed in the keynote that “we make change where we are — that’s how culture shifts.” In this, each of us has the agency to effect positive change.

Let’s start 2020 boldly.

Author Bio:

Robyn Engel, AIA
Engel is a project architect at IKM Architecture in Pittsburgh, Penn. An ardent reader, Ms. Engel most recently served as jury chair for the 2019 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize.