I teach adults, many of whom are making a major career change. A few months back, a gentleman called, in some distress that a class he was trying to enroll in was full. Just days before, when we’d spoken previously, seats were still available. But now they were gone, and he’d made some significant life changes (despite counsel to the contrary) in anticipation of embarking on a new career, starting with this particular class which was now closed. He wanted me to make an exception. He needed me to make an exception.
Narrator’s voice: I did not make an exception.
It’s not that I didn’t want to. And it’s not that I didn’t come close. I very much wanted to allow him to be the 21st person in a class limited to 20, in part to help him out of his predicament and in part to put to rest the repeated pleas to make that exception. Mostly, it felt like the kindest thing to do under the circumstances.
In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues for a “kindness of exclusion”:
Faced with people who should not, in theory, be [at your gathering] but are hard to keep away, it can feel easier and more generous to go with the flow. But the thoughtful gatherer understands that inclusion can in fact be uncharitable, and exclusion generous.
Ultimately, it would not have been a kindness to open the crowded class up to let one more in. For starters, it would have caused physical discomfort: adding one more would mean switching from comfy padded chairs to not-so-comfy hard chairs in order to have enough seating. What’s more, enrollment is limited to ensure the quality of of the class is not compromised by an instructor who is spread too thin. The kinder thing for everyone, including my number 21, was to ask him to wait until the next class—even if it didn’t feel so kind to either one of us.
The premise underlying much of what Parker has to say about gathering well has to do with purpose. When it comes to the rule of having a clear purpose, Parker is an equal opportunity enforcer. No more parties just because it’s your birthday. No more weddings just to get married. (You can get married, yes, but you can do that with or without 350 of your closest friends, so make sure, before you convene all 350, that you know why you want to celebrate your wedding with them as opposed to the Justice of the Peace and the court reporter.) Having purpose, she says, “simply means knowing why you’re gathering and doing your participants the honor of being gathered for a reason.”
One of Parker’s keys to having a clear purpose is specificity. “The more focused a particular gathering is, the more narrowly it frames itself and the more passion it arouses.” Here again, Parker leans toward narrowness, but for good reason. Research conducted by the online meeting organizing platform called MeetUp revealed that the more specific the title of the meetup being scheduled (or, what they call “tightness of fit”), the more likely potential participants were to see themselves in the group and choose to join.
Specificity of purpose enables us not only to “draw out a sense of togetherness and identity and welcoming and belonging,” but also understand when and how we need to exclude for the good of all. “You will have begun to gather with purpose,” she says, “when you learn to exclude with purpose.”
But is this always the case? Does purposeful exclusion, even when done as generously as can be, always distinguish good gatherings from the lesser ones? Parker shares a story of friends in the book who had an annual gathering where they all let their proverbial hair down together for a weekend. When two of the group became coupled with other individuals, they wanted to bring them along. There were reasons to welcome the new friends in, and there were reasons to “protect the gathering” by closing the door, all of them valid. In the end, the group decided to exclude the newcomers. I can’t say this was a bad decision. But I couldn’t help feeling like it was the shorter-sighted one. It seemed that while the exclusion could be a kindness in some ways as it allowed the friends to continue to be their unguarded selves together (indeed, this is how Parker pitches the decision), they also may have limited their opportunities to become something even more by welcoming individuals who were loved by others in the group.
Perhaps there is a kindness to a certain kind of exclusion, like with my student. And perhaps in some cases there is something to be missed, which seems not a kindness at all.
* * *
This month, we’re discussing Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering. We invite you to share in the comment box around this topic. If you’re reading along, tell us what most intrigued you about this week’s reading. Were you able to relate to the delights and frustrations of past gatherings she shared? And whether or not you’re reading with us, tell us how you feel about the sometimes-need to exclude in order to protect your gathering. Does this feel like it runs counter to building community, or does it help? What does practicing a sense of purpose in your gatherings look like?
Announcement Post
June 13: Chapters 1-3
June 20: Chapters 4-6
June 27: Chapters 7-8
No matter what kind of gatherings you’re a part of—dinner parties, business meetings, birthdays, conferences and more—gather here with us first, and let’s rethink together.
Buy The Art of Gathering now
Listen to Krys Boyd’s interview with Priya Parker on Think
Photo by Jason Parrish, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
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Laura Lynn Brown says
Look at that poor excluded macaque. Or is she deliberating whether to exclude someone from her gathering?
I think exclusion depends on the gathering, the purpose, the possibilities of breaking a rule. You were right to exclude that man. The class holds 20, period. And it sounds like his purpose for wanting to be there was a cart-before-the-horse situation.
Years ago when I taught a composition course with a food focus, I allowed in a student after the class was full. Some people chose the class because they needed a comp class and it was at a time that fit their schedules; they didn’t realize until the first day of class that it had a food theme. She wanted in because she’d been to culinary school and she really wanted into this particular class. It was a good decision. She was very attentive in class, wrote some great papers and became a friend.
Sometimes the thing to question might be the purpose of the rule itself, or the unspoken rules we perceive about a gathering. Like “members only, no new significant others.” Or “baby showers are for women only.”
Parts of these chapters that stood out for me:
• The more specific a meetup group, the more successful it will be, especially if the description includes the group’s activity and not just its identity.
• How she realized too late that inviting her husband and other men to her baby shower could have turned an old ritual into a gathering with new, family-building and community-building purpose.
• Many suggestions that involve purposefully talking with strangers.
Will Willingham says
I agree, exclusion does depend on the purpose, and perhaps this underscores the importance of having a clear purpose for our gatherings. It makes it simpler (not easier) when we have to make those decisions.
She had an example in the book of when they opted to expand the participants when the original purpose would call for exclusion, and that’s what I’m thinking of when you mentioned letting the highly interested student in.
So there have to be times when we make the exceptions. I sure hope so, anyway. 🙂
Megan Willome says
This is not a book I would have read on my own, apart from it being a Tweetspeak thing, but I’m on the last chapter now, and I’m glad I’ve stuck with it.
These first chapters made me rethink how to handle a recent visit home by one of my children. I wanted it to feel different, now that they’re in their own home in a different city. I wanted them to feel more like an honored guest than the lost puppy showered with love. It was still a welcome but a different kind of welcome—one that attempted to acknowledge their independence.
Laura, thanks for the story about your class, which illustrates that different students and different classes need different things. I like that Parker is giving us ways to think about gatherings rather than iron-clas rules.
Laura Lynn Brown says
I think someone probably dropped that class, so I ended up with the capped number anyway.
Will Willingham says
I love the way you take a little different approach with your kid’s visit. I’ve already taken a different approach on a few things just based on some of Parker’s observations.
Monica Sharman says
I’m all for exclusion for the purpose of protecting a gathering. The tricky part is how to do that and yet still be welcoming, in other ways, to the excluded ones.
Or maybe that’s part of the problem — feeling as if we owe something to the excluded ones because they’re excluded. Which maybe is not excluding them at all.
In this book about gathering, is there a part that addresses the excluded ones? How they should or should not have certain expectations? How they should accept and respect the reality of an exclusive gathering?
This is something I’ve been pondering for years. A friend recently told me about C.S. Lewis’s ideas about the Inner Ring and the Outer Ring, so that’s another thing I’ve been looking into.
Thanks for this post.
Kortney Garrison says
Wow! Thanks for the Inner Ring reference. I was already planning to re-read the essay while traveling this week. But I don’t know if I would have made the connection between the two.
Will Willingham says
I haven’t gotten far enough to say whether there’s much said about what to do with the excluded ones. But that would be a great thing to address. It’s all fine and well to decide that the best thing is to close the door, but having a clear plan for the ones on the other side of that door would be super helpful.
Glynn says
I’m asking myself why what I’ve read so far in the book leaves me unsettled. In the first chapter, the discussion of how the new editor changed the Page One meetings at The New York Times focused on the benefits. Nothing was really said, but was there anything lost in the break of tradition? Doing something because “it’s always been done this way” is always a bad reason, but, unless I misunderstood, it seems that the decision-making was actually concentrated in fewer hands. (I believe the editor who made the changes also did away with the reader’s advocate, which, given the discussion they had about the need to represent readers more, is really odd.)
My concern is crazy, because I hated meetings in the corporate world, and especially ones that invited everyone because everyone had to be represented, even though few actually contributed, and inviting everyone generally made for a useless, ineffective meeting.
I understand the point about exclusion, but I find it worrisome as well. Here’s a hypothetical example. A group of male managers come together to discuss concerns about how women are treated. The point is to raise awareness of a problem and offer a free atmosphere for discussion, one where men would not feel inhibited about asking questions and raising concerns. So no women managers are invited. On the one hand, the exclusion has a purpose. On the other hand, is excluding women itself an example of how women are treated? If a woman asks to join, or a member of the group suggests that a woman should join, would it be right for the group to say no, since that would undermine the group’s purpose? (And could they even do this, legally?)
It may be the difference between a group of friends in voluntary association and people working for an organization, governed by various workplace laws.
L.L. Barkat says
Glynn, I’m glad you expressed the unsettledness. I loved the opening of the book, and the further it goes, the more I, too, feel unsettled.
I haven’t been able to put my finger on why, exactly. After all, I agree, in principle, with many of the principles. I see especially good applications for creating fascinating, memorable, powerful experiences in settings besides parties. I even plan to use some of the ideas. 🙂
My theories so far:
• The Unconscious Perspectives
– it would be just as easy to talk inclusion as exclusion, as in “here are the ways you could be included and why that might make sense for you and us.” Of course, that requires a bit of trust: that people will be grown-ups about things and self-select in or out of things based on the “terms of engagement.” So, for instance, that example about the woman who got “shame walked” back to her table. Wow! I thought, “You have *got* to be kidding me. Did the woman who got shame walked have any idea ahead of time that this might happen?” To LW’s example, the terms of engagement would have been “first come first served, up to 20 people.”
– what makes the group (and therefore its protective host) more important than any one individual in attendance? I mean, to the extent that a host would choose to do something like “shame walk” a person back to her seat? This is a cultural perspective, I’m almost sure (towards collectivism, away from individualism).
• The inability to be consistently flexible.
Parker admits to her own falling down here, with the example of how she ruined her own dinner party. I feel that the book itself is also a bit inflexible. And I wonder if people will be judging each other (ha, or maybe judging *me*)—was the host too chill? did the gathering have enough purpose?—rather than taking some responsibility for helping to make their own fun and influence (appropriately) the direction of any given experience
***
I do think there’s a place for gatherings that are very specific. More can happen along certain lines. But, then, there are things that won’t happen. So, in the man/woman meeting example, it would make sense to me to offer three initial meetings at different times that then report back to one large meeting…
• a man-to-man meeting
• a woman-to-woman meeting
• a men-and-women meeting
All three would then report to a completely inclusive men-and-women meeting, perhaps having discussed, in their specific groups, a collection of targeted issues (rather than, say, some kind of free-for-all approach)
Kortney Garrison says
Love that you bring up the role of the guests, LL. If Laura’s student mentioned above would not have been a responsive (and responsible) student, I wonder if Laura might have second guessed her decision?
Also wanted to mention how welcomed I felt when the invite to Editor TLC included a way to respond to questions for reflection as well as responding to the prompt. I wasn’t up for fiction writing, but I’m nearly always ready to think about characters and stories.
By the way we’ve got a fancy wedding coming up at the end of the month. I can’t imagine not sitting with my husband or being escorted by the bride back to my seat! 😉
Will Willingham says
Kortney,
In the NPR interview, Parker talks about the idea of asking people to *do* something instead of bring something (like a bottle of wine) to a gathering. She told the story of a man who planned a Christmas gathering for friends, and asked ahead of time that they send him two pictures of their happiest moment in the previous year. He then printed them out and hung them on a Christmas tree, and this was the source of much joy and conversation during the night. I too love that Laura added the questions for the Editor TLC, as an alternative thing to *do* as a participant. Makes me wonder how else that could be put into practice.
Laura Lynn Brown says
Kortney, I had a feeling from talking to her that she’d be a good student. She had learned how to contact me (this was before email existed) and she knew she had one shot. She explained why she wanted in the class and why she was late to learn about it, and she expected no favors. She wasn’t pushy or desperate. Just respectful and hopeful.
About that wedding, Parker did mention that Nora Abousteit saw the dinner as a small part of a long evening and the only part where couples were separated. Still, an odd choice at a wedding.
Will Willingham says
Her inflexibility is ever increasingly apparent as I read along. I like the essence of what she is suggesting, but it seems there is such a firmness in adhering to these principles that it begins to feel counterproductive. Maybe that will get better as I continue reading.
Overall, though, I have to say she’s making me think. I don’t do a lot of planning of personal or social gatherings, but I think what she’s saying is useful on the business side of things.
You raise an important question about who or what is most important to protect. And this is always a difficult question: whose rights or interests take precedence. No easy answers there, but it might be good when we decide these things if we looked at the greater good of all, whether it’s the ones to be included or the ones to be excluded.
Laura Lynn Brown says
I imagine some of the guests were as flabbergasted as that woman was when she got shame-walked back to her table. Some guests may have been uncomfortable when the woman came over and sat on her husband’s lap, too, but there were kinder ways to deal with that.
“Consistently flexible.” Yes, that’s important. And trusting guests to take some responsibility for their own outcomes. Which brings the question, can individual purposes and a group purpose coexist?
L.L. Barkat says
I think individual purposes and a group purpose can exist, yes. I’m thinking of how partner dancing works. Or renga writing. Or improv. Or jazz.
Sports and the arts might have a few things to teach us about being flexible within a structure, giving individuals play and power, freedom and responsibility, creative thought and rites.
Monica Sharman says
That is super appealing to me — to think about it in terms of inclusion instead of exclusion. It reminds me of a friend who, instead of giving up something negative for Lent, committed to taking up something positive (a particular physical exercise) every day of Lent.
L.L. Barkat says
I agree, Monica. And I think it’s more than semantics. Words have power. And they have connotations. And they have a lifetime of experiences that come along with them, to help us interpret what’s happening to us or what we’re doing to/with someone else. As writers, we surely know this, and we harness it in our work.
At the word level, then, exclusion feels actively negative, like “We don’t want you here.” Inclusion feels like an invitation, “We think this might be for you, so if you think so, too, let’s make it happen.” To the person who isn’t invited, then, the message is that they would probably be better served at a different gathering. At the very least, it implies that we thought so and made a compassionate choice rather than a mean one.
Will Willingham says
Glynn, corporate meetings send me too. But I’m with you on the Times. Certainly the change to digital created a need for a different framework, but it does seem the new model limits (perhaps to their detriment) access. Was this when they eliminated the public editor? That was an unfortunate decision…
I wrestled with the defense of exclusion, even as I recognize there are times that it must be adhered to. But I’m with Laura in approaching it from the other direction, from who is included. Maybe that’s semantics, but maybe it also leads us to a broader view. I appreciate your input here and that you put words on what many of us were likely feeling.
Sandra Heska King says
I’m still reading in these first chapters. My first reaction to the “drill deep” concept was “that’s a lot of work.” Which is then mildly discouraging to attempt a gathering at all. Maybe that’s just because I’ve got a lot on my plate right now anyway. I can, however, see how both gathering some people and gathering a purpose for the gathering is important.
My daughter who lives in Michigan recently got engaged. She plans to get married on the beach here in Florida because it’s the state of her birth and because her heart is on the beach. Because it then becomes a destination wedding, some people and family members will end up excluded–like my dad–her grandfather–who can’t/won’t travel here. (We hope we can make it work.) It also creates a bridal attendant issue. She has a whole passel of girls for whom she’s helped plan weddings and stood with who are thrilled with saving to come and stand with her and wrangle a mini family vacation out of the deal. The groom, though, has discovered that his guy friends are not so excited–one (who he considered a best friend) saying up front he wouldn’t spend/save money to do that. So now the bride has to decide if she uninvites friends to serve, hopes for new male connections before the wedding (it’s a little over a year away), or figures out a way to work with more females than males. By virtue of distance and finances, the shindig won’t be a big extravaganza, but we will have a welcoming party and a reception. Also, there are birthparents and family members here with whom she’s connected and would undoubtedly be delighted to come and may be sad to not be invited. But that would create other complications, though we haven’t made any firm decisions about anything yet.
Weddings can be complicated. I hope this book has some answers or at least ideas.
Donna Falcone says
:)d
Donna Falcone says
🙂
Donna Falcone says
🙂
Megan Willome says
I’ve finished the book since I commented. I agree with the feeling of unsettledness described above, although I am grateful that the book has made me think about gatherings in new ways.
One thing I think Parker underestimates is the value of hanging out with people without an agenda. A tremendous amount of relationship can be established by just visiting if it’s done consistently. It’s a skill I’ve had to learn since moving to a small town twelve years ago. (It took about ten years to get comfortable with it.)
Rick Maxson says
I’m coming into this slowly, because so many family obligations are calling for my attention.
In my life I’ve not been to many formal gatherings, save for corporate meetings, which for the most part always seemed arbitrary. I think the worse kind of exclusion is to be invited to a meeting and not have your input acknowledged, for good or bad.
As far as parties go, I’m probably not the best person to benefit from Parker’s suggestions, because I am an extreme introvert, never having mastered “circulation” at one, or being seated next to someone chosen by a host. One of the few times this occurred I was actually offended at not being able to sit next to my wife at a dinner table. Parker’s sensibilities for social gatherings seem like they would be helpful. They are more recognizable to me to be applied to corporate meetings, because that is largely my experience. Socially, I always tended to avoid groups larger than a few good friends. But I would agree in part with her suggestions for structuring as it could be applied to formal meetings, which always seemed to have somewhat of an ad hoc soul.
Having said all that, when my youngest daughter was married, she almost single-handedly arranged the wedding and hosted a reception for 300 family and friends. She instinctively seem to make all the right choices outlined in Parker’s book. My wife, her older sister (who more or less eloped and married in private), and I were amazed at how smooth and fun the reception was for everyone.