How many times have you sat through a meeting and asked yourself, “Why am I here?” In the meetings that you host, is there a possibility that your attendees are asking the same question? In a fascinating and highly informative new book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, Priya Parker takes meeting design to an entirely new and more effective level.
Parker advises that most people often misunderstand what makes a group connect and a meeting matter, and encourages anyone planning a meeting to ask these questions:
- Why meet?
- Who is the meeting for?
- What are the goals?
- What is the problem we are trying to solve?
- How can attendees come together to come to a solution?
The more focused a particular gathering is, the more narrowly it is framed and the more passion it arouses, the more effective it will be. Being very specific about a meeting’s purpose and goals sharpens the gathering, because people can see themselves in it. Ask yourself - why is this gathering different from all the other gatherings (this is called the Passover rule)? What is this meeting that other meetings are not? What is the higher purpose? Every time you get to a deeper reason, ask why again. What larger problems is the meeting trying to solve? What is the desired outcome? What do you want to happen and what can help everyone make the choices to get there?
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