The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters

in grabbing them, it should both awe the guests and honor them. It must plant in them the paradoxical feeling of being totally welcomed and deeply grateful to be there.

I try to embed two elements in my workbook questions: something that helps them connect with and remember their own sense of purpose as it relates to the gathering, and something that gets them to share honestly about the nature of the challenge they’re trying to address.

In gatherings, once your guests have chosen to come into your kingdom, they want to be governed—gently, respectfully, and well. When you fail to govern, you may be elevating how you want them to perceive you over how you want the gathering to go for them. Often, chill is you caring about you masquerading as you caring about them.

When you’re asking people to go deeper, to share what they don’t usually share, you must manage the risk-taking you are encouraging. Sometimes that means prodding people to take more risk; other times, it means soothing people afraid of taking risk.

Priming can be as simple as a slightly interesting invitation, as straightforward as asking your guests to do something instead of bring something.

A talented gatherer doesn’t hope for disparate people to become a group. She makes them a group.

I repeatedly urged the group to go below the surface, into the assumptions beneath what they were talking about. When things would get heated, I would slow them down and try to help them go “below the iceberg.” Rather than looking at the specific incidents and events above the water line, I would ask them how those moments revealed their underlying

What do you need to feel safe here? What do you need from this group to be willing to take a risk in this conversation today? Spending the time asking such questions helps further prime your guests to take chances in the conversation and to listen more deeply than they otherwise might.

The kinds of gatherings I specialize in creating could be terrifying to people who share this sensibility. That doesn’t mean there is no place for such gatherings, or that people with this inclination need to just take or leave it, or that they should not be invited. It means that some of your guests will share her aversion, and if you are going to