Inspiring bedside reading: The Art of Gathering subtitled How we meet and why it matters by Priya Parker: A reminder that, as my college teacher for “how to run a meeting” told us, “You can be competent, or you can be incompetent.” Ms Parker is delightfully competent.
I wrote this “essay-report” about 24 hours after the zoom event; my college course was four decades ago. (Today’s post is over 1,500 words)
Scott Berkun, tweeter, blogger and author of several good nonfiction books, held his first-ever zoom meeting to thank his readers. I know Scott well enough that when I met with another blogger-writer in London, Derek Sivers, Scott told me to say hello for him.
In truth, I can’t “de-brief” because there was no “briefing” first. Not like, say, my Uncle Jack on a WWII bombing raid where the flight officers would first brief on what was to happen and how, timings, and such, and then upon their return debrief for how it went, and what had they learned to apply for their next mission.
Happily, everyday life ain’t as serious as what my grim uncle went through, but then again, experienced party hosts, and meeting chairmen my age, know better than to youthfully “wing it.” For example: Are you having coffee or milk? Will there be enough ashtrays? A place to keep cell phones? …Let us draw a curtain of charity across the disaster of any formal meeting held without first having an agenda (including timings) pre-planned, or at least improvised publicly at the very start.
I don’t know of any templates for examining a zoom meeting—they are a different animal—but I suppose I can manage by thinking of the template I took decades ago in college.
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Here, then, is my template:
Planned Tone and Purpose (Target for change) Scott’s default tone, as everyone present would know, is fun, light, even funny. The purpose was to “thank his fans,” by bringing them together and answering any of their questions. So he showed up cheerful, energetic, and told us he loves getting questions in e-mail, and today he would like to answer questions live.
I suppose even Albert Einstein would be hesitant on entering a new meeting or an evening party—and none of us had ever been to a Scott zoom meeting before. I suppose it is such hesitation—rather than being “fashionably busy”—that accounts for folks streaming in late, and for Scott himself appearing very close to the start time. As it happens, Scott’s fans tend to be older and self confident in practical matters, while Scott set a positive tone, so the event began as well as might be expected. Folks could comfortably feel clear what “answering questions” would entail.
Debrief My Uncle Zeke, setting out with a file of soldiers on snowshoes, would have his troops stop after the first ten minutes so folks could adjust any loose equipment, then carry on. The zoom equivalent might have been for Scott to stop the meeting after ten minutes, and formally “gather in” the later comers, adjusting their expectations, as a good host. And Scott could have appeared early, before the meeting started to help warm the virtual room. Zeke knows “how a politician wins votes: One by one by one.” Scott could engage pre-meeting people one by one.
Idea to kick around Scott might have had people, in their regisration-for-the-meeting form, besides giving their name (as they did) give how they knew Scott, for example from twitter, and give their latest hobby. (If you only have one, then that’s your latest) Then Scott could have introduced each participant, briefly. (Some of whom he already knew) Maybe that would take too long, or maybe it would be time well spent for the purposes of the group members.
Role of the Leader As so often happens, the person who called the meeting was the leader. Scott filled his role well, with an appropriate degree of “winging it.” He announced from the start that this had never been done before, and that he might do a zoom meeting again. It all worked out.
Role of the Group Members As I saw it, we were to ask questions, if we had any, and listen, and speak one at a time. (I solely listened) This all went well, and I’m sure Scott would have “gate keeped” if there were any obstacles to doing so, such as a boring relative droning on and on. In fact, it came out that he had prepared one or more questions in advance to fill in any gaps. Such good hosting.
A “felt role” of the members, one reminiscent of blog comments and tweets, was to help each other by sharing information such as, most notably, names of authors on one or more topics such as creativity. This they did in the “chat column,” which zoom provides, where people can type their contributions as others are talking. Zoom also provides for private chats between individuals.
Debrief In a Toastmasters speech or meeting, I will focus the group’s attention on one thing at a time, such as one white board or one activity. If I want them all to pull out their day-timer calendars and rustle through their pages, then I will stop talking, and pause any activity. If I have one or two photographs that are too small to post on the chart, then I might pass it around while I am talking, but generally no, I don’t like doing any concurrent activity during a meeting. At the zoom I found it hard to both attend to the typed chat “prose conversation” and listen to a speaker at the same time. I didn’t know whether to pull out a pen and write down interesting titles. (I did, just a little)
Idea to kick around Scott might have paused the Q. And A., and then have directed the group’s attention to the chat room, and considered switching to any resulting conversations. Or asked folks to add their views. Maybe that would have been perceived to be “off topic” for too many folks, or it might have energized the meeting for most people. A delay to give folks time to write down authors and titles might have been in order. (The tech savvy guys might have preferred to drag, highlight and paste, even if that took longer than by hand)
Method of Group Control That was a role for Scott, of course. While the business world is notorious for semi-controlled meetings that people hate, and while Scott has noted in his writings the need for the business chairman to explicitly give the quiet members a chance to be heard, the fans of Scott seemed to be experienced at meetings, so things went well. No obstructive personal agendas, as can happen in a business conference room. An example of which, from Scott, might be two guys who “shoot from the hip” loudly and forcefully, edging out team members who contribute at slower thoughtful speeds. Zoom meetings include a button to put a yellow “hand up,” to be called on, at your little screen picture, which helped.
A classic method of group control is “timings.” Our meeting started right on time. Hurray! And then (probably from excitement) Scott forgot, until near the end, to suddenly announce what time the meeting would be over, due to his own previous commitment.
Idea to kick around Maybe Scott could have appointed an official observer of the time to keep us all on track. He might have added a chat column observer to interrupt the verbal meeting at intervals, or an observer to give a chat summary, or summarize the verbal. And maybe such observers might well have been overkill for an informal zoom group.
Target for Change A more accountable term than “purpose.” Idea to kick around If our zoom meeting could have had a target for change, what might it be?
Relation to Other Groups “No group meets in a vacuum” and “all are part of the mainland.” In this case, some of us are in Scott’s twitter group, others read his blog, and I suppose some could even be in a “Scott Berkun book” discussion group. I wonder: If there was a followup later, or we told other groups what we did on zoom, then what might that be like?
Final Evaluation As for me, Q: would I go home and eagerly tell people about my zoom meeting? A: No. Would I and the others show up again? Would Scott try this again? I think yes and yes. So that means success.
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Back to Me
Within the vast business world, my reading material about Gatherings is a reminder-to-me that there are others out there who appreciate gatherings that are competent, others who know when something is “well done.” If I have the courage to write this post to inspire my readers, then that is partly due to the example of Priya Parker, who stresses that a host must be willing to do the right thing.
Meanwhile, as my way of saying “Thank you” back to Scott, I will send a digital copy of this piece to Scott Berkun (link to his web site)
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Sean Crawford
On land once used in WWII for the Commonwealth Air Training Program
March
2021
