How to Work with Power Dynamics for the Good of Your Gathering
We are changing who owns the story.
We are in a moment where, due to both Covid and the uprisings around racial injustice, we are having more explicit conversations about power. These conversations are happening at the highest level of our public life, but also, in our most intimate spheres. Power exists in every gathering. (And that’s not a bad thing.) As gatherers, we need to understand how the various decisions we make in a gathering practically shifts and shares power within the group. I want to give you a simple example that illustrates how the way a gathering is structured can shift power dynamics within a family across generations.
I have a friend named Adam. He recently left me six WhatsApp voice memos on my phone. (I didn’t even know that was a thing.) In it, he said that after listening to Together Apart (yay!), he was inspired to host a Zoommorial, to mark the one year death anniversary of his paternal grandmother. Adam is half-Scottish, half-Thai, and has family all around the world. He’s also Jewish, and in the Jewish tradition, there’s a stone setting that happens 11 months after a death.
When he initially spoke to his father and uncle about his Zoom memorial idea, although open-minded, they were a bit hesitant given some of the lackluster Zoom gatherings they had attended in recent months. “You know I had wanted to be quite differential to my dad and my uncle and was like ‘you know can the send the invite out and I will help you set things up and think through how the structure of it can work’ and then at some point, they were kind of like, ‘you know, you go for it.’”
So Adam did. And he sent this invitation:
“I would like the memorial to be a chance for each of you to say something, and remember Grandma at her finest. You could share a memory that means something special to you, a photo, or whatever else you’d like to say. It doesn’t have to be long. Indeed, you should probably think of sharing your memory in a way that's a bit like Grandma herself: short and sweet. And if you’d prefer to just listen, then of course that’s fine too.”
And so it went.
After the event, Adam received many notes about how beautiful and valuable and needed the experience was, but more than anything, people LOVED the structure. “I think that what happened was that it was a democratization of who owned her memory. Because what some people said was that, ‘you know if this had been a more traditional memorial, maybe one of the sons would give a speech but not everyone,’” he said.
A democratization of who owned her memory.
Whoa.
The way in which Adam structured the gathering, and invited everyone in to share — simple, this is not rocket science people! — changed who gets to own and shape her memory.
Shifting power is not only relevant at the top or on the national level, we can also share power within our intimate circles. After all, our core beliefs of who belongs, who gets to speak, who is worthy of being listened to, starts very often in our most personal settings.
What are some of the ways in which you are seeing the power dynamics shift in your gatherings over the past few weeks? What are you hearing, seeing, noticing, and experimenting with?
Inspirations
Have More Meaningful Gatherings, Even During The Pandemic
I recently sat down with the fine people of WBUR’s Kind World podcast to discuss how the pandemic has changed the way we gather, but not our desire to do so. Take a listen!
Launched by a classmate of mine, David Baumwall, and his little brother Mike, rep’d is an app to help candidates meaningfully engage with their constituents through virtual “door-knocking” in their districts. Check it out, and also, if you know good folks running for office, share this new project with them.
I participated in my first Roots ConnectED, Inc workshop this week (as a parent) and was blown away by it. They’re the real deal.
