Feeling Disconnected? Your room setup might be at fault.

May 30

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Take a moment to adjust the mic (and the room).

My mother-in-law, Nandini, is retiring after 24 years of teaching ceramics at the same high school. This past week, she stood up before her students, their families, and her colleagues at their final art show to make her closing remarks.

After she was introduced, Nandini stepped up to the mic someone had placed on a blue-and-pink carpet in the middle of the reception and adjusted it to her height. And then, as she looked out at the crowded room, she realized she couldn’t see any of her students.

She paused, and smiled, and said, “So where are my students?” The audience responded, “Awwww.” But, she wasn’t trying to pull heartstrings. As she looked around, all she saw were teachers and parents. She actually wanted to see her students as she spoke. She pointed to the space in front of her: “I want my students in front of me, because everything I’m going to say is for my students.”

There was some commotion and then two dozen young women pushed through the crowd, and sat on the ground in front of her. It took a second. In fact, it took 37 seconds. (I went back and watched the video.) But she waited with a smile, pushed through the awkwardness, and they found their way in. With her students finally visible to her (and the room), Nandini began:

“Tonight, at this show, I stand before you as your ceramics teacher one last time. As I prepare for a new chapter of life, I want to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to you, my dear students…”

One of the biggest mistakes we make when we gather is we accept the physical setup we’re given, even when it doesn’t serve our needs. Nandini instinctively helped the room physically re-organize around and reflect back its deeper purpose. And you can, too.

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Four ways to hack a bad setup

1. Remove physical barriers.

I was once asked to lead a lively, roll-up-your-sleeves, interactive workshop for managers. When I entered the room, attendees were seated at three long tables in a U formation, far apart from one another. The furniture was fighting our purpose. After being introduced to the group, I spoke for ten minutes or so to warm them up. And then I asked the participants to pick up their chairs and see if they could figure out how to make the room setup feel more like the workshop it was intended to be. They ended up moving to sit on the inside of the perimeter of the long tables, rather than the outside. You could immediately feel the dynamic shift. By removing the physical barrier of the tables and creating more density, they changed a lecture into a living room.

2. Draw a perimeter.

My friend, Aimee, was invited to a birthday party in the park. When she arrived at the spot where she’d been told to meet, it took her a while to realize that this was the group. It didn’t feel like a party – there were just clusters of people standing around making awkward conversation. She pulled out a big picnic blanket, spread it on the ground, and invited everyone to kick off their shoes and join her. It was like she’d flipped a switch – suddenly, the picnic blanket was the party. The park was a boundaryless space, but the picnic blanket created a border that allowed for density to be created.

When your space doesn’t naturally allow for density, create it by making a perimeter. If a dance floor is too big, bring out masking tape to mark out a smaller one. (Also, I was not popular in high school.) For a table at a restaurant, create the perimeter with your bodies by pulling up two chairs at both ends, to close the circle.

3. Fill gaps, build energy.

I’ve noticed a dynamic in many work meetings I’ve recently been a part of. To be safe, the hosts set up the physical room with hundreds of chairs. We want to make sure there’s one for everyone! But, inevitably, half the chairs remain empty, and it's hard to build energy across the holes.

If you find yourself, as a colleague of mine did, in a breakout session at a conference where there were way too many chairs in the room for the number of attendees who showed up, remove them. Don’t let them just sit there empty, like ghosts. When she stacked the 10 empty chairs in the hallway, a group of 25 people in 25 chairs suddenly felt full and exciting, as opposed to incomplete. Remember, “full” is relative.

4. Focus the spotlight.

We don’t have to accept the default setup on Zoom, either. During the pandemic, I took a Zoom improv class with eight friends. Much of improv is scene-based, with two or three people playing a scenario out together in front of others. Our teacher realized it was hard for the people acting out the scene to feel like they were really in it together when everyone else’s faces were also on the screen. So she had those not in the scene turn off their cameras. And came up with a simple workaround for the off-camera students to still engage: drop a “1” in the chat if we thought something was funny, and a “2” when we felt like the performers really nailed a concept we were practicing.

*******

Nandini could have just thought, Why bother? Or, Oh well. But by taking a second to help the room find the right physical formation, she tightened the social contract. She helped clarify and remind all of them, after all, why they were there.

As ever,

Priya

ICYMI

I was recently in conversation with Phil Libin, the former founder of Evernote and CEO of mmhmm, about the new world of remote work. You can check out our full conversation here.

Inspirations

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It’s rare to see an artful closing, and we can learn from them as gatherers. I was touched by Mara Hoffman’s announcement that, after 24 gorgeous years, she’s shutting down her namesake label. She reminds us that there is “grace to be had when we lovingly LET GO when it is time.”v

How Do People Spend Their Time?

If who we are is how we spend our time, this is a pretty telling mirror. Here’s the TLDR: savor the precious and fleeting relationships (like parents, children, and friends), and choose wisely when it comes to the ones you’ll spend most of your time with (partners, coworkers, and yourself).

How to Live in a Digital City

Danah Boyd is one of our most prescient digital researchers and divinators of online life. More than a decade ago, she helped us understand the social life of teenagers online at the dawn of social media. Now, she’s taking her lens to helping people build meaningful digital communities. Listen to her interview here.

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