Over the past few years the firm I work for has grown—and so has the size of the leadership.
I’m fortunate to be in the leadership group of the firm, and more fortunate still to work for a firm that is serious about creating actual leadership opportunities for Associates, making it more than just a title.
But it feels like we’re arriving at a tipping point: the numbers are working against us. A recent meeting included 18 people—principals and associates—and that wasn’t even everyone!
At this size, no meeting it quite right. There’s something off about the chemistry. I though of an illuminating section in Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering.
Groups of 6: Groups of this rough size are wonderfully conducive to intimacy, high levels of sharing, and discussion through storytelling. Groups of 6 are, on the other hand, not ideal for diversity of viewpoints, and they cannot bear much dead weight. To make the gathering great, there’s more responsibility on each person.
Groups of 12 to 15: The next interesting number is around 12. Twelve is small enough to build trust and intimacy, and small enough for a single moderator, if there is one, formal or informal, to handle. (When multiple facilitators are required at a large meeting, it is customary to divide the number of participants by 12 to figure out how many facilitators are needed.) At the same time, 12 is large enough to offer a diversity of opinion and large enough that it allows for a certain quotient of mystery and intrigue, of constructive unfamiliarity.
Groups of 30: Thirty starts to feel like a party, whether or not your gathering is one. If smaller gatherings scale greater heights of intimacy, the group of 30 or so has its own distinctive quality: that buzz, that crackle of energy, that sense of possibility that attaches to parties. Groups of this size are generally too big for a single conversation, although I’ve seen that done well with experienced facilitators and the proper arrangement of a room.
Groups of 150: The next interesting number lies somewhere between 100 and 200. When I speak to conference organizers who think about group dynamics, the ideal range I hear again and again is somewhere between 100 and 150 people. While they disagree on the precise number, they all agree that it’s the tier at which, as one organizer told me, “intimacy and trust is still palpable at the level of the whole group, and before it becomes an audience.”
Note that there’s a gap between 12-15 and 30 people—at 30, as Parker puts it, a group “starts to feel like a party.”
But right below that?
Without a strong facilitator?
These meetings are wild things. They’re a challenge for everyone, with their side conversations, non sequiturs, overload of information-sharing… They don’t quite work.
The challenge we’re looking at as a group of leaders is partly: How do we design a better meeting?
Taylor Coe 