Guiding Principles

Convene

Create opportunities for deep, varied interactions. Foster conversations as drivers for change. Engage with your people—stakeholders, audiences, users, participants, communities, lists, followers, donors, members. Enable them to do this with each other. See yourself more as a convener, less as a mobilizer.

Less talking at, more talking with.

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What does it mean to convene?

Humans are wired for relationships; we’re built to come together. When we feel connected, we become smarter, more creative, more resilient, better able to learn, grow, and act. This is the most basic form of polyvagal regulation—socially engaged regulations between people’s nervous systems—we have. It provides connection and feeling understood. We are social beings. We think, make sense and process the world around us largely via our social interactions.

Relationships are the drivers of change, especially when sustained over time. In fact, as our advisor Steve Berg-Smith reminds us, “Motivation takes place in the context of relationships.”

However, many of us are influenced by a mobilization mentality. We know the high stakes, we want desperately to motivate people to take action—whether it’s consuming differently, political action, or funding our initiatives. So we can default into a mode of messaging, telling, promoting, pitching, and getting people to show up, care, sign, and so on. But this default mode can set us up to miss opportunities for connection. It can show up as a one-directional, broadcasting mode, versus leveraging the energy, human resources, creativity, and momentum that can only be created when people have the space and opportunity to convene.

The mindset here is seeing your organization as a convener versus a messenger or storytelling machine.

The more high-quality interactions you can generate, the more lasting relationships will form, supporting deeper, transformational change that impacts every aspect of our lives

But, how exactly do we do this?

It’s very easy to tell and sell in any of the campaigns we design. When we do this, we tend to talk at people versus creating opportunities for more lateral interactions. For your events do you have panels and experts? Do you ensure adequate time for discussion? Do you have creative ways of ensuring all voices are heard and in the room? Panels and presentations are important ways to share knowledge and provide information. But your impact is increased by having quality participation, everyone’s voices in the mix, and by leveraging the power of small groups and pairs.

Here are four beginning steps to do more
convening and less telling:
Often organizations host panels, screenings, talks, webinars, all ways to stimulate, inform, inspire, and yes, convene. Often they fall short of truly leveraging interactions. Do an inventory of your campaign strategies and events to see where you fall in this spectrum.
A Playbook for Difficult Conversations

Use this guide to transform the way you approach challenging conversations with your community and stakeholders.
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Individual Activity

Guides

Small group interactions, when well facilitated, are the gold of our work, driving transformational change, and catalyzing engagement. It may seem so high touch when we contemplate the scale of change. However consider the power of programs like 12-Step and the Good Grief Network. Think about groups who go on tours and trips together. Think about the power of cohorts. These are incubators and drivers for the change you need.
This is building on Attune and Reveal. Convening is about allowing people to attune with each other, and to be real. It’s also about your demonstrating your own attunement with your stakeholders and communities. Offer courageous spaces for people to think out loud, express their feelings and ideas. Provide a wide range of ways for people to interact, from intimate conversations to online forums.
Design your work to orient around convening smaller groups for discussion, social interaction, brainstorming, and frankly just being with each other, as we practiced with the grounding sessions. People truly welcome this opportunity to just be ourselves with each other, with no specific agenda. Provide opportunities for people to get to know each other while engaging. Create opportunities for people to take breaks from the serious cause and have fun together.
How Relational Are You?

Use this process tool to conduct an assessment of your communications with stakeholders, members, and supporters as a first step in deepening your attunement.
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Group Activity

Activities