Inviting on Purpose: Empowering Others to Participate

JESSICA BECKENDORF (00:03)

Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Jessica. Today we’re talking about how to make better invitations. Later, Erin and I will discuss five principles to help you craft your next invitation. I am so excited about this topic.

Hi, Erin. Maybe I could bring you into this conversation. What is your favorite invitation that you’ve received?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (00:27)

Wow. Hi. That’s a great question. Okay. I have two that come to mind for completely different reasons. One is, I got an invitation to a Muppet themed costume party. I may have talked about it before on this podcast. I’m sorry if I have. Genuinely delightful. Like every single thing was even the words were Muppet themed, and just the sheer delight of realizing I would get to dress up as a Muppet. I had something to look forward to for months. Genuinely so fun.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (01:10)

What about that made like you said, it was very joyful? Is there anything about that invitation that made you feel special for having been invited? Not that that’s a prerequisite, I’m just curious.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (01:23)

I mean, no. Like, I mean, this was a friend of mine who has a birthday party every year. But hilariously, the second invitation I was about to talk about was I had a friend who was running like an experience for college students. And she specifically asked me, “Hey, will you come run this with me? Because you have all these gifts and skills that I don’t have. And I trust you as a collaborator. Here’s a specific role I would love if you would come fill.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF (01:58)

That’s cool.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (01:59)

And this was, I don’t know, maybe 2020. This was six years ago. I still think about that invitation regularly because I’ve never felt so seen, known, and valued as that invitation. And it wasn’t like a super formal thing. It was just in a conversation. But I felt very honored to be getting this invitation and it was clear like, this person really trusts me.

And sees expertise that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of, a thing you need expertise in. Sometimes you’re really skilled at something, and you don’t realize you’re good at it until someone else points it out and you realize, “Wait, not everybody can do this.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF (02:43)

Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a compliment or not, but the first time I ever heard and understood something like that, someone told me it was because they told me that they really appreciated that I can’t not open my mouth. And I feel like that’s in some circles, that’s maybe not a compliment, but they really did mean it that way. Because they were very opposite that. And I really appreciated how they were able to ask me questions so that I could think, in a way, but I always appreciated their ability to sit back and contemplate.

And I didn’t realize that they had also appreciated my ability to just say what’s on my mind. You know, maybe I’m less direct than some people who when they say what’s on their mind, they’re like super direct, and even blunt about it. I wouldn’t say that I’m blunt at all, but I definitely do attempt to say what’s on my mind, and I can’t stop myself, frankly, most of the time.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (03:40)

That’s fair. Do you have an invitation that you still remember?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (03:46)

Well, you brought up a good example of, I think there’ve been a lot of times in my life when someone has just specifically said to me, “I really want you there. I really think I need you specifically to be there. I need someone like you there.”

And there’s been a number of times when I’ve heard something like that. Like an example is, you know, it’s very hard for me to say no, and I was going through a practice of trying to say no to this one. I’d been invited to be part of this planning team. We were trying to do some professional development for our callings. It was on a topic I was skilled in and they invited me to be part of it.

And I tried at first and after a while I was like, “You guys, I can’t. I just don’t have the capacity or the time.” And then like a week later I got a call from one of the organizers. This was one of the people who had really been pushing for this effort. And they said to me, “You know,  I think we really specifically need you there. Your innovative way of thinking, your kind of pushing the boundaries of the box. Like we really, really need that. And we need you.”

I said, “I can’t give you much. All I can really do is like comment on what you guys are developing. I can be a reviewer. That’s about all I can do.”

And they were like, “You know what? We’ll take it. We just need you involved.” So things like that I think have stuck out to me as great invitations. And I’ll say one other, someone I know was having a wedding and they did black tie. And I had never been to a black tie event, and there aren’t a lot of black tie – I feel like there aren’t a lot of black tie things happening in my circles and in my area of the world where I live.

And so for me that just felt special. Really, really special. Do I aspire to dress in black tie all the time? No, but being able to say that I went to a black tie event, where the dress was required, the dress was black tie, that feels nice.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (05:57)

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (05:59)

So let’s get into why we’re focusing on invitations today. So why are invitations worth spending time on?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (06:07)

Yes. I have very passionate feelings about this. Which I didn’t fully realize until I was writing this episode. And then it was like, “Wait a minute. No, I care so much.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF (06:18)

Also, can I back us up? I’ll come back to these questions, but I actually want to back up for a second. What’s an invitation, Erin?

I’m so sorry I’m putting you on the spot.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (06:31)

I would say an invitation is when you ask someone or a group of people to participate in something.

So it can be a vulnerable thing where you’re extending, you’re taking a risk, but it can also be a trust building exercise.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (06:53)

Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (06:55)

It can be power sharing. That’s not like a good dictionary definition of an invitation, but I think it maybe gets at the essence of what an invitation is, which is inviting someone to have, I think for me, the participation point.

Space is very important. It’s like you can participate in lots of different ways, but offering space for people to participate.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (07:19)

Yeah, so part of the invitation probably outlines that. And so let’s go back to the original questions that I had, which is why are we focusing on invitations today and why are they worth spending time on?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (07:30)

Yes. I think the primary reason you spend time crafting an invitation is because it saves you time, energy, and sanity later. And I know that sounds a little bit too many magical things to really hang on an invitation, but I think it really can help an event or meeting or party or whatever kind of thing you’re inviting people to.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (07:57)

And effort, like if you’re trying to do a large scale change community change effort, right?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (08:05)

Yeah, that’s probably the most prevalent and most relevant example to people.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (08:10)

Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (08:12)

The thing about crafting your invitation is if you do a good job, it empowers other people to participate and it empowers somebody to know if they should say yes or no to it.

So, like a really good invitation helps people know what to expect, so that they know how to prepare, so that they know if it’s a good fit for them, so they know if they even care about what’s gonna happen. And I also think a really good invitation helps you figure out what you are trying to make happen. What do you want?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (08:44)

And what do you want from your participants?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (08:46)

And what do you want from your participants? Yes. I think it’s very easy to forget or not have time. If you don’t bother to spend time crafting your invitation, it’s really easy to forget about shaping what you want and deciding what you want. And often shaping the invitation can help really filter is not quite the right word I’m looking for.

I think it helps with pruning your event down to the essentials. We’ll get into that a little bit more later, but y that’s what I was thinking. What about you? Do you have thoughts about invitations?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (09:22)

I do. I am probably very similar, but coming at it maybe from a slightly different angle. This reminds me of something we’ve talked about in the past on this podcast, in the way past, I would say. And that’s something called the logic of co-production. And I don’t remember them all off the top of my head right now. But when you’re having an event, whether you’re in charge of the event and people are just participating, there’s still co production happening. You know, people are showing up, they are participating in whatever manner the invitation indicated, or whatever manner you were trying to create.

But when you’re talking about those longer range community change types of efforts, then you might be talking about a purpose where you’re trying to co create deeper, longer relationships or you’re trying to co create in deeper and longer relationships with people. And so you’re trying to co create that change.

And sometimes one of the logics of co production is that you invited people because to say that you invited them, right? You invited them so that you could say, “I invited them.” They didn’t come or I invited them and I got their opinion, but you don’t really do much with their opinion. So there’s sort of that logic like you invite people in to say that you invited them in, but you already knew what you were gonna do to begin with, right?

And then there’s the logic of co-production go all the way to, of course, the extreme of that, which is more of that really co-creative an invitation not just to come in and share your opinion where the event is extractive of your thoughts and your perspective, but an invitation where you are invited to share the power equally with everyone else.

And you don’t put it that way on the invitation, but basically, you know, meaning that this whole process, no change is going to happen without all of us together. And it recognizes that.

So anyway, I’m getting way too in the weeds on the these ‘logics of co-production,’ but that’s what this reminds me of, right? The invitation is super important to not only save yourself sort of time and headache and effort, but also to really communicate what your purpose is so that like you said, people can decide, and be empowered to choose whether this is for them or not for them or whether to ask questions about the invitation or not. Does that make sense to you?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (11:58)

That makes a lot of sense to me. Well, I think we should dive into these principles before we start spilling the secrets.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (12:05)

Yeah, do it. Do did I already start spilling secrets, or I think we both did.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (12:08)

That’s okay. Okay, so the first one I read is Priya Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering, and she has a whole chapter called Let Your Purpose Be Your Bouncer. Her premise is that you decide what is the purpose of the gathering, what’s the point of the gathering, what are you trying to make happen at the gathering? And then you think about who can make that happen by showing up and who will prevent it from happening by showing up.

And then if someone is either going to hinder or not contribute to the purpose of your meeting, you don’t invite them. And that is scary, but I think it is a very interesting principle to have. I also like to add, ‘let your purpose be your bouncer and your recruiter,’ because sometimes you need to think about well, who is going to invest in this purpose with me and are they on my list of people to consider?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (13:02)

Yeah. And I would think that with those longer term community change efforts, for example, that it’s not about not inviting the people who are going to be naysayers so much as it’s about maybe developing relationships with them before you start your effort, and working with them on the change effort. So I think if they would prevent it from happening by showing up, I think there’s a lot of ways to deal with that too before you get to the invitation stage.

But there’s a lot that we could talk about when it comes to those kinds of efforts. And this is not the focus of this episode.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (13:41)

Yeah. You could go really deep on that. And also I don’t want to make this an hour long episode. So I’ll just say this is the principle that you start with, because figuring out what you want to make happen and who’s going to help you do that, you want to think about that before you even set the event, before you pick the location, before you pick the date and time. You want to think about what am I trying to do and who’s going to help me do it.

Because then we get to principle two, which is, figure out what will prevent people from participating fully, and pivot. Which is essentially thinking about who wants to be a part of this, and how do we make it easier for them to participate. So that’s location, that’s time of day, that’s place, that’s if the meeting lasts the duration of a time when people normally eat dinner, for heaven’s sake, feed them.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (14:34)

Ha ha ha.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (14:36)

Or encourage them to bring dinner if they need to. If you’re talking to a parent group, provide child care. That’s not always easy, but if you want parents to participate in something, as a community leader who’s specifically having an event for parents, have a plan for how people aren’t going to be able to come if there’s nobody to watch their kids. Those are two kind of more basic things.

But another thought I have is there are lots of places where maybe they don’t have good internet access. So if your meetings are on Zoom, how do they show up? Can they call in? Is there a way for people to participate if their internet’s too slow to do a video? Yeah, that’s kind of the main principle there.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (15:20)

Okay, that’s great, Erin. This is one of those things where we invite people, and if you want to come, well you’re on your own. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to do it. And sometimes we do need to consider what those needs are and if there’s any barriers. So what’s the third principle for a good invitation?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (15:36)

Yeah, your invitation should match the participation you want.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (15:41)

Hmm, explain. What does that mean? I think we’ve touched on this a little bit.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (15:48)

One of the first things that comes to mind with this principle for me is avoiding a bait and switch. So I’ve been to a lot of events where the invitation is a networking event to connect with others around a topic. But you get there, and it’s auditorium seating and you’re all staring at a speaker and the whole time is spent by somebody giving a presentation.

And I just get so mad. It feels like someone specifically is rage baiting me because I learn and grow a lot through conversation. I specifically search out opportunities to have dialogue with people who have different ideas than me. And so when I come expecting that, and then I get there and it’s one person standing at a microphone talking to an auditorium, and you called it a discussion or a networking event, I was just like, “You lying liar! Your pants are burning.” Like, what is happening here?

And I think what that also gets at is this idea of your invitation should give people a picture of what their role at a meeting is. What is the expectation for them as a person? Are they showing up and listening? Are they showing up and participating? Should they bring something with them? Should they have something prepared to say? What do you want them to do? And that should match their actual experience at the meeting. Which seems intuitive, but it’s really easy to accidentally bait and switch people.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (17:16)

Yeah. So if you had gone or if they’d, as part of their invitation, if they had said, “We’ll start with about a thirty minute lecture, and the last thirty minutes of our time together will be spent in discussion,” or something, is that what you’re talking about? Manage the expectations up front?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (17:34)

Yeah, absolutely.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (17:37)

And so that tells them that, like, hey, if you don’t want to talk with people, leave after the presentation, or if you wanted to talk to people, stay. Like just bear with us and stay through the presentation, and you’ll get a chance to talk about the topic after.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (17:52)

Yes. Okay. And I think a lot of people are scared to include this type of information in an invitation, because they don’t want to overwhelm people with too much information. And I definitely think this is a time where pruning is your friend. So write everything you think you want to say, and then go in and make it shorter without losing content, the best that you can.

But, you know, I think it’s also it could also look like getting a casual invite to something. “Hey, we’re having this check-in meeting. Would you come just to meet this person?” And then you show up and everybody else is wearing a suit and it’s in like a fancy business suite, and everybody has like an agenda and it’s very formal.

But you got the most informal invitation. So you didn’t come wearing your suit jacket today. And then you stand out and you feel awkward and uncomfortable and like, “I don’t really fit here.” That’s the kind of thing we’re hoping to avoid.

And that can look really different depending on where you are and what situation you’re in. So unfortunately, all of these are principles because you have to actually stop and think about your circumstance, the people you’re inviting, what you’re trying to do. There isn’t like a magical, ‘just do this.’ You have to actually think about it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (19:09)

So that principle seems to go really hand in hand with the next one that you have down in our notes, which is, what will the person you invite get out of this meeting? it seems like those two really go hand in hand.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (19:21)

Yeah. I almost combined them, but I think they’re just separate enough.

Something I see frequently is people will come to me and say, “Man, we invited, we did so much outreach to get people to come to this event, and nobody showed up.” And then I was like, “Well, what was the event? Tell me about it.” And they told me about it. And I was like, you wanted them to pay for that? And it’s something where you were asking them to pay to do work.

Or like they weren’t going to get anything out of it, or it just was a very thinly veiled timeshare pitch or something. I think those are really hard to sit through personally. So I think often this can happen in academic spaces, or anytime someone’s like, “Well, come and tell us your opinions.” But then it’s like, “Well, what are you going to use them for? What are you going to do with them? Are we wasting our time?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF (20:20)

“Why should I?”

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (20:21)

Yeah.

Why should I? And I think it’s good to consider if we’re asking someone to show up and participate in something, which as I said, that’s what I think an invitation is, is not show up to just stand at the back of the wall. We want participation. Or at least I do. You look like you maybe don’t agree with that.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (20:43)

No, no, no. I very much agree. I love participation. And in fact, it’s mostly what I do. I’m a facilitator. I design meetings practically for a living, it’s a big part of my role. But this reminds me though, and I keep bringing it back to this idea of like long range community change projects. That’s not the only thing that we’re talking about here, but I keep bringing it to that because that’s where my background is.

And one of the things that comes up for me is that when there’s an immediate crisis or some sort of immediate need, a lot of people are very interested in having the conversations and trying to get some solutions done. But when someone’s like, “Hey guys, this is something that could happen,” or, “If we don’t start talking about this now in twenty years, we could be in a pickle.” I find that much fewer people want to talk about that and perhaps it’s partly the invitation. I’m not sure, but I’m curious about whether, you know, the way we talk about long range planning is dry and droll enough that maybe we’re not – I don’t think we need to like zhuzh it up and make it super exciting.

I just mean, you know, it seems like when you are in a role like I am and you’re trying to get people to think way ahead into the future, when they’re not dealing with any crises right now related to the things they need to talk about for the future, it’s difficult. Maybe this doesn’t match up with invitations, but I do wonder how are we doing our invitations?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (22:26)

Yes, I think that that’s a good example. Because the thing here is when I say, what will a person get out of this meeting, my hope is that you will think through why would this be valuable to somebody else? Why would coming be valuable to somebody else? And how do I communicate that?

And to be clear, I’m not asking you to lie because that’s baiting and switching, and we don’t want that. So I think in your example, if you’re trying to get people to come help,

make decisions or work towards something that will prevent a future problem that could happen long distance from now, you’re going to have to make the case for why it’s important now, because there are currently crises happening.

So why are we taking time away from that to prevent these future things? And this is where you can strategically communicate this idea of the purpose of this meeting is to help us build the future that we want.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (23:21)

Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (23:23)

And it’s impacted by the things that are happening now. So we want to input it now. We want to think about our future now so that we can do it on purpose. And that, of course, is a hard sell and not everybody’s going to say yes to it.

But the people who have capacity to care about it now will hear that and go, “I hate all of the things that we’re in now and that we’re responding to crises in the moment, and making expensive, hard decisions.” And what if we did this on purpose? Those are the people who are going to be like, “Yes, this is for me. This is my thing. I’m going to show up and come because I would love to solve things before they get bad.”

And so that’s the point of this thing is, what is the value for the person who’s attending, and how can I say it clearly so that the people who value that thing want to say yes to the invitation.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (24:05)

Yeah. Great. Well, I feel like this starts to get into the next one that you have in our notes. Don’t forget to share the details.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (24:13)

Yeah, look, the amount of invitations that I get that don’t have an address, where to park, how to pay, how to RSVP.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (24:21)

My gosh, where to park?!

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (24:23)

Look, I live in the Milwaukee area. And if you do not share how someone will park, people will not show up. Parking is a nightmare. And we’re not even that huge of – we’re a big city for Wisconsin, but we’re not like a big, big city. And maybe you’re in a community where parking is not a factor whatsoever, there’s never missing parking. But you have to talk about like mosquitoes or you know, like what is the thing that people need to know?

And for me, the most egregious thing is when you ask somebody to do something in the invitation and you don’t tell them how to do it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (24:59)

Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (25:00)

So it’s if you want somebody to RSVP message this person, but you don’t provide any contact details for that, I have seen that shockingly more times than I thought possible.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (25:12)

Or one is provided, but they don’t answer questions.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (25:17)

Sure.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (25:18)

Probably because they’re an overworked volunteer.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (25:22)

Yes, sure. Exactly. So again, some of these things are pretty basic, but it’s so easy to forget the basics when you’re in a rush, when you have a huge workload, when you just need to get it done so you can make some progress.

So the reason I bring up the principles is just that they’re really helpful things to keep in mind to pause and just check before you send something. Because let me tell you, I have been the person who has sent an invitation and then ten minutes later sent a follow-up email to an entire giant group being like, “I apologize, here is the correct link.”

Or one time I accidentally put my personal cell phone number on something for work. And so I was getting all of these calls to sign up for a class to my cell phone. Horrifying. I wish I had spent just like two minutes rereading my email before I sent it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (26:19)

I can tell you though, sometimes as someone who used to prepare public notices and stuff for a city, you can have sometimes five people look at it and every one of you miss the mistake. And that might mean another thirty days to sixty days to wait for that project to begin. So that’s great…

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (26:37)

Yeah.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (26:38)

Okay, so what is the smallest step someone can take?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (26:45)

Pause and think about what you’re doing.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (26:50)

And there we have it. Mic dropped.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (26:53)

You know, I think essentially all of these boil down to like, “stop and think.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF (26:59)

Yeah. I love that. And you know what? Just because you said stop and think, and because you’ve got these, they can’t see our notes, but you’ve got these so beautifully summarized in our notes. I’m not going to summarize all of them, but I am going to go through the five different areas if you don’t mind. So when Erin says pause and think about what you’re trying to accomplish, keep these in mind.

So let your purpose be your bouncer and your recruiter. So what’s the purpose? Figure out what will prevent people from participating fully and pivot where you need to, so what barriers might be in place? Your invitation should match the participation you want. What will the person you invite get out of this meeting? And don’t forget to share the details. Where are they gonna park?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (27:46)

Is there a bathroom there?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (27:48)

Exactly.

Well that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you like this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or coworker. We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.