I remember vividly being at a party in college, feeling overwhelmed and left out and alone, and deciding to leave to be with my own company rather than feel disconnected and excluded from the party I was at. I’ve had many, many encounters like that, before that particular evening, and after. It’s really easy for me to feel disconnected from groups!
I’ve often found group conversations and dynamics difficult to enjoy, navigate. I vastly prefer one-on-one conversations. In a one-on-one conversation, it’s possible for me to attune deeply to both my conversation partner and to myself, to find an optimal conversation topic, rhythm, and orientation that both my partner and I will enjoy and find fruitful. I really cherish on-on-one conversations for these reasons.
U can see me doing this, for example, on my podcast. It’s not the Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss podcast—I have a much smaller audience—but people who listen to my podcast often appreciate the way I attune to the person I am interviewing, the way I listen to and ask questions. These superpowers are often heightened in private, one-on-one conversations, where there’s often more shared context and intimacy, and more safety and freedom to explore. That’s true all the more so for an in-person conversation, where subtle dynamics can be felt and sensed in much higher resolution.
By contrast, it’s virtually impossible to attune to every person in a group conversation with the same level of detail I’m used to from one-on-one conversations. The thing I find hard about group conversations isn’t what to ask or talk about—it’s attuning to and flowing with the whole group, giving and taking space. You simply can’t track three, four, five, six or more individual people with the same quality and depth of attention that you can two people (yourself and an interlocutor). If I try, I lose myself in the process, merging into the group, being swept away by its dynamics, abandoning my own needs, boundaries, and desires.
This post is about some of the ways I’ve learned to work with group dynamics and settings more effectively: to find and attend more group contexts that are resonant and life-giving for me, and to participate in ways that bring me joy and meaning.
I’m definitely not an expert in all this. If anything, these are just my field notes on what seems to work and be helpful so far, mostly for myself, but shared in case they’re helpful to others, or someone wants to suggest a way of seeing or a move that I’m missing.
What kinds of groups are alive and resonant
When I started repeatedly checking my energy levels before and after different activities, I noticed that group interactions pretty reliably drained my energy. That insight made me want to do less group interactions like that. I found myself saying no to way more group events, and hitting the bricks on group events I realized weren’t doing it for me.
There are a few suboptimal recurring loci of group conversations, that don’t work well for one reason or another:
- I leave the conversation, seeking my own company or the company of someone I can have a one-on-one conversation
- I stay, but avoid speaking, listen and watch instead; feel shut down, distant, disconnected
- I participate, but dominate conversation by being the group’s leader, monologuing, acting on what I want while risking missing other’s needs and desires
But I also started noticing that there were exceptions—group events that were energizing, enlivening! And I started to wonder what was up with that.
Since then, I have thought a lot about which kinds of group interactions I like, and which ones I don’t. Every time I really enjoy a group interaction, I reflect on what factors contributed to that enjoyment—and vice versa.
Over time, I’ve found that I enjoy group conversations most when a specific set of necessary conditions are all met:
- they are people I already know, independently have shared context with, feel safe around, like and enjoy their company and how it feels to be with them
- the gathering or event has a clear purpose that is actively related to my goals and interests, feels resonant for me in an embodied way
- the group is well-held with an explicit, intentional structure by a clear leadership figure
Here are some examples of common group gatherings or events that don’t meet those requirements:
- Large group gatherings, e.g. an event with 50+ people
- A free-form, flowing dinner conversation with old friends I love deeply but no clear structure
- An intentional activity that is well-facilitated but with people I don’t know well (people often criticize Circling with strangers for this reason—it’s much much better with old friends U know and trust and have established relationships with)
- An intentional activity that is well-facilitated but is not aligned with my goals and interests / isn’t feeling resonant
- An intentional activity that is aligned with my goals and interests, feels resonant for me, but isn’t with people I know
- A group gathering that is aligned with my goals and interests, feels resonant for me, but is loosely (or poorly) facilitated
By default, I’ll often choose to avoid these events or group settings, and save my social skill points for something I’m more likely to find enjoyable and life-giving. If I have a good reason to do so, I can still choose to go to these events, but frankly, my odds of enjoying it and finding it to be a fulfilling experience are much lower. If I choose to try to beat the odds, I have to emphasize self-care above all else, and be creative about how to meet my needs in the context of the group.
When the three factors I mentioned above are all present, I’m very likely to find a group experience energizing. These additional factors can help make a good group experience even better and more enjoyable for me, but they’re not strictly necessary or make-or-break in the same way:
- I tend to like small groups. Relating to two other people is already vastly more challenging for me than relating to one other person—all the more so if there are three, four, five, six, or sixty other people in a group.
- I like to be able to participate, to feel seen and met, to be able to contribute to what’s happening. A Zoom lecture with one person monologuing ain’t it.
- I really prefer group events that start with check-ins, that acknowledge each person’s mood and circumstance, that demonstrate they care about the people in the group as they are that day. It’s much harder for me to participate if my own emotions feel invisible—and I feel sensitive to the ways others’ needs and feelings might not being cared for if they aren’t surfaced and acknowledged.
- It also helps quite a bit if I’m already in a good mood when the event happens, because group interactions tend to amplify my existing mood—e.g., from happy -> very happy, or from sad -> very sad.
Moves and Tactics for Enjoying Groups
I’ve also learned a variety of moves that help me enjoy a group that I’m in, once I’m in it.
First off, I am more willing to attend events when I know that I don’t have to be there—that I can choose to leave at any time. Before I attend a group event, I remind myself of this: I give myself permission to leave at any time. Paradoxically, knowing that I have my own back, that I have good boundaries, can hit da bricks—can do so, have done so, will do so—is part of what allows me to participate fully in group events I choose to be at.
Once I decide to attend an event, something that has helped me a tremendous amount is to actively, vigilantly self-monitor my own experience, needs, boundaries, and desires. I do this without thinking in a on-on-one setting, but it’s easy to forget myself in the context of a group, in the momentum of its dynamics and energies.
I try to ask myself, “what do I need? what do I want?” If I can give myself what I need or what I want, then I simply do that. If I want something that would require participation or permission for the group, then I ask for that (presuming I feel safe doing so). I can have agency in a group context! I can ask for what I want! I can make bids for connection with groups, just like I would with another person! For example, I can propose a specific structure or activity that meets my needs and desires, or name a tension I’m experiencing and ask for help resolving it.
This basically feels like a group specific-form of the self-love inquiry question I often ask myself, that I learned from Kamal Ravikant’s book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It: “If I loved myself truly and deeply, what would I do?”
If I don’t want to leave a group, but it’s not working for me, it’s usually fair game to pair off with someone that I want to connect more deeply with one-on-one, or to join or form a small cluster that’s a subgroup within the larger group. This is a very natural and workable move.
Something else that works for me is simply to get curious, and to notice the group dynamics at play.
I can also get playful, and see if there’s some experiment I’d like to try, some new move or way of relating that I’ve never explored before. Depending on what I decide to try, this can be high-risk, high-reward, and I’ve definitely stumbled in a group context from trying things that didn’t go over well—like making a bid for an activity that no one else wanted to do, or, more idiosyncratically, trying to only look at the face and body language of the people who weren’t actively speaking, rather than whoever was actively speaking.
When I posted on Twitter about finding group dynamics difficult, one of the suggestions that I found especially helpful was from my friend Zencephalon, who suggested that I “widen out [my] attention and try to feel the vibe of the entire group as a gestalt, like enjoying a smoothie instead of separate fruit.” There are a lot of other practical suggestions in that thread, and in reply to another similar post from my friend Sandra.
I can make use of my strengths with on-on-one connection, and relate to two people (like a couple) as a dyad (a unity composed of two people), or a whole group (like a family) as a whole. If there is a pre-existing, established context in which those people are connected, flow together as a larger system and whole, then this makes connecting to the group much easier, because it really can and does feel a lot like relating to one person rather than several.
I’ve done a lot of parts work, and this particular move always makes me feel like I am expanding all of the parts work from myself to others. Internal Family Systems was originally named after Family Systems work with real families—it’s taking the same tools and approaches back to its origins.
Chris Lakin suggested that it works surprisingly well at a party to “sit alone in a corner. no phone, just be present, and wait. the friendliest people *will come to you*.” A mutual also pointed out that U can be this person, and look for the people who aren’t talking to anyone and go talk to them 🌞
Conclusion
Group conversations are just a different animal than one-on-one conversations—with different strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and opportunities. I want to learn more about what group conversations are great at, and learn to play to their strengths rather than trying to make them be good at the thing that I love one-on-one conversations for.
I’m still learning about group dynamics, how to be attuned to what’s present, and how to show up in a way that honors myself while being attuned to others and the group as a whole. I’ll try to add more notes and suggestions to this post as I have them. In the meantime, I’d love to hear if U have any suggestions that have worked for U!
Thanks to Rich Bartlett and Abi for reading this post and providing feedback on it.
If U enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to my newsletter, my YouTube channel, or following me on Twitter to get updates on my new blog posts and current projects. U can also support my work with The Service Guild on Patreon.
The art in this post was created by Sílvia Bastos, and is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license. You can support her work on Patreon.
