Speaker 1: Guess what will? What's that mango? So you know, I
Speaker 1: don't normally suffer from fomo, but every once in a
Speaker 1: while I hear about a historic party I wasn't invited to.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you already told me about this. Is
Speaker 1: this the this is the Guilda Radner party right now?
Speaker 1: I mean I do talk about the party a lot,
Speaker 1: and in fact, now that you mentioned it, I am
Speaker 1: going to talk about it. There's this California party from
Speaker 1: the oral history of Saturday Night Live, and they discuss it.
Speaker 1: It's basically every funny person in the world attended it.
Speaker 1: It was pretty crazy to read about some of those
Speaker 1: original lessonel cast members and some of the people that
Speaker 1: are just now such superstars. But you've got Steve Martin there,
Speaker 1: and Monty Python, the SCTV folks like so many others
Speaker 1: that were all in this one place. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: during the night, somewhere along the way, they realized that
Speaker 1: Gilda Radner is really sick and this is probably the
Speaker 1: last time anyone's going to see her. And when she
Speaker 1: tries to make her exit and say her goodbyes, Bill
Speaker 1: Murray just picks her up and uses her as this
Speaker 1: like improv prop and makes her laugh really really hard,
Speaker 1: and then he passes her off to someone else and
Speaker 1: they do that, and in the entire nights just spent
Speaker 1: where people are just passing Guilder Radner around and using
Speaker 1: her as an improv prop and making her laugh and
Speaker 1: and just sounds like the best party in the world.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the party I was talking about. So
Speaker 1: this is way arts here and it feels way more
Speaker 1: doable for us to get to. But in Berlin, this
Speaker 1: artist through a same hype party, and the whole idea
Speaker 1: was that you got everyone's hype forehand, and then he
Speaker 1: constructed all these slip on platform shoes that were at
Speaker 1: the entrance, and before you could come in you had
Speaker 1: to put on these giant blue foam shoes, and once
Speaker 1: you did, everyone who walked in the room was exactly
Speaker 1: the same height six ft six six ft six, And
Speaker 1: so what what's the point of this? So really it
Speaker 1: was just an experiment to see how your behavior changes,
Speaker 1: Like you know how on TV talk shows the host
Speaker 1: often has his chair jacked up super high and that
Speaker 1: changes the dynamic. But the idea was, what if everyone
Speaker 1: is exactly eye to eye, what does it mean when
Speaker 1: we're all one height and I kind of love the
Speaker 1: idea of how if you play with the settings, or
Speaker 1: you know, you play with how you invite people, or
Speaker 1: even how you provoke controversy at a party, you can
Speaker 1: actually make for more meaningful and more memorable interactions. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I guess. Pierre Parker authored the new
Speaker 1: book The Art of Gathering is here to talk about.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined
Speaker 1: by my good friend man guest show Ticketer and sitting
Speaker 1: behind that soundproof glass assembly a mix tape for his
Speaker 1: next house party. I hear these are pretty raging events.
Speaker 1: That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. I took
Speaker 1: a peek at the tracks Tristan's flowing together. It's got
Speaker 1: everything from like Beethoven B sides to Mahavish New Orchestra
Speaker 1: to Spice Girls remixes. It's pretty um eclectic. I gotta
Speaker 1: be honest, I wouldn't expect anything less from Tristan. But
Speaker 1: you know, today's show is more than just setting the
Speaker 1: mood with a soundtrack. We've got Prea Parker, author of
Speaker 1: the new book The Art of Gathering on the show, Now,
Speaker 1: if you've ever wondered what's the right size for a party,
Speaker 1: or how do you gently tell someone they're not invited
Speaker 1: to a gathering? Or something even bigger, like how do
Speaker 1: you bring NFL players and owners together in a way
Speaker 1: that makes them both feel at ease and then has
Speaker 1: them leaving experience feeling bonded. Pria has this amazing amount
Speaker 1: of experience and insight. So Pria Parker, welcome to part
Speaker 1: time Genius. Thank you for having me. Now. We're fascinated
Speaker 1: by your background. You know, from the world you were
Speaker 1: bridging as a child to the events you organize and
Speaker 1: consult on now and I was curious before we get
Speaker 1: into all the conversation around gatherings, I was hoping you
Speaker 1: could just tell us a little bit about your background
Speaker 1: and conflict resolution, and then of course how you grew
Speaker 1: that background into starting Thrive Labs. So I was born
Speaker 1: in Zimbabwe, perhaps uncommonplace to be born, and I come
Speaker 1: from two different world My mother is Indian, grew up
Speaker 1: in um in India, born and raised, and then immigrated
Speaker 1: to the US for graduate school and met my white
Speaker 1: American father in Iowa, where he's from. And for about
Speaker 1: thirteen years they they were married, they traveled the world together.
Speaker 1: My mother is a cultural anthropologist and my father is
Speaker 1: a hydrologist. And so I was born in Zimbabwe. And um,
Speaker 1: fast forward nine years from my birth and they separated.
Speaker 1: UM we were living in Virginia at the time, and
Speaker 1: both within a few years remarried, and I ended up
Speaker 1: I'm an only child. I ended up basically traveling back
Speaker 1: and forth every two weeks between these two radically different households.
Speaker 1: Um My my mother is Indian, remarried an english Man,
Speaker 1: and that household was really a kind of very liberal,
Speaker 1: staunch democrat, vegetarian, kind of Buddhist Hindu athe isst household
Speaker 1: um and kind of all the creatumas new a g
Speaker 1: as my husband likes to say. And my um my
Speaker 1: father remarried, and he remarried a white American Caucasian American
Speaker 1: woman and they are Evangelical Christians. And basically I was
Speaker 1: part of both of these households. And my um you know,
Speaker 1: I think it deeply, deeply informs my work. And I
Speaker 1: basically realized that these two families gather differently. They use
Speaker 1: different you know, code words, they used a different language, um,
Speaker 1: And they have fundamentally radically different views of the world.
Speaker 1: And yet I, as a biracial you know, half Indian,
Speaker 1: half white American UM, young woman, was considered by both
Speaker 1: families to be fully a part of their families. And
Speaker 1: so I, UM, I guess it's no no surprise I
Speaker 1: end up in the field of confic resolution. But I
Speaker 1: that early experience really shaped me to um try to
Speaker 1: kind of be curious about and better understand why and
Speaker 1: how people come together and why and how people come apart.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. I do want to talk about how
Speaker 1: you find common ground in these conflicts and how you
Speaker 1: make gatherings interesting by by having the spice of personalities there.
Speaker 1: But before all that, I just want to talk about
Speaker 1: gatherings and and I know you say it's important to
Speaker 1: know why you're gathering, even when it's something familiar like
Speaker 1: birthday parties or bridle showers, And would you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that? Sure? So, UM, you know, I
Speaker 1: wrote this book The Art of Gathering, How we meet
Speaker 1: and why it matters. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I found over and over again, whether I was doing
Speaker 1: research and interviewing you know Japanese tea ceremony masters or um,
Speaker 1: you know, choreographers of circus is basically anybody who creates
Speaker 1: group experiences for others. Was the ones that kind of
Speaker 1: really took off and are transformative were the ones that
Speaker 1: were very, very very clear on what their purpose was
Speaker 1: and what their purpose was. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've seen, particularly in our kind of more personal
Speaker 1: private lives, is we often confuse categories of gathering for purpose.
Speaker 1: And so what I mean by that is, you know,
Speaker 1: a birthday party, um, is actually not a purpose. I mean,
Speaker 1: we assume a birthday party is to celebrate a birthday,
Speaker 1: but that's what I would call a category. Or a
Speaker 1: wedding is to sort of get married. That's a functional
Speaker 1: category um. And when we assume, you know, two people
Speaker 1: get engaged, they get very excited about having a wedding,
Speaker 1: or at least most people do, or they dread it
Speaker 1: or both. Um. But one of the problems that happens
Speaker 1: in a lot of wedding planning is once you kind
Speaker 1: of start getting into the logistics arguments about size, about style,
Speaker 1: about form um. And often one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: a lot of conflict can happen whether between the couple
Speaker 1: or between the couple, and they're kind of sets of parents.
Speaker 1: UM is because there actually have for ideas of what
Speaker 1: the wedding is for and who the wedding is for,
Speaker 1: and so whenever you're gathering, the first question to ask,
Speaker 1: particularly when you think that the reason is obvious, is
Speaker 1: to say, what is this wedding for? And for some people,
Speaker 1: the wedding is to honor their parents and first and
Speaker 1: foremost and kind of at some level have a almost
Speaker 1: right of passage for the parents to say, Okay, we've
Speaker 1: done our job and our children are out in the
Speaker 1: world and they now are starting their families. And if
Speaker 1: that's the case, then if you are debating who should
Speaker 1: be on the guest list, you may want to choose
Speaker 1: you know, your your mother's colleagues over your long lost
Speaker 1: college buddy. In other cases, the purpose of the wedding
Speaker 1: might be to you know, united tribe from very different
Speaker 1: sides of the world or two very different walks of life,
Speaker 1: and the couple may say, you know what we want
Speaker 1: to have our larger community know each other and UM
Speaker 1: and hold us through this through this you know, marriage, UM,
Speaker 1: and our wedding is an opportunity for all of the
Speaker 1: people who wouldn't normally show up to come together and
Speaker 1: for us to make sure that they really meet and
Speaker 1: have meaningful time together. And then you can talk about
Speaker 1: the guest lists or the food or you know, the
Speaker 1: table setting or even the place, because once you know
Speaker 1: what the purposes, you no longer have all of these
Speaker 1: other proxy wars battling out. Speaking of the invite list,
Speaker 1: one of the things you talk about, or that you say,
Speaker 1: is that when everyone is invited, no one is invited.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm curious, like why is excluding people
Speaker 1: from gatherings so important? And and on that note, if
Speaker 1: you are going to be excluding people, how do you
Speaker 1: manage the feelings of the people that you exclude or
Speaker 1: or the bobs as you call them. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: great question. I mean, I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that paradoxically kind of mess up or at least the
Speaker 1: loot some of our gatherings is this sort of age
Speaker 1: old adage the more the merrier um. And that saying
Speaker 1: comes from a spear of generosity, which I you know,
Speaker 1: strongly recommend to have whenever you bring people together. Um,
Speaker 1: but whenever one of the things that that kind of
Speaker 1: happens in a number of different gatherings. Is that when
Speaker 1: we kind of invite anyone and everyone, it's hard to
Speaker 1: have people connect over something specific. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you're having a birthday party and invite kind of everybody
Speaker 1: you know, or or even as if it's a small
Speaker 1: birthday party, but you invite people from all different parts
Speaker 1: of your life, it may be hard for people to
Speaker 1: kind of connect over you know, they can have to
Speaker 1: figure out how what they want to connect on an
Speaker 1: over Whereas if you get more specific, So for example, okay,
Speaker 1: this year for my birthday, I want to really focus
Speaker 1: on reconnecting with my siblings, or I want to cut
Speaker 1: out the people in my life that are bringing out
Speaker 1: the parts of my life that I don't really want
Speaker 1: to be doing anymore, and I want to really focus
Speaker 1: on the people that are bringing out the best in me.
Speaker 1: Um it gives you a clear sense of who you
Speaker 1: actually want to invite and who who you may not
Speaker 1: want to A friend of mine was recently invited by
Speaker 1: his grandmother to for her birthday. He lives in the US,
Speaker 1: but his grandmother is in Germany. For him and his
Speaker 1: adult siblings to go to their grandmother's birthday, and the
Speaker 1: grandmother specifically said no partners, no children, and this was
Speaker 1: an extremely controversial invitation. And um, the partners felt, you know,
Speaker 1: some partners didn't care, some partners kind of felt badly. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the adult grandchildren thought this was a very
Speaker 1: strange invitation. Others didn't think anything of it. But at
Speaker 1: the end of the day they decided to go. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, his grandma is getting old, she's in her eighties.
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of like a quirky, you know, quirky invitation.
Speaker 1: Let's just go. And I spoke with my friend when
Speaker 1: he came back from this birthday party, which is basically
Speaker 1: time with his adult siblings and cousins, and he said
Speaker 1: it was one of the most beautiful times he'd ever
Speaker 1: spent with his siblings and sense because they met for
Speaker 1: the first time as adults without any of the other
Speaker 1: roles that they play in their life, you know, husband
Speaker 1: or wife, father, and so they were able to connect
Speaker 1: as adults for the first time in the way that
Speaker 1: they hadn't been able to since they were thirteen. And
Speaker 1: this kind of slow, beautiful, open time with their grandmother
Speaker 1: was this like gorgeous meaningful time together that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to have or what at least would
Speaker 1: have been different had they also been tending to their
Speaker 1: spouses needs and their children's needs. And so it wasn't
Speaker 1: that they should do that necessarily every year, but it
Speaker 1: was actually the wisdom of the grandmother in exclusion and
Speaker 1: being willing to take some heat for it that allowed
Speaker 1: for some space for them to come out and kind
Speaker 1: of play as adults. I love that, and I love
Speaker 1: um that phrase used purpose as a bouncer because it
Speaker 1: just feels really liberating, especially for someone like me who
Speaker 1: does them to just wanted to invite everyone and uh
Speaker 1: um and uh allow as many bobs as possible to come.
Speaker 1: But I do have one question about magic numbers, and
Speaker 1: you talk about this a little bit. I'm always someone
Speaker 1: who never knows the right amount of pizza order for things,
Speaker 1: and I like knowing that they're like specific numbers that
Speaker 1: are useful. Can you talk about like the certain types
Speaker 1: of gatherings and how many people you need to make
Speaker 1: those more effective? Yeah? Absolutely. You know, I'm a facilitator
Speaker 1: and I work professionally with groups to um, you know,
Speaker 1: to kind of have great transformative experiences for them. And
Speaker 1: so groups of six tend to be great for great
Speaker 1: conversation um when all six are you know, actively participating,
Speaker 1: so whether it's a dinner or whether it's a support group.
Speaker 1: But the drawbacks of six is that if somebody isn't
Speaker 1: fully engaged, you know, you can't really bear deadweight, um.
Speaker 1: And it's also difficult, if agan, to bring on your
Speaker 1: purpose to have university of viewpoints. Eight to twelve is
Speaker 1: kind of a great number for small group experience where
Speaker 1: it's still lovely and um and if well facilitated, everyone
Speaker 1: can talk. And above that, you know, that's a good
Speaker 1: size for a kind of a buzzy party. People can
Speaker 1: still look around and over a few hours can meet
Speaker 1: you know, everybody in the room or the majority of people.
Speaker 1: But it still feels kind of intimate, not overwhelming, and
Speaker 1: and kind of works as a you know, as an
Speaker 1: energetic gathering. You're probably not all sitting around table, but
Speaker 1: you're milling around. And for weddings, you know, for my
Speaker 1: wedding between a fifty and you still feel like you're
Speaker 1: being held by kind of your community, um, but it's
Speaker 1: not so overwhelming that you have no idea who's there.
Speaker 1: We have lots more questions for Prea, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: and we're talking to author Prea Parker. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: curious when you think about other meetings that maybe you're
Speaker 1: not organizing, guessing it's pretty tough for you not to
Speaker 1: it kind of post mortem those events. You know, you
Speaker 1: think about recent gatherings that we see on TV, whether
Speaker 1: it's the White House correspondence dinner or the way the
Speaker 1: NFL owners got together to talk about, you know, the
Speaker 1: players kneeling. Do you look at events like that and
Speaker 1: think about how they could have been executed more effectively? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And to me that's actually, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is most interesting, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that friends say to me after
Speaker 1: they've read this book is that the Gift and the
Speaker 1: Curses you never look at it gathering the same way. Again,
Speaker 1: to take the two examples you mentioned. With the first
Speaker 1: the NFL meeting, it would actually happened a while ago.
Speaker 1: It was recently leaked to the press, which is why
Speaker 1: some of the news Again, but last October, after Colin
Speaker 1: Kaepernick started this kneeling, you know, these kneeling moments and
Speaker 1: kind of this call to action to other nfls to
Speaker 1: join NFL players, to join NFL owners and a number
Speaker 1: of players to come to their headquarters in New York
Speaker 1: to have a meeting about you know what they called
Speaker 1: the quote kneeling issue and um. The tapes of that
Speaker 1: meeting was recently released. You can listen to how the
Speaker 1: meeting kind of went down. And first of all, it
Speaker 1: was I think awesome that they fought to gather in
Speaker 1: that way. So I would say the first thing is
Speaker 1: that in a moment where there is multiple moments any
Speaker 1: time in a game where uh player can choose to
Speaker 1: kneel um and to activate a symbol that is extremely
Speaker 1: controversial in the public eye and means different things to
Speaker 1: different people, the idea for the owners to bring together
Speaker 1: the players and to actually talk about this is a
Speaker 1: great thing. So the first thing I'd say is, whoever
Speaker 1: thought about doing that, is it was on the right track. Um.
Speaker 1: The second thing is I think once they actually decided
Speaker 1: and I haven't spoken to anyone from there, so this
Speaker 1: is all you know, me speaking about it from far.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing about a gathering is to think
Speaker 1: about how you seek people. Where is the gathering they
Speaker 1: decided to do the NFL headquarters. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of authority there um and gravitas. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it is the at some level of
Speaker 1: the owner's turf. Um. And they sat in a circle
Speaker 1: as far as I understand, with the players and the
Speaker 1: owners sitting in every other chair to kind of show equality,
Speaker 1: which I would say is also good. But when you
Speaker 1: actually listen to the tapes of the conversation, the they're
Speaker 1: broadly talking past each other um, And what I would
Speaker 1: say is you zoom back out over and over again.
Speaker 1: The players keep coming back to the idea that Kaepernick
Speaker 1: is that they believe as being blackballed from the league.
Speaker 1: Kind of their language, not mine. Um. And the owners
Speaker 1: basically are still are trying to focus on damage control,
Speaker 1: and they're worrying that that this sort of as they
Speaker 1: call the kneeling issue is actually literally affecting their bottom
Speaker 1: line and his upsetting fans. And as you listen to
Speaker 1: the conversation, they're basically talking past each other, and one
Speaker 1: of them, what I would say is going, if I
Speaker 1: was working at the organizers of that meeting, be two
Speaker 1: step back ahead of time. And day. What is the
Speaker 1: purpose of this meeting beyond kind of showing us, you know,
Speaker 1: symbolic UM camaraderie. What do you actually want to get
Speaker 1: out of this meeting? Do you want to come to
Speaker 1: an agreement you on both sides to better understand where
Speaker 1: they're coming from. Do you want to focus on kaepernack
Speaker 1: because that might seem it seems like the players can't
Speaker 1: uh get over the idea precondition to actually talking about
Speaker 1: whether or not they're willing to kneel. Do you want
Speaker 1: to have the focus of the agenda be kneeling? And
Speaker 1: so basically, I think one of the problems with that
Speaker 1: meeting was that it wasn't clear what its purpose was,
Speaker 1: and then the structure of how they actually allowed people
Speaker 1: to talk. Basically, that doesn't seem like there was a structure,
Speaker 1: and so it was a bit chaotic and they just
Speaker 1: kept on talking in circles. And so so when I
Speaker 1: look at a public gathering like that UM, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I look at is, how could they
Speaker 1: if they have this incredible moment where they're bringing together
Speaker 1: UM players and owners for probably one of the first
Speaker 1: times in the league's history, how do you actually structure
Speaker 1: the gathering so that it meets its intended purpose and
Speaker 1: what is the purpose were that gathering? You know, the
Speaker 1: place you host a gathering allows for all sorts of
Speaker 1: different options in how you gather. And it's not just logistical.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have a room that if it's
Speaker 1: twenty people, or room and it's people. But basically, any
Speaker 1: time you're thinking about a gathering, you should have the
Speaker 1: place in the space work for what how you want
Speaker 1: people to show up and what you want them to
Speaker 1: be thinking about. So let's just play with this NFL
Speaker 1: meeting for a second. They hosted at the NFL headquarters.
Speaker 1: Imagine had they, as you said, held it in Selma.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they held it in ferguston Um. Imagine if
Speaker 1: they held it in a stadium with fans in the
Speaker 1: seats watching as long as they agreed not to speak,
Speaker 1: and then and they miked up the players and the
Speaker 1: owners and actually had a dialogue about what does this
Speaker 1: kneeling thing mean? And had the audience and NFL fans
Speaker 1: agree to listen but not boo or cheer, you know.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they had it in an owner's home over dinner.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they had it at Colin Kaeperneck's mother's home.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they had it at the Trump Hotel in Washington.
Speaker 1: Each of these choices are should be very intentional choices,
Speaker 1: and by the way, will be interpreted by people in
Speaker 1: all sorts of different ways. I could see fans being
Speaker 1: very angry that a meeting like that would be held
Speaker 1: in um Selma or in Montgomery, or in any places
Speaker 1: that have symbolic you know meaning. But all of that
Speaker 1: to say is the same thing is true for you know,
Speaker 1: a birthday party or a book event or a a
Speaker 1: a sales meeting. And one of the ways to really
Speaker 1: think boldly about the way you gather is to think
Speaker 1: about having your place really work for you. So if
Speaker 1: you are having you know, I know a publisher that
Speaker 1: had a book event in a cemetery, um and already,
Speaker 1: no matter what they do in the cemetery, they've already
Speaker 1: transformed people's relations ship to the book and to the
Speaker 1: author and to how they remember that event. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things to think about is you're gathering
Speaker 1: is where and how and what kind of strange venues
Speaker 1: might you want to gather in? You think about, um,
Speaker 1: what you're saying about the NFL thing like if they
Speaker 1: had picked a venue like Selma, or the owners and
Speaker 1: the players had walked across the bridge together or you
Speaker 1: know that that that you could have really established a
Speaker 1: very different feel for this meeting, and how interesting that
Speaker 1: that could have been. You know, you talk about a
Speaker 1: scene in the book where there are these four important
Speaker 1: leaders that are attending a dinner event uh, the night
Speaker 1: before a meeting, and there's this fifth really important world
Speaker 1: leader who wants to attend it, but doesn't want to
Speaker 1: go to the dinner, just wants to go to the
Speaker 1: meeting the next day. I was curious, like, how do
Speaker 1: you convince self important people, or you know, even people
Speaker 1: who are gathering an event but are shy to fully
Speaker 1: participate and buy into sort of the cadence of the
Speaker 1: meeting and the various events that that are orchestrated or
Speaker 1: plan for a reason. I mean, so it's a great question,
Speaker 1: and what you're kind of talking about at some level
Speaker 1: is the larger question of legitimacy. So in the example
Speaker 1: in the book, we had a meeting on a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: let's say, and um, it was a meeting where it
Speaker 1: was important that the leaders that were coming together basically
Speaker 1: interacted in a way that they wouldn't normally otherwise and
Speaker 1: started to come with the spirit of openness. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that I did with had a
Speaker 1: dinner the night before that was more like a dinner
Speaker 1: party or even like a wedding party than a than
Speaker 1: a kind of a work meeting. You know, there's candles
Speaker 1: and um wine and like stories and structure and um.
Speaker 1: And there was a state leader who couldn't make the
Speaker 1: dinner the night before, or didn't want to or wasn't
Speaker 1: willing to kind of come. And at some level, one
Speaker 1: of the things that you are grappling with when you're
Speaker 1: designing and experience for other people, UM is communicating with them.
Speaker 1: One that is important but to whether or not your
Speaker 1: your event kind of has legitimacy um and and what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is whether or not people are
Speaker 1: buying into your vision of what this is for and
Speaker 1: whether they need to be there or not. At any
Speaker 1: time you know two or more people come together, you know,
Speaker 1: decisions need to be made often over the course of
Speaker 1: any type of gathering, and basically who's in charge and
Speaker 1: who needs you know, if if there's conflicts, how do
Speaker 1: you actually deal with it? And so at some level
Speaker 1: depending on the context. So in an organization, if you're
Speaker 1: doing a gathering and there's a dinner the night before, UM,
Speaker 1: in part because people have signed contracts and the authority
Speaker 1: lies with the UM. You know, with the boss, you
Speaker 1: can actually require people to show up to a dinner.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that shouldn't be used lightly. So
Speaker 1: I often say when I'm working with companies and they
Speaker 1: say we can require people to attend the night before,
Speaker 1: I often say, please, don't require them. I want them
Speaker 1: to come of their own volition, because people behave very
Speaker 1: differently if they're required to be somewhere versus if they
Speaker 1: decide that they want to go. UM. And similarly, you know,
Speaker 1: with a wedding or with with with a kind of
Speaker 1: social gathering. UM. You know, to me, if people aren't
Speaker 1: coming to whatever it is you you planned, I always say, like,
Speaker 1: pick up the phone and call them, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: if this is something that's important to you and explain
Speaker 1: to them you know what it is, and UM on
Speaker 1: why you'd love for them to be there. Texts, you know, email, Instagram,
Speaker 1: everybody's online, but I rarely hear anybody's voice anymore. And
Speaker 1: UM and actually just making a phone call. It goes
Speaker 1: a long way. You know. I was amused by the
Speaker 1: list that you put together of the fifteen ways to
Speaker 1: make conferences suck less. And and because you know, Mango
Speaker 1: and I have been to so many conferences over the years,
Speaker 1: and so many terrible conferences over the years, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't envy those that have to put them together,
Speaker 1: because it does seem like a really difficult thing to
Speaker 1: put together a good conference, and so when you go
Speaker 1: to a great one, it's really that much more impressive.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious if you could share just a few
Speaker 1: of your favorite ideas for how to put together this
Speaker 1: type of active gathering. Mm hmm. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: And you know there are conferences are on the rise,
Speaker 1: and more and more people, um, More and more companies
Speaker 1: are starting to have you know, confidence wings and conference arms.
Speaker 1: Media companies are starting to have live events. So this
Speaker 1: is something that work. I you know, I think we're
Speaker 1: going to see more and more of So it's a
Speaker 1: really important question. I would just say, kind of simply,
Speaker 1: the two principles that I think make conferences fantastic um our,
Speaker 1: intimacy and heat and UM. What I mean by that
Speaker 1: one on the intimacy side. You know, there's all these
Speaker 1: studies that show that, um, that people can connect much
Speaker 1: more when you share your vulnerability and things that you
Speaker 1: aren't working as well. Burnee Brown Um and sociologists like
Speaker 1: her popularized these ideas about intimacy often between two people,
Speaker 1: and I would just take that principle and apply it
Speaker 1: to groups into larger, too larger gatherings. So, UM, when
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of things under intimacy, the
Speaker 1: first is um to have people share in small groups
Speaker 1: or in large things that aren't working rather than things
Speaker 1: that are. So one of the things that I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book is, you know, rather than training
Speaker 1: everybody to kind of give their two minutes stumps speech
Speaker 1: and all of you know, like how great you are,
Speaker 1: what you're doing, how kind of clients that you serving,
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever it is that you're doing your company,
Speaker 1: to flip it around and give a sprout speech which
Speaker 1: basically sharing all of the things in your work that
Speaker 1: you actually are still curious about that you don't know
Speaker 1: the answers to that you're trying to figure out. And
Speaker 1: people are much more interested in kind of wanting to
Speaker 1: know what's not going well and how they may actually help. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the groups that does this well that I've
Speaker 1: come across as the House of Genius, and they have
Speaker 1: read it about in the book UM. They have gatherings
Speaker 1: all over the world where they invite ten or twelve
Speaker 1: people to come together to constitute what they call a
Speaker 1: house UM and UH invite two or three entrepreneurs to
Speaker 1: come in and get forty five minutes each to talk
Speaker 1: about what's not working in their business or what they
Speaker 1: need help with. And then UM those twelve people give
Speaker 1: them all sorts of advice and ideas. It's a very
Speaker 1: structured process, UM, but basically it ends up being, you know,
Speaker 1: a really interesting evening because implicitly you're saying I need help,
Speaker 1: and we tend to want to help each other. The
Speaker 1: second thing is to do dinners where people share stories
Speaker 1: and experiences from their life. UM. That demonstrates some kind
Speaker 1: of struggle or some kind of um, you know, confusion,
Speaker 1: because we at the end of the day want to
Speaker 1: connect with each other in meaningful ways. And so I
Speaker 1: think conferences that allow both space but also structure for
Speaker 1: people to share what's actually going on in their life
Speaker 1: to me are much more interesting. And then the second
Speaker 1: part is heat. And what I mean by that coming
Speaker 1: as a confique resolution facilitator, is anything that kind of
Speaker 1: gets people's temperature, you know, rising in the room. Um.
Speaker 1: It can be things that are controversial but controversial that
Speaker 1: still serve the purpose. So controversial for just kind of
Speaker 1: controversy's sake isn't particularly interesting, um, but controversial when it
Speaker 1: kind of taps the core values of a community can
Speaker 1: be extremely invigorating. We tend to avoid the things that
Speaker 1: we think might you know, rufflesome feathers, and actually from
Speaker 1: a perspective of gathering, those are the ones that actually,
Speaker 1: you know, people want to stay in the room for,
Speaker 1: so if it's a you know, a church gathering. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the people interviewed for the book was a
Speaker 1: secretary of the Society of Friends, basically Quaker communities, and
Speaker 1: she said some of the best meetings that they had
Speaker 1: had m this is the Philadelphia community Circle of Friends.
Speaker 1: Society Friends was when they began to consciously have meetings
Speaker 1: around whether or not to allow gay marriage in there
Speaker 1: to acknowledge gay marriage in their communities, and um, rather
Speaker 1: than avoiding it, they actually structured meetings around it. And
Speaker 1: debates um in the Quaker format, which is if you're
Speaker 1: moved to speak, speak and that you know, people come
Speaker 1: alive when they're talking about and struggling with and listening
Speaker 1: to one another about the things that most um define
Speaker 1: them as a community. And I'm curious too about the
Speaker 1: openings of conferences. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think openings are extraordinarily important. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that conferences can do is in the
Speaker 1: first few moments any in any type of gathering, people
Speaker 1: are walking in and wondering, you know, what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Do I want to be here? What part of myself
Speaker 1: do I show? Can I be jokey or should I
Speaker 1: be more formal? And um? We as organizers often vastly
Speaker 1: underestimate the importance of kind of setting the tone and
Speaker 1: um and creating a environment where people have permission to
Speaker 1: go up to each other and and find ways to
Speaker 1: kind of go in and so UM. One of the
Speaker 1: ways of a inference that I UM that I love
Speaker 1: that I spoke to for this book is it's called
Speaker 1: Spark Camp and it was started by five friends in
Speaker 1: the media industry, and one of the things they do
Speaker 1: early on their weekend gatherings. There there's their captive seventy people,
Speaker 1: so that maintains an intimacy but still a buzz the
Speaker 1: first night of the gathering, so I guess Friday night
Speaker 1: they do introductions, you know, as many conferences do the
Speaker 1: less than you would think. But the way they do
Speaker 1: introductions is they take the weight off the guests for
Speaker 1: having to introduce themselves and either be you know, stuck
Speaker 1: in their humble brags or you know, all of the
Speaker 1: awkward ways one wants to introduce oneself. And the conference
Speaker 1: organizers give the conference what I think is such a gift,
Speaker 1: which is they spend time ahead of time researching every
Speaker 1: single one of their seventy guests, who often they don't
Speaker 1: know themselves, and come up with these short, whimsical introductions.
Speaker 1: And they gathered together in a room and they actually
Speaker 1: read aloud each person's introduction without naming them. Um, and
Speaker 1: they say, when you hear your helf stand and so
Speaker 1: they may say, you know, this person met their husband
Speaker 1: at a beekeeping convention and um. They are also one
Speaker 1: of the foremost minds on artificial intelligence. They grew up
Speaker 1: in Alaska, but actually because their parents were part of
Speaker 1: the Air Force. They lived in twelve states before the
Speaker 1: age of sixteen. And what happens is, you know, our
Speaker 1: eyes are kind of darting around trying to figure out
Speaker 1: who it is, but also you're not sure if there's
Speaker 1: somebody else in the group that met their husband at
Speaker 1: a beekeep being gone, you know, so sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: two or three people stand up and then everyone laughs
Speaker 1: and they have to kind of keep listening. And this
Speaker 1: is brilliant exercise where it's interesting. Everybody is engaged because
Speaker 1: you don't want to miss your own introduction, but everybody's
Speaker 1: also engaged because there they're You're they're giving you seeds
Speaker 1: of information that you can then go up to each
Speaker 1: of the other sixty nine people in the room over
Speaker 1: the course of the weekend and have three or four
Speaker 1: different ways into conversation with them. And so they think
Speaker 1: very beautifully about how do you early on give non
Speaker 1: awkward or at least less awkward ways for people to
Speaker 1: approach one another in meaningful ways about their work and
Speaker 1: also about things that have nothing to do with their work.
Speaker 1: More questions for PRIA after a quick break. I love
Speaker 1: the idea too of you um sitting out and charting
Speaker 1: out heat maps would you talk about in the book
Speaker 1: and to orchestrate some of the heat But I'm also
Speaker 1: curious about these two interesting events that you've pulled together.
Speaker 1: One is fifteen Toasts and then these I'm here days,
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if you could just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about that. Sure, So fifteen Toasts came from
Speaker 1: this experience of going to events and having kind of
Speaker 1: amazing people in the room, but feeling um that the
Speaker 1: kind of modus operandi was showing off or or talking
Speaker 1: about how great everything was. And specifically I was at
Speaker 1: the World Economic Forum one of their annual meetings in
Speaker 1: Abu Dhabi, and a colleague and I Tim Labret, who
Speaker 1: were serving on the same council, realized that in all
Speaker 1: of these meetings, even though we're supposed to be talking
Speaker 1: about new models of leadership or values based leadership, it
Speaker 1: tends to remain very heavy UM. And you know, or
Speaker 1: is an opportunity for people to kind of promote their
Speaker 1: company's latest initiative UM. And so we we we decided
Speaker 1: to run an experiment where the night before we gathered
Speaker 1: fifteen people from a number of the different councils and
Speaker 1: invited them to come together over dinner off the record,
Speaker 1: though UM we all agreed we could share what happened
Speaker 1: at the dinner but not attributed to specific person. So
Speaker 1: Chatham House Rules and fifteen Toasts basically was this um
Speaker 1: experiment that we kind of made up along with my husband,
Speaker 1: where everybody is asked to give a toast at some
Speaker 1: point in the evening to a theme and you choose
Speaker 1: the theme. The first one we ever did was what
Speaker 1: is a good life? Not is what is the good life?
Speaker 1: But what what makes for a good life? But you
Speaker 1: can choose a theme that the group would be interested in.
Speaker 1: It could be rebellion, it could be um borders, it
Speaker 1: could be what does it mean to be American? It
Speaker 1: could be anything. And over the course of the night,
Speaker 1: people you know, clink their glass old school style, stand
Speaker 1: up and share a story and experience from their life
Speaker 1: UM that relates to the theme. And the only other
Speaker 1: rule is that the last person has to sing their toast.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it kind of speeds along
Speaker 1: the toasts because basically most people used in the U
Speaker 1: S context don't want to sing um, and so it's
Speaker 1: this kind of playful way to get people to UM
Speaker 1: do take a smaller risk, which is which is giving
Speaker 1: their toasts. Um. And what happens over the course of
Speaker 1: the night is you hear stories that are still along
Speaker 1: a kind of organizing principle that people would never kind
Speaker 1: of share in you know, in the in the context
Speaker 1: like that, but when you hear about somebody you know,
Speaker 1: falling in love for the first time or experiencing heartbreak. Um.
Speaker 1: Or I remember one story that was shared in a
Speaker 1: dinner that where the thing was strangers. Somebody shared that
Speaker 1: their mother's life was saved because a stranger happened to
Speaker 1: be walking past her. Their mother fainted, hit their head
Speaker 1: on the ground, started bleeding. A stranger happened to walk
Speaker 1: past them in the same moment called the police and
Speaker 1: save their life. And because of that, the person sitting
Speaker 1: at the table like existed, it was born. Um. There's
Speaker 1: so much more after this dinner that you could go
Speaker 1: and talk to, you know, talk to this person about
Speaker 1: then if she simply told you that she was the
Speaker 1: VP of sales that you know, such as such company. UM.
Speaker 1: And so what fifteen toasts does and you could use
Speaker 1: any format, but it allows people to share stories and
Speaker 1: experiences um that are kind of you know off the
Speaker 1: perhaps theme of the conference or kind of selling something
Speaker 1: um but basically makes them complicated and human, and most
Speaker 1: people want to talk to other people who are complicated
Speaker 1: in human, because that's what each of us are. The
Speaker 1: book is called The Art of Gathering, How We Meet
Speaker 1: and Why It Matters, and it's available this week. But Priya,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
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Speaker 1: Thanks for the points Jason him