Speaker 1: Pushkin. Our gathering shape, the way we live, our gathering shape,
Speaker 1: the way we assume what is normal, like what it
Speaker 1: is we mark what is worth talking about, how we
Speaker 1: actually begin to think about how we spend our collective
Speaker 1: time together. That's Priya Parker. She's an expert in group
Speaker 1: dialogue and conflict resolution. Interestingly, Priya has taken her expertise
Speaker 1: in these fields and applied it to the way we
Speaker 1: think about coming together with others, or she likes to say,
Speaker 1: how we gather. In her book The Art of Gathering,
Speaker 1: Priya encourages us to focus on what actually matters when
Speaker 1: we get together. What I wanted to do is detail
Speaker 1: hangele gathering from the stuff of gathering, from food, from hosting.
Speaker 1: Even this Martha Stewart archetype that like, the way to
Speaker 1: host well is to prepare a crudities three days in advance,
Speaker 1: to be an expert in food, to be an expert
Speaker 1: in floral, to be an expert in aesthetics, and all
Speaker 1: of those things create beauty and meaning. But they're the hygiene, right,
Speaker 1: it's not actually what do you do with these people
Speaker 1: on today's show? How we can stop obsessing about the
Speaker 1: stuff of weddings, dinner, parties, and celebrations, and instead remember
Speaker 1: why we're coming together in the first place. I'm Maya
Speaker 1: Shunker and this is a slight change of plants, a
Speaker 1: show about who we are and who we become in
Speaker 1: the face of a big change. If you're anything like me,
Speaker 1: when you first think of a gathering, logistics are top
Speaker 1: of mind, details like location or what should beyond the menu.
Speaker 1: But since I'm not a detail oriented person and I'm
Speaker 1: terrible at logistics, organizing gatherings stresses me out. And this
Speaker 1: is pretty unfortunate because those of you who listen to
Speaker 1: the show know how much I love connecting with people.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing to do. Prea's work has changed
Speaker 1: the game for me. She's helped me rethink why and
Speaker 1: how we should get together. I think one thing that
Speaker 1: really drew me to your story, Prea, and to your
Speaker 1: work is that you approach the art of gathering from
Speaker 1: such a fresh perspective. Right It's not from the vantage
Speaker 1: point of an event planner or an organizer, but instead
Speaker 1: as an expert in group dialogue and conflict resolution. And
Speaker 1: so I'm wondering what inspired you to work in this
Speaker 1: area in the first place. I think, perhaps like most
Speaker 1: of us, so much of my work very much stem
Speaker 1: from how I was raised and what I bumped into
Speaker 1: as a child, then as a young person. I'm by racial.
Speaker 1: My mother is Indian, an Indian immigrant, and my father
Speaker 1: is white American, And for the first ten years of
Speaker 1: their life and their marriage together, we lived in a
Speaker 1: number of different countries. I was born in Zimbabwe, and
Speaker 1: we moved to the Maldives and to Indonesia, and eventually
Speaker 1: moved back to the States. And within a year of
Speaker 1: moving to Virginia, they separated. And when they did, everyone
Speaker 1: myself included, was shocked because they never fought. And so
Speaker 1: that was the first signal to me, like, oh, all
Speaker 1: is not what it might appear to be. All is
Speaker 1: not necessarily always well, and that conflict isn't always observable,
Speaker 1: that there's many codes that are happening within a relationship.
Speaker 1: But then within two years they remarried other people, and
Speaker 1: I would leave my mother and stepfather's house and it
Speaker 1: was and still is an in British kind of globally
Speaker 1: minded New age, meditating progressive household, and I would, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would come downstairs in that home, and the first
Speaker 1: question that I would be asked in the morning, is like,
Speaker 1: tell us about your dream, like, tell us about your
Speaker 1: dream last night, like literally like, and our conversations would
Speaker 1: be about dream interpretation. And then I would travel to
Speaker 1: my father and stepmother's house. And it was and still
Speaker 1: is a white American Evangelical Christian conservative Republican church, going
Speaker 1: often twice a week, dogs in the house, meat eating,
Speaker 1: kind of like all Americana. And I became a contact
Speaker 1: resolution facilitator in college in part, I think because I
Speaker 1: lived in these two households in which how they began
Speaker 1: their meals was completely different, how they celebrated or marked
Speaker 1: indication was completely different. What they considered obvious was completely different.
Speaker 1: You know, you had had extensive experience in the conflict
Speaker 1: negotiation space in facilitating group dialogue. Was there a defining
Speaker 1: moment when you realized this work really meaningfully intersects with
Speaker 1: the way that we think about gatherings, because I don't
Speaker 1: think everyone would have connected those dots. Such a good question.
Speaker 1: You're incredibly insightful, and I actually don't think i've shared
Speaker 1: this before. I knew that what I was trained to
Speaker 1: do as a group facilitator, how to connect people quickly.
Speaker 1: How to get people off their scripts? Right, if you're
Speaker 1: coming together, how do you prime these people? And how
Speaker 1: what do you do in a room to get them
Speaker 1: to not say what their pre prepared stump speech was,
Speaker 1: but kind of shift them into a lane of conversation
Speaker 1: where they're surprised themselves by what they're sharing or revealing.
Speaker 1: How do you create the conditions where people are open
Speaker 1: to one of my teachers, Keith Johnstone, calls being altered
Speaker 1: by each other? And I knew that so much of
Speaker 1: what kind of outside of this field of facilitation were
Speaker 1: taught around groups and gathering tends to be about stuff, right.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the proxy in the bookstore or the
Speaker 1: library is cookbooks. Right, if you want to if you're
Speaker 1: going to gather, here's a cookbook. And I what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do is detangle gathering from the stuff of gathering,
Speaker 1: from food from hosting the Martha Stewart archetype that like,
Speaker 1: the way to host well is to put crewetaise, you know,
Speaker 1: prepare your crew totaise three days in advance. And this
Speaker 1: is there's nothing wrong with that, but it becomes so
Speaker 1: gelled into this is the only form of gathering and
Speaker 1: to be an expert in food, to be an expert
Speaker 1: in floral, to be an expert in aesthetics, and all
Speaker 1: of those things create beauty and meaning. But they're the hygiene, right,
Speaker 1: it's not actually what do you do with these people?
Speaker 1: And what I wanted to do is kind of write
Speaker 1: a book for the rest of us. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a good cook. I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have a fancy house. I you know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: demystify and kind of bring what facilitators are taught to
Speaker 1: do into every day democratic, normal gathering spaces, whatever normal
Speaker 1: means to you in your context or community. And basically
Speaker 1: it's like that ratatui. Like anyone can cook, anyone can gather,
Speaker 1: And I wanted to demystify how anybody can create a
Speaker 1: meaningful gathering for their people in a way that is transformative,
Speaker 1: memorable and isn't a waste of time. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: you approach it with a human first perspective, it really
Speaker 1: does feel accessible for so many of us. I mean,
Speaker 1: I am the worst at logistics and planning. I am
Speaker 1: not a detail oriented person. Organizing things is like my
Speaker 1: worst nightmare. I've yet to enter that phase of adulting,
Speaker 1: and so it felt like you were just speaking my language,
Speaker 1: because I felt like you were making gathering something that
Speaker 1: felt so inaccessible to me as defined by society at large,
Speaker 1: because I am so bad at that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: something that maybe I could thrive and excel at. That
Speaker 1: makes me so happy. So let's dig into this very
Speaker 1: valuable wisdom that you have, which is we focus so
Speaker 1: much on the logistics of gatherings rather than the human component. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just forgetting. We're losing touch with the primary goal
Speaker 1: of gathering. And so you say that one of the
Speaker 1: first things we should do is ask ourselves a very
Speaker 1: foundational question, which is the why question. Why are we
Speaker 1: really gathering? Do you mind saying more about that? The
Speaker 1: biggest mistake we make when we gather is we assume
Speaker 1: that the purpose is obvious and shared. Oh I know
Speaker 1: what a wedding is, and so does everyone else. Oh
Speaker 1: I know what a board meeting is. Oh I know
Speaker 1: what a dinner party is. And then because we assume
Speaker 1: we know what it's for, we skip too quickly to
Speaker 1: form right long eye, white dress or red dress, going
Speaker 1: in a circle seven times round a fire or board meeting.
Speaker 1: You know, one long brown table, twelve white men, and
Speaker 1: instead when we pause and actually ask, Okay, why are
Speaker 1: we doing this? What is the purpose? What is the
Speaker 1: purpose of this of my birthday party or my birthday
Speaker 1: not even birthday party? What is the purpose of my
Speaker 1: birthday this year? What do I most want to mark?
Speaker 1: What do I most need in my life? Do I
Speaker 1: want to reconnect with a friends who've actually lost touch
Speaker 1: with and as I feel like I'm kind of starting
Speaker 1: to lose my way, I actually want to double down?
Speaker 1: And what would it look like if I actually hosted
Speaker 1: a party for just the friends who I knew before
Speaker 1: I was twenty and we all share or talk about
Speaker 1: or do something we used to do together and then
Speaker 1: reflect on who we've become and what our regrets are
Speaker 1: and how do I find my way again? Or is
Speaker 1: like the deepest need of my life in this moment
Speaker 1: to reconnect with a sense of adventure? And actually, what
Speaker 1: I want to do for my birthday this year is
Speaker 1: like go to the fishing docks and watch the fisher
Speaker 1: people pull in their fish at five am and invite
Speaker 1: my friends who would only say yes to that crazy
Speaker 1: invitation to come with me. And so often because we
Speaker 1: don't pause to actually ask why our imagination gets incredibly
Speaker 1: stuck and we focus on perfecting the forms that we
Speaker 1: already know. And so when you pause and actually ask
Speaker 1: why am I doing this? What is the need? It
Speaker 1: actually opens up an entire world of how we could
Speaker 1: actually spend our time together. But it's also incredibly relevant
Speaker 1: and moving because you're then inviting specific people that makes
Speaker 1: sense for that need, that feel like they're of use
Speaker 1: rather than being used. Right, It's not like how many
Speaker 1: people can I get at this party? Oh gosh, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: who are the people in my life who give me courage?
Speaker 1: What if this year I only invited them to come
Speaker 1: together and bring me like poems or objects that give
Speaker 1: them courage because I just need a little bit of
Speaker 1: courage blown my way this year. Yeah. But because we're
Speaker 1: like okay, candles and pointy hats, we're actually going on
Speaker 1: autopilot and perpetuating forms that no longer necessarily make any sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You say that a common mistake is to confuse having
Speaker 1: a category with having a purpose, right, Yes, that if
Speaker 1: you identify the category, Oh it's a birthday party, it's
Speaker 1: a funeral, it's a baby shower, that naturally lends itself
Speaker 1: to a purpose, but it's actually a very distinct process
Speaker 1: to define the purpose of the gathering. And there was
Speaker 1: one anecdote that really stuck out to me, and it
Speaker 1: was around a woman's baby shower. And the whole time
Speaker 1: I'm reading this passage, I'm like, you go, girl, like
Speaker 1: she was so awesome in the way that she was
Speaker 1: thinking about the true goals she had for this baby shower.
Speaker 1: Do you mind sharing that story? Sure? I mean, I
Speaker 1: love the example of a baby shower in part because
Speaker 1: people have such strong feelings about them either way. So
Speaker 1: I've talked about them a lot because we feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's only one way to do a shower. I don't
Speaker 1: want to have a pin a diaper on a baby thing,
Speaker 1: like why am I doing this? It's often because we're
Speaker 1: so stuck to form. It's either like I don't want
Speaker 1: a baby shower or like I'm going to go through
Speaker 1: this thing and it's kind of I find it kind
Speaker 1: of silly. But my community wants to bless me, and
Speaker 1: this is the form that we do in our community
Speaker 1: instead to pause and actually ask what does my actual
Speaker 1: need right now? I'll give a couple of examples, so
Speaker 1: one is I was advising as coaching a woman on
Speaker 1: her baby shower. She had two different parts of her
Speaker 1: of this kind of baby shower. One is, she was
Speaker 1: terrified of labor. And she invited six of her friends
Speaker 1: and each of them brought a bead of a different
Speaker 1: color to put together into a necklace, and each bead
Speaker 1: basically representative value that she already has. They know her
Speaker 1: to have, right, your sense of bravery, your sense of awe,
Speaker 1: your sense of humor, your sense of wonder. And as
Speaker 1: her friends, as her mentors, they've seen this quality that
Speaker 1: is already within her, and they were inviting her to
Speaker 1: tap into something that was already within her to know
Speaker 1: that she could do this. And then they put that
Speaker 1: into a necklace for her to wear or at least
Speaker 1: take with her to the hospital. And then there's a
Speaker 1: second part of the ritual in which in the evening
Speaker 1: she and her husband invited friends, men and women to
Speaker 1: come have dinner together and to share stories of different
Speaker 1: elements of the things that they loved about how they
Speaker 1: were raised. And part of the act of that that
Speaker 1: was so radical, I mean, it's so simple, was that
Speaker 1: it was inviting both men and women, people who have
Speaker 1: complex relationships with their parents, like all of us, right
Speaker 1: to share, to come into conversation and to reflect together.
Speaker 1: They're shifting the culture. Who should be part of the
Speaker 1: conversations around parenting just the mothers? No, not if you
Speaker 1: want to coequal parenting, right, who should be invited early on,
Speaker 1: well before you give birth to think about, well, how
Speaker 1: are we going to structure these rules? And so that
Speaker 1: dinner not just was helpful to them, but it began
Speaker 1: to shift the assumption of all of their roles around
Speaker 1: how they want to begin to raise their children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love this story for many reasons. I think
Speaker 1: one of them is, you know, this family together is
Speaker 1: figuring out why it is that they want or need
Speaker 1: to have a baby shower and in the mother articulating
Speaker 1: I'm terrified of labor. It helps reduce stigma around the
Speaker 1: pregnancy experience absolutely where you know, women are told in society, oh,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be this magical time where you're glowing
Speaker 1: and you can't wait to birth new life, and that
Speaker 1: does not reflect the reality of so many women's experience
Speaker 1: going through pregnancy and giving birth and the kind of
Speaker 1: anxiety and alienation that can accompany every part of that process,
Speaker 1: and so I love that in defining the purpose and
Speaker 1: meaning of her gathering fully, it had a broader societal
Speaker 1: purpose to it as well. Absolutely, So to summarize, we
Speaker 1: want to ask ourselves that why question, why are we
Speaker 1: really gathering? And we want to commit to this bold,
Speaker 1: sharp purpose? And I want to know what are just
Speaker 1: a couple of examples of purpose statements that you think
Speaker 1: are really good, just to give our listeners a sense
Speaker 1: of the kind of specificity that you have in mind
Speaker 1: when you're talking about purpose. That's such a great question,
Speaker 1: you know. Taking a simple example of a pool party, okay, right,
Speaker 1: neighbors is like, let's let's have a pool party. So
Speaker 1: an unhelpful purpose is let's have our neighbors swim. Right,
Speaker 1: let's get in the pool, right, that's an activity. A
Speaker 1: good purpose is let's toast a pool party in order
Speaker 1: to remind and help shape our children so that they
Speaker 1: know that neighbors aren't scary. A helpful purpose helps you
Speaker 1: make decisions at the deepest essence, What is it that
Speaker 1: you actually need in this moment? Well, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since we've actually brought people together. And I
Speaker 1: grew up in a neighborhood in which children ran between households,
Speaker 1: and I want to see if we could create that
Speaker 1: for our children. And I really deeply want them to
Speaker 1: know their neighbors and feel like this is a place
Speaker 1: where everybody's looking out for each other. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have your marching orders. Okay, so we're going to
Speaker 1: invite our neighbors, not our friends. We're going to invite
Speaker 1: the people within three walking blocks, or we're going to
Speaker 1: invite people within our apartment building, or it gives you
Speaker 1: an orientation, It helps you understand why are we doing this,
Speaker 1: and how do we begin to think about who to invite? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this speaks to something you've already mentioned, which is
Speaker 1: the next step is to figure out who. And what
Speaker 1: I found so interesting that you share in your work
Speaker 1: is that a guest list is as much about who
Speaker 1: you don't invite as it is about who you do invite.
Speaker 1: That was so interesting and it really flipped it around
Speaker 1: for me. And the reason you say this is that
Speaker 1: we can tend towards over inclusion, right to avoid hurt feelings,
Speaker 1: to pay people back for times they've invited us to something.
Speaker 1: But you caution caution against this because you say that
Speaker 1: way of thinking can really jeopardize the quality of the gathering.
Speaker 1: You know, you may have been raised the way I
Speaker 1: heard this quite often, like the more the merrier, that's
Speaker 1: always one more seat at our table. And there's there's
Speaker 1: a spirit of generosity in that, and I and I
Speaker 1: think gathering is an act of generosity. But in part
Speaker 1: because we don't ask what the need is first, We
Speaker 1: actually don't know how to exclude people or why to
Speaker 1: exclude people. We have no rationale for excluding people, right,
Speaker 1: we back into it in our work context. You show
Speaker 1: up to a meeting, maybe it's a TBD hold on
Speaker 1: your calendar. You show up and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a product design meeting, and you enter the zoom room
Speaker 1: or you enter into the conference room and you know,
Speaker 1: you look around, it's like, why is legal here? It
Speaker 1: changes the whole tenor of the meeting. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: But we're always doing this, we're kind of backing into it.
Speaker 1: You almost like what is this thing for? Based on
Speaker 1: who's in the room. And when we don't first ask
Speaker 1: what is the need? Why are we actually here? We
Speaker 1: over include and it's not rocket science. Like often if
Speaker 1: it's four people or six people, eight people. All of
Speaker 1: us are like this. We calculate what we share based
Speaker 1: on the person who we least know in the room,
Speaker 1: not with the person with whom we have the best
Speaker 1: relationship with. It's a different party based on who's there.
Speaker 1: It's a different meaning, it's a different wedding, and so
Speaker 1: who you invite actually shifts the conversation. Speaking of weddings,
Speaker 1: when we're back from the break, Priya and I take
Speaker 1: the time machine back to my wedding day. Because weddings
Speaker 1: can be especially thorny. They have a lot to teach
Speaker 1: us about the art and science of gathering. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment with a slight change of plan.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, I'm thinking back to my wedding
Speaker 1: planning process and I'm just remembering that Jimmy and I
Speaker 1: and I don't think we're alone in this. Part of
Speaker 1: the guest planning process was literally trying to take account
Speaker 1: of all the people who had invited us to their weddings. Right,
Speaker 1: you really, you really don't want to hurt people's feelings.
Speaker 1: You want to create a sense that there's reciprocity. By
Speaker 1: the way, if you're listening to this and we're at
Speaker 1: my wedding. You were on the top list. You're not
Speaker 1: on this, You're not on this back, You're you're all in. Okay,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, No, But more seriously, I think
Speaker 1: you talk in the book about how Obama's aunt told
Speaker 1: him if everyone's family, no one is family, and you've
Speaker 1: kind of extended that to this domain as well, which is,
Speaker 1: if everyone is invited, no one's invited. You capture the sentiment. Well,
Speaker 1: you have a phrase called the kindness of exclusion, and
Speaker 1: and I like, help me out here, prey, because I
Speaker 1: do feel like if I were to planet wedding today,
Speaker 1: i'd probably go through the same process because I don't
Speaker 1: want to upset anybody. And so I want you to
Speaker 1: help me build courage in this moment to think differently
Speaker 1: about who is on that guest list and who's not
Speaker 1: on the guest list. Gathering is an act of line drawing,
Speaker 1: and we don't like to think of it that way,
Speaker 1: but it is. It's an act of persuasion. I have
Speaker 1: a vision for a specific time, in a specific place,
Speaker 1: to move your body in your mind into that space
Speaker 1: right with these other people, like won't you come on in?
Speaker 1: And by definition like sometimes the constraint is the living
Speaker 1: room or the porch, right, But every gathering is an
Speaker 1: act of line drawing what is the need and given that,
Speaker 1: who is in and who is out for that temporary
Speaker 1: moment in time, And there's certain gatherings where who is
Speaker 1: in and who is out becomes incredibly symbolic. Right. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the gatherings were talking about weddings, baby showers,
Speaker 1: those end up becoming also kind of like litmus tests, right,
Speaker 1: a friendship, and so it's just starting to deeply become
Speaker 1: intentional about why are you actually doing this? So, so
Speaker 1: part of what's complex about modern life is most of
Speaker 1: us are negotiating multiple value systems at the same time. Yes,
Speaker 1: well said, and so in a wedding there are multiple
Speaker 1: obligations that actually come from different value systems. So one
Speaker 1: value system is the collective value system of reciprocity, and
Speaker 1: some of that is a collective reciprocity. You and I
Speaker 1: both have Indian backgrounds, like many Indian weddings, and my
Speaker 1: cousins eies are like literally seven hundred eight hundred people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my parents wedding head over a thousand people, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And we look at that from the West, at least
Speaker 1: from the US. Often it's like, how do you even
Speaker 1: know all those people? But that's actually a very specific
Speaker 1: individualistic value system in which the assumption is you or
Speaker 1: your parents have an individual link and maybe even a
Speaker 1: meaningful relationship to everyone there. That is just not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a value system in which it's actually multiple generations
Speaker 1: of reciprocity and who gave who and loan and who
Speaker 1: gave who When one person's cousin was sick and they
Speaker 1: slept on their living room floor thirty five years ago,
Speaker 1: then they right. It's a different cultural system. And so
Speaker 1: in a wedding, the planning process becomes this incredibly powerful
Speaker 1: set of negotiations and conversations between the couple and often
Speaker 1: between the couple and the parents. And so one of
Speaker 1: the reasons weddings are so chaotic or feel, you know,
Speaker 1: emotionally incredibly difficult, is because it's a lot of cutting,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of line drawing, and often we're
Speaker 1: sorting ourselves out. Do I fundamentally want to invite everybody
Speaker 1: else who invited me to their weddings? And we find
Speaker 1: we'll just make it twenty more people. It'll be a
Speaker 1: larger wedding than we thought. But I want to be
Speaker 1: part of communities of reciprocity, and that's what we've landed on.
Speaker 1: And that's okay, that's a legitim at purpose. The core
Speaker 1: purpose of your wedding might actually be to honor the
Speaker 1: generation behind you. That's okay, right, I'm not like that's
Speaker 1: why this is actually a freeing construct is because you
Speaker 1: decide what the need is. The problem is going in
Speaker 1: blindly and kind of backing into stuff and basically not
Speaker 1: choosing your life. Yeah, and I think it's freeing. And
Speaker 1: it's also not a one time decision either when it
Speaker 1: comes to planning a wedding in terms of negotiating those values.
Speaker 1: Different values can express themselves over the course of an event. Right.
Speaker 1: So when it came to my wedding, you know, my
Speaker 1: husband comes from a Chinese tradition, my parents come from
Speaker 1: Indian tradition, and so on. The guest list were absolutely
Speaker 1: people that we may have never met before, but we're
Speaker 1: very important to both of our parents. That was just
Speaker 1: it almost felt like a non negotiable that written into
Speaker 1: the purpose of our wedding statement was making our parents happy,
Speaker 1: making our families happy. On the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: Jimmy and I poured a ton of time into thinking
Speaker 1: thoughtful about how to create this Chindian ceremony where there
Speaker 1: was the blending of two cultures. We spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time writing vows and yeah, we felt that was
Speaker 1: the most sacred aspect of the whole ceremony. And so
Speaker 1: that was one moment where we had to part from
Speaker 1: cultural expectations around inclusion. And I still remember to this day,
Speaker 1: was so uncomfortable writing to a few people saying Hey,
Speaker 1: we're actually going to do a kid's free ceremony was
Speaker 1: so painful, I think, I mean, my mom was probably
Speaker 1: just like, what is going on in this Western world
Speaker 1: that we live in. It's ridiculous. Yes, of course it
Speaker 1: was so antithetical to the inclusive vibes of an Indian wedding.
Speaker 1: But that was a moment in the process where Jimmy
Speaker 1: and I were able to draw a line for ourselves
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, look, kids can come to the celebration
Speaker 1: part the reception, but we just need the ceremony to
Speaker 1: really be an adult gathering because of the way that
Speaker 1: we're approaching it. And so I like the complexity there,
Speaker 1: which is like you don't have to give everything, but
Speaker 1: you also don't have to take everything. It's an gootiable
Speaker 1: process throughout, and you're making distinctions. So part of what
Speaker 1: you're doing is even within a contract of a wedding.
Speaker 1: And again this is true for conferences, this is true
Speaker 1: for retreats. Is there are multiple gatherings within the gathering,
Speaker 1: and so you're actually having some sophistication to say, at
Speaker 1: this place, this is the need, and therefore this is
Speaker 1: going to be the circle. At this place, this is
Speaker 1: the need, and therefore this is going to be the circle.
Speaker 1: You know. And so you and you're then fiance having
Speaker 1: these conversations with each other, having these conversations with your parents.
Speaker 1: You know, I heard you say earlier our part of
Speaker 1: our purpose, or written to our wedding statement, was to
Speaker 1: make our parents happy. You know. That is like there,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were certain things you would not do
Speaker 1: that would make them happy. I might slightly shift it
Speaker 1: to say what I hear part of that statement is
Speaker 1: is to in certain important ways to honor the traditions
Speaker 1: and desires of our parents. That's right, and in other
Speaker 1: ways to break from that, to carve out new ways.
Speaker 1: Exactly to know what to break and what to keep.
Speaker 1: To summarize for our listeners, we've talked about the why
Speaker 1: question why we gather. We've also talked about the who right,
Speaker 1: who should be on the guest list, who should not
Speaker 1: be on the guest list? How should we think about
Speaker 1: where we gather? Rooms come with scripts, right, So, like
Speaker 1: how you behave in a nightclub is different than how
Speaker 1: one behaves the same person right behaves when they walk
Speaker 1: into a conference room. And there's going to be a
Speaker 1: common theme here. You're who should stem from what the
Speaker 1: need is, what the purposes of the gathering. You're aware
Speaker 1: should also serve the purpose and also timing of day
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm a contact resolution facilitator and in
Speaker 1: the context that I often work with. Some of that
Speaker 1: is also power power related, right if you're bringing together
Speaker 1: a team or are a family where a lot of
Speaker 1: the rupture is actually about some people having too much
Speaker 1: power and other people not having enough, you don't host
Speaker 1: the gathering at the site of power, right like so,
Speaker 1: so some of that is like literally, who's turf is
Speaker 1: this on and where? And do you have it in
Speaker 1: a neutral place or do you have in your home
Speaker 1: or do you have it whatever it is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: because we are trained to act in certain ways in
Speaker 1: certain environments and bring expectations to certain environments. I think
Speaker 1: the biggest lesson from you is rewrite the order of operations.
Speaker 1: Do not book the venue first, which I think is
Speaker 1: all of our instincts. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna book
Speaker 1: a venue and then let that dictate everything else. It's
Speaker 1: going to dictate how many people I can invite, it's
Speaker 1: going to dictate the kinds of events and in activities
Speaker 1: we can engage in. We're like cooking our lasso to
Speaker 1: the wrong star exactly, you got it. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean just some kind of the math. So density creates
Speaker 1: different kind of behavior, meaning how many actually bodies are
Speaker 1: within a square footage borders kind of matter. So an
Speaker 1: example at a restaurant, this is one of my favorite tips.
Speaker 1: My friends often like they're like, don't want to be
Speaker 1: seen with me because I will go and insist on
Speaker 1: ordering the chairs in a restaurant. If you have six
Speaker 1: people going together to a table, instead of having three
Speaker 1: people on one side and three people on the other
Speaker 1: side of the table, put one person on each basically
Speaker 1: the head. Otherwise you're like leaking energy. You want to
Speaker 1: close the circle because that actually shifts the conversation. It
Speaker 1: actually gives a border in a way that turns two
Speaker 1: lines into a group, and the conversation changes. The way
Speaker 1: people feel safe or not changes, who can enter an
Speaker 1: exit changes. But we often assume, however the room is
Speaker 1: set up, is the way it has to be, and
Speaker 1: like facilitation one to one at any context, is you
Speaker 1: go into the room and you shift the furniture so
Speaker 1: that it serves the purpose. Yeah, I mean you were
Speaker 1: joking about the fact that, like your friends don't want
Speaker 1: to come to your restaurant gatherings because you'll force them
Speaker 1: to move the chairs. But not a joke. It does
Speaker 1: speak to a part of this process that can feel
Speaker 1: quite uncomfortable, which is you know you talk about how
Speaker 1: as the hope, it can be very important to define
Speaker 1: rules in advance of an event, right, So I talk
Speaker 1: about the idea of pop up rules versus etiquette. So
Speaker 1: etiquette kind of traditionally comes from monolithic cultures or communities
Speaker 1: where whatever is considered to be polite is assumed and
Speaker 1: learned from the culture, which can work when everybody is
Speaker 1: raised in the same way, but in diverse societies. The
Speaker 1: way one person's raise is different from the way another
Speaker 1: person's raise, and when we are inventing new ways of
Speaker 1: coming together, we all have different assumptions of how to
Speaker 1: be and making the implicit explicit is actually an equalizing
Speaker 1: act in a diverse community. And that doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: have to be controlling or you know, super didactic. You
Speaker 1: can do it in an incredibly fun ways, so simple
Speaker 1: example this comes from Anthony Rocco. He's an experienced designer,
Speaker 1: he's in the art of gathering. He was in charge
Speaker 1: of creating these like secret society member nights. You would
Speaker 1: walk into this room, didn't know anybody, and someone who
Speaker 1: was standing at the door and they were like, welcome,
Speaker 1: drinks her in the back. There's only one rule. You
Speaker 1: can't serve yourself a drink. You can serve anyone else
Speaker 1: a drink, but you can't serve yourself a drink. It
Speaker 1: was a slight tilt that gives people social permission right
Speaker 1: to look out for one another. And one of my
Speaker 1: favorite examples is a journalist who hosted what she called
Speaker 1: the worn Out Moms Hoot and Nanny and it was
Speaker 1: a dinner party and she invited other moms who like her,
Speaker 1: she believed to be worn out and the invitation on it.
Speaker 1: She said, there's only one rule, and that is if
Speaker 1: you talk about your kids, you have to take a
Speaker 1: tequila shot. And again, like it was fun, it was playful,
Speaker 1: but it's also slightly radical in the sense that she's
Speaker 1: saying we can come together with a shared identity of
Speaker 1: being a parent and we don't have to talk about
Speaker 1: our kids. Yeah, right, we can talk about so many
Speaker 1: other things. And so when I say pop up rule,
Speaker 1: it's really starting to just think about what is going
Speaker 1: to make people feel safe. What is the context though,
Speaker 1: and this is true in virtual gatherings as well, like
Speaker 1: who's going to be there? And how do I orient
Speaker 1: myself so that I know that whatever success looks like here,
Speaker 1: I can choose to engage and as a guest, I
Speaker 1: can truly choose if I want to be there or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe that what you're proposing can absolutely
Speaker 1: help lift the quality of the gathering, help achieve its purpose.
Speaker 1: But one reason why it's hard for people to establish
Speaker 1: rules in advance is that it does go against the norm, right,
Speaker 1: and it just takes a lot to be the first
Speaker 1: mover to establish new norms, especially when the costs can
Speaker 1: feel very high, like I might offend a friend or
Speaker 1: they might see this as a very patronizing move or
Speaker 1: paternalistic move like don't tell me who gets to or
Speaker 1: who's drink right, that sort of thing. And so I
Speaker 1: just wonder, given like you said, it can it can
Speaker 1: actually lead to a better gathering, It can foster greater inclusivity.
Speaker 1: How do we build the I'm just trying to think
Speaker 1: about the right the right word here, but it's like
Speaker 1: it takes some goal to be willing to say, yep,
Speaker 1: I'm inviting you to this thing, but there are terms
Speaker 1: and conditions. Yeah, and unless you're prea Parker who has
Speaker 1: a book that's literally called The Art Gathering, so you
Speaker 1: kind of get like a hall pass for establishing those
Speaker 1: rules because they're like, Okay, she's an expert. Like, how
Speaker 1: do I maya establish these rules without feeling like wildly
Speaker 1: self conscious and insecure and worried that I'm going to
Speaker 1: offend people? Well, first of all, I don't have a
Speaker 1: hall pass, So like, I mean, I imagine your friends
Speaker 1: are like my friends, Like it's my friends who tease
Speaker 1: me the most, right, So so literally now in my gatherings,
Speaker 1: I outsource. Oh that's interesting. I outsource like often almost
Speaker 1: to a fault. I outsource to the person in the
Speaker 1: room that's the most unexpected person to ding the bell
Speaker 1: or to run the game. Right, It's like I understand
Speaker 1: power and context. And so I'll say a couple of things.
Speaker 1: One is, all pop up rules are not good, Like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't create this pop up rule in a vacuum. First,
Speaker 1: what's the need? Then? Is this need perceived by my guests?
Speaker 1: Or am I in lala land? Right? If you're trying
Speaker 1: to shift the way you do Thanksgiving or shift the
Speaker 1: way you do Stater, it's not going to work. You
Speaker 1: send out an email to everybody and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: let's do it differently this year. No, you organize, you rally,
Speaker 1: You text the cousins that you know hate the same
Speaker 1: way that is done every year. You start to have
Speaker 1: conversations with them, You ask them what they might need.
Speaker 1: You then go to the grandmother who actually secretly is
Speaker 1: also bored and doesn't like cooking for two days and
Speaker 1: wants to shift it but doesn't know how. Right, if
Speaker 1: you pre work exactly, do pre work and all I'm
Speaker 1: saying is it's the beginning of the conversation, not the end.
Speaker 1: I often say to my clients gatherings are trojan horses
Speaker 1: because you think you're planning the scent of like event
Speaker 1: with just all the logistics, but actually the higher state
Speaker 1: makes the gathering. But more it's a forcing mechanism for
Speaker 1: people to actually make the implicit explicit, to say what
Speaker 1: do they care about? Who should be invited in, why,
Speaker 1: how should we actually spend our time? And that ends
Speaker 1: up becoming this conversation where the gathering becomes just a
Speaker 1: symptom of thinking and decisions. It's the process of getting
Speaker 1: there that shifts the community. As we think about structuring gatherings,
Speaker 1: it can be so tempting to try and avoid any
Speaker 1: kind of controversy or conflict, right, to avoid hot button topics.
Speaker 1: But you do caution against this way of thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I said earlier when our conversation first began. When my
Speaker 1: parents separated, everyone was shocked because they never fought. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a facilitator, I work within a lot of organizations,
Speaker 1: within movements, within intergenerational families, and particularly in the workplace.
Speaker 1: This is slightly changed of the last two years but
Speaker 1: so much of our context, so many organizations, so many teams,
Speaker 1: suffer more from unhealthy peace than from unhealthy conflict. And
Speaker 1: part of meaningful gatherings or effective gatherings is to begin
Speaker 1: to understand how do we talk about the things of
Speaker 1: relevance to our community without burning the house down right,
Speaker 1: And so I'll give a simple example. It could be Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: It could be a family reunion with a lot of
Speaker 1: complicated dynamics, it could be a retreat with a lot
Speaker 1: of tension. One of the kind of simple principles in facilitation,
Speaker 1: but it's incredibly helpful, is people's stories and experiences are
Speaker 1: almost always more interesting than their opinions, and so to
Speaker 1: find structures that allow people to share their stories so
Speaker 1: you're still having meaningful conversation without getting into the you know,
Speaker 1: cold war or hot war. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: talk about this book. I have a process in vented
Speaker 1: called fifteen toasts, and we created in part to help
Speaker 1: larger groups have meaningful conversation that's equitable, that's interesting, And
Speaker 1: you choose a theme. It could be conflict, it could
Speaker 1: be vision, it could be beauty, it could be anything,
Speaker 1: and you ask people at some point in the night
Speaker 1: to stand up old school style if it's available to them,
Speaker 1: ding their glass and share an experience or a story
Speaker 1: that no one else in the room has ever heard about,
Speaker 1: what it's taught them about, whatever the theme is. And
Speaker 1: the only other rule is that the last person has
Speaker 1: to sing their toast, and that just kind of moves
Speaker 1: the night along. We tend to throw the baby out
Speaker 1: with the bathwater because there's so many mind fields we
Speaker 1: decide not to talk about anything, but there's actually ways
Speaker 1: to still have meaningful conversation and connect without all having
Speaker 1: being the same, and in certain contexts, asking people to
Speaker 1: share stories or share experiences is a much better way
Speaker 1: than getting into a debate about whatever recent thing. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean very hard to have so many defenses up
Speaker 1: when people are just sharing sharing personal stories. I would
Speaker 1: love to end on a personal note. You know, A
Speaker 1: slight change of Plants is very much about personal stories
Speaker 1: of transformation, and I'm just so curious to hear how
Speaker 1: has working in the area of gatherings changed you as
Speaker 1: a person, You know, your worldview or your understanding of
Speaker 1: human beings at our core. It's changed me as a
Speaker 1: person in part because I often thought like change kind
Speaker 1: of happens out there, or like I don't really know
Speaker 1: or understand where and how culture happens. It just kind
Speaker 1: of happens. And I think what working specifically and deeply
Speaker 1: in the field of gathering is it's helped me realize
Speaker 1: that there's a successible way that's already in our life,
Speaker 1: it's baked into our everyday life, that is kind of
Speaker 1: like a magic wand the way that we come together
Speaker 1: is invented. We literally make it up or someone else did,
Speaker 1: and then we're following it. And it's just it's like
Speaker 1: we can choose and help persuade other people and shape
Speaker 1: them and grapple with how should we actually spend our time.
Speaker 1: And I think I used to kind of like a child,
Speaker 1: I thought of like as magic as like out there,
Speaker 1: like you know, superpowers are in TV shows. And I
Speaker 1: think what it's made me see is like this is
Speaker 1: a form of magic if you define magic as creating
Speaker 1: a set of ingredients that have the possibility to alter things,
Speaker 1: to alter people, myself included. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: changed me by feeling like magic is closer than you think.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I loved it. It's it's beautiful to be in conversation
Speaker 1: with you. Hey, thanks for listening. Next week, we'll replay
Speaker 1: one of our most popular science episodes, The Science of Quitting,
Speaker 1: with Annie Duke. The following week, we'll hear from one
Speaker 1: of my favorite singer songwriters, Jason Izbel. After wrestling with addiction,
Speaker 1: Jason realized that most mainstream narratives about sobriety were too simplistic,
Speaker 1: so he wrote his own. As time passed, I came
Speaker 1: to terms was the idea that there were good things
Speaker 1: and bad things about the person that I used to be.
Speaker 1: But at first it was really hard to do because
Speaker 1: there was a danger, you know, at every turn, I
Speaker 1: was looking for ways to keep myself from backsliding. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is created, written an executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes our
Speaker 1: showrunner Tyler Green, our story editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
Speaker 1: sound engineer Andrew Vestola, and our associate producer Sarah McCrae.
Speaker 1: Louise Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 1: helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries so big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Shunker. See you next week. Side note, Um,
Speaker 1: you know I love my husband Jimmy very much and
Speaker 1: I hope we do stay together forever. But the number
Speaker 1: one reason why I hope we stay together is because
Speaker 1: I don't have it in me to plan the second wedding.
Speaker 1: It's too much. You're too much. Sorry,