May 16, 2018 • 37 mins
Priya Parker hasn't just studied how gatherings work; she's lived it. From running conflict negotiations with high level diplomats, to making conference goers feel comfortable, to creating more intimate and memorable experiences at dinner parties, Priya's new book The Art of Gathering includes tricks and tips for rethinking your next event. Join Will and Mango as they pester Priya for advice on throwing better parties and how to get onto more invite lists.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will? What's that mango? So you know, I
don't normally suffer from fomo, but every once in a
while I hear about a historic party I wasn't invited to.
I'm pretty sure you already told me about this. Is
this the this is the Guilda Radner party right now?
I mean I do talk about the party a lot,
and in fact, now that you mentioned it, I am
going to talk about it. There's this California party from
(00:22):
the oral history of Saturday Night Live, and they discuss it.
It's basically every funny person in the world attended it.
It was pretty crazy to read about some of those
original lessonel cast members and some of the people that
are just now such superstars. But you've got Steve Martin there,
and Monty Python, the SCTV folks like so many others
that were all in this one place. Yeah, And and
during the night, somewhere along the way, they realized that
(00:43):
Gilda Radner is really sick and this is probably the
last time anyone's going to see her. And when she
tries to make her exit and say her goodbyes, Bill
Murray just picks her up and uses her as this
like improv prop and makes her laugh really really hard,
and then he passes her off to someone else and
they do that, and in the entire nights just spent
where people are just passing Guilder Radner around and using
(01:04):
her as an improv prop and making her laugh and
and just sounds like the best party in the world.
But that wasn't the party I was talking about. So
this is way arts here and it feels way more
doable for us to get to. But in Berlin, this
artist through a same hype party, and the whole idea
was that you got everyone's hype forehand, and then he
constructed all these slip on platform shoes that were at
(01:25):
the entrance, and before you could come in you had
to put on these giant blue foam shoes, and once
you did, everyone who walked in the room was exactly
the same height six ft six six ft six, And
so what what's the point of this? So really it
was just an experiment to see how your behavior changes,
Like you know how on TV talk shows the host
often has his chair jacked up super high and that
(01:45):
changes the dynamic. But the idea was, what if everyone
is exactly eye to eye, what does it mean when
we're all one height and I kind of love the
idea of how if you play with the settings, or
you know, you play with how you invite people, or
even how you provoke controversy at a party, you can
actually make for more meaningful and more memorable interactions. And
that's exactly what I guess. Pierre Parker authored the new
(02:07):
book The Art of Gathering is here to talk about.
Let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
(02:33):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined
by my good friend man guest show Ticketer and sitting
behind that soundproof glass assembly a mix tape for his
next house party. I hear these are pretty raging events.
That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. I took
a peek at the tracks Tristan's flowing together. It's got
everything from like Beethoven B sides to Mahavish New Orchestra
to Spice Girls remixes. It's pretty um eclectic. I gotta
(02:57):
be honest, I wouldn't expect anything less from Tristan. But
you know, today's show is more than just setting the
mood with a soundtrack. We've got Prea Parker, author of
the new book The Art of Gathering on the show, Now,
if you've ever wondered what's the right size for a party,
or how do you gently tell someone they're not invited
to a gathering? Or something even bigger, like how do
you bring NFL players and owners together in a way
(03:19):
that makes them both feel at ease and then has
them leaving experience feeling bonded. Pria has this amazing amount
of experience and insight. So Pria Parker, welcome to part
time Genius. Thank you for having me. Now. We're fascinated
by your background. You know, from the world you were
bridging as a child to the events you organize and
consult on now and I was curious before we get
(03:41):
into all the conversation around gatherings, I was hoping you
could just tell us a little bit about your background
and conflict resolution, and then of course how you grew
that background into starting Thrive Labs. So I was born
in Zimbabwe, perhaps uncommonplace to be born, and I come
from two different world My mother is Indian, grew up
(04:02):
in um in India, born and raised, and then immigrated
to the US for graduate school and met my white
American father in Iowa, where he's from. And for about
thirteen years they they were married, they traveled the world together.
My mother is a cultural anthropologist and my father is
a hydrologist. And so I was born in Zimbabwe. And um,
(04:25):
fast forward nine years from my birth and they separated.
UM we were living in Virginia at the time, and
both within a few years remarried, and I ended up
I'm an only child. I ended up basically traveling back
and forth every two weeks between these two radically different households.
Um My my mother is Indian, remarried an english Man,
(04:50):
and that household was really a kind of very liberal,
staunch democrat, vegetarian, kind of Buddhist Hindu athe isst household
um and kind of all the creatumas new a g
as my husband likes to say. And my um my
father remarried, and he remarried a white American Caucasian American
(05:12):
woman and they are Evangelical Christians. And basically I was
part of both of these households. And my um you know,
I think it deeply, deeply informs my work. And I
basically realized that these two families gather differently. They use
different you know, code words, they used a different language, um,
(05:33):
And they have fundamentally radically different views of the world.
And yet I, as a biracial you know, half Indian,
half white American UM, young woman, was considered by both
families to be fully a part of their families. And
so I, UM, I guess it's no no surprise I
end up in the field of confic resolution. But I
(05:55):
that early experience really shaped me to um try to
kind of be curious about and better understand why and
how people come together and why and how people come apart.
That's pretty amazing. I do want to talk about how
you find common ground in these conflicts and how you
make gatherings interesting by by having the spice of personalities there.
(06:17):
But before all that, I just want to talk about
gatherings and and I know you say it's important to
know why you're gathering, even when it's something familiar like
birthday parties or bridle showers, And would you talk a
little bit about that? Sure? So, UM, you know, I
wrote this book The Art of Gathering, How we meet
and why it matters. And one of the things that
I found over and over again, whether I was doing
(06:40):
research and interviewing you know Japanese tea ceremony masters or um,
you know, choreographers of circus is basically anybody who creates
group experiences for others. Was the ones that kind of
really took off and are transformative were the ones that
were very, very very clear on what their purpose was
and what their purpose was. And one of the things
(07:02):
that I've seen, particularly in our kind of more personal
private lives, is we often confuse categories of gathering for purpose.
And so what I mean by that is, you know,
a birthday party, um, is actually not a purpose. I mean,
we assume a birthday party is to celebrate a birthday,
but that's what I would call a category. Or a
(07:22):
wedding is to sort of get married. That's a functional
category um. And when we assume, you know, two people
get engaged, they get very excited about having a wedding,
or at least most people do, or they dread it
or both. Um. But one of the problems that happens
in a lot of wedding planning is once you kind
of start getting into the logistics arguments about size, about style,
(07:47):
about form um. And often one of the reasons that
a lot of conflict can happen whether between the couple
or between the couple, and they're kind of sets of parents.
UM is because there actually have for ideas of what
the wedding is for and who the wedding is for,
and so whenever you're gathering, the first question to ask,
(08:07):
particularly when you think that the reason is obvious, is
to say, what is this wedding for? And for some people,
the wedding is to honor their parents and first and
foremost and kind of at some level have a almost
right of passage for the parents to say, Okay, we've
done our job and our children are out in the
(08:28):
world and they now are starting their families. And if
that's the case, then if you are debating who should
be on the guest list, you may want to choose
you know, your your mother's colleagues over your long lost
college buddy. In other cases, the purpose of the wedding
might be to you know, united tribe from very different
sides of the world or two very different walks of life,
(08:50):
and the couple may say, you know what we want
to have our larger community know each other and UM
and hold us through this through this you know, marriage, UM,
and our wedding is an opportunity for all of the
people who wouldn't normally show up to come together and
for us to make sure that they really meet and
have meaningful time together. And then you can talk about
(09:13):
the guest lists or the food or you know, the
table setting or even the place, because once you know
what the purposes, you no longer have all of these
other proxy wars battling out. Speaking of the invite list,
one of the things you talk about, or that you say,
is that when everyone is invited, no one is invited.
And you know, I'm curious, like why is excluding people
(09:33):
from gatherings so important? And and on that note, if
you are going to be excluding people, how do you
manage the feelings of the people that you exclude or
or the bobs as you call them. Yeah, it's a
great question. I mean, I think one of the things
that paradoxically kind of mess up or at least the
loot some of our gatherings is this sort of age
old adage the more the merrier um. And that saying
(09:58):
comes from a spear of generosity, which I you know,
strongly recommend to have whenever you bring people together. Um,
but whenever one of the things that that kind of
happens in a number of different gatherings. Is that when
we kind of invite anyone and everyone, it's hard to
have people connect over something specific. So, for example, if
(10:23):
you're having a birthday party and invite kind of everybody
you know, or or even as if it's a small
birthday party, but you invite people from all different parts
of your life, it may be hard for people to
kind of connect over you know, they can have to
figure out how what they want to connect on an
over Whereas if you get more specific, So for example, okay,
this year for my birthday, I want to really focus
(10:44):
on reconnecting with my siblings, or I want to cut
out the people in my life that are bringing out
the parts of my life that I don't really want
to be doing anymore, and I want to really focus
on the people that are bringing out the best in me.
Um it gives you a clear sense of who you
actually want to invite and who who you may not
want to A friend of mine was recently invited by
(11:05):
his grandmother to for her birthday. He lives in the US,
but his grandmother is in Germany. For him and his
adult siblings to go to their grandmother's birthday, and the
grandmother specifically said no partners, no children, and this was
an extremely controversial invitation. And um, the partners felt, you know,
(11:29):
some partners didn't care, some partners kind of felt badly. Um,
some of the adult grandchildren thought this was a very
strange invitation. Others didn't think anything of it. But at
the end of the day they decided to go. They said,
you know, his grandma is getting old, she's in her eighties.
Like it's kind of like a quirky, you know, quirky invitation.
Let's just go. And I spoke with my friend when
he came back from this birthday party, which is basically
(11:52):
time with his adult siblings and cousins, and he said
it was one of the most beautiful times he'd ever
spent with his siblings and sense because they met for
the first time as adults without any of the other
roles that they play in their life, you know, husband
or wife, father, and so they were able to connect
as adults for the first time in the way that
(12:13):
they hadn't been able to since they were thirteen. And
this kind of slow, beautiful, open time with their grandmother
was this like gorgeous meaningful time together that they wouldn't
have been able to have or what at least would
have been different had they also been tending to their
spouses needs and their children's needs. And so it wasn't
that they should do that necessarily every year, but it
was actually the wisdom of the grandmother in exclusion and
(12:38):
being willing to take some heat for it that allowed
for some space for them to come out and kind
of play as adults. I love that, and I love
um that phrase used purpose as a bouncer because it
just feels really liberating, especially for someone like me who
does them to just wanted to invite everyone and uh
um and uh allow as many bobs as possible to come.
(13:00):
But I do have one question about magic numbers, and
you talk about this a little bit. I'm always someone
who never knows the right amount of pizza order for things,
and I like knowing that they're like specific numbers that
are useful. Can you talk about like the certain types
of gatherings and how many people you need to make
those more effective? Yeah? Absolutely. You know, I'm a facilitator
(13:20):
and I work professionally with groups to um, you know,
to kind of have great transformative experiences for them. And
so groups of six tend to be great for great
conversation um when all six are you know, actively participating,
so whether it's a dinner or whether it's a support group.
But the drawbacks of six is that if somebody isn't
(13:42):
fully engaged, you know, you can't really bear deadweight, um.
And it's also difficult, if agan, to bring on your
purpose to have university of viewpoints. Eight to twelve is
kind of a great number for small group experience where
it's still lovely and um and if well facilitated, everyone
can talk. And above that, you know, that's a good
(14:05):
size for a kind of a buzzy party. People can
still look around and over a few hours can meet
you know, everybody in the room or the majority of people.
But it still feels kind of intimate, not overwhelming, and
and kind of works as a you know, as an
energetic gathering. You're probably not all sitting around table, but
you're milling around. And for weddings, you know, for my
wedding between a fifty and you still feel like you're
(14:28):
being held by kind of your community, um, but it's
not so overwhelming that you have no idea who's there.
We have lots more questions for Prea, but first let's
take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
(14:52):
and we're talking to author Prea Parker. You know, I'm
curious when you think about other meetings that maybe you're
not organizing, guessing it's pretty tough for you not to
it kind of post mortem those events. You know, you
think about recent gatherings that we see on TV, whether
it's the White House correspondence dinner or the way the
NFL owners got together to talk about, you know, the
(15:13):
players kneeling. Do you look at events like that and
think about how they could have been executed more effectively? Absolutely,
And to me that's actually, you know, one of the
things I think is most interesting, and I think, um,
you know, one thing that friends say to me after
they've read this book is that the Gift and the
Curses you never look at it gathering the same way. Again,
(15:34):
to take the two examples you mentioned. With the first
the NFL meeting, it would actually happened a while ago.
It was recently leaked to the press, which is why
some of the news Again, but last October, after Colin
Kaepernick started this kneeling, you know, these kneeling moments and
kind of this call to action to other nfls to
join NFL players, to join NFL owners and a number
of players to come to their headquarters in New York
(15:56):
to have a meeting about you know what they called
the quote kneeling issue and um. The tapes of that
meeting was recently released. You can listen to how the
meeting kind of went down. And first of all, it
was I think awesome that they fought to gather in
that way. So I would say the first thing is
that in a moment where there is multiple moments any
(16:18):
time in a game where uh player can choose to
kneel um and to activate a symbol that is extremely
controversial in the public eye and means different things to
different people, the idea for the owners to bring together
the players and to actually talk about this is a
great thing. So the first thing I'd say is, whoever
(16:39):
thought about doing that, is it was on the right track. Um.
The second thing is I think once they actually decided
and I haven't spoken to anyone from there, so this
is all you know, me speaking about it from far.
You know, one thing about a gathering is to think
about how you seek people. Where is the gathering they
decided to do the NFL headquarters. So on one hand,
(17:00):
there's a lot of authority there um and gravitas. On
the other hand, it is the at some level of
the owner's turf. Um. And they sat in a circle
as far as I understand, with the players and the
owners sitting in every other chair to kind of show equality,
which I would say is also good. But when you
actually listen to the tapes of the conversation, the they're
(17:21):
broadly talking past each other um, And what I would
say is you zoom back out over and over again.
The players keep coming back to the idea that Kaepernick
is that they believe as being blackballed from the league.
Kind of their language, not mine. Um. And the owners
basically are still are trying to focus on damage control,
and they're worrying that that this sort of as they
call the kneeling issue is actually literally affecting their bottom
(17:43):
line and his upsetting fans. And as you listen to
the conversation, they're basically talking past each other, and one
of them, what I would say is going, if I
was working at the organizers of that meeting, be two
step back ahead of time. And day. What is the
purpose of this meeting beyond kind of showing us, you know,
symbolic UM camaraderie. What do you actually want to get
out of this meeting? Do you want to come to
(18:04):
an agreement you on both sides to better understand where
they're coming from. Do you want to focus on kaepernack
because that might seem it seems like the players can't
uh get over the idea precondition to actually talking about
whether or not they're willing to kneel. Do you want
to have the focus of the agenda be kneeling? And
so basically, I think one of the problems with that
(18:26):
meeting was that it wasn't clear what its purpose was,
and then the structure of how they actually allowed people
to talk. Basically, that doesn't seem like there was a structure,
and so it was a bit chaotic and they just
kept on talking in circles. And so so when I
look at a public gathering like that UM, one of
the things that I look at is, how could they
if they have this incredible moment where they're bringing together
(18:48):
UM players and owners for probably one of the first
times in the league's history, how do you actually structure
the gathering so that it meets its intended purpose and
what is the purpose were that gathering? You know, the
place you host a gathering allows for all sorts of
different options in how you gather. And it's not just logistical.
(19:09):
You know, if you have a room that if it's
twenty people, or room and it's people. But basically, any
time you're thinking about a gathering, you should have the
place in the space work for what how you want
people to show up and what you want them to
be thinking about. So let's just play with this NFL
meeting for a second. They hosted at the NFL headquarters.
Imagine had they, as you said, held it in Selma.
(19:32):
Imagine if they held it in ferguston Um. Imagine if
they held it in a stadium with fans in the
seats watching as long as they agreed not to speak,
and then and they miked up the players and the
owners and actually had a dialogue about what does this
(19:52):
kneeling thing mean? And had the audience and NFL fans
agree to listen but not boo or cheer, you know.
Imagine if they had it in an owner's home over dinner.
Imagine if they had it at Colin Kaeperneck's mother's home.
Imagine if they had it at the Trump Hotel in Washington.
(20:14):
Each of these choices are should be very intentional choices,
and by the way, will be interpreted by people in
all sorts of different ways. I could see fans being
very angry that a meeting like that would be held
in um Selma or in Montgomery, or in any places
that have symbolic you know meaning. But all of that
(20:34):
to say is the same thing is true for you know,
a birthday party or a book event or a a
a sales meeting. And one of the ways to really
think boldly about the way you gather is to think
about having your place really work for you. So if
you are having you know, I know a publisher that
had a book event in a cemetery, um and already,
(20:56):
no matter what they do in the cemetery, they've already
transformed people's relations ship to the book and to the
author and to how they remember that event. And so
one of the things to think about is you're gathering
is where and how and what kind of strange venues
might you want to gather in? You think about, um,
what you're saying about the NFL thing like if they
had picked a venue like Selma, or the owners and
(21:16):
the players had walked across the bridge together or you
know that that that you could have really established a
very different feel for this meeting, and how interesting that
that could have been. You know, you talk about a
scene in the book where there are these four important
leaders that are attending a dinner event uh, the night
before a meeting, and there's this fifth really important world
leader who wants to attend it, but doesn't want to
(21:36):
go to the dinner, just wants to go to the
meeting the next day. I was curious, like, how do
you convince self important people, or you know, even people
who are gathering an event but are shy to fully
participate and buy into sort of the cadence of the
meeting and the various events that that are orchestrated or
plan for a reason. I mean, so it's a great question,
and what you're kind of talking about at some level
(21:58):
is the larger question of legitimacy. So in the example
in the book, we had a meeting on a Wednesday,
let's say, and um, it was a meeting where it
was important that the leaders that were coming together basically
interacted in a way that they wouldn't normally otherwise and
started to come with the spirit of openness. And so
(22:20):
one of the things that I did with had a
dinner the night before that was more like a dinner
party or even like a wedding party than a than
a kind of a work meeting. You know, there's candles
and um wine and like stories and structure and um.
And there was a state leader who couldn't make the
dinner the night before, or didn't want to or wasn't
(22:41):
willing to kind of come. And at some level, one
of the things that you are grappling with when you're
designing and experience for other people, UM is communicating with them.
One that is important but to whether or not your
your event kind of has legitimacy um and and what
I mean by that is whether or not people are
buying into your vision of what this is for and
(23:04):
whether they need to be there or not. At any
time you know two or more people come together, you know,
decisions need to be made often over the course of
any type of gathering, and basically who's in charge and
who needs you know, if if there's conflicts, how do
you actually deal with it? And so at some level
depending on the context. So in an organization, if you're
doing a gathering and there's a dinner the night before, UM,
(23:27):
in part because people have signed contracts and the authority
lies with the UM. You know, with the boss, you
can actually require people to show up to a dinner.
And by the way, that shouldn't be used lightly. So
I often say when I'm working with companies and they
say we can require people to attend the night before,
I often say, please, don't require them. I want them
(23:47):
to come of their own volition, because people behave very
differently if they're required to be somewhere versus if they
decide that they want to go. UM. And similarly, you know,
with a wedding or with with with a kind of
social gathering. UM. You know, to me, if people aren't
coming to whatever it is you you planned, I always say, like,
(24:09):
pick up the phone and call them, UM, you know,
if this is something that's important to you and explain
to them you know what it is, and UM on
why you'd love for them to be there. Texts, you know, email, Instagram,
everybody's online, but I rarely hear anybody's voice anymore. And
UM and actually just making a phone call. It goes
a long way. You know. I was amused by the
(24:30):
list that you put together of the fifteen ways to
make conferences suck less. And and because you know, Mango
and I have been to so many conferences over the years,
and so many terrible conferences over the years, and you know,
I don't envy those that have to put them together,
because it does seem like a really difficult thing to
put together a good conference, and so when you go
(24:51):
to a great one, it's really that much more impressive.
And I'm curious if you could share just a few
of your favorite ideas for how to put together this
type of active gathering. Mm hmm. It's a great question.
And you know there are conferences are on the rise,
and more and more people, um, More and more companies
are starting to have you know, confidence wings and conference arms.
(25:13):
Media companies are starting to have live events. So this
is something that work. I you know, I think we're
going to see more and more of So it's a
really important question. I would just say, kind of simply,
the two principles that I think make conferences fantastic um our,
intimacy and heat and UM. What I mean by that
(25:34):
one on the intimacy side. You know, there's all these
studies that show that, um, that people can connect much
more when you share your vulnerability and things that you
aren't working as well. Burnee Brown Um and sociologists like
her popularized these ideas about intimacy often between two people,
and I would just take that principle and apply it
(25:54):
to groups into larger, too larger gatherings. So, UM, when
a couple of a couple of things under intimacy, the
first is um to have people share in small groups
or in large things that aren't working rather than things
that are. So one of the things that I talked
about in the book is, you know, rather than training
everybody to kind of give their two minutes stumps speech
(26:16):
and all of you know, like how great you are,
what you're doing, how kind of clients that you serving,
or you know, whatever it is that you're doing your company,
to flip it around and give a sprout speech which
basically sharing all of the things in your work that
you actually are still curious about that you don't know
the answers to that you're trying to figure out. And
people are much more interested in kind of wanting to
(26:37):
know what's not going well and how they may actually help. UM.
One of the groups that does this well that I've
come across as the House of Genius, and they have
read it about in the book UM. They have gatherings
all over the world where they invite ten or twelve
people to come together to constitute what they call a
house UM and UH invite two or three entrepreneurs to
come in and get forty five minutes each to talk
(26:59):
about what's not working in their business or what they
need help with. And then UM those twelve people give
them all sorts of advice and ideas. It's a very
structured process, UM, but basically it ends up being, you know,
a really interesting evening because implicitly you're saying I need help,
and we tend to want to help each other. The
(27:19):
second thing is to do dinners where people share stories
and experiences from their life. UM. That demonstrates some kind
of struggle or some kind of um, you know, confusion,
because we at the end of the day want to
connect with each other in meaningful ways. And so I
think conferences that allow both space but also structure for
(27:41):
people to share what's actually going on in their life
to me are much more interesting. And then the second
part is heat. And what I mean by that coming
as a confique resolution facilitator, is anything that kind of
gets people's temperature, you know, rising in the room. Um.
It can be things that are controversial but controversial that
(28:02):
still serve the purpose. So controversial for just kind of
controversy's sake isn't particularly interesting, um, but controversial when it
kind of taps the core values of a community can
be extremely invigorating. We tend to avoid the things that
we think might you know, rufflesome feathers, and actually from
(28:22):
a perspective of gathering, those are the ones that actually,
you know, people want to stay in the room for,
so if it's a you know, a church gathering. Um.
One of the people interviewed for the book was a
secretary of the Society of Friends, basically Quaker communities, and
she said some of the best meetings that they had
had m this is the Philadelphia community Circle of Friends.
(28:44):
Society Friends was when they began to consciously have meetings
around whether or not to allow gay marriage in there
to acknowledge gay marriage in their communities, and um, rather
than avoiding it, they actually structured meetings around it. And
debates um in the Quaker format, which is if you're
moved to speak, speak and that you know, people come
(29:07):
alive when they're talking about and struggling with and listening
to one another about the things that most um define
them as a community. And I'm curious too about the
openings of conferences. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
you know, I think openings are extraordinarily important. And one
of the things that conferences can do is in the
(29:28):
first few moments any in any type of gathering, people
are walking in and wondering, you know, what's going on here?
Do I want to be here? What part of myself
do I show? Can I be jokey or should I
be more formal? And um? We as organizers often vastly
underestimate the importance of kind of setting the tone and
um and creating a environment where people have permission to
(29:52):
go up to each other and and find ways to
kind of go in and so UM. One of the
ways of a inference that I UM that I love
that I spoke to for this book is it's called
Spark Camp and it was started by five friends in
the media industry, and one of the things they do
early on their weekend gatherings. There there's their captive seventy people,
(30:13):
so that maintains an intimacy but still a buzz the
first night of the gathering, so I guess Friday night
they do introductions, you know, as many conferences do the
less than you would think. But the way they do
introductions is they take the weight off the guests for
having to introduce themselves and either be you know, stuck
in their humble brags or you know, all of the
(30:34):
awkward ways one wants to introduce oneself. And the conference
organizers give the conference what I think is such a gift,
which is they spend time ahead of time researching every
single one of their seventy guests, who often they don't
know themselves, and come up with these short, whimsical introductions.
And they gathered together in a room and they actually
read aloud each person's introduction without naming them. Um, and
(30:57):
they say, when you hear your helf stand and so
they may say, you know, this person met their husband
at a beekeeping convention and um. They are also one
of the foremost minds on artificial intelligence. They grew up
in Alaska, but actually because their parents were part of
the Air Force. They lived in twelve states before the
(31:18):
age of sixteen. And what happens is, you know, our
eyes are kind of darting around trying to figure out
who it is, but also you're not sure if there's
somebody else in the group that met their husband at
a beekeep being gone, you know, so sometimes you know,
two or three people stand up and then everyone laughs
and they have to kind of keep listening. And this
is brilliant exercise where it's interesting. Everybody is engaged because
(31:42):
you don't want to miss your own introduction, but everybody's
also engaged because there they're You're they're giving you seeds
of information that you can then go up to each
of the other sixty nine people in the room over
the course of the weekend and have three or four
different ways into conversation with them. And so they think
very beautifully about how do you early on give non
(32:07):
awkward or at least less awkward ways for people to
approach one another in meaningful ways about their work and
also about things that have nothing to do with their work.
More questions for PRIA after a quick break. I love
(32:32):
the idea too of you um sitting out and charting
out heat maps would you talk about in the book
and to orchestrate some of the heat But I'm also
curious about these two interesting events that you've pulled together.
One is fifteen Toasts and then these I'm here days,
And I was wondering if you could just talk a
little bit about that. Sure, So fifteen Toasts came from
(32:52):
this experience of going to events and having kind of
amazing people in the room, but feeling um that the
kind of modus operandi was showing off or or talking
about how great everything was. And specifically I was at
the World Economic Forum one of their annual meetings in
Abu Dhabi, and a colleague and I Tim Labret, who
(33:17):
were serving on the same council, realized that in all
of these meetings, even though we're supposed to be talking
about new models of leadership or values based leadership, it
tends to remain very heavy UM. And you know, or
is an opportunity for people to kind of promote their
company's latest initiative UM. And so we we we decided
(33:38):
to run an experiment where the night before we gathered
fifteen people from a number of the different councils and
invited them to come together over dinner off the record,
though UM we all agreed we could share what happened
at the dinner but not attributed to specific person. So
Chatham House Rules and fifteen Toasts basically was this um
(34:02):
experiment that we kind of made up along with my husband,
where everybody is asked to give a toast at some
point in the evening to a theme and you choose
the theme. The first one we ever did was what
is a good life? Not is what is the good life?
But what what makes for a good life? But you
can choose a theme that the group would be interested in.
It could be rebellion, it could be um borders, it
(34:26):
could be what does it mean to be American? It
could be anything. And over the course of the night,
people you know, clink their glass old school style, stand
up and share a story and experience from their life
UM that relates to the theme. And the only other
rule is that the last person has to sing their toast.
(34:46):
And what that does is it kind of speeds along
the toasts because basically most people used in the U
S context don't want to sing um, and so it's
this kind of playful way to get people to UM
do take a smaller risk, which is which is giving
their toasts. Um. And what happens over the course of
(35:06):
the night is you hear stories that are still along
a kind of organizing principle that people would never kind
of share in you know, in the in the context
like that, but when you hear about somebody you know,
falling in love for the first time or experiencing heartbreak. Um.
Or I remember one story that was shared in a
dinner that where the thing was strangers. Somebody shared that
(35:28):
their mother's life was saved because a stranger happened to
be walking past her. Their mother fainted, hit their head
on the ground, started bleeding. A stranger happened to walk
past them in the same moment called the police and
save their life. And because of that, the person sitting
at the table like existed, it was born. Um. There's
(35:50):
so much more after this dinner that you could go
and talk to, you know, talk to this person about
then if she simply told you that she was the
VP of sales that you know, such as such company. UM.
And so what fifteen toasts does and you could use
any format, but it allows people to share stories and
experiences um that are kind of you know off the
(36:12):
perhaps theme of the conference or kind of selling something
um but basically makes them complicated and human, and most
people want to talk to other people who are complicated
in human, because that's what each of us are. The
book is called The Art of Gathering, How We Meet
and Why It Matters, and it's available this week. But Priya,
thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much
for having me. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(36:48):
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the MIXI MIXI sound. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer
thing gave. Louesier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas
Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(37:10):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, And if you really really like what
you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Thanks for the points Jason him
Guess what will? What's that mango? So you know, I
don't normally suffer from fomo, but every once in a
while I hear about a historic party I wasn't invited to.
I'm pretty sure you already told me about this. Is
this the this is the Guilda Radner party right now?
I mean I do talk about the party a lot,
and in fact, now that you mentioned it, I am
going to talk about it. There's this California party from
(00:22):
the oral history of Saturday Night Live, and they discuss it.
It's basically every funny person in the world attended it.
It was pretty crazy to read about some of those
original lessonel cast members and some of the people that
are just now such superstars. But you've got Steve Martin there,
and Monty Python, the SCTV folks like so many others
that were all in this one place. Yeah, And and
during the night, somewhere along the way, they realized that
(00:43):
Gilda Radner is really sick and this is probably the
last time anyone's going to see her. And when she
tries to make her exit and say her goodbyes, Bill
Murray just picks her up and uses her as this
like improv prop and makes her laugh really really hard,
and then he passes her off to someone else and
they do that, and in the entire nights just spent
where people are just passing Guilder Radner around and using
(01:04):
her as an improv prop and making her laugh and
and just sounds like the best party in the world.
But that wasn't the party I was talking about. So
this is way arts here and it feels way more
doable for us to get to. But in Berlin, this
artist through a same hype party, and the whole idea
was that you got everyone's hype forehand, and then he
constructed all these slip on platform shoes that were at
(01:25):
the entrance, and before you could come in you had
to put on these giant blue foam shoes, and once
you did, everyone who walked in the room was exactly
the same height six ft six six ft six, And
so what what's the point of this? So really it
was just an experiment to see how your behavior changes,
Like you know how on TV talk shows the host
often has his chair jacked up super high and that
(01:45):
changes the dynamic. But the idea was, what if everyone
is exactly eye to eye, what does it mean when
we're all one height and I kind of love the
idea of how if you play with the settings, or
you know, you play with how you invite people, or
even how you provoke controversy at a party, you can
actually make for more meaningful and more memorable interactions. And
that's exactly what I guess. Pierre Parker authored the new
(02:07):
book The Art of Gathering is here to talk about.
Let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
(02:33):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined
by my good friend man guest show Ticketer and sitting
behind that soundproof glass assembly a mix tape for his
next house party. I hear these are pretty raging events.
That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. I took
a peek at the tracks Tristan's flowing together. It's got
everything from like Beethoven B sides to Mahavish New Orchestra
to Spice Girls remixes. It's pretty um eclectic. I gotta
(02:57):
be honest, I wouldn't expect anything less from Tristan. But
you know, today's show is more than just setting the
mood with a soundtrack. We've got Prea Parker, author of
the new book The Art of Gathering on the show, Now,
if you've ever wondered what's the right size for a party,
or how do you gently tell someone they're not invited
to a gathering? Or something even bigger, like how do
you bring NFL players and owners together in a way
(03:19):
that makes them both feel at ease and then has
them leaving experience feeling bonded. Pria has this amazing amount
of experience and insight. So Pria Parker, welcome to part
time Genius. Thank you for having me. Now. We're fascinated
by your background. You know, from the world you were
bridging as a child to the events you organize and
consult on now and I was curious before we get
(03:41):
into all the conversation around gatherings, I was hoping you
could just tell us a little bit about your background
and conflict resolution, and then of course how you grew
that background into starting Thrive Labs. So I was born
in Zimbabwe, perhaps uncommonplace to be born, and I come
from two different world My mother is Indian, grew up
(04:02):
in um in India, born and raised, and then immigrated
to the US for graduate school and met my white
American father in Iowa, where he's from. And for about
thirteen years they they were married, they traveled the world together.
My mother is a cultural anthropologist and my father is
a hydrologist. And so I was born in Zimbabwe. And um,
(04:25):
fast forward nine years from my birth and they separated.
UM we were living in Virginia at the time, and
both within a few years remarried, and I ended up
I'm an only child. I ended up basically traveling back
and forth every two weeks between these two radically different households.
Um My my mother is Indian, remarried an english Man,
(04:50):
and that household was really a kind of very liberal,
staunch democrat, vegetarian, kind of Buddhist Hindu athe isst household
um and kind of all the creatumas new a g
as my husband likes to say. And my um my
father remarried, and he remarried a white American Caucasian American
(05:12):
woman and they are Evangelical Christians. And basically I was
part of both of these households. And my um you know,
I think it deeply, deeply informs my work. And I
basically realized that these two families gather differently. They use
different you know, code words, they used a different language, um,
(05:33):
And they have fundamentally radically different views of the world.
And yet I, as a biracial you know, half Indian,
half white American UM, young woman, was considered by both
families to be fully a part of their families. And
so I, UM, I guess it's no no surprise I
end up in the field of confic resolution. But I
(05:55):
that early experience really shaped me to um try to
kind of be curious about and better understand why and
how people come together and why and how people come apart.
That's pretty amazing. I do want to talk about how
you find common ground in these conflicts and how you
make gatherings interesting by by having the spice of personalities there.
(06:17):
But before all that, I just want to talk about
gatherings and and I know you say it's important to
know why you're gathering, even when it's something familiar like
birthday parties or bridle showers, And would you talk a
little bit about that? Sure? So, UM, you know, I
wrote this book The Art of Gathering, How we meet
and why it matters. And one of the things that
I found over and over again, whether I was doing
(06:40):
research and interviewing you know Japanese tea ceremony masters or um,
you know, choreographers of circus is basically anybody who creates
group experiences for others. Was the ones that kind of
really took off and are transformative were the ones that
were very, very very clear on what their purpose was
and what their purpose was. And one of the things
(07:02):
that I've seen, particularly in our kind of more personal
private lives, is we often confuse categories of gathering for purpose.
And so what I mean by that is, you know,
a birthday party, um, is actually not a purpose. I mean,
we assume a birthday party is to celebrate a birthday,
but that's what I would call a category. Or a
(07:22):
wedding is to sort of get married. That's a functional
category um. And when we assume, you know, two people
get engaged, they get very excited about having a wedding,
or at least most people do, or they dread it
or both. Um. But one of the problems that happens
in a lot of wedding planning is once you kind
of start getting into the logistics arguments about size, about style,
(07:47):
about form um. And often one of the reasons that
a lot of conflict can happen whether between the couple
or between the couple, and they're kind of sets of parents.
UM is because there actually have for ideas of what
the wedding is for and who the wedding is for,
and so whenever you're gathering, the first question to ask,
(08:07):
particularly when you think that the reason is obvious, is
to say, what is this wedding for? And for some people,
the wedding is to honor their parents and first and
foremost and kind of at some level have a almost
right of passage for the parents to say, Okay, we've
done our job and our children are out in the
(08:28):
world and they now are starting their families. And if
that's the case, then if you are debating who should
be on the guest list, you may want to choose
you know, your your mother's colleagues over your long lost
college buddy. In other cases, the purpose of the wedding
might be to you know, united tribe from very different
sides of the world or two very different walks of life,
(08:50):
and the couple may say, you know what we want
to have our larger community know each other and UM
and hold us through this through this you know, marriage, UM,
and our wedding is an opportunity for all of the
people who wouldn't normally show up to come together and
for us to make sure that they really meet and
have meaningful time together. And then you can talk about
(09:13):
the guest lists or the food or you know, the
table setting or even the place, because once you know
what the purposes, you no longer have all of these
other proxy wars battling out. Speaking of the invite list,
one of the things you talk about, or that you say,
is that when everyone is invited, no one is invited.
And you know, I'm curious, like why is excluding people
(09:33):
from gatherings so important? And and on that note, if
you are going to be excluding people, how do you
manage the feelings of the people that you exclude or
or the bobs as you call them. Yeah, it's a
great question. I mean, I think one of the things
that paradoxically kind of mess up or at least the
loot some of our gatherings is this sort of age
old adage the more the merrier um. And that saying
(09:58):
comes from a spear of generosity, which I you know,
strongly recommend to have whenever you bring people together. Um,
but whenever one of the things that that kind of
happens in a number of different gatherings. Is that when
we kind of invite anyone and everyone, it's hard to
have people connect over something specific. So, for example, if
(10:23):
you're having a birthday party and invite kind of everybody
you know, or or even as if it's a small
birthday party, but you invite people from all different parts
of your life, it may be hard for people to
kind of connect over you know, they can have to
figure out how what they want to connect on an
over Whereas if you get more specific, So for example, okay,
this year for my birthday, I want to really focus
(10:44):
on reconnecting with my siblings, or I want to cut
out the people in my life that are bringing out
the parts of my life that I don't really want
to be doing anymore, and I want to really focus
on the people that are bringing out the best in me.
Um it gives you a clear sense of who you
actually want to invite and who who you may not
want to A friend of mine was recently invited by
(11:05):
his grandmother to for her birthday. He lives in the US,
but his grandmother is in Germany. For him and his
adult siblings to go to their grandmother's birthday, and the
grandmother specifically said no partners, no children, and this was
an extremely controversial invitation. And um, the partners felt, you know,
(11:29):
some partners didn't care, some partners kind of felt badly. Um,
some of the adult grandchildren thought this was a very
strange invitation. Others didn't think anything of it. But at
the end of the day they decided to go. They said,
you know, his grandma is getting old, she's in her eighties.
Like it's kind of like a quirky, you know, quirky invitation.
Let's just go. And I spoke with my friend when
he came back from this birthday party, which is basically
(11:52):
time with his adult siblings and cousins, and he said
it was one of the most beautiful times he'd ever
spent with his siblings and sense because they met for
the first time as adults without any of the other
roles that they play in their life, you know, husband
or wife, father, and so they were able to connect
as adults for the first time in the way that
(12:13):
they hadn't been able to since they were thirteen. And
this kind of slow, beautiful, open time with their grandmother
was this like gorgeous meaningful time together that they wouldn't
have been able to have or what at least would
have been different had they also been tending to their
spouses needs and their children's needs. And so it wasn't
that they should do that necessarily every year, but it
was actually the wisdom of the grandmother in exclusion and
(12:38):
being willing to take some heat for it that allowed
for some space for them to come out and kind
of play as adults. I love that, and I love
um that phrase used purpose as a bouncer because it
just feels really liberating, especially for someone like me who
does them to just wanted to invite everyone and uh
um and uh allow as many bobs as possible to come.
(13:00):
But I do have one question about magic numbers, and
you talk about this a little bit. I'm always someone
who never knows the right amount of pizza order for things,
and I like knowing that they're like specific numbers that
are useful. Can you talk about like the certain types
of gatherings and how many people you need to make
those more effective? Yeah? Absolutely. You know, I'm a facilitator
(13:20):
and I work professionally with groups to um, you know,
to kind of have great transformative experiences for them. And
so groups of six tend to be great for great
conversation um when all six are you know, actively participating,
so whether it's a dinner or whether it's a support group.
But the drawbacks of six is that if somebody isn't
(13:42):
fully engaged, you know, you can't really bear deadweight, um.
And it's also difficult, if agan, to bring on your
purpose to have university of viewpoints. Eight to twelve is
kind of a great number for small group experience where
it's still lovely and um and if well facilitated, everyone
can talk. And above that, you know, that's a good
(14:05):
size for a kind of a buzzy party. People can
still look around and over a few hours can meet
you know, everybody in the room or the majority of people.
But it still feels kind of intimate, not overwhelming, and
and kind of works as a you know, as an
energetic gathering. You're probably not all sitting around table, but
you're milling around. And for weddings, you know, for my
wedding between a fifty and you still feel like you're
(14:28):
being held by kind of your community, um, but it's
not so overwhelming that you have no idea who's there.
We have lots more questions for Prea, but first let's
take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
(14:52):
and we're talking to author Prea Parker. You know, I'm
curious when you think about other meetings that maybe you're
not organizing, guessing it's pretty tough for you not to
it kind of post mortem those events. You know, you
think about recent gatherings that we see on TV, whether
it's the White House correspondence dinner or the way the
NFL owners got together to talk about, you know, the
(15:13):
players kneeling. Do you look at events like that and
think about how they could have been executed more effectively? Absolutely,
And to me that's actually, you know, one of the
things I think is most interesting, and I think, um,
you know, one thing that friends say to me after
they've read this book is that the Gift and the
Curses you never look at it gathering the same way. Again,
(15:34):
to take the two examples you mentioned. With the first
the NFL meeting, it would actually happened a while ago.
It was recently leaked to the press, which is why
some of the news Again, but last October, after Colin
Kaepernick started this kneeling, you know, these kneeling moments and
kind of this call to action to other nfls to
join NFL players, to join NFL owners and a number
of players to come to their headquarters in New York
(15:56):
to have a meeting about you know what they called
the quote kneeling issue and um. The tapes of that
meeting was recently released. You can listen to how the
meeting kind of went down. And first of all, it
was I think awesome that they fought to gather in
that way. So I would say the first thing is
that in a moment where there is multiple moments any
(16:18):
time in a game where uh player can choose to
kneel um and to activate a symbol that is extremely
controversial in the public eye and means different things to
different people, the idea for the owners to bring together
the players and to actually talk about this is a
great thing. So the first thing I'd say is, whoever
(16:39):
thought about doing that, is it was on the right track. Um.
The second thing is I think once they actually decided
and I haven't spoken to anyone from there, so this
is all you know, me speaking about it from far.
You know, one thing about a gathering is to think
about how you seek people. Where is the gathering they
decided to do the NFL headquarters. So on one hand,
(17:00):
there's a lot of authority there um and gravitas. On
the other hand, it is the at some level of
the owner's turf. Um. And they sat in a circle
as far as I understand, with the players and the
owners sitting in every other chair to kind of show equality,
which I would say is also good. But when you
actually listen to the tapes of the conversation, the they're
(17:21):
broadly talking past each other um, And what I would
say is you zoom back out over and over again.
The players keep coming back to the idea that Kaepernick
is that they believe as being blackballed from the league.
Kind of their language, not mine. Um. And the owners
basically are still are trying to focus on damage control,
and they're worrying that that this sort of as they
call the kneeling issue is actually literally affecting their bottom
(17:43):
line and his upsetting fans. And as you listen to
the conversation, they're basically talking past each other, and one
of them, what I would say is going, if I
was working at the organizers of that meeting, be two
step back ahead of time. And day. What is the
purpose of this meeting beyond kind of showing us, you know,
symbolic UM camaraderie. What do you actually want to get
out of this meeting? Do you want to come to
(18:04):
an agreement you on both sides to better understand where
they're coming from. Do you want to focus on kaepernack
because that might seem it seems like the players can't
uh get over the idea precondition to actually talking about
whether or not they're willing to kneel. Do you want
to have the focus of the agenda be kneeling? And
so basically, I think one of the problems with that
(18:26):
meeting was that it wasn't clear what its purpose was,
and then the structure of how they actually allowed people
to talk. Basically, that doesn't seem like there was a structure,
and so it was a bit chaotic and they just
kept on talking in circles. And so so when I
look at a public gathering like that UM, one of
the things that I look at is, how could they
if they have this incredible moment where they're bringing together
(18:48):
UM players and owners for probably one of the first
times in the league's history, how do you actually structure
the gathering so that it meets its intended purpose and
what is the purpose were that gathering? You know, the
place you host a gathering allows for all sorts of
different options in how you gather. And it's not just logistical.
(19:09):
You know, if you have a room that if it's
twenty people, or room and it's people. But basically, any
time you're thinking about a gathering, you should have the
place in the space work for what how you want
people to show up and what you want them to
be thinking about. So let's just play with this NFL
meeting for a second. They hosted at the NFL headquarters.
Imagine had they, as you said, held it in Selma.
(19:32):
Imagine if they held it in ferguston Um. Imagine if
they held it in a stadium with fans in the
seats watching as long as they agreed not to speak,
and then and they miked up the players and the
owners and actually had a dialogue about what does this
(19:52):
kneeling thing mean? And had the audience and NFL fans
agree to listen but not boo or cheer, you know.
Imagine if they had it in an owner's home over dinner.
Imagine if they had it at Colin Kaeperneck's mother's home.
Imagine if they had it at the Trump Hotel in Washington.
(20:14):
Each of these choices are should be very intentional choices,
and by the way, will be interpreted by people in
all sorts of different ways. I could see fans being
very angry that a meeting like that would be held
in um Selma or in Montgomery, or in any places
that have symbolic you know meaning. But all of that
(20:34):
to say is the same thing is true for you know,
a birthday party or a book event or a a
a sales meeting. And one of the ways to really
think boldly about the way you gather is to think
about having your place really work for you. So if
you are having you know, I know a publisher that
had a book event in a cemetery, um and already,
(20:56):
no matter what they do in the cemetery, they've already
transformed people's relations ship to the book and to the
author and to how they remember that event. And so
one of the things to think about is you're gathering
is where and how and what kind of strange venues
might you want to gather in? You think about, um,
what you're saying about the NFL thing like if they
had picked a venue like Selma, or the owners and
(21:16):
the players had walked across the bridge together or you
know that that that you could have really established a
very different feel for this meeting, and how interesting that
that could have been. You know, you talk about a
scene in the book where there are these four important
leaders that are attending a dinner event uh, the night
before a meeting, and there's this fifth really important world
leader who wants to attend it, but doesn't want to
(21:36):
go to the dinner, just wants to go to the
meeting the next day. I was curious, like, how do
you convince self important people, or you know, even people
who are gathering an event but are shy to fully
participate and buy into sort of the cadence of the
meeting and the various events that that are orchestrated or
plan for a reason. I mean, so it's a great question,
and what you're kind of talking about at some level
(21:58):
is the larger question of legitimacy. So in the example
in the book, we had a meeting on a Wednesday,
let's say, and um, it was a meeting where it
was important that the leaders that were coming together basically
interacted in a way that they wouldn't normally otherwise and
started to come with the spirit of openness. And so
(22:20):
one of the things that I did with had a
dinner the night before that was more like a dinner
party or even like a wedding party than a than
a kind of a work meeting. You know, there's candles
and um wine and like stories and structure and um.
And there was a state leader who couldn't make the
dinner the night before, or didn't want to or wasn't
(22:41):
willing to kind of come. And at some level, one
of the things that you are grappling with when you're
designing and experience for other people, UM is communicating with them.
One that is important but to whether or not your
your event kind of has legitimacy um and and what
I mean by that is whether or not people are
buying into your vision of what this is for and
(23:04):
whether they need to be there or not. At any
time you know two or more people come together, you know,
decisions need to be made often over the course of
any type of gathering, and basically who's in charge and
who needs you know, if if there's conflicts, how do
you actually deal with it? And so at some level
depending on the context. So in an organization, if you're
doing a gathering and there's a dinner the night before, UM,
(23:27):
in part because people have signed contracts and the authority
lies with the UM. You know, with the boss, you
can actually require people to show up to a dinner.
And by the way, that shouldn't be used lightly. So
I often say when I'm working with companies and they
say we can require people to attend the night before,
I often say, please, don't require them. I want them
(23:47):
to come of their own volition, because people behave very
differently if they're required to be somewhere versus if they
decide that they want to go. UM. And similarly, you know,
with a wedding or with with with a kind of
social gathering. UM. You know, to me, if people aren't
coming to whatever it is you you planned, I always say, like,
(24:09):
pick up the phone and call them, UM, you know,
if this is something that's important to you and explain
to them you know what it is, and UM on
why you'd love for them to be there. Texts, you know, email, Instagram,
everybody's online, but I rarely hear anybody's voice anymore. And
UM and actually just making a phone call. It goes
a long way. You know. I was amused by the
(24:30):
list that you put together of the fifteen ways to
make conferences suck less. And and because you know, Mango
and I have been to so many conferences over the years,
and so many terrible conferences over the years, and you know,
I don't envy those that have to put them together,
because it does seem like a really difficult thing to
put together a good conference, and so when you go
(24:51):
to a great one, it's really that much more impressive.
And I'm curious if you could share just a few
of your favorite ideas for how to put together this
type of active gathering. Mm hmm. It's a great question.
And you know there are conferences are on the rise,
and more and more people, um, More and more companies
are starting to have you know, confidence wings and conference arms.
(25:13):
Media companies are starting to have live events. So this
is something that work. I you know, I think we're
going to see more and more of So it's a
really important question. I would just say, kind of simply,
the two principles that I think make conferences fantastic um our,
intimacy and heat and UM. What I mean by that
(25:34):
one on the intimacy side. You know, there's all these
studies that show that, um, that people can connect much
more when you share your vulnerability and things that you
aren't working as well. Burnee Brown Um and sociologists like
her popularized these ideas about intimacy often between two people,
and I would just take that principle and apply it
(25:54):
to groups into larger, too larger gatherings. So, UM, when
a couple of a couple of things under intimacy, the
first is um to have people share in small groups
or in large things that aren't working rather than things
that are. So one of the things that I talked
about in the book is, you know, rather than training
everybody to kind of give their two minutes stumps speech
(26:16):
and all of you know, like how great you are,
what you're doing, how kind of clients that you serving,
or you know, whatever it is that you're doing your company,
to flip it around and give a sprout speech which
basically sharing all of the things in your work that
you actually are still curious about that you don't know
the answers to that you're trying to figure out. And
people are much more interested in kind of wanting to
(26:37):
know what's not going well and how they may actually help. UM.
One of the groups that does this well that I've
come across as the House of Genius, and they have
read it about in the book UM. They have gatherings
all over the world where they invite ten or twelve
people to come together to constitute what they call a
house UM and UH invite two or three entrepreneurs to
come in and get forty five minutes each to talk
(26:59):
about what's not working in their business or what they
need help with. And then UM those twelve people give
them all sorts of advice and ideas. It's a very
structured process, UM, but basically it ends up being, you know,
a really interesting evening because implicitly you're saying I need help,
and we tend to want to help each other. The
(27:19):
second thing is to do dinners where people share stories
and experiences from their life. UM. That demonstrates some kind
of struggle or some kind of um, you know, confusion,
because we at the end of the day want to
connect with each other in meaningful ways. And so I
think conferences that allow both space but also structure for
(27:41):
people to share what's actually going on in their life
to me are much more interesting. And then the second
part is heat. And what I mean by that coming
as a confique resolution facilitator, is anything that kind of
gets people's temperature, you know, rising in the room. Um.
It can be things that are controversial but controversial that
(28:02):
still serve the purpose. So controversial for just kind of
controversy's sake isn't particularly interesting, um, but controversial when it
kind of taps the core values of a community can
be extremely invigorating. We tend to avoid the things that
we think might you know, rufflesome feathers, and actually from
(28:22):
a perspective of gathering, those are the ones that actually,
you know, people want to stay in the room for,
so if it's a you know, a church gathering. Um.
One of the people interviewed for the book was a
secretary of the Society of Friends, basically Quaker communities, and
she said some of the best meetings that they had
had m this is the Philadelphia community Circle of Friends.
(28:44):
Society Friends was when they began to consciously have meetings
around whether or not to allow gay marriage in there
to acknowledge gay marriage in their communities, and um, rather
than avoiding it, they actually structured meetings around it. And
debates um in the Quaker format, which is if you're
moved to speak, speak and that you know, people come
(29:07):
alive when they're talking about and struggling with and listening
to one another about the things that most um define
them as a community. And I'm curious too about the
openings of conferences. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
you know, I think openings are extraordinarily important. And one
of the things that conferences can do is in the
(29:28):
first few moments any in any type of gathering, people
are walking in and wondering, you know, what's going on here?
Do I want to be here? What part of myself
do I show? Can I be jokey or should I
be more formal? And um? We as organizers often vastly
underestimate the importance of kind of setting the tone and
um and creating a environment where people have permission to
(29:52):
go up to each other and and find ways to
kind of go in and so UM. One of the
ways of a inference that I UM that I love
that I spoke to for this book is it's called
Spark Camp and it was started by five friends in
the media industry, and one of the things they do
early on their weekend gatherings. There there's their captive seventy people,
(30:13):
so that maintains an intimacy but still a buzz the
first night of the gathering, so I guess Friday night
they do introductions, you know, as many conferences do the
less than you would think. But the way they do
introductions is they take the weight off the guests for
having to introduce themselves and either be you know, stuck
in their humble brags or you know, all of the
(30:34):
awkward ways one wants to introduce oneself. And the conference
organizers give the conference what I think is such a gift,
which is they spend time ahead of time researching every
single one of their seventy guests, who often they don't
know themselves, and come up with these short, whimsical introductions.
And they gathered together in a room and they actually
read aloud each person's introduction without naming them. Um, and
(30:57):
they say, when you hear your helf stand and so
they may say, you know, this person met their husband
at a beekeeping convention and um. They are also one
of the foremost minds on artificial intelligence. They grew up
in Alaska, but actually because their parents were part of
the Air Force. They lived in twelve states before the
(31:18):
age of sixteen. And what happens is, you know, our
eyes are kind of darting around trying to figure out
who it is, but also you're not sure if there's
somebody else in the group that met their husband at
a beekeep being gone, you know, so sometimes you know,
two or three people stand up and then everyone laughs
and they have to kind of keep listening. And this
is brilliant exercise where it's interesting. Everybody is engaged because
(31:42):
you don't want to miss your own introduction, but everybody's
also engaged because there they're You're they're giving you seeds
of information that you can then go up to each
of the other sixty nine people in the room over
the course of the weekend and have three or four
different ways into conversation with them. And so they think
very beautifully about how do you early on give non
(32:07):
awkward or at least less awkward ways for people to
approach one another in meaningful ways about their work and
also about things that have nothing to do with their work.
More questions for PRIA after a quick break. I love
(32:32):
the idea too of you um sitting out and charting
out heat maps would you talk about in the book
and to orchestrate some of the heat But I'm also
curious about these two interesting events that you've pulled together.
One is fifteen Toasts and then these I'm here days,
And I was wondering if you could just talk a
little bit about that. Sure, So fifteen Toasts came from
(32:52):
this experience of going to events and having kind of
amazing people in the room, but feeling um that the
kind of modus operandi was showing off or or talking
about how great everything was. And specifically I was at
the World Economic Forum one of their annual meetings in
Abu Dhabi, and a colleague and I Tim Labret, who
(33:17):
were serving on the same council, realized that in all
of these meetings, even though we're supposed to be talking
about new models of leadership or values based leadership, it
tends to remain very heavy UM. And you know, or
is an opportunity for people to kind of promote their
company's latest initiative UM. And so we we we decided
(33:38):
to run an experiment where the night before we gathered
fifteen people from a number of the different councils and
invited them to come together over dinner off the record,
though UM we all agreed we could share what happened
at the dinner but not attributed to specific person. So
Chatham House Rules and fifteen Toasts basically was this um
(34:02):
experiment that we kind of made up along with my husband,
where everybody is asked to give a toast at some
point in the evening to a theme and you choose
the theme. The first one we ever did was what
is a good life? Not is what is the good life?
But what what makes for a good life? But you
can choose a theme that the group would be interested in.
It could be rebellion, it could be um borders, it
(34:26):
could be what does it mean to be American? It
could be anything. And over the course of the night,
people you know, clink their glass old school style, stand
up and share a story and experience from their life
UM that relates to the theme. And the only other
rule is that the last person has to sing their toast.
(34:46):
And what that does is it kind of speeds along
the toasts because basically most people used in the U
S context don't want to sing um, and so it's
this kind of playful way to get people to UM
do take a smaller risk, which is which is giving
their toasts. Um. And what happens over the course of
(35:06):
the night is you hear stories that are still along
a kind of organizing principle that people would never kind
of share in you know, in the in the context
like that, but when you hear about somebody you know,
falling in love for the first time or experiencing heartbreak. Um.
Or I remember one story that was shared in a
dinner that where the thing was strangers. Somebody shared that
(35:28):
their mother's life was saved because a stranger happened to
be walking past her. Their mother fainted, hit their head
on the ground, started bleeding. A stranger happened to walk
past them in the same moment called the police and
save their life. And because of that, the person sitting
at the table like existed, it was born. Um. There's
(35:50):
so much more after this dinner that you could go
and talk to, you know, talk to this person about
then if she simply told you that she was the
VP of sales that you know, such as such company. UM.
And so what fifteen toasts does and you could use
any format, but it allows people to share stories and
experiences um that are kind of you know off the
(36:12):
perhaps theme of the conference or kind of selling something
um but basically makes them complicated and human, and most
people want to talk to other people who are complicated
in human, because that's what each of us are. The
book is called The Art of Gathering, How We Meet
and Why It Matters, and it's available this week. But Priya,
thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much
for having me. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(36:48):
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the MIXI MIXI sound. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer
thing gave. Louesier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas
Adams and Eves. Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(37:10):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
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Thanks for the points Jason him
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