174. Fix Meetings: Transform Gatherings Into Meaningful Moments

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Being purposeful in the way we come together, in the way we gather, can decide and define the success of our group communication. 

[00:00:11] My name is Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. 

[00:00:21] Today, I'm looking forward to speaking with Priya Parker. Priya is best known for her book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. She's an expert facilitator and strategic advisor. She's worked with organizations and individuals worldwide to reimagine how we come together in both personal and professional settings. Priya, thanks for being here. I'm so excited for our conversation. 

[00:00:45] Priya Parker: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:00:46] Matt Abrahams: All right, shall we get started? 

[00:00:48] Priya Parker: Let's do it. 

[00:00:49] Matt Abrahams: Okay. In your book, The Art of Gathering, which I really have enjoyed, you emphasize the importance of intentionality when bringing people together. How can we apply that same level of intentionality to smaller, more everyday conversations and gatherings we have so that we can create more meaningful connections with those we're interacting with? 

[00:01:10] Priya Parker: A huge part of what I was trying to do with The Art of Gathering was interrupting the autopilot scripts that we are on in modern life. Whether it's the assumption of how a meeting is run, whether it's an assumption of how one weds or how one mourns or how one parties. And so much of the invitation to that interruption is to actually pause and ask the question, why are we doing this? What is the purpose? What is the need in this community or in this classroom or in this team that by bringing together a specific group of people, we might be able to address. And that same relationship, looking at what is the need here? What is the purpose? Why am I doing this? Is as applicable to everyday conversation because our everyday conversations are also on autopilot.

[00:02:01] Our everyday conversations are also on scripts. And scripts can absolutely be helpful, but in modern life, so many of us are looking for more meaning, more connection. If you're working in any modern workplace or join any type of association or club, we're not all the same. And so we don't have shared inherited ways of being together. So intentionality is the first step to actually pause, and ask, and to look, what is happening here and what is my intent and how do we begin to make something anew. 

[00:02:35] Matt Abrahams: I really like this notion of being intentional with the meetings and gatherings that we have to take a pause and think about it. We all know that there are many meetings and gatherings that aren't needed. And then there are probably many that aren't happening that would be very beneficial. So taking that moment to pause and to think about what's important and what's not really makes a lot of sense. Do you have advice and guidance and criteria perhaps that we should think through as we're thinking about, is a gathering warranted here?

[00:03:02] Priya Parker: So I'm a conflict resolution facilitator. And so I think a lot about communication and helping people meaningfully connect through dialogue. And I started writing The Art of Gathering in 2012, came out in 2018 and two years later, gathering was canceled. Part of what happened when the pandemic hit was that in most of our collective life, everything was temporarily interrupted. And part of what happened, particularly in our workplaces, was when every meeting collectively stopped we began to actually ask these first sort of questions, which is when and where and why and how should we meet and who decides.

[00:03:44] And so part of what has happened over the last four years, so many of our institutions is we got off of autopilot because we couldn't meet in the same old ways. So whether it's a nonprofit asking, traditionally, raising ninety percent of its revenue one night a year at their gala, do we do this on Zoom? Asking these core questions. What happens when all of the board members can't be in the room? Do we put everyone on Zoom, even if they're in the same room? Life is a series of coordination questions. Communication is a series of coordination questions. How people sit, what room they're in, and facilitators and communication experts and sociologists have thought about questions like this for years.

[00:04:29] But what the pandemic did is it democratized these questions and made everyone have to actually ask, how do we coordinate so that we can be efficient? How do we coordinate so that we can fight well? How do we coordinate so that people are off their scripts and not just giving their stump speeches. 

[00:04:43] Matt Abrahams: I hadn't really thought of it this way, but the pandemic actually was a catalyst and an accelerant for some of the things you talk about. Because it did force all of us to all of a sudden disrupt our scripts and think really about what's important. And I think people are still remembering that and challenging the way they think about meetings and gatherings today. In your work, you often talk about the power of asking the right questions when hosting a gathering. What advice do you have to ensure that we ask questions that have impact? 

[00:05:13] Priya Parker: Being a good question asker opens the entire world. If there is one skill that you can just get really good at as a parent, as a boss, as a teacher, as a friend, it's almost like sorcery. It opens up their sense of self, a whole entire new world of possibility, imagination, and it's a learnable skill. And when we're bringing people together who don't necessarily want to be brought together, but realize they need to, is what is the right question? What question are we asking this group? What is the right amount of vulnerability? What is the right amount of relevance?

[00:05:49] And a very simple equation I often write about is called the magical equation for good questions. And here's what it is. A good question for a group, is one that everybody is interested in answering and everybody is interested in hearing each other's answers. So I'll give a simple example. One of my favorite questions to ask in a Zoom, particularly in a large group where you're just trying to warm people up and put into the chat boxes. What is the first concert you went to and who took you? Particularly in work context when there's dozens of people all of a sudden, there's so much shared context.

[00:06:26] Oh, my gosh. Tony Braxton. Wow. Madonna. Michael Jackson. I didn't realize they were that old, right? And this waterfall of so much information. And then also, who took me? My mom, my dad, my older sister, my stepsister, after my parents divorced, it was the first activity we did together. And so all of a sudden, when you have the right question, it should be appropriately bounded for the community, appropriate for work or appropriate for an intergenerational family or whatever your context might be. But learning to ask a question that sparks a group, that helps give them shared context and meaning, and expands their notions of each other is a really powerful skill. 

[00:07:05] Matt Abrahams: I really like framing questions as this magic sorcery, because you're right, it opens things up, it allows you to connect, it allows you to explore things very well, and your guidance of a good magical question is a question that everyone is interested in answering and everybody is interested in hearing others answers makes a lot of sense. I have to know your first concert and who took you. 

[00:07:27] Priya Parker: My first concert was Sweet Honey in the Rock. They are an all women's a cappella group in Washington, DC and I saw it in a church. And it was my cool, older step sister, who's ten years older than me, right after my parents, my mother, and her father got married, and she took me with her friends. And I just thought it was so cool. 

[00:07:46] Matt Abrahams: You facilitated conversations in some high stakes environments. When emotions run high, how do you recommend that we maintain focus on what truly matters without losing sight of the human element and getting sucked into all of that emotion? 

[00:08:00] Priya Parker: I mean, this is like the ten million dollar question that is relevant to every team, that's relevant right now in whatever nation you're, you know, listening from, which is how do you hold heat without burning the house down? And I'm biracial and bicultural. I'm half Indian, half white, American. In both sides of my family we are very good at when heat arises, we're very good at just, sticking our head in the sand, right? Nothing to see here, folks. And I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, but I'm a conflict averse resolution facilitator.

[00:08:32] And my deepest instincts to this day, twenty-five years into facilitating, my hands get sweaty, my heart starts palpitating when I can feel heat rising in the room. And what I have most learned, I think I'm a relatively effective facilitator because I have deep empathy for the people in the room who also want to flee. And I have built skills as a facilitator to train myself to stay in the room. And so the first thing is when you are holding, whether you're a manager, whether you're thinking about holding a conversation with an extended family, whatever, set of friends, you can only hold a conversation as deep or as hot as the facilitator themselves can hold. 

[00:09:08] And so the first thing is to start to becoming aware of your own kind of relationship to heat. The second is, heat is relevance. People get upset about, or people get worked up about things that matter to them. And so at some level, like being a homing device for heat is something that is, it's a way of knowing like what matters to these people? What are the lines in this community? What are our shared values or our values where we are actually apart? And so part of having a relationship to heat is realizing when heat is in the room, it means you're talking about something that matters. But the last thing I'll say is you can grow cultures of heat and different cultures are attuned to whether or not something is seen as dangerous in terms of conflict. And in any type of team, you can grow people's muscles to normalize heated, respectful exchange. 

[00:09:55] Matt Abrahams: First, I love this notion of holding heat without burning the house down and just calling it heat rather than conflict, rather than many other terms we might use, I think is really important. And really, I like that notion of heat is all about relevance. It means you're touching on something that's important to people. So don't run away from it, lean into it. 

[00:10:14] I find it ironic, as you pointed out, that you, as somebody who helps people engage in conflict, resolve conflict, manage conflict, are conflict averse. You don't have to be embracing of conflict to be good at managing conflict, and that's a powerful lesson. I appreciate you sharing that. I'm curious about the communication strategies you recommend for how hosts can actually encourage active participation and genuine engagement for everyone, particularly when the groups are large and some people's voices might get overshadowed by others. 

[00:10:47] Priya Parker: The first thing when I was a baby facilitator, one of my mentors would often say to us, ninety percent of the success of any gathering happens before anyone enters the room. And when you apply it to gathering, that means that at first of all, when you're thinking about participation and inviting participation, don't begin at the moment people enter the room or the zone. They're thinking about and being primed for what is expected of them and how to be a successful guest from the moment they receive the invitation.

[00:11:17] And so as you're thinking about what kind of participation am I hoping for? First of all, really good gatherers are really good namers. The language between, the difference between a meeting versus a workshop, right? Just the social contract between a meeting, which is sort of a vague term versus a workshop, right? You're already going to roll your sleeves up. There's an inherent invitation to workshop, and this is absolutely communication. Like invitations are such missed opportunities because we think they're a carrier of logistics, right? Name, date, time, and place. And so the first way to begin to think about participation is what is the purpose of this meeting?

[00:11:55] Who actually needs to be there? Does it need to be this big? If it is this big, what are the different roles we're asking people to play? What are we actually calling this thing? And the second thing is an invitation at some level as a story. Versus just like everyone getting onto a Zoom and be like, hey, everyone, there's a hundred and fifty of you here. We hope everyone gets a chance to ask a question. Come one, come all. You're not actually priming them, you're not setting them up for success. It's a false notion of democracy. 

[00:12:22] And so this is what I said earlier, a gathering is group coordination. It starts with language, but then it is also thinking about the structure of the group, the sequencing, where and how power is shared, and who can and should be listening based on what the purpose of the meeting is.

[00:12:35] Matt Abrahams: In many ways, we're going back to our discussion about questions. As somebody who is doing the gathering, there are some critical questions you have to ask yourself as you just Identified. What's the arrangement? What's the power? Who has to be there? What's the environment like? And those questions can help. That language sets expectations for how the interaction will happen and how people will be treated. The work happens before the gathering. The invitation is critical. So few of us actually pay any attention to the invitation of the calendar invite. And you've highlighted so many ways that it can be empowering.

[00:13:11] We've talked a bit about what we do in advance, the inviting and how important that is. I'm curious, do you have thoughts on what happens after the gathering to help really cement it? You know, how things end really impact how we feel about things. What thoughts do you have about at the conclusion of the gathering, but also after the fact? Are there things you recommend we do? 

[00:13:30] Priya Parker: I'm a lifelong student of improv and one of my early teachers used to say good actors think about how they enter the stage. Great actors obsessed over how they leave. You enter the stage and you have this big opening and then when your lines are done, you just, okay, I'm done here, right? Nothing to see here, folks. And similarly in our gatherings, absolutely obsess over the first five percent of the opening because it sets the track for the rest of it. But also think about the last five percent. And studies show, including communication patterns, that over the course of a meeting or an experience or a conversation, people disproportionately remember the first five percent, a peak experience, and the last five percent.

[00:14:10] And as you said, most gatherings, most meetings don't end. They stop, right? Oh, gotta go. Okay, great. See you next time. Gotta jump to my next call. And I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. But when you think about and plan for the last five percent the closing ten minutes, the closing five minutes, to just help people. Whenever I speak with organizations or companies, when there's people actually on the Zoom or webinar, the last five minutes, they'll say, how would you like to close? And I always say, we've spent fifty-five minutes together. Can you pop into the chat one thing you're taking from today? What is the one, what is one insight or one aha?

[00:14:43] And then you see, I get to see, what resonated. All sorts of things happen in a meeting. And if you don't debrief at the meeting, they're going to be debriefing on the Uber ride home. Debrief with the group, make meaning with the group. What happened here? What's the meaning of this conversation? Was that the worst conversation we ever had? Or was that a breakthrough? 

[00:15:01] Matt Abrahams: I love this distinction between ending and stopping because most of us just stop. And what you're talking about is a sense of closure, a sense of ending. And often these endings serve as beginnings or preparation for the next gathering. Most of the time, these things get revisited and it sounds like there's a lot of work we can do in the end of the gathering that sets us up for the beginning of the next one. And I really appreciate that. 

[00:15:28] Priya, before we end, I like to ask all my guests, three questions. One, I make up just for you and two, I ask across everybody. Are you up for that? 

[00:15:35] Priya Parker: I'm up for it. 

[00:15:36] Matt Abrahams: You've shared with us lots of great ideas and activities. Do you have a really quick, short icebreaker you like to use, or you'd like to participate in and gatherings you're a participant in? 

[00:15:47] Priya Parker: There's one that I actually attended for a dinner that I thought was hilarious and I started borrowing it, which is, what is a unpopular low stakes position you hold? Right? And so people are like ketchup is a terrible sauce. Or mustard is really the unsung hero of condiments. It creates actually some of that banter and some of that heat and allows people, it's equalizing. Everyone has a low stakes, unpopular opinion. And it allows people to laugh and starts to just warm up the crowd in a way that then actually counterintuitively shows we can hold different opinions than each other. 

[00:16:27] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, I see the value in that and that it sets the stage for discussing different points of view, but it does so in a way that has less heat. Question number two, who is a communicator you admire and why? 

[00:16:40] Priya Parker: Congressman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I think she is one of the greatest communicators of her generation. First, she deeply understands, like, great communicators, the different tools at her disposal and when to use what. When to post a video on Twitter, versus when to go on a morning show, versus when to ask me any things on Instagram. So she's incredibly versatile in her tools, which is unusual. She deeply listens and assumes that people are coming with the best of intent, even when they're angry. And she just so deeply, deeply knows her stuff. 

[00:17:18] Matt Abrahams: I agree that she communicates very well, and I encourage people to look at the authenticity, the directness, and the appropriateness of content and channel through which it's delivered. Question number three. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 

[00:17:36] Priya Parker: Getting clear on intent, getting clear on desired outcome and listening and paying deep attention to the other person. 

[00:17:47] Matt Abrahams: So really being clear on where you're coming from and being open to listening and understanding where the other person is coming from.

[00:17:55] Thank you, Priya, so much for your time and for your insight. The purpose driven approach to gatherings is incredibly helpful. We need to spend more time, not just in the gathering itself, but in the orchestrating of the gathering and making sure that it ends well. Your advice and guidance are incredibly helpful.

[00:18:15] Priya Parker: It's been a pleasure to be your guest. 

[00:18:17] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To enjoy more from Priya Parker, check out Think Fast Talk Smart Premium at fastersmarter.io/premium to hear her full Deep Think episode. To learn more about gatherings and meetings, please listen to our two part miniseries episodes 124 and 125 with Karin Reed, Joe Allen, and Elise Keith. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us.