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When I was a child,

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every other Friday,

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I would leave my mother
and stepfather's home --

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an Indian and British, atheist, Buddhist,

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agnostic, vegetarian, new age-y sometimes,

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Democratic household.

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And I would go 1.4 miles
to my father and stepmother's home

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and enter a white, Evangelical Christian,

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conservative, Republican,

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twice-a-week-churchgoing,

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meat-eating family.

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It doesn't take a shrink
to explain how I ended up

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in the field of conflict resolution.

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(Laughter)

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Whether I was facilitating dialogues
in Charlottesville or Istanbul

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or Ahmedabad,

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the challenge was always the same:

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despite all odds,

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and with integrity,

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how do you get people
to connect meaningfully,

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to take risks,

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to be changed by their experience?

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And I would witness extraordinarily
beautiful electricity in those rooms.

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And then I would leave those rooms

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and attend my everyday
gatherings like all of you --

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a wedding or a conference
or a back-to-school picnic --

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and many would fall flat.

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There was a meaning gap

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between these high-intensity
conflict groups

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and my everyday gatherings.

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Now, you could say, sure,
somebody's birthday party

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isn't going to live up to a race dialogue,

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but that's not what I was responding to.

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As a facilitator,

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you're taught to strip everything away

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and focus on the interaction
between people,

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whereas everyday hosts
focus on getting the things right --

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the food, the flowers, the fish knives --

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and leave the interaction
between people largely to chance.

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So I began to wonder how we might change
our everyday gatherings

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to focus on making meaning
by human connection,

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not obsessing with the canapés.

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And I set out and interviewed
dozens of brave and unusual hosts --

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an Olympic hockey coach,
a Cirque du Soleil choreographer,

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a rabbi, a camp counselor--

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to better understand
what creates meaningful

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and even transformative gatherings.

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And I want to share with you
some of what I learned today

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about the new rules of gathering.

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So when most people plan a gathering,

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they start with an off-the-rack format.

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Birthday party? Cake and candles.

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Board meeting?

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One brown table, 12 white men.

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(Laughter)

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Assuming the purpose is obvious,
we skip too quickly to form.

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This not only leads to dull
and repetitive gatherings,

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it misses a deeper opportunity

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to actually address our needs.

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The first step of creating
more meaningful everyday gatherings

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is to embrace a specific
disputable purpose.

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An expectant mother I know
was dreading her baby shower.

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The idea of "pin the diaper
on the baby" games

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and opening gifts felt odd and irrelevant.

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So she paused to ask:

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What is the purpose of a baby shower?

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What is my need at this moment?

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And she realized it was
to address her fears

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of her and her husband's --
remember that guy? --

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transition to parenthood.

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And so she asked two friends
to invent a gathering based on that.

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And so on a sunny afternoon,
six women gathered.

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And first, to address her fear of labor --
she was terrified --

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they told her stories from her life

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to remind her of the characteristics
she already carries --

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bravery, wonder, faith, surrender --

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that they believed would carry her
and help her in labor as well.

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And as they spoke, they tied a bead
for each quality into a necklace

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that she could wear around her neck
in the delivery room.

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Next, her husband came in,

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and they wrote new vows,
family vows, and spoke them aloud,

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first committing to keep
their marriage central

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as they transitioned to parenthood,

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but also future vows to their future son

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of what they wanted to carry with them
from each of their family lines

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and what would stop with this generation.

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Then more friends came along,
including men, for a dinner party.

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And in lieu of gifts, they each brought
a favorite memory from their childhood

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to share with the table.

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Now, you might be thinking
this is a lot for a baby shower,

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or it's a little weird
or it's a little intimate.

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Good.

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It's specific.

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It's disputable.

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It's specific to them,

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just as your gathering
should be specific to you.

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The next step of creating
more meaningful everyday gatherings

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is to cause good controversy.

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You may have learned, as I did,

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never to talk about sex, politics
or religion at the dinner table.

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It's a good rule in that
it preserves harmony,

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or that's its intention.

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But it strips away a core ingredient
of meaning, which is heat,

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burning relevance.

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The best gatherings learn
to cultivate good controversy

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by creating the conditions for it,

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because human connection
is as threatened by unhealthy peace

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as by unhealthy conflict.

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I was once working
with an architecture firm,

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and they were at a crossroads.

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They had to figure out whether they wanted
to continue to be an architecture firm

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and focus on the construction of buildings

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or pivot and become
the hot new thing, a design firm,

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focusing on beyond
the construction of spaces.

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And there was real
disagreement in the room,

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but you wouldn't know, because no one
was actually speaking up publicly.

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And so we hosted good controversy.

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After a lunch break,
all the architects came back,

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and we hosted a cage match.

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They walked in,

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we took one architect, put him
in one corner to represent architecture,

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the other one to represent design.

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We threw white towels around their necks,

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stolen from the bathroom -- sorry --

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played Rocky music on an iPad,

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got each a Don King-like manager

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to rev them up and prepare them
with counterarguments,

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and then basically made them each argue
the best possible argument

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of each future vision.

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The norm of politeness
was blocking their progress.

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And we then had everybody else
physically choose a side

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in front of their colleagues.

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And because they were able
to actually show where they stood,

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they broke an impasse.

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Architecture won.

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So that's work.

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What about a hypothetical
tense Thanksgiving dinner?

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Anyone?

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(Laughter)

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So first, ask the purpose.

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What does this family need this year?

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If cultivating good heat is part of it,

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then try for a night banning opinions
and asking for stories instead.

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Choose a theme
related to the underlying conflict.

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But instead of opinions,

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ask everybody to share a story
from their life and experience

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that nobody around the table
has ever heard,

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to difference or to belonging

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or to a time I changed my mind,

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giving people a way in to each other

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without burning the house down.

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And finally, to create more meaningful
everyday gatherings,

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create a temporary alternative world

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through the use of pop-up rules.

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A few years ago, I started noticing
invitations coming with a set of rules.

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Kind of boring or controlling, right?

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Wrong.

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In this multicultural,
intersectional society,

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where more of us are gathered and raised

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by people and with etiquette
unlike our own,

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where we don't share the etiquette,

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unspoken norms are trouble,

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whereas pop-up rules allow us
to connect meaningfully.

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They're one-time-only constitutions
for a specific purpose.

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So a team dinner,

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where different generations are gathering

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and don't share the same
assumptions of phone etiquette:

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whoever looks at their phone first

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foots the bill.

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(Laughter)

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Try it.

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(Applause)

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For an entrepreneurial advice circle
of just strangers,

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where the hosts don't want
everybody to just listen

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to the one venture capitalist
in the room --

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(Laughter)

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knowing laugh --

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(Laughter)

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you can't reveal what you do for a living.

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For a mom's dinner,

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where you want to upend the norms

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of what women who also happen
to be mothers talk about when they gather,

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if you talk about your kids,
you have to take a shot.

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(Laughter)

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That's a real dinner.

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Rules are powerful,

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because they allow us to temporarily
change and harmonize our behavior.

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And in diverse societies,

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pop-up rules carry special force.

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They allow us to gather across difference,

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to connect,

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to make meaning together

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without having to be the same.

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When I was a child,

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I navigated my two worlds
by becoming a chameleon.

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If somebody sneezed in my mother's home,

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I would say, "Bless you,"

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in my father's, "God bless you."

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To protect myself, I hid,

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as so many of us do.

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And it wasn't until I grew up
and through conflict work

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that I began to stop hiding.

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And I realized that gatherings for me,

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at their best,

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allow us to be among others,

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to be seen for who we are,

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and to see.

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The way we gather matters

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because how we gather

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is how we live.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)