3 steps to turn everyday get-togethers into transformative gatherings

Why do some gatherings take off and others don't? Author Priya Parker shares three easy steps to turn your parties, dinners, meetings and holidays into meaningful, transformative gatherings.

When I was a child,

every other Friday,

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

an Indian and British, atheist, Buddhist,

agnostic, vegetarian, new age-y sometimes,

Democratic household.

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

and enter a white, Evangelical Christian,

conservative, Republican,

twice-a-week-churchgoing,

meat-eating family.

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

in the field of conflict resolution.

(Laughter)

Whether I was facilitating dialogues
in Charlottesville or Istanbul

or Ahmedabad,

the challenge was always the same:

despite all odds,

and with integrity,

how do you get people
to connect meaningfully,

to take risks,

to be changed by their experience?

And I would witness extraordinarily
beautiful electricity in those rooms.

And then I would leave those rooms

and attend my everyday
gatherings like all of you --

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

and many would fall flat.

There was a meaning gap

between these high-intensity
conflict groups

and my everyday gatherings.

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

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

but that's not what I was responding to.

As a facilitator,

you're taught to strip everything away

and focus on the interaction
between people,

whereas everyday hosts
focus on getting the things right --

the food, the flowers, the fish knives --

and leave the interaction
between people largely to chance.

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

to focus on making meaning
by human connection,

not obsessing with the canapés.

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

an Olympic hockey coach,
a Cirque du Soleil choreographer,

a rabbi, a camp counselor--

to better understand
what creates meaningful

and even transformative gatherings.

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

about the new rules of gathering.

So when most people plan a gathering,

they start with an off-the-rack format.

Birthday party? Cake and candles.

Board meeting?

One brown table, 12 white men.

(Laughter)

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

This not only leads to dull
and repetitive gatherings,

it misses a deeper opportunity

to actually address our needs.

The first step of creating
more meaningful everyday gatherings

is to embrace a specific
disputable purpose.

An expectant mother I know
was dreading her baby shower.

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

and opening gifts felt odd and irrelevant.

So she paused to ask:

What is the purpose of a baby shower?

What is my need at this moment?

And she realized it was
to address her fears

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

transition to parenthood.

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

And so on a sunny afternoon,
six women gathered.

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

they told her stories from her life

to remind her of the characteristics
she already carries --

bravery, wonder, faith, surrender --

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

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

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

Next, her husband came in,

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

first committing to keep
their marriage central

as they transitioned to parenthood,

but also future vows to their future son

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

and what would stop with this generation.

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

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

to share with the table.

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

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

Good.

It's specific.

It's disputable.

It's specific to them,

just as your gathering
should be specific to you.

The next step of creating
more meaningful everyday gatherings

is to cause good controversy.

You may have learned, as I did,

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

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

or that's its intention.

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

burning relevance.

The best gatherings learn
to cultivate good controversy

by creating the conditions for it,

because human connection
is as threatened by unhealthy peace

as by unhealthy conflict.

I was once working
with an architecture firm,

and they were at a crossroads.

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

and focus on the construction of buildings

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

focusing on beyond
the construction of spaces.

And there was real
disagreement in the room,

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

And so we hosted good controversy.

After a lunch break,
all the architects came back,

and we hosted a cage match.

They walked in,

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

the other one to represent design.

We threw white towels around their necks,

stolen from the bathroom -- sorry --

played Rocky music on an iPad,

got each a Don King-like manager

to rev them up and prepare them
with counterarguments,

and then basically made them each argue
the best possible argument

of each future vision.

The norm of politeness
was blocking their progress.

And we then had everybody else
physically choose a side

in front of their colleagues.

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

they broke an impasse.

Architecture won.

So that's work.

What about a hypothetical
tense Thanksgiving dinner?

Anyone?

(Laughter)

So first, ask the purpose.

What does this family need this year?

If cultivating good heat is part of it,

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

Choose a theme
related to the underlying conflict.

But instead of opinions,

ask everybody to share a story
from their life and experience

that nobody around the table
has ever heard,

to difference or to belonging

or to a time I changed my mind,

giving people a way in to each other

without burning the house down.

And finally, to create more meaningful
everyday gatherings,

create a temporary alternative world

through the use of pop-up rules.

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

Kind of boring or controlling, right?

Wrong.

In this multicultural,
intersectional society,

where more of us are gathered and raised

by people and with etiquette
unlike our own,

where we don't share the etiquette,

unspoken norms are trouble,

whereas pop-up rules allow us
to connect meaningfully.

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

So a team dinner,

where different generations are gathering

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

whoever looks at their phone first

foots the bill.

(Laughter)

Try it.

(Applause)

For an entrepreneurial advice circle
of just strangers,

where the hosts don't want
everybody to just listen

to the one venture capitalist
in the room --

(Laughter)

knowing laugh --

(Laughter)

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

For a mom's dinner,

where you want to upend the norms

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

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

(Laughter)

That's a real dinner.

Rules are powerful,

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

And in diverse societies,

pop-up rules carry special force.

They allow us to gather across difference,

to connect,

to make meaning together

without having to be the same.

When I was a child,

I navigated my two worlds
by becoming a chameleon.

If somebody sneezed in my mother's home,

I would say, "Bless you,"

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

To protect myself, I hid,

as so many of us do.

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

that I began to stop hiding.

And I realized that gatherings for me,

at their best,

allow us to be among others,

to be seen for who we are,

and to see.

The way we gather matters

because how we gather

is how we live.

Thank you.

(Applause)