Priya Parker on gathering well
Image Credit: Photographer, Adam Ferguson
How We Live Now with Katherine May:
Priya Parker on gathering well
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When it comes to getting together, Priya Parker turns our assumptions on their heads: gatherings, she says, benefit from firm rules and careful management, which allow us to relax more, communicate better, and come away feeling positive. It’s all about clarity of purpose. A lack of structure leads to chaotic and draining events, and may even put us in conflict.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Good morning. I'm having tea in my garden. The birds are really singing today. The sun's out, the skies are blue, it's cold. There's a starling on my chimney stack, and it's making the most extraordinary noises chirping and then clicking. Oh, he's now having an altercation with a pigeon. It's quite exciting this. I think some mornings all of nature thinks it's spring when it's really November. We are all a bit stuck in the house. First H was ill and then I got ill and now Bert's ill. So it's been a long couple of weeks of everybody feeling exhausted and fed up and very confined, really. I'm beginning to feel a bit better, and so, of course, now I want to get out and I have to look after Bert because he's off school.
These are the moments when I really realize that I think I'm quite a solitary person, but I do like the company of others just a little bit or even... Actually, I like the chance to be on my own, but not in my house. It's hard to please me really. So I'm out here soaking in a little bit of winter sunshine, which is thinner than summer sunshine, but I don't mind that too much. I know I said this a lot, but it's important to take in as much as you can whenever it's there, and to go out and feel those changes in the air. I've really noticed in the last few days that the air has changed. It's much, much damper, but it smells really different. You can smell the cold coming. It's also been very windy. I always think a new season blows in on the wind. I quite like to sit with these moments of transition all over my social media, where I'm seeing people get complaining about it and worrying about it and saying, "Oh God, you can really feel winter coming." With a sense of dread.
I don't dread it so much, I just think it's different. And I think if we ride that change very deliberately, very intentionally, It opens up a very different relationship with that season that's coming. It lets you prepare, it lets you think how to manage it. For me, it means I've got out a load of my winter clothes. I've got my jumpers out from last year, my sweaters, sorry, Americans. I know it means something different for you. And I have one of those little gadgets that shaves off the bubbles. I used to use a razor, which just I ended up making holes in loads of stuff. So now, I have got one of the electric ones. But does a really nice job of making everything look fresh again. So I've been doing that. I've washed everything. I've put some nice liners in my drawers and mothballs feeling good about winter coming anyway. Well, this talk of being alone and being separate from other people is actually a very good segue into this week's guest who is Priya Parker, who I've really wanted to invite onto the show because of the way she talks about gathering.
I think it's almost counter instinctive to say that the best gatherings are ones with strong rules imposed. But for me, as an autistic person, I love gatherings where I know the rules, where I have a clear roadmap, where I know when it starts and ends, what I'm supposed to wear, what's going to happen. It really makes a huge difference to my comfort. And I've noticed as someone who's run a lot of gatherings myself over many years, that the more clear I can be about the exact nature of that gathering, the more it helps people to actually relax into the gathering. The rules have to be reasonable. They're only followed by common consent. But the minute I read Priya's work, I was totally bought into it. It told me something that I already knew but hadn't articulated, which I think often are the books that hit you the most. And of course, it's incredibly pertinent to us in this season where we're thinking about how we can come back together again. Anyway, I won't say any more than that. Have a listen, I'll be back later.
Priya Parker trained as a conflict resolution and dialogue facilitator and now helps organizations and individuals to create transformative gatherings. Her bestselling book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters shows how good gatherings come from conscious hosting. Priya, welcome. I hope that was an okay introduction.
Priya Parker:
Thank you so much for having me. That was a beautiful introduction. And as you know, openings matter.
Katherine May:
I know you've made me very, very conscious of how I open the space for you today.
Priya Parker:
I'm sorry, and you're welcome.
Katherine May:
Actually, I mentioned this before we started recording, but for me, when I read The Art of Gathering, I had this lovely rising up a recognition because it spoke to a job that I used to do a long time ago before I had my son, where I used to facilitate groups of teachers actually to help them to reflect on their practice and often to reinvigorate their approach to their whole profession because we know how tired teachers are for now.
And I've run lots of workshops since, but I had this wonderful moment of recognition of bringing about gatherings as a skillset and how you can almost sculpt the room to create the right environment. The first thing I want to ask you really is, I guess for some people your advice on gathering might seem almost counterintuitive because you don't think it's fun to be laissez-faire and to just let things go with the flow, do you?
Priya Parker:
Well, I think it's important to host and to attend gatherings that you want to attend that give you great joy, that perhaps even give you a sense of peace that you approach these moments with a spirit of generosity. And I think in many of our gatherings, whether particularly in our communities with our loved ones, with our friends outside of work, but even inside of work, we tend to under host. And what I mean by that is in part in not thinking ahead of times with more intention around why do I want to bring people together? What do I hope is actually happening in the room? We under guide our guests and we protect them. And what I mean by that is basically when I started conducting this research for the Art of Gathering years ago, well before a global pandemic that band gatherings, I started to realize a pattern, which is, I was looking at two things.
I was looking at what are the elements of transformative gatherings, meaningful gatherings, gatherings in which people aren't texting under the table, wondering when they're going to leave, but are so riveted by the conversation or the laughter or the person next to them that people stay well beyond when they're planning to leave. And our changed by it in some way, even in some small way. And one of the things that I found was that in community after community, in gathering after gathering meaning lies in specificity. And in many traditional communities, there are very elaborate rituals that still give the people in those communities deep meaning. And when I say traditional, people who are born in the same plot of land, who pray to the same God, who eat the same food and follow the same dietary restrictions.
I'm half Indian, if you go to Southern India, and you go to a red thread tying ceremony at the moment where the red thread is tied around a specific wrist in a specific community, everyone bursts into tears. Why? Because they understand what that symbol is. They understand that it's a crossing of a specific phase of life. They understand that this is not just important for the individual, but of all of the people who raised them, et cetera, et cetera. And as we've modernized and globalized and diversified, all influences that I have deeply benefited from as a biracial person, as a woman, as a brown person, in trying to not impose a specific way, in trying to not offend one another. Our gatherings have become vague and diluted.
Katherine May:
Interesting.
Priya Parker:
And we all end up in the living room sipping beers or the same conference happens again and again and again and again. The panel is this format that for some reason has taken over all structures of conferences even though it's not a particularly useful format. And so just go back to your spirit of laissez-faire, I would reframe it slightly, which is most people are seeking meaning, right? Seeking some jolt, seeking some sense of connectedness with other people. I love being alone. I think being alone and being still is this incredibly powerful gift, it's a privilege. And when I'm going to be with others, I hope that that time is well spent. And I think in many of our gatherings, it's not.
Katherine May:
Actually, the other part of me that really responded to your very clear rules for gathering is myself as an autistic person. Because actually I will often say like, "Oh, I love my own company. I don't really like going out." But that's not true. What I don't like is entering disordered spaces where I can't understand what the rules are, but are governing them.
Priya Parker:
Beautiful, beautiful.
Katherine May:
And I love it when those rules are stated. In some way, I don't need a sheet. But I love it when we all know what's happening. What I hate is being in gatherings that feel directionless when I don't know when I'm going to eat, when I don't know when I'm next going to get a drink, when don't know the shape of the evening and I don't know when I'm supposed to go home. All of those tiny prompts help me so much.
Priya Parker:
I love that you've brought this up and I couldn't agree more. I think whether it's autism, whether it's being part of any community in which you don't, for whatever reason, know the codes, right? Know that in specific German social classes, as it's been described to me, when you're supposed to say gesundheit, if someone sneezes and when you're supposed to stay quiet, right?
Katherine May:
Yup.
Priya Parker:
And part of The Art of Gathering is my intention with it, is that this is a deeply, deeply accessible democratic set of skills and set of guides in part because when we gather, again in traditional communities, when we are all the same norms and the ways of doing things, knowing what to eat, knowing in what order, all of the things you mentioned, knowing what time to show up, knowing what time to leave, those are socialized in you from childhood. And then your neighbors or your communities all share broadly the same codes.
And for most of us, particularly those who live in cities, which is as of 2007, the majority of civilization, it means that we have different assumptions about how to be, and the core of The Art of Gathering is how do we meaningfully connect without all having to be the same? And I often talk about gatherings as being social contracts and people will say, "As a dinner party, a social contract, really? Loosen up, Priya. And when I say that I'm trained, my education, my undergraduate education is in political social thought, basically political philosophy. And when I say that, people say-
Katherine May:
Great. We both have the same undergraduate education. Yeah.
Priya Parker:
Really?
Katherine May:
Yeah.
Priya Parker:
I have a feeling we have many things in common. And when you say a dinner party and people say the dinner party is not a social contract. Well, we back into it, right? When someone doesn't bring a bottle of wine and someone else says, "Wow, how rude." They've broken an unspoken social code within a specific community. And so part of thoughtful gathering, particularly in diverse groups is first, is to orient specificity not around identity, but around need. And that need not be serious.
I got a new rug, right? This is a real example, Dittmeier, she's an expat in France. She got a new Turkish rug she was really excited about. She hadn't in a funk as she describes it from the pandemic, hadn't met any of her neighbors. And she decided to throw a tiny rug party, and people came together and she unfurled the rug. And then spontaneously, her neighbors started telling stories about how it piece of furniture began to change their life in some strange way. They changed the couch and actually changed the relationship and their family, yada, yada, yada. But part of when we are explicit about what the purpose is and how people can show up and it can be playful ways, it can be humorous, it allows people who aren't just like you to meaningfully participate.
Katherine May:
Yeah. It's inclusive. It's genuinely inclusive.
Priya Parker:
It's inclusive.
Katherine May:
Yeah. As you're speaking, I'm thinking of so many examples where the rules weren't explicit for me. And the shame that we feel when we don't understand the rules is so real and it's such a social barrier. Thinking of a time when I was, I think 16 or 17, and I was invited to stay at my stepmother's parents' house on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. And nobody said anything about dress code. So I turned up in what I wore all the time, which was a pair of leggings and a long jumper, that was my uniform at that moment in my life. And we all were having tea and a chat. And then there was a moment when they said, "Okay, we're going to retire now and dinner's at 8:00 or whatever." So I was like, "Ooh, that's weird."
So I went back up to my little room and sat on my camp bed and my stepmother knocked on the door and said, "You do know they dress for dinner, don't you?" And I was like, "I have." And it was just horrifying. I'd fallen foul of rules that I didn't even know exist in anybody's house. But actually, I think we can so easily do that to other people. We can visit that on our own guests without really-
Priya Parker:
Realizing it. Absolutely.
Katherine May:
Yeah. Without understanding it. Yeah.
Priya Parker:
And I think I love that example. I'm sorry for that example, but I love you sharing that example because it's not just why does this matter? It's not just for the honoring of guests that are different from you. It's actually, to be frank, like the core of living in a multiracial democracy, which is if we are so much, just to geek out for a little bit, so much of strong civic and social fabric and social health is what sociologists think of as bridging communities, not just bonding communities. So bridging communities is when people spend time with each other, who across communities, across lines of difference. And healthy societies have both. You have time in whatever you think of it as your own, whether it's religious, whether it's racial, whether it's interests of softball players gather, and what I call in the book pop-up rules, which are temporary invented rules at a specific moment in time that are explicit and explained, allow people to come together as opposed to what we're talking about is etiquette.
Which etiquette is an implicit set of rules that you only know by really being part of a community for a long time. And I think so much of modern life is the skill of having empathy for... Having a sense of who you are and what you want for a night, and then also having the empathy for setting people up to choose to be able to meaningfully participate in that. I'll give a simple example. I'll give a couple examples. The Art of Gathering came out in 2018, and as you know from penning multiple books, if you're lucky, a journalist calls you and asks you to talk about it. So a journalist called me up, Jancee Dunn, she's a really amazing writer, and she was assigned, I think for Real Simple Magazine, I'm forgetting now to write a story about me helping her to art of gathering a phi a dinner party.
And I said to her, "What do you think that means?" And she was like, "I don't know, but this is my assignment." And I said, "Okay, let me just walk you through how I would think about it." She says, "Great." So I said, "Okay, what is a specific need in your life right now that by bringing together a group of people you might be able to address?" And she said, "For a dinner party?" And I said, "Just go along with it. Just go along with it." And she said, "Okay, I don't know if this counts, but I'm a worn out mom." And the other day I was at a friend's house and she cut me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into triangles and fed it to me on a plate, and I burst into tears and I said, "Why did you burst into tears?" And she said, "Because I realized it's the first time in a long time where I was being taken care of." And she said, "What if I threw a dinner party for my other worn out moms?" And I said, "Great, give it a name." This is me helping her to meaning make and communicate what this vision is. She said, "The worn out moms hootenanny."And then I said, "And give it a rule." And she said, "If you talk about your children, you have to take a tequila shot."
Katherine May:
No, great. Why do I sign up?
Priya Parker:
Yeah, exactly. And she did it. And again, when you meaningfully gather, if everything's a social contract, the opening salvo, the constitution, if you will, is the invitation. So I said, "Put in the subject line, the worn out mom's hootenanny, write the rule, write the peanut butter jelly sandwich story in the invitation." All six women are RSVP, yes. Within the first 45 minutes she went on and did it. I think they ended up ordering takeout in part to embody the evening. And part of what she did just to come back to this idea of popup rules, is we think of rules as sources of control or sources of... Can only be a removal of agency without any benefit? But part of what she was doing was she was allowing six people for that evening to decide if they want to attend and then to understand at some level the kinds of conversations she was wanting with a bit of a playful punishment or maybe for some people a reward for other types.
And this is an example of a pop-up rule I love in part because while it's funny, she's actually doing somewhat radical in her community, which is she's shifting the norms around what parents can talk about when they come together and take that identity off for a moment and say, "Yes, we can be parents or mothers and we can also be journalists and we can also be community members and we can also be newspaper readers." I talk about the dinner on Blanc in the book, which is sort of these massive pop-up dinners where everyone wears white, and they're controversial and they can be seen as exclusive for different reasons. But part of the fascination of them is they're giving people a common code that's explicit that people can decide if they want to enter and engage in. And it's temporary. And if you want to have a different gathering, a different night where you explain what the rules are and people decide they're signing up for this, come on in.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, that's fine. And I'm thinking about how often when we gather, we do something that changes the rules of everyday life to mark that change in meeting. We dance, for example, which we don't often do in a mundane time. Or I'm thinking about my friend Kat's monthly full moon potluck gathering that she holds in Texas where she gathers with some friends to celebrate every single full moon. They all bring some food and they engage in acts of divination, someone brings a tarot pack or something. And they're a very specific change of mode for these very busy professional women. They're thinking about these bigger themes when they gather. And I'm struck by the beauty of that, by the effort it takes to make a different meaning and to have that real change of mind and change of action.
Priya Parker:
It's a beautiful example. And when I was researching this book, I spent time with game designers, I spent time with all sorts of people, other people credited with consistently creating transformative experiences. And I learned from some of these game designers that in the history of game design theology, if you could call it that, there was this, I think it was a Dutch game designer who had this concept called the Magic Circle. And basically, as it was described to me is that there's this magic circle where games are basically this magical world where through a set of rules, and it can be pick up soccer, right? The tree is the back post, where the grass meets the cement is the sidelines. Someone does something you don't like, you can call a time-out. We imagine a temporary alternative world together. And that, by the way, is actually every gathering.
So every time, this magic making, right? I dream something up in my head, I think I'm turning 27 or 47 or 72. Wouldn't it be delightful if I could have everyone come and fill in the blank? Dance, sing, give a TED Talk, whatever it is, it literally doesn't matter. But gathering is acts of manifestation and they're acts of persuasion. You're creating this imaginative, and this is true in the work workforce. I think, right now in the global pandemic, at least in knowledge-based work, there is huge controversy around when and how and what and where should people meet, should colleagues meet and who decides. And a huge part of what's up for contestation is basically what is worthy around meeting for.
And so part of your full moon party example is such a beautiful example. And if you think about it, that's every gathering. And particularly right now in our... When so many gatherings are still in this moment h occurring online, if you have these online Zoom calls or choose your technology, we're ricocheting, we're whiplash between different gatherings and different identities. And you're sitting in the same chair, right? You're going from perhaps a parent teacher conference on one Zoom call and then you exit and you go to a work meeting and you exit and you go to a friend's book talk.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And you're a completely different person. Yeah.
Priya Parker:
Yeah. And these are different worlds and they, it takes some shifting, but whether you're hosting or whether you're guesting, gatherings are temporary alternative worlds. And as we begin to think about that, it becomes incredibly interesting and fun, but also beautiful and also responsibility to create and to shape and to hold and then to close.
Katherine May:
Yeah. Because one of the things that you learn when you're an experienced gatherer of people is to manage those transitions, isn't it? That's definitely part of your job to ease people between different modes and different moments. Yeah. Maybe this is a perfect time for you to be speaking about this because have we ever been so conscious about the quality of our gatherings as we have now? The pandemic has really forced us to connect with our desire to come together in the first place, but also to feel the... I don't know, we are more sensitive to the changes in mode, I guess, or texture as we gather. We're picking up on them in ways that we perhaps were numb to before we got separated.
Priya Parker:
Through taking gathering from us, we began to see it, right? We started this conversation, you asked me to read the opening of The Art of Gathering. And part one of the first lines of the book is when governments, when cities, when nations begin to turn to authoritarianism, one of the first rights to go is the freedom to assemble. Why? Because of what happens when people do come together. And part of what we saw when we couldn't gather is how much we rely on it to raise money, to learn, to witness, to wed, to mourn, to grieve, to make decisions. And in my lifetime and somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about and setting gatherings, I've never seen such a collective interest and attention to this social infrastructure that by the way we've been doing since Time and Memorial. And I think it's such an interesting time and moment where we're beginning to actually ask fundamental social questions for our individual and personal lives and also in our workplaces and also in our public sphere, which is how should we do this? How should we get together?
And an individual level we think about nutritional diets, right? What am I putting into my body? What do I want to eat? What do I want to drink? And then maybe 10 years ago, this idea of informational diets, right? If you just non-consciously scroll your phone or scroll the web, you can end up in all sorts of rabbit holes and dark corners and whatever it is, incredibly stressed out, incredibly distracted. And so there's now tools to help us decide what information and where are my sources and how do I think about intentionally engaging with the news. I think the pandemic has given us an opportunity to think about our gathering diets.
Katherine May:
And to intentionally gather.
Priya Parker:
What do I want to attend? How do I want to shape, how often do I need to go to something? What are my obligations versus my desires? And I think the last thing the pandemic did is for most people, it just slowed the pace of life down for a while. And it's easy to attend all sorts of things when you're on autopilot and running on adrenaline. And I think when we actually go back, there's so much of your work is about this, we go back to stillness. Stillness reveals desire and it also reveals what has been obligation. And we're at this moment at an individual level and we have to start making some difficult decisions and conscious decisions about what do we actually want to attend, who do we want to spend our time with, and how?
Katherine May:
One of the things you say is, even though we're making these utopian spaces in our gatherings, we should bring out our whole self to them. Don't bring your idealized self to a gathering. Don't bring your very best behavior, bring messy humanity right there so that we can connect with each other.
Priya Parker:
I think it depends on the context.
Katherine May:
Yeah, sure. Sorry. I do that to a work meeting.
Priya Parker:
Yeah. I have this chapter called Keep Your Best Self Out of My Gathering. And part of what I'm getting to in that chapter is particularly in our communal gatherings, in our peer gatherings that so often even in things, something as simple as, or seemingly simple as a conference, we tend to show up and think I'm going to give my stump speech or I'm going to rattle off the things that make other people, quote, unquote, "pay attention" to me. Whatever it is. You go to a networking night or a conference and people are handing out business cards and talking about how great their businesses are, but if their businesses were so great, they probably wouldn't be at the conference, right?
At some level, we need each other and in trying to performatively pretend that we don't, we're missing a lot of opportunity for real authentic, relevant connection. And some of the examples I looked at at the book that there's these founders, these two guys, they were tired of going to conferences where they realized that they knew they were having a lot of trouble with their business, but every time they went anywhere else they just felt like, "Oh, we're just supposed to show our how great everything is." And so they invented this format that they called the House of Genius, and what they believed is that genius doesn't lie in one person. We all have geniuses and that genius lies in the collective, and they create to go back to our earlier conversation, a set of pop-up rules, I think it started in called Boulder, Colorado, and it's spread all over the world where they bring together and they invite and different hosts do it, they invite a group of individuals, maybe 10 or 12 or eight from all walks of life.
People come, they're not allowed to say what their last name is, they're not allowed to talk about work, they're not allowed to say what they do for a living. There's a 30-minute usually milling around time, meet each other. But again, the only rules, you can't talk about what you do for a living, which I've been to some and they're hilarious. People are like, "Uh, uh, uh." At least in New York. So I just took my kids to Disney World and then they bring people together and it's usually 90 minutes and there's a very structured conversation and a facilitator and three entrepreneurs are allowed to come. They each get a certain amount of time, share their problems, looking under the trunk. This is some big business problem I have. A group explain it so that the group of strangers understands it enough. Group cycle one, everybody gets to ask an informative question.
Cycle two, each person gets to give their advice. But part of the rule is you can't say anything that's... Even during the advice that dictates what you say, right? So in part, if somebody's a venture capitalist in the room and someone else is a nurse or a doctor or a babysitter or whatever they are, caregiver, the perception around status or relevance or expertise is basically taken off the table. They're temporarily equalizing their guests.
Katherine May:
That's so interesting.
Priya Parker:
And I've been to a number of them and it's a interesting format. It's very specific. It's scary for the entrepreneurs, but it's also people giving them feedback that have no dog in the fight. And this is again, an example of the entrepreneurs come in and they're bringing their mess, but they're bringing their mess within contained defined rules where everyone is up for that mess and then it's closed.
I talk about 15 toes, the format that I invented with a friend of mine, Tim Leberecht, in which a group of 15 people around a table for whatever reason, it's hard to have one conversation. It often splits into tiny side conversations. Maybe you have a beautiful conversationalist and you're so happy to have that. But otherwise it feels a little stuck until we invented the set of rules where we choose a theme and everybody is aware of this is going to happen before they arrive, they sign up for it. And at some point in the night, you're invited to stand up if you're able, ding your glass and share a story about whatever that theme is, trust or light or conflict or borders or vision or heartbreak. Some story from your life that no one else in the room has ever heard and what it taught you about said theme. And the only other rule, the last person has to sing their toast, which in most contexts moves the night along.
Katherine May:
You never stop falling here.
Priya Parker:
Sometimes you meet a group of singers, but usually the terror of giving a toast is outweighs by the terror of singing in front of people. Each of these elements are invented forms at a specific moment in time where someone felt a need. And again, they're not supreme forms. If this sounds terrible to you, don't do it. Invent what works for you. But so much of artful gathering is just first starting and observing the life and the communities around you and asking, "What is the actual need here?" And then designing what is a infrastructure or form that would allow people to connect in a way that's relevant to the need at hand?
Katherine May:
Well, and also that creativity so often flows from constraint. That actually the more you restrict people quite often the more they will fight against those restrictions and come up with really interesting stuff. And it's about getting the best out of people that are in the room with you.
Priya Parker:
Yeah, I was just going to say, and I think of gathering as line drawing. I'm going to draw a line probably in the shape of a circle, but I'm going to draw a line, what is this about in this moment? Who is in and who is out for this moment? What is the right amount of constraint that gives people enough orientation to how to be while still giving them enough freedom to express their own individuality within that constraint? And you talked about dress codes earlier. Dress codes to me are such a fascinating example of figuring out the right line between freedom and agency.
I have a monthly newsletter and I write. Every month I write about one specific topic that might shed light on something. And I'm recently writing about dress codes and I've been collecting examples of dress codes to parties or to launches that I think are awesome. And I'll give a couple of examples. So one is it was a birthday party and the dress code was the single best item in your closet, no shopping. As another one was for a movie, a film, I'm forgetting which film it was, but it was for a film. Someone sent it to me and it was dress code, dress like your ex is going to be there, right? And as I started realizing what is the common denominator of the dress codes I like? I think there's some amount of orientation like you are drawing a line, the single best thing in your closet, no shopping, I'm asking you not to spend money on this thing. There's actually some care in that. But within that code there's so much interpretation and it honors the guest.
Again, if they choose they to want to say yes, it's choice. But if they want to say yes, it honors the guest to think about what is that for them. And then when you go the best dress codes it continues to be generative because when people then show up at that event, everyone is so curious about each other's interpretation, right? If you dress like your ex is going to be there, maybe some people are in a ballgown and other people are in all leather and other people have a brown bag over their head, and it's hilarious. And so I think so much of group life is just this design and this wonder and this creativity around given the need, given the purpose, where is the right level of play? Where's the right level of release? Where's the right level of control? Just as you do in art, just as you do in writing, just as you do in sentence structure that this is just a different canvas, and the canvas is group life.
Katherine May:
But it's interesting, I think isn't it that we've come to dread gathering so much now and even going back to gatherings that were once very ordinary to us. My theme for this season is how do we come back together again? And one of the reasons that I wanted to tackle that was because I'm hearing so many people express apprehension about spending time with family members now at Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter or whatever comes up because of this sense that we are now all in conflict and that feels very intergenerational and that the stances feel very fixed and that a lot of people are feeling that they can't quite face it. What is happening? First of all, I feel like you are going to have the most clear take of all of us on this, what's going on?
Priya Parker:
I think different levels of conflict and different levels of perception and different levels of identity are happening in different families. And so context as always matters. I'll say a couple of things and I'll answer first from a gathering perspective, which is I think guests, this book and this work is called The Art of Gathering, not the art of hosting in part because I think guests have a lot of power. They have power in their attendance and they also have power in their absence. And as we head into the holidays or as people are thinking about navigating their own families, and for many people, families have multiple circles and multiple lines, right? There's extended family, there's far extended family, there's original family. If you're come from divorce as I do, there's multiple families within a family of origin structure.
I think the first is to ask again and again at the level of individual, what is the need here? Not just why am I attending this gathering? It's like what do I want from this relationship and these relationships and not worry yet about the form? What do I want from these relationships? Is it a meaningful connection? Is it an ability to have deeper dialogue? Is it actually just to be able to be in the same room and enjoy each other without talking about the things that divide us, right? And everybody's going to have their own answer to that. So to answer that first. And then the second is does the current form that some people in the family currently have opted into work for me? And if it does, go for it. And if it doesn't pause and ask, "Who else is it not working for?" And how do we detangle the form around which we keep gathering from actually the need that we actually have.
So I'll give an example. All examples I share, I have permission to share. I was speaking to a woman years ago and she realized that in her family, the family context was when they gathered, when she as an adult gathered with her family of origin with her partner and her children, there was a lot of alcohol involved. And the alcohol tied into the ritual of the way her family celebrated Christmas led to a lot of trouble. And she paused and she basically, long story short, realized that she wanted a meaningful connection with her family. And she didn't feel like she had different choices of which boundaries to draw. Was it to say stop drinking in this way or was it to detangle the form of their attendance at Christmas and create a different tradition in which they spent meaningful time in another form, not on that day.
And that's when I said earlier gathering is line drawing. And her saying, and she ended up creating a different ritual, which is she invited those family members over on a different day for a different form of interaction. And if a family rejects that invitation, you are going to have conflict, but conflict can be generative. So that's the first. I think this, there's a larger obviously question right now happening, which is... And all of these studies show there's a wonderful book called, I think it's called Civic Disagreement, where the author shows how 50 years ago, 40 years ago, we had much more bridging communities. So Democrats had friends with Republicans. Not so much on race, but on politically there's much more bridging. Whereas now it's the percentage of people who say they'd spend time with each other is like tanked.
Katherine May:
Much lower, yeah.
Priya Parker:
Much lower. And I think that there are certain moments that our democracy is in trouble and we are having some existential collective fights about what is the core narrative of this country? When did it begin? What does America mean? What are the symbols? And most, I'm a conflict resolution facilitator. Most groups go through a cycle at some point. And if you think about a nation as a group in which they have to really storm and grapple with who they are and what narrative is going to win the day, and we are in that. And so I think also at a collective level, at a structural level with a previous president that was sowing hate, it also creates fractures at the microcosm. And so this isn't happening out of nowhere. There's a collective malaise.
The last thing I'll just say is, and forgive me, but I live with an author who's just come out with a book called The Persuaders. And my husband wrote a book recently, his name is Anand Giridharadas, and he really looks at the people in the country on the progressive side and particularly on those who believe in multiracial democracy who haven't yet written off the other side and looks at organizers and cults deprogrammers and teachers and activists who are getting in there and looking at where and how do you actually engage and what are the skills of persuasion as the last political act of a democracy to try to change minds through changing people. And so depending on the family, depending on the infrastructure to really think about given your need, then what are the skills? And the last thing I'll say, I know I said last thing is, I texted this to a friend the other day, organizing and designing gatherings for family, for your own people is so much harder.
Katherine May:
Than it is for complete strangers.
Priya Parker:
Than organizing gatherings for strangers.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And we behave better for strangers than we do.
Priya Parker:
We're not part of the system, right? you're part of your own family system. People have all sorts of history and perceptions of one another and sense of their role in their family. And it's really hard to take risks when you feel that you have to perform a very specific role.
Katherine May:
I interviewed Simran Singh who was talking about Sikhism and the communitarian sense that comes from that belief system and the sense that everybody is radically connected or interconnected. And I guess what I'm fascinated by is how we get back that sense that we are interconnected. To me, it seems undeniable, but we feel very, very separate. And one of the things that he said was that actually in a strange roundabout way, and I'm probably misquoting him really badly here, but that his experiencing of aggressive racism as a young man meant that, or even as a boy actually took away a fear of that conflict for him almost. That actually he couldn't avoid it. There was nothing he could do to avoid that conflict, and therefore it was almost safe for him to go in and have those conversations with the people that were throwing hate at him because they were going to throw hate at him either way.
So he might as well enter into the dialogue. That really gave me pause for thought because it made me realize how the people who are most anxious about gathering back together again are often the people for whom that conflict is actually indirect. They're white people who are worried about their, I don't know, father-in-law saying something racist and they'll be hurt by it, but they won't. It's not a personal attack. It's actually a more indirect sense of like, "Oh God, then what do I say now?" Yeah, how do I fight that? What argument do I put forward? And I don't know, I just wanted to put that to you. I know that's quite a diffuse way of asking a question, but I wondered if there is something about our fear of entering into conflict and our lack of trust about what that process will be. And I just wondered if with your kind of conflict resolution hat on could speak to that. What happens after the conflict, if the conflict comes? Is that the end or is it possible for us to then repair?
Priya Parker:
One of the elements in conflict and in dialogue work, particularly when there is heat, is to slow things down and gathering as we've been talking about, forget the conflict part of it. Gathering is actually groups are complex organisms. I had a mentor, Hal Saunders, who used to say... He was a group dialogue facilitator. He said, traditional negotiation imagines it's a tennis game, you hit a ball, you have a racket, you hit a ball over the court.
Katherine May:
Yeah, you get back again.
Priya Parker:
Yeah, exactly. Multi stick holder dialogue, which is basically all of group life. Imagine as if you had six players with a bracket and 12 balls and a foresighted court and all of the balls are flying at the same time, right? These are complex organisms. That's true even if you're in the same community singing off the same hymnal, right? Then add conflict, add identity, add senses of justice to it. There's so much going on there. And so the first thing I say is in each of these moments is to slow things down. And that might just simply mean if you get a text that is upsetting to just pause and to breathe and to really think about what are my... I have a mentor says, "How do I create choicefulness in this moment?"
Katherine May:
That's a good word, choicefulness.
Priya Parker:
What are all of the different options I have to respond? What is it that I actually want or need in this moment? And what are the different ways that I might create a different way, expand the playing field of this very narrow strike. And I think in the Simran example, he's choosing to engage and I don't know the context, I don't know if he's in choosing to engage in a way that makes him feel safe. I don't know if it's days later, I don't know what he's doing to protect his own safety, if at all. But I think with each of us, there's like, "What am I doing for my individual relationships? And then also what am I doing as a white person? What am I doing as a citizen? And for what reasons and when?" We'll go back, maybe we can end where we started, which is modern life is complex and it's full of choice.
And that can be debilitating and it can also be incredibly empowering. And I think in each of these moments of having both dignity and integrity to what your values are when you're engaging with other people, it's all practice. And in my experience, getting together with family and conflict, it's like ground zero that is the most complex. I can tell you from my own experience, that is the most complex gathering that you ever can imagine. And many people are still thinking about gathering just at the basic level that it's still kind of scary to see other people, right? You've been perhaps not doing that for many years. And so it's like baby steps. Just start practicing gathering in Saul, simple ways that are short-lived with people you like and practice breathing physiologically, practice talking again, practice telling a joke. Extended family dinner where there's conflict around a specific meaningful ritualized holiday is like the Olympics of gathering. Let's not start there, but you can practice.
Katherine May:
It was so attractive.
Priya Parker:
I'm a student of improv. Improv is a entire philosophy, physical philosophy of creating choicefulness, right? You're given a prompt. You, you're present to that prompt and you think about all of the different ways that you could say yes, you could respond to that prompt. And so much of working one's way up to self differentiating within your family, right? I'll end here. There's this one of a book I read recently called If You Met My Family, You'd Understand. Greatest title ever. And it's written by a Japanese American minister, beautiful little sleeve of a book. And he basically says, self differentiation is something like, I'm going to paraphrase here, "When you can be who you are and say what you think."
Even when the surrounding togetherness pressure, even when the surrounding family culture is different from that, and he says the core muscle to practice that step is what he calls a non-anxious presence. It's not a non-anxious absence.I'm fine if I'm not with them, but I'm fall apart if I'm with them. It's also not an anxious presence, so you're nervous, right? It's just literally practicing a non-anxious presence that allows you to begin to say who you are or say what you believe, even when the surrounding culture or context is different from that and still be present.
Katherine May:
Actually, we have looped that because that shows exactly where structure helps us. If we are not anxious about the other parts of the gathering, then we've got half a chance of holding our own really and keeping our integrity, but also it seems to me more and more that we are just a little out of practice and that it's okay to be an eternal learner and it's okay to practice again. And that's a comforting message.
Priya Parker:
It's not just okay, it's the whole thing. This is all practice.
Katherine May:
That's amazing. Thank you so much. It's been brilliant to talk to you. The time went so quickly.
Priya Parker:
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for your beautiful questions. I loved having this conversation with you.
Katherine May:
Oh, thank you.
I always think the seagulls are louder in the winter. I don't know if that's true. I think they come in from the Seymour, it's stormier, so they come in land. Maybe they're looking for shelter on our roofs. It's the only time of the year I noticed them. The rest of the year, I'm quite often on a Zoom call or something and the person I'm speaking to will say, "I can hear the seagulls." And I just think, "They're just background noise to me. I never noticed the seagulls. They're just part of the general hum of the every day." And I remember when I first moved to the sea as well, people saying, "Oh, the seagulls will drive you mad. You'll hear nothing but seagulls." You just don't notice them. They're so present all the time. But in winter I hear them again.
I suppose all the birds are busy getting ready and the squirrels are back too. I didn't see squirrel much all summer, but every morning now the dog starts growling at the back door and I let her out and she goes and chases him, pour squirrel. But he does very well out of us. We leave him out walnuts and pumpkin seeds he likes, and generally he has his feel. He's a lovely little squirrel. He sometimes eats out of Bert's hand if Bert's it's still enough, which is pretty cool.
I hope today's episode left you inspired to gather in new ways. I know it did for me. I think there's been a real journey for me in this, which is that when I first realized I was autistic, I cut down vastly on gatherings. I realized it was one of the things that I was finding very hard to deal with. I was gathering too much, I guess. And I was gathering without knowing the rules or being able to establish the rules clearly enough to make it manageable for me. But I've come through that a little now, I guess. It's all about finding balance, isn't it? I'm craving other people's company again a little, but in a different way. I still often come up to things in my calendar and dread them that I'd look forward to them when I put them in there. I think that'll always be me. Anyway, let me know what you think. Let me know if you feel that there are better ways we can get together in the future, and I'll see you all really soon. Bye.
Show Notes
There’s a guiding question of each mini-season of How We Live Now, and this time around it’s ‘How can we come back together again?’ I posed this question to some of the world’s most important thinkers in this field: political journalist Ece Temelkuran, radical Buddhist Lama Rod Owens, digital native Emma Gannon, gathering expert Priya Parker, spiritual teacher Simran Jeet Singh and ecological writer Jay Griffiths. Each of them offered something thoughtful and fresh, and each of them changed the way I think about this current - often divided - life.
When it comes to getting together, Priya Parker turns our assumptions on their heads: gatherings, she says, benefit from firm rules and careful management, which allow us to relax more, communicate better, and come away feeling positive. It’s all about clarity of purpose. A lack of structure leads to chaotic and draining events, and may even put us in conflict.
In this episode, Katherine asks Priya how we can learn to be in the same room again - whether it’s with colleagues, family or even complete strangers. For those of us who have found it tough to return to social spaces after the pandemic, this is a reassuring conversation, reminding us of the pleasures of meeting, and offering a blueprint for more enriching, less fraught, future gatherings. Links from the episode:
Priya's website
Priya's book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
Other episodes you might enjoy:
Season 2: Josie George on the joy of small things
Please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing to my Patreon where you’ll get episodes a day early (and always ad free) along with bonus episodes and more!
To keep up to date with How We Live Now, follow Katherine on Instagram and Substack
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Enchantment - Released March 2023
“Katherine May gave so many of us language and vision for the long communal ‘wintering’ of the last years. Welcome this beautiful meditation for the time we’ve now entered. I cannot imagine a more gracious companion. This book is a gift.”
New York Times bestselling author Krista Tippett
