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The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk
663: Priya Parker - The Art of Gathering with Purpose: Power, Preparation, Magical Questions, and the Psychology of Bringing People Together
01:02:47
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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com now on to tonight's featured leader of the Great Priya Parker is a conflict resolution facilitator and author of the mega bestselling book the Art of Gathering How We Meet and why It Matters. During our conversation, we discussed how you can facilitate excellent leadership retreats. Then Priya goes deep on the art of asking magical questions, including some specific ones you should ask at your next gathering. And then she shares the keys to hosting a dinner party that people will remember for years. This one is so good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Prince Priya Parker. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company that builds world class technical teams for clients around the globe. If you need help with your applications, infrastructure or data layer, Insight Global's team of technical experts can build custom or managed services to deliver the outcomes you desire. Getting the most out of your technology can be tough, but growing your business with the right technical solutions can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com learningleader that's insightglobal.com learningleader today to learn more. So I want to start with an interesting time in your life. Your parents, they met in Iowa, they fell in love, they got married, they had you in Zimbabwe. They worked in fishing villages across Africa and Asia. Then they fell out of love, got divorced in Virginia, went their separate ways after the divorce. You move. This seems wild to me. You moved every two weeks between their households. One a vegetarian, liberal, incense filled, Buddhist, Hindu, new age universe, the other a meat eating, conservative, twice a week church going, evangelical Christian realm. Whoa. Okay, so that comes directly from your book. How did that type of upbringing shape you?
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B
It made me a conflict resolution facilitator.
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A
Tell me more about that.
- [02:43]
B
My day job still is a dialogue facilitator for groups to help them have the conversations they have been avoiding but are crucial for them to figure out their next formation. And so much of how I was raised in part, I mean to break it down a little bit, first of all, across two very, very different cultures. And when, you know, I was in my teenage years, so probably like 12 to 18 before college when I would go back and forth toggling between these two homes. But part of being part of two different cultures was it wasn't these two vague ideas. It was like deeply specific and they're very different so everything from the quote unquote right way or obvious way to like start a dinner. At one home, you would never put food in your mouth before saying grace right. At the other, the word God wasn't mentioned ever, Right. There was a completely different way to start, but they both began a meal in a way that honored the table. Right. Or the games that we would play, or what would be considered, like, what you do when you're bored. You know, I'm sort of putting my fingers in quotes. In growing up, I also would spend a lot of summers in New Delhi. My mother is a researcher and she would often take me to India and she would go and conduct her research and I would stay with my relatives. And so much of, like, the time we spent together, often in Hinglish called time pass. Like the way you pass your time is literally just like playing cards on the bed or like everybody is like on the shared family bed or playing carom. And when I would go visit my grandparents in Iowa, no one knew what Karam was. And so at some deep, deep level, I've always been interested in when and why and how people come together, how they spend that time, what they think of as normal, how people can create and invent and change cultures and. And then also because of my life, how they come apart. And so I've been deeply, deeply interested in groups and in how they form and in how they break and then how they come together again. And so much of that is because of how I was raised.
- [04:55]
A
Let's progress a little bit further along in your story. You go to college, and once there, I believe you met Dr. Hal Saunders. What type of influence or how did Dr. Hal Saunders influence you and how has his work helped you today?
- [05:11]
B
Dr. Saunders passed, Gosh, maybe almost a decade ago, and I still think of him and what he taught me probably daily. And he was an American diplomat. He went to Princeton undergrad, I think in the 40s. He was on the National Security Council. He eventually became a top diplomat in the State Department. And he served five different presidential administrations. And he was part of the Camp David Accords, brokering peace between Israel and Egypt, and was part of the. What was then called shuttle diplomacy. And he basically realized that through that work, at the highest level of statecraft, governments can create peace treaties. But on the ground, people's perceptions of each other still hasn't necessarily changed. And after he left government, he, he became part of the longest running dialogue, sort of what's called track two diplomacy, of working with citizens on the ground. After wars in post conflict states. And so much of what he saw in those days was what the power of what the government can do and the use of what the government can do, and then also the power of what citizens and civics and culture and institutions can do. And I met him, I was very frustrated with race relations. I'm biracial, as you laid out. And I went to the University of Virginia and one of the first questions people would ask me is, what are you? And I was like, I didn't understand what it meant. I thought they meant like a first year. And I learned very quickly it meant racial in that context. And I learned in part, probably because my mother's an anthropologist, that the first questions people ask you in a community or culture signify what they value. Right? So I was like, okay, race is really important here. I grew up in all these different cultures. I grew up in these different countries. I was like, okay, good to know. And I was very frustrated with race relations at uva. And the University of Virginia, to its deep credit, has a strong sense of what they call student self governance, which means if you see a problem, don't complain, do something about it. And I was talking to my mother, actually, she's clearly a large part of this narrative, and told her how frustrated I was. And she knew about this man called Hal Saunders, and she said, you should email him. And I emailed him as a freshman, and I learned that he was interested in working with American students on college campuses on race relations. And I said, will you come train us? And he had been working with Princeton students as a trustee there. And he came and he trained like 1219 year olds in a classroom at 2pm with bad lighting. And he basically was this deeply, deeply curious human being who even in his 70s, even in his 80s, always believed that he had something to learn. And I, as a teenager, and then as a person in my 20s, had never been taken so seriously by such a person of so much power and wisdom and experience. And he trained us in sustained dialogue. We launched it September 10, 2001. And then of course, 9, 11 happened the next day.
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A
Wow.
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B
And so it was one of these things where we were at the right place at the right time, where we had this container which by the way, can get into our gathering conversation. Like all sustained dialogue was was the name of the program. It was an invitation. When I say we launched it September 10, 2001, that means we sent a letter out to the university announcing we were doing this thing to bring together students behind closed doors to have conversations about race that they rarely get to have with people who are unlike them. Hal Saunders became my mentor and then my boss for the next eight years. And I learned deeply. Facilitation is a weird field. There's no Goldman Sachs of facilitation. It's an apprentice based field. It's very fragmented. It particularly if you're not going to work at the State Department. And I was very lucky to be one of the people Hal Saunders took on to sort of train me as a young person and the skills of group life.
- [09:19]
A
Facilitation is such an interesting thing. So I do a good bit of it within my profession now and I never anticipated that. And I feel like I was just thinking leading up to this conversation, like what makes a good facilitator? You know, I mean, Priya was the perfect person to talk to, but I was thinking it through and I just love to riff on this, if you're cool with it, of course, of what I've learned over the years, I think it's like this weird combination of being deeply curious, slash fascinated by people and their stories and what it is about them that makes them unique and different and wanting to learn from their life experiences combined with being a fantastic listener, asking even better follow up questions than initial questions. Good body language and then just a high level of emotional intelligence and a knack of a feel for the room, both zoom and in person, knowing when to speak, when to add on, when to ask a question as opposed to give your point of view, when to teach, when to shut up. Like there's just a million different things I could go on and on and on. So I'm speaking with probably maybe the best in the world or one of the best in the world at it. That's you. When I asked you that question, like what makes up a world class facilitator? The floor is yours. I'm deeply curious. What is it?
- [10:44]
B
You did very well. You did very well. I, I think that a facilitator, unlike a mediator, the first thing I would say is when I think of a facilitator, I really think of somebody who is interested in the life of a group. When I think of a facilitator, at least the way I was sort of raised as a baby facilitator, is it's really people who are interested in the infrastructure of three or more people who need to come together and ideally are changed for the better by what transpires between them. And a facilitator is somebody who thinks deeply about how to set up the conditions in order to increase the likelihood that that happens. And so a facilitator is somebody who both has a very high quality of listening, but I would add to your definition, is also obsessed with and very good at language. So there's listening to kind of you make the person feel like you are really hearing them. But then one of the differences between greener facilitators and more seasoned facilitators is an obsession and an ability to hear, recall, play with language. A second is, as you said, deep curiosity. But I would also say that a really good facilitator and the difference between sort of green and more seasoned is a healthy relationship to an understanding of power. And so even as you were saying earlier, you know when to shut up, you know when to pull people out, you know when to push people in. A big part of that underneath is actually understanding power, right? How are decisions being made here? Who is talking more than others? When do you actually allow for that? What is my own relationship to an ability to hold the group? A third element is our own relationship to conflict and heat. So I am a conflict diverse conflict resolution facilitator. I'm biracial, as I said earlier. But what you may not know about me is that I'm also third generation ostrich, which means that on both sides of my families, when conflict arises, we're really good at sticking our head in the sand. You're like, we're just like, nothing to see here, folks. Hopefully it'll just pass if no one says anything. And so a huge part of what I have tried to cultivate myself. And I think one of the reasons what really helps me is counterintuitively I have deep empathy for the people in the room who want to flee. Even now when, like, the heat rises, if I'm facilitating a reckoning on zoom, or if I'm facilitating a conflict and, you know, voices rise or we start getting approaching like the core of it, my palms still get sweaty. I can feel my heart racing. I can feel like, you know, the blood rushing to my cheeks. And I've learned how to hold heat. And so, so much of facilitation. Some people are like, deeply have, you know, naturally skilled at some of the elements that are important, but it's also a deeply learnable skill.
- [13:53]
A
Let's say somebody is a lot less experienced than you and they're a VP of whatever at a Fortune 500 company. And one of the things they have coming up is they're going to be in charge of like a leadership off site, let's say it's a gathering and they're going to run a half day of it and it's a variety of things, but basically they're going to be up in front of the room. They may not be called a facilitator by the big boss, but essentially that's a part of their role. So that this is facilitation 101. They haven't really done it, not that experienced, maybe haven't had enough repetitions to be that good at it yet. What are some of the ways that person, some of the foundational things they should think of and maybe even practice to get good at it faster than if they just kind of showed up and were winging it.
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B
So first of all, don't wing it.
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A
Yes, 100% practice.
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B
Another one of my mentors is a woman named Rhonda Sleem. She was House founders colleague for many, many years. She's an incredible practitioner and one of the things she said to me, she's a Lebanese American woman, is 90% of the success of what happens in the room. And as a facilitator happens before anybody arrives. And so you're a vp, you've been assigned, you've been voluntold this leadership retreat, the first most important thing to do before anything else is to determine and clarify what the purpose is. What is the purpose of this leadership retreat? A leadership retreat is just a word, it's a frame. Anything can happen in a leadership retreat. What is the deepest need and to become a precise, precise and effective facilitator in the room. It's almost like you're building a house and the construction of the house happens before anyone gets there. So what's the foundation? What does this team need? Who actually needs to be in the room? Are the right guests the ones who have been invited? Do we need to actually think about more deeply what is the right conversation for this group to have? What is the right conversation for this group to have is a simple and also a very complex question. And the conversation that, particularly if it's a leadership retreat that your direct reports get to have in person or on, you know, virtually, but in person at the same time, at the same place is your highest real estate and wasting your time, kind of like figuring out what to say or do in the room is actually going to make you waste a lot of time. And so a huge part of preparing for that meeting is to figure out what is the right conversation for this group to have and how do I equip them to have it.
- [16:34]
A
Well, I've had a number of military leaders here and I'll try to weave this together on the fly here, but it feels like military leaders are really good at setting mission objectives. I remember Michelle Kern, who's a fighter pilot. They're just really good at the pre mission brief and the post mission brief, the debrief. So they basically always knew this is the goal, this is what we are striving to do on this mission. And then afterwards they would debrief and learn so they could do better the next mission. It feels to me, Priya, if I wove that together, that that's kind of what you're talking about, is you've got to have the pre meeting brief slash additional, then practice, which is a separate thing. But you got to know, what are we doing here? What's the purpose? Why are we meeting? What are our goals? What do we hope to get out of this? This probably doesn't apply just for a leadership retreat. This applies for hosting a dinner at your house with friends and family, right? So maybe you could talk more about getting really, really clear on the objective and the purpose of the meeting.
- [17:35]
B
So the biggest mistake we make when we gather, and this is true for board meetings, this is true for protests, this is true for birthday parties, is we skip defining the purpose. And the more obvious seeming the purpose, the more likely we are to skip it. Oh, I know what a board meeting is. I know what a wedding is. I know what a zoom is. When we don't pause to ask what the purpose is, we end up replicating old outdated forms. And often the wrong people are in the room. So the first thing to do absolutely is to actually, and I wouldn't even call it a pre meeting, is to deeply, deeply ask and figure out what is the desired outcome. You have six hours or two hours or 12 hours and eight people or 40 people. There is absolutely a sequence of things you can do in that room that fundamentally transforms their relationships to each other. It's your job to figure out sometimes with them what that sequence of steps is. So, for example, there was a woman I knew who ran a community Hub. It was sort of a startup networking organization. It was called Hub la. Her name was Elizabeth Stewart. It still is Elizabeth Stewart. And she really wanted to create a community for startup founders and also have it to be a place where it was truly a community and not like a shark tank or a place for sales pitches. And she would host these social occasions and think about, okay, what is my deepest purpose of these evenings? And she would invite Investors. And she got really clear. Her deepest purpose for that evening was not to get as many startup funders as possible funded. It was to build trust and long lasting relationships between and across a network of people trying to start businesses and the people in the region who are wanting to support them. And so she created a pop up rule in order to protect from what happens often in a room where there's funders and VCs and startups, which is people pitch each other and then the investors feel like they just have like dollar signs on their head and just want to flee. Is she said you can't talk about what you're selling. No pitches. Right. Super counterintuitive rule for a networking night. But it created and it signified what it was she was trying to create. And so so much of how you think about like running a meeting or running anything that is high stakes is this is a precise surgical design that we get to decide given all these different people coming from different norms and different ways of doing things. And it is your job to think about what is the purpose. And then how do I set people up so that they understand what the rules are? I'm protecting them, I'm connecting them, I'm temporarily equalizing them so that we can actually coordinate group life. And gathering is a coordination problem.
- [20:40]
A
Wow. Okay. So this makes me think about the primary event I host every year. It's for my learning leader circle members and it's usually in May. We go to a cool location like Scottsdale so we can hike and do other things. And one of the first things I say to the group when we meet is I just put a big slide that says A plus on it. And then I say this is what an A plus meeting is. This is what we're here to do. This is the purpose of our time together. And then I'll usually two or three things, not like 10 things that you can't remember, but two or three. And so usually there's something along the lines of transformational learning. So that means learning that you intrinsically take in and then you apply. And then usually the first and most important one is that you become lifelong friends or this is the beginning of a lifelong friendship with two or three people. Now there are roughly 40 to 45 people there. It's not realistic to become lifelong friends with 40 people, but it is realistic to become the beginnings of a lifelong friendship relationship with two or three people. So that it's very clearly stated, that's why you're going to sit next to the same people Both today during the day and, and at dinner, we're going to sit you on the bus next to them when we drive to the mountain to hike and hopefully you walk side by side with them. So that it's not about becoming surface level with 40, it's coming deep with a few because I think that can transform your life. My point of oversharing there, Priya, is clearly defining what an A plus is and then executing on that so that they know, oh, this was all intentionally done. So when I share all of that, I would love for you again, as maybe the best in the world at this to say, yeah, that, that's good, but maybe you should think about this. Or I, I would just be curious to get your thoughts on that kind of experiential design goal setting and then trying to execute on that.
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B
It's such a great example. And I, I first I'll just sort of break down what it is you're doing. So every gathering is a social contract, right? So your listeners may be listening right now. Be like, ugh, he's putting people neck. I have to sit next to the same person on the bus every day. Like, who is he to tell me where I'm gonna sit? I'm not a 12 year old. But because you are basically creating a temporary constitution, right? I'm trained in political and social theory, so excuse the nerdiness, but this is basically what it is. Every gathering is a temporary constitution. It's a dinner party, bring a bottle of wine, right? Or if it's implicit, people find out that they've broken the constitution by like the, wow, they didn't even bring a housewarming gift. Right? We have all of these implicit norms and often in diverse groups, which is every leadership circle, Right? And I'm not even meaning racially diverse or ethnically diverse. I'm just saying we come from different assumptions of how a meeting is run.
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A
Yep.
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B
Right. So what you have done here as the leader of this off site is first you've laid out your expectations. You are using the language of A plus that may or may not resonate with them. That's your job as a leader, to figure out what feels aspirational and what feels, you know, is no longer working, language wise. And then you are using your power, right? So a huge part of hosting is using your power, realizing you have power, but using it for the good of the group to achieve its purpose. So you then explain the design. Hey, part of A plus is transformational learning. In my mind, Ryan, that's your job. You're almost like, I don't know as a guest how to be transformed by the learning. I just know that I'm supposed to maybe listen or engage in a way that like, it increases the likelihood. But the part where you're signaling to me as a guest of what my role is is two to three lifelong friends. Okay, right, okay. Interesting. There's 40 people here. You're literally kind of giving me like a navigation map. It's like, okay, so I have six hours here. This is really helpful. My leader, whom assuming I think is legitimate, which is the question. Right. Is saying, okay, so success here is over the next few. Okay. I don't have to spend my time distributing everyone equally. 38. I am purposely going to try to focus on two or three people. Got it Right. That changes my orientation. But the second thing is lifelong. I talked earlier about facilitators are really listening to language. Lifelong is an interesting assumption. Right. It's also saying I don't need to tell them everything from the get go. Or it may be like, wow, lifelong friendship. That means after I leave this place, we're still supposed to be friends. That changes my assumption of the conversations I have on that hike. So so much of what you're doing there is you're tightening and clarifying what the social contract is. And that is really helpful. And the last thing I'll just say is people might stage a coup. Right? They may say, this is not what we're here for. We're not supposed to be lifelong friends. I don't want to share everything. I think it's inappropriate for work. But that's data. And so, so much like leadership. So much. It's basically creating and setting a social contract, inviting and seeing who is absolutely up for it. And then watching the data in and out and creating a relational model where people are wanting to give up some amount of power to be able to be part of something greater than themselves and they trust you to help run it.
- [25:44]
A
So part of what we do as well is we go and work with like leadership teams. Me and a couple of my teammates, my coaches, and we like to start those by letting them know what we're going to do and why we're going to do it by the end of that day. And sometimes it's just the beginning of a relationship where it starts in person, then we're going to meet whatever we meet throughout the course of the year on zoom, in person, whatever. I'm just curious, is there ever a time where you shouldn't do that, where you should Say like, no, let's just go and do what we do. Or is laying out clearly the purpose and the why or do they need to know all of that? This is a real kind of like I'm not really sure question. This is what we do. I personally, when I went to college, I did better than when I did in high school because as weird as this sounds, they give you a syllabus in college on the first day of class and on that syllabus I see everything we're going to do. I see due dates, I can work ahead if I want to. I love knowing what we were going to do. I love seeing the schedule, I love seeing what we're learning, the topics. I love seeing if I could work ahead. Right. As a student athlete. So I knew I was time crunched at time. Hey, I got a little extra time, let's work ahead. Right. So I've learned from that and try to implement into that when I'm working with people, like, I think people enjoy knowing where we're headed. Let's just tell them. But again, you're the master. This. What do you think about that?
- [27:06]
B
It depends on the context.
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A
Okay.
- [27:09]
B
And there are moments for surprise, there are moments for whimsy and delight. There are moments where again, it depends on what the purpose is. If the purpose. If a team is so stuck and in say a 50 year old institution, they've always done it the exact same way and if they don't change, they're going to die institutionally. And what you actually need them to do is build and expand their own skills for discomfort and change. If that's the purpose. Right. Very specifically, then perhaps one of the practices you're doing as a team, which again maybe you tell them, maybe you don't, is helping them do exercises over the course of a three day retreat in which they don't know what the path is because that the purpose is to expand their ability to navigate uncertainty.
- [28:02]
A
Ah, good call. Yeah.
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B
So in, you know, particularly in diverse learning environments and so many of your questions are also at some level about pedagogy and education, specialists would be an amazing addition to this conversation. But so much of what you are doing, what you're talking about, making it explicit, laying out one's expectations, that is deeply beneficial to, particularly to people with less power and knowledge in the room. It is people who, for newer people who don't know how things work. Right. And is true for people who might have other obligations, whether it's tending to an elderly parent or whether it's being A student athlete and having very fixed. You had less flexibility, I imagine, for people who weren't student athletes. And so therefore it's actually equalizing to people who have student work. Right? Say I work at the library five times a week, and I have to plan my schedule ahead of time. So so much of what you're talking about, all of these are design choices. But there's certain design choices that help, particularly when it's transparent and clear, equalize the room. But that may not always be your purpose.
- [29:04]
A
Gotcha. Okay, let's get practical from a personal perspective. And I'm fascinated by how you run these things. So let's say you and your spouse want to host a dinner and drinks party, kind of basic, wherever can happen anywhere, and you're going to have over five couples. Okay, maybe you'll tell me that's too many or too little. Whatever. Okay, five couples. You all know each other already. Maybe some are closer than others, like most social groups, but for the most part, you all know each other. And the goal of the night is we want to laugh, we want to have a good time, we want to create memories. We want to get closer together. That's the goal. Because everyone's crazy busy with kids and sports and life. And before you know it, if you don't plan these things, they just don't happen. Right? So that's what we want to do. Okay? And this is real life for me, right? This is my life.
- [29:54]
B
So you're like asking for a friend.
- [29:57]
A
I'm asking for myself. Okay, what. What are the keys? From the very start of the invitation till the last person leaves the house, and whatever happens afterwards, what are the keys to hosting, like, an amazing dinner party with a handful of couples that you don't do a good enough job intentionally spending time together outside of all your kids stuff?
- [30:19]
B
Okay, so I'm going to pause and say first, and I always say this, which is, first ask, what is the purpose and what is our need, and what is it that we most want? Even before the structure of the dinner party, as annoying as that might seem. And one of the things I heard you say is like, I really. These are people who you kind of see, they all know each other, right? And we really want to have a great time and laugh hysterically. If that's the goal. A dinner party may not be the best form. Okay, a dinner party, and then we'll go to the dinner party. But a dinner party is, like, you're often seated down. It really, really depends on the conversation. Also, in some ways, it's almost easier to have a beautiful conversation with strangers than it is with people who have known each other for a long time. People have known each other for a long time. Also, like, aren't willing to like, oh, here's Ryan's like, magical question again. Like, you know, like, they like, dunk on each other versus, like, someone be like, yeah, absolutely. I'll answer, you know, a question about from my childhood or, you know, whatever it is. So the first thing I'd say is if the goal is to, like, revive a friendship group, really think about, like, it might actually make more sense to play a kickball game in the park. It might actually makes more sense to go and book out a pickleball court for two hours and stage a made up pickleball championship and, like, put people in a teams of two. If you, if it's like fun and laughter and doing something different and having some people deeply remember it, it might be going to like a morning rave and go, like, go to daybreaker in your city and say, this is what I want to do. It will be done before break. So the first thing I would just really say, and I sound like a broken record and whether I should think about work or pleasure is really pausing before form and saying, what is our deepest need? And then pausing and saying, what is it that gives me energy? I recently launched a substack called Group Life. And we do these group help sessions every two weeks where I get on Zoom Live with whoever, with Group Lifers. And the second session we did was called Throw a gathering, how to host a gathering you actually want to attend. So the first question I would ask you, Ryan, is, do you want to throw a dinner party?
- [32:22]
A
I don't know.
- [32:25]
B
It's like, we're so boxed into thinking about how adults and couples must hang out.
- [32:30]
A
That's a great point.
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B
And so the first thing I would just think about is, like, do you want to actually go bowling or do you want again? Because I'm listening to what you said, which is fun and laughter and joy. Do you want to go for a dance party? Do you want to go and have tea in your grandmother's China on a picnic blanket in the river?
- [32:50]
A
Yeah. One of the most recent ones we did in this kind of realm was party, bus, concert, and man, it was amazing.
- [32:59]
B
Right?
- [33:00]
A
It checked all those boxes. There's no real dinner. Maybe some snacks, but, like, it was some beverages and a bus, good driver and music and.
- [33:10]
B
Or with a dinner party. Again, if you. This is why I'm saying, really. And like, Anyone listening to this, like, really pause and ask, like, what is it that I most need? Or what is it that the group most needs? And like, that's a leadership skill. That's discernment.
- [33:25]
A
Yes.
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B
And then ask. Okay. Or, and if it's like, what I most want is to become a great dinner party host, then throw a dinner party. Right. There's nothing wrong with dinner parties, but it's just one of many forms of connection.
- [33:37]
A
Do you like hosting dinner parties?
- [33:39]
B
I do like hosting dinner parties and I like it because my husband is a great cook.
- [33:43]
A
So when you host dinner parties, do you guys cook normally?
- [33:46]
B
Yes, we cook. And I will say, my husband, I'm very fortunate, does most of the cooking. I think about the meaning and he thinks about the, like, the nourishment.
- [33:54]
A
Okay.
- [33:54]
B
So for a dinner party, you know, the quick and dirty as I think, keep it relatively simple. And so, I mean, some of the things we've seen is often, like, people will enjoy. We're Indian, Indian American, like, people. Some of our most successful dinner parties is literally like a big vat of biryani, chicken biryani, one dish with like yogurt on the side. And then like, just like a night of like, stories and laughter and you, you know, continue. Maybe you have some desserts versus like, you know, 12 dishes. And so, so on a dinner party, really think about what's the menu and what's the menu. You know, I'll tell you from my lens because I really do. I'm not thinking about the food. The food matters, but what to come to me with is the meaning making. So the first is when you think about the food and what you want to serve, think about something that tells a story. Think about something that you can relatively easily accomplish. So it could be again, when you increase the meaning dial, it decreases the pressure on the quality of the food. So, for example, I grew up. This is a true story. I grew up. My paternal grandparents, Ruth Eliel Parker, were simple working class people who lived in Waterloo, Iowa. And whenever I would go and visit them, they would make me BLTs. And they made like my grandmother made the perfect BLT. And she. They had a garden in the backyard. And it wasn't just like a small garden. It was like rows and rows and rows of cabbage and tomatoes. And I grew up. I have this deep, visceral memory of her blts. Right? If I am hosting and I don't and my husband's not going to cook, I can send an invitation. Come enjoy. My best attempts at Ruth's BLTs. The invitation matters, right? I tell the story in the email. I narrow the expectations. Right? This is for BLTs. If you don't eat BLTs, maybe this is not the party for you. I will have. You can take out the bacon if you're vegetarian, Right. It's also. It's a social contract, right? No, no, please don't bring your mushroom penne. Right? No, please don't in this context. And so, so much of what ends up happening is again, you want to increase the dial menu. And all I ask you to bring, if you're asking, if you think about what you bring, bring a story of a dish that takes you back to childhood. It creates the whole night. It's done. It's a play that plays itself.
- [36:15]
A
I mean, that sounds like such a little thing, but it's actually a pretty big thing. Bring a dish because then you know you're probably gonna get an amazing story and you get a room full of those. And that creates a lot of connection, some vulnerability, probably.
- [36:28]
B
Yes. You're priming them. You're helping them think about their own social anxiety. Okay. That's all I need to say.
- [36:34]
A
They don't talk about that much.
- [36:35]
B
Yes. And particularly for a group that knows each other well, actually, particularly for adult friends, so much of the patterns of communication end up being about, like, what is happening in current life. And so one very simple way to refresh a friend group is to find ways that to tell stories that people have never heard of before. And again, if you want to have a dinner party and just like, come and hang, do that. But so much of what I think of is like, how do you meaningfully focus a group in a way that they want to be focused? So another very simple tool. I talk about this a lot on my Instagram. And if you all can go to Priya Parker on Instagram, and there's a whole circle there about this idea, but it's called magical questions. So magical question is, this is what I think of as a magical question. It's for a group. It's a question that everyone in the group is interested in answering, and everyone in the group would be interested in hearing each other's answers. It's a magical equation. And it's subjective. It's relative. Right? So I have a daughter. My poor children know this practice very well. The other day, I was parenting, solo parenting. My husband was traveling. I was solo parenting my kids and their nephews. It was me and three kids. And they started like, it was Dinner Saturday night. And they started just like arguing about what movie they were going to watch that night. And I was thinking, like, this is not my Saturday night. This is not going to be my Saturday night. And so I paused and I'm like, okay, let's ask a magical question. And they know what a magical question is. And my daughter, 7 years old, she goes, she thought, and she goes, I have one. What's the naughtiest thing you've ever done that was worth it, right? And like, we ended up, we laughed and we talked and we shared and we were there for two hours and I heard stories that they had done and they had stories that I had done. Recently, we went to visit my father again. So much of facilitation is actually figuring out connection despite obstacles, right? Figuring out connection despite obstacles. One obstacle in many groups, and particularly in families, is age intergenerational connection. I recently visited my elderly father in Florida. And again, table, I was with my children. I was like, let's ask a magical question this time. My son said, I have one. What's the meanest thing you ever did to anybody?
- [38:53]
A
Wow.
- [38:54]
B
Before the age of 15, right? And I'm like, I have literally never heard this question before. Like, this is why it's a learnable skill. You can teach this to your teams, you can teach us to your teenagers. And we all heard stories of one another. And what was so interesting is he caveated by saying before the age of 15, which actually temporarily equalized the group. So the 78 year old, right, and the 40 something year old and the, you know, the under 10 year olds were relatively equalized. And we all shared a memory from when we were kids. And so part of thinking about connection, whether it's at a dinner party or anything else, is when the mechanism for connection is conversation, which is not always. You can go dancing, you can play soccer game, you can. There's so many ways to connect. But when it's conversation, asking a magical question is a very powerful tool.
- [39:42]
A
What are some of your other favorite magical questions?
- [39:47]
B
One that I love to ask and I actually do this virtually on Zoom a lot. I, you know, as a facilitator, a huge part of my growth, maybe ironically, was during the pandemic. And so much of all of the groups I used to facilitate, right, the reckonings, the organizational, complicated conversations, it would always be in person. And the pandemic hit and everything moved on to Zoom. And as you know, there were a lot of reckonings on Zoom. And I was a facilitator who was Brought in along with my peers to facilitate those. And all of a sudden, I realized that my skill, my job as a facilitator, I no longer had the tools that I had to run after somebody leaving a room, right? To chase them into the bathroom and knock on the door and convince them to come back out. To use my body to signal that it's, like, time to start quieting down. I was in a little green square, right? And so, so much of the. The single most important tool that I have learned as a facilitator of virtual groups is to create psychological togetherness. How do you create psychological togetherness when people aren't in the same room? And actually, in group life, my substack. I am doing a. My next session is literally on this. My single most important skill as a facilitator is creating virtual togetherness. Psychological togetherness in a zoom. And one of my biggest tools is magical questions. I promise I'm answering a question and my favorite question to ask of any group. And I do this all the time. I do this in organizations. I do this when I'm speaking for a speaking engagement to a company. I'm doing it for conferences. 3,000 people, 50 people. As I ask in the chat, I say, open up the chat. And I just want to get a sense. You often can't see everybody, right? But it's like. It's like an imaginative community. I just want to get a sense of who's here, okay? So open up the chat. Let's warm up our chat. And I want you to tell me, think a moment. What was the first concert you ever went to, comma? And who took you? And people pause. And then all of a sudden, you see this waterfall of answers. Bonnie Raitt, Madonna, Michael Jackson, New Kids on the Block, Nicki Minaj. And so a couple of things are happening. First, everyone is super interested in seeing everyone else's answers, but there's so much data and context. Who's here? Wow, I didn't realize they were that old. Or, oh, my gosh. Their first concert was my first concert. You also realize everyone has someone behind them. My sister, my mother, my dad, my older brother, my college girlfriend. Right. All of a sudden, it expands your notion of who's there. But finally, particularly if you ask us at the opening and openings really matter how you actually create a community or a group, you're also increasing the likelihood that everyone else is realizing, oh, these are real people here, and there's real context. And by the way, when the going gets tough, when there's some Miscommunication on the team as there is in everyone. I'm more likely to pick up the phone and call them because how bad could they be? Their first concert was a New Kids on the Block concert, right? So all of this is like you're stitching together a community to, if not be lifelong friends, to be resilient in the trenches. People who know enough data about each other that make them real and human. That's appropriate for a work context that helps people realize, hey, I know something about this person, I can pick up the phone.
- [43:01]
A
Wow. Tom Petty, seventh grade. My dad. It was awesome. I was kind of, like, in shock, actually, of how cool it was that I didn't really know what to do. He probably thought I wasn't having fun, but I actually was blown away. Anyway. How do you come up with magical questions? What's your process? Do you just come up with a ton of questions and then throw out the bad ones? Like, a lot of creativity works? Or what is your process? Because I don't want to just give people the questions. I want to help people create the muscle so that they can come up with magical questions.
- [43:32]
B
I do, too. You know, no one has ever asked me that. Such a great question. So I would say I do it in a couple of different ways. The first is I practice. Like, I test a lot out, and I test that out on my own team, right? And in part because they have the shared purpose of figuring out magical questions that we then share online. So the first is I test and I practice, and I really think about. Again, it's not rocket science, but I think I. Every single time I think. And I'll be sitting there feeling hostess heat at a dinner party and being like, okay, okay, how do I ask a question? What is a question? This entire room, this unique group, like my best friend from college, but also our neighbor, but also my husband's sister, would all be interested in answering, right? That's like social arithmetic. What did that. It means, what do they have in common? What don't they have in common? What's the right level of vulnerability? And that they would all be interested in answering, right? And so I really. I just ask that question over and over and over again. It's a muscle. And then I also ask my community. So on group life on Substack, we actually, on the chat recently, I asked, what's a magical question that you love? And people share all sorts of magical questions that they love. On Instagram, I ask people to send me magical questions. And my DMs are full of magical questions. And then we put them together and when somebody recently. I'm just gonna see if I can find it. Somebody recently sent me a DM from Brazil and he said, I've tried this magical question in my group and it leads to very heated debates. Hold on, let me see if I can find it.
- [45:00]
A
I love that you're creating some tension here with a little bit of delay. Let's find it here.
- [45:04]
B
Yeah, exactly. Oh, I found it. I found it.
- [45:06]
A
Okay.
- [45:07]
B
And you can judge if this is magical or not. So again, this is for his group, Brazilian guy. I got one magical question that has been around my friend group since high school. Are you ready for it?
- [45:16]
A
I am.
- [45:17]
B
Would you rather spend 10 minutes on the moon or one year traveling through Europe? It is a close ended question but it inspires heated debates.
- [45:31]
A
Wow.
- [45:32]
B
I know. I'm like, they literally made that up for that group. It might be super interesting for me. Questions that I So I love the concert question. A question that recently different mediums are good for different questions. So a question that did really well on Instagram, like went totally viral in this way. And I'm like, what the heck? So this is why I keep saying like test be curious. It was, what's the strangest thing you ever found in your pocket? And people are like really?
- [45:59]
A
Like, yeah, I'm kind of drawing a.
- [46:01]
B
People are like everything from the little retainer screw like a child's retrainer screw many parents who have children or if you ever have like an expander to like, I don't know, like guitar pick to glitter from a concert. But it just did really well if that. Would that do well in a room? I don't know. I'll just say one more thing which is this leadership ability to begin to deeply. I mean one of the core skills of facilitation and it's a muscular skill is once you know what the need or the purpose of the group is is to figure out the question that helps the group have the right conversation. So I have a digital course, Art of gathering. Digital course is a six week course. It's pre recorded. People take it as teams. You can go on my website, check it out. Priyaparker.com and one of the practices we have in that digital course is how do you connect a group across power dynamics? And this is an example from that course. It was the healthcare meeting and in the room was a massive hierarchy. It was the CEO of the healthcare company, it was researchers, it was nurses, it was anesthesiologists. It was interns, it was residents. And the purpose of the meeting was to analyze a metadata set of maternal mortality rates. Okay, this is quite heady stuff, but basically maternal mortality rates. I want to actually show you the sophistication of why this is such muscular work as a facilitator. So in this room is a massive hierarchy, and they needed to literally look, read data about maternal mortality and make meaning of it and figure out what they wanted to do across all of these stakeholders. And the facilitator had the task in the first hour to equalize the group. So in my course, I say, okay, take a moment and write down if you were the facilitator in that room, you had an hour and you had to ask one question that would, everyone would answer, that would temporally equalize the group, what would it be? Okay, so this is the question they asked. What is something about your mother or mother figure that you couldn't tell by looking at her? Right. This is a brilliant question for the need of the group. Why? Because first of all, it's temporarily equalizing. Everyone in that room, including the CEO, is a child of somebody has a mother or mother figure. Right. It's temporarily equalizing. Second, they're looking at metadata. Right. Which means a lot of microdata has been kind of summarized. So when you're looking at a data set, part of what they're doing is priming. What is something about your mother that you can tell by looking at her? Right. It's expanding their own context. And so they ran this question and it completely, completely transformed the group, but it wasn't gratuitous. It fundamentally served the desired outcome of the room, which is to use all of these stakeholders who come from many different places to look at each other with respect, to look at the data with context and to be able to have a high enough trust to have a complex conversation with care.
- [49:13]
A
So good. Can I run one by you? A magical question that I ask every year. Okay, so let me set the stage of how this, our dinners go. When we're at this growth Summit again with 40ish people, we go out to a nice, usually like a steakhouse type place, and we get a private room. And in between the main course and the dessert, I tell the people this ahead of time. The host and the restaurants, they know what's going on in between those two courses. I get up and give like a very mini talk. And then I say, here's what we're going to do. I have this box of cards, and each card is A question and you're each going to answer two questions. And I have them all stand up and do this. I go person to person and like usually make a little comment about the person or something, not too long. And then they all answer one question which is the same. This is the champagne question. I'm curious if this is one you use. I got it from Jason Gaynor, by the way. Everything I've gotten I've learned from somebody else. None of it's really original. So anyway, I ask them all the champagne question and I give them a card and sometimes I'll just pick randomly from the box. But anyway, the champagne question is Priya, we're meeting exactly one year from today and we are popping bottles. Beautiful popping bottles, right? Champagne going crazy, celebrating. What are we celebrating?
- [50:30]
B
That's a beautiful question, right?
- [50:33]
A
Champagne questions or grape juice doesn't. Whatever. It just goes better if you say champagne. So, so then they have to sit there and think about like, what does a successful year look like? What's a big goal? What's something they want to accomplish? I want to publish a book, you know, like whatever. Okay. And then the card questions. So they answer, they all answer that.
- [50:51]
B
But can I say one of the reasons why that's so good? It's not only because it's both future oriented and again for the group, it's thinking about goals. But why are you popping champagne? That's a visceral thing, right? You, you pop. It's an emotional reaction. It's a non obligatory reaction, right? You could say like, what is your.
- [51:12]
A
You know, goal in a year? Goal for the year? Yeah, it's boring, right?
- [51:15]
B
Versus. And so part of the power of it is it's almost like a somatic. Right. It's like a physical question that helps people get closer again going back to.
- [51:24]
A
Like, you can feel it, you can feel it.
- [51:26]
B
You can say like you're also like not going to pop champagne about something that's boring.
- [51:30]
A
Correct.
- [51:31]
B
So it's a great question. Okay, keep going.
- [51:32]
A
Forces. You think big, right? Some of them, last time they popped a bottle of champagne maybe have been like their wedding and that. And for some that had been like a decade or more. The second part is I created a box again. Got this from Jason Getter. He runs Mastermind Talk. So he hosts events. I learned it from him a decade ago and he's, he's remained a friend and I've gone to like five or six of his events. So anyway, you get a box of cards and you hand, make these cards. You can use mood.com or whatever. And they're colored, actually intentionally. So the lighter shaded cards are kind of light, loose, no big deal. Questions like basic that it's not a lot of vulnerability. But the cards get progressively darker, and the darker the shade of the card, the. The more vulnerability it will force you to answer. And so this gives me flexibility as the host to know. I don't know if this group, we should go that deep right now. Like, let's stay lighter. And I have, like, 100 of them, so I don't use all of the cards. And so sometimes if maybe it's a smaller group or it's a group where we know each other better or we feel like, yeah, we can go there. I'll go a little bit darker. There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of help. There's a lot of intentionality. But the questions on the cards, then they read it, and a lot of times they've never answered that question before. So they also never answer the champagne question. So they're answering two questions. They have to think on their feet a little bit. And sometimes what they say surprises themselves, let alone everybody in the room. And so, again, heavy facilitation. A lot of intentionality, a lot of planning. Nobody till this year understood the shades of the colors of the cards. I just told them, and they're like, oh, wow. There really is a lot of thought putting this. I go, yes, there is. And so sometimes when they go back, they're like, oh, I got a darker card. He must, like, trust me or something even more so. It's interesting to see what people put into it when you tell them about, like, yeah, this is why we do this. And I think people really, really appreciate it. And they do. They feel, like, a sense of togetherness after we leave that dinner, after going through that kind of moment where we all answer questions together.
- [53:35]
B
Yeah, it's very. It's very effective. And I think part of, again, the responsibility gathering is about connection, but it's also about power. And particularly in a work context, using your role as a host to also protect your guests and making sure that the questions you ask are related to the purpose of the convening. And so you can ask questions that are too vulnerable for a work context. You can ask questions that aren't related to or shouldn't be. Shouldn't be asked. That would be a much better question for, you know, a group of friends. And when you are skilled at deeply thinking about, you know, what is the purpose even asking something as simple as particularly for groups that have been together for a long time. What's a core experience from your early life that you think connects to why you do the work you do today? Right. Again, it's like, it helps people understand people's motivation. But you're not saying, like, tell me any experience from your early childhood? No, no, no, no. It's like connecting. Like, why are you an activist at this organization? Or why are you an accountant? Or what is it that you. Why are you a ballet instructor? Right. What, what? I mean, we're sort of ending where we began. Which is questions are a sequence of words that if you ask them in a specific way, it can open up the world.
- [54:54]
A
Yeah. Being genuinely curious and fascinated about people and their stories and their life experiences will change your life.
- [55:02]
B
Yes, Full stop.
- [55:04]
A
Will change your life. Well, I got to ask you, I meant to ask you this earlier, Priya. This is a little bit of a departure to end, but I'm curious. You write the Art of Gathering, How We Meet and why It Matters. Again, a life changing, transformational book that went mega viral. How did it change your life? What happened when that came out? And all of a sudden, like, millions of people are talking about it, are reading it, are implementing it. It's changing their lives. Like, what did that do for you and your life?
- [55:32]
B
You know, what was interesting is, before the book came out, so much of what I felt like I did as a facilitator and would also be so frustrated with in rooms when I could just see, like, oh, if they would just, all the ingredients are here. If they would just protect their guests, or all the ingredients are here. If they just ask this question or if they just raise a toast and tell people why they're here, it would be so good. Writing a book is like, you get to write what deeply frustrates you and try to convince other people. It should frustrate them too. And so one of the things that writing this book and having it really take was that, like, I grew people's frustration in mediocre gatherings. And that was that I grew people's lens to see, like, this could be so much better. Our time is so short and precious. And by the way, like, I can do this. Like, I say this in the beginning of the Art of Gathering. It's like, anyone can gather. It's like that movie Ratatouille. Anyone can cook. Anyone can gather. And one of the things I learned in interviewing the 100 gatherers I interviewed was, like, many of them identified as introverts. These are gatherers other people credit with creating transformational gatherings consistently so many of them identified themselves as loners, their language often on the outside of things, introverts having social anxiety. And they often, as one person said to me, I create the gatherings I wish existed in the world. And other people seem to like it. And so what has been so beautiful for me, and kind of honestly like a relief, is that people are starting to get fed up with and expect better of how the most precious thing we have is how do we spend our time together and to realize and to give the radical permission that we can change it with some thought, with some temerity, with some bumping around in relationship, in conversation. And that has been beautiful. And the last thing I'll say is, strangely, the Pandemic made the book even more relevant because the Art of Gathering, the paperback, came out April 2020. Super awkward. The Gathering was banned. It was illegal. And part of what happened with the Pandemic is that by taking Gathering from us, we began to see it. We began to see that this thing that we took for granted shapes our lives, right? How do we wed now? How do we fight battles in court now? How do we host funerals? How do we host a gala? What is this thing? And so part of what has been very interesting and very, very helpful as a conflict resolution facilitator, I know that first, groups, things begin to change when you can get a group or a community to go back to first order questions, which is when and where and why should we meet and who decides? And people are now asking that question. And that's a powerful question to be asking.
- [58:29]
A
Wow, this is awesome. Where can we go to learn more about you online?
- [58:34]
B
Priya, thank you so much for asking me. Thank you for having me. You can go to www.priyaparker.substack.com. so I have a substack, it's called Group Life and we've actually created a special page for you all. It's priyaparker.substack.com learningleader.
- [58:57]
A
Let's go.
- [58:58]
B
And we're offering your audience a 15% discount code. So learningleader and group life is really my attempt to. I just started it. It's a substack and I started it because we are awash in self help. We have so many for decades. We have tools for self help. We have apps. We can count our steps, we can count the amount of sugar we intake. We don't have a lot of tools for group help. And we have a crisis of group life. And so group Life is my attempt as a substack to begin to demystify and be part of what I call a group life and group help revolution. So as much as we have tools for self help, it is time to begin to really elevate group help. And part of what I do on the substack is every two weeks. It's the first time I've ever offered this to the public is I teach, I do live sessions based on questions from the audience on Zoom. If you become a group lifer, you can come and we get to go deep on many of these juicy questions together. So thank you so much for having me. Ryan. It's been. You're a wonderful host. Thank you for modeling so many of these principles. Principles.
- [60:05]
A
Well, thank you and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.
- [60:10]
B
Priya, thank you so much. I would too.
- [60:16]
A
It is the end of the Podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are send me a Note ryan@learningleader.com Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Priya Parker. A few takeaways from my notes when you're hosting a leadership off site, 90% of success happens before the gathering starts. You have to determine and clarify what the actual purpose is. What is the deepest need, as a military leader might say, what is the objective of this mission? Get clear on that and plan the gathering accordingly. By the way, the same is true for hosting a dinner party or any other type of of gathering. And I loved the Magical Questions conversation. What are some of your favorite questions to ask that create quote, psychological togetherness? We all have to build the muscle to come up with those questions, borrow from others, test them, see what works. Some of Prius recent favorites what was the first concert you went to and who did you go with? Or the champagne question that I asked that I got from Jason Gaignard. It's one year from today. We are popping bottles, celebrating. What exactly are we celebrating? I love that one. And then finally I actually want to challenge you. And that's simply just to host a gathering. Maybe one for your friends or your work colleagues or just a few couples over for dinner, whatever it is. But host one, have a purpose. Use some magical questions and then do the thing. And then I'd love it if you would send me an email, ryan learningleader.com and let me know how it went. I think you'll be glad that you did. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to the Learning Leader show with Priya Parker. I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and subscribe and rate and write a review, and you go to Apple Podcasts and do the same. By doing all of that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.