174. Fix Meetings: Transform Gatherings Into Meaningful Moments

Summary

Episode Summary: Think Fast Talk Smart – Episode 174: Fix Meetings: Transform Gatherings Into Meaningful Moments

In Episode 174 of the Think Fast Talk Smart podcast, hosted by Matt Abrahams, the focus is on transforming everyday meetings and gatherings into meaningful and impactful interactions. Matt welcomes Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, renowned facilitator, and strategic advisor, to delve into the nuances of intentional communication and effective gathering practices.

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1. The Power of Intentionality in Gatherings

Priya Parker emphasizes the critical role of intentionality in both formal meetings and casual interactions. She explains that modern life often leads us to operate on "autopilot scripts," which can diminish the quality of our interactions.

“A huge part of what I was trying to do with The Art of Gathering was interrupting the autopilot scripts that we are on in modern life.”
— Priya Parker (02:11)

Parker advocates for pausing to question the purpose behind each gathering: “Why are we doing this? What is the purpose?” This mindful approach ensures that each meeting serves a meaningful objective rather than following outdated or ineffective routines.

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2. The Pandemic as a Catalyst for Change

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional meeting formats, compelling organizations to rethink how they convene. Parker notes that this interruption forced a reevaluation of meeting structures, fostering greater intentionality.

“What the pandemic did is it democratized these questions and made everyone have to actually ask, how do we coordinate so that we can be efficient?”
— Priya Parker (04:03)

This shift away from routine has encouraged many to adopt more thoughtful and purposeful gathering methods, moving beyond mere logistical coordination to foster deeper connections and effective communication.

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3. Crafting Impactful Questions

One of the key strategies Parker discusses is the art of asking meaningful questions to drive engagement and connection within a group. She introduces the "magical equation for good questions":

“A good question for a group is one that everybody is interested in answering, and everybody is interested in hearing each other's answers.”
— Priya Parker (06:14)

For example, she suggests using questions like, “What is the first concert you went to and who took you?” Such questions not only break the ice but also create shared context and foster a sense of community among participants.

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4. Managing Emotions in High-Stakes Conversations

Parker addresses the challenge of maintaining focus during emotionally charged discussions, coining the concept of holding "heat" without "burning the house down."

“How do you hold heat without burning the house down?”
— Priya Parker (09:01)

She emphasizes the importance of understanding one's own relationship to conflict and building a culture that normalizes respectful, heated exchanges. This approach ensures that conversations remain productive and centered on what truly matters to the participants.

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5. Encouraging Active Participation in Large Groups

Effective facilitation is crucial in large gatherings to ensure that all voices are heard. Parker shares insights on pre-gathering preparations that set the stage for active participation.

“90% of the success of any gathering happens before anyone enters the room.”
— Priya Parker (11:48)

She advises hosts to clearly define the purpose of the meeting, carefully select participants, and structure the gathering in a way that encourages meaningful engagement rather than superficial participation.

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6. The Importance of Invitations and Meaningful Closures

Parker highlights the significance of how gatherings begin and end. She draws parallels with acting, where great performers are as meticulous about their exits as their entrances.

“Great actors obsess over how they leave.”
— Priya Parker (14:03)

A well-crafted invitation should set clear expectations and purpose, while a thoughtful ending should provide closure and reinforce the meeting's objectives. For instance, she suggests dedicating the last few minutes to reflections, such as asking participants to share one key takeaway, thereby solidifying the meeting's impact.

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7. Practical Tools and Icebreakers

Throughout the episode, Parker shares practical tools to enhance gatherings. One notable icebreaker she recommends is:

“What is an unpopular, low-stakes position you hold?”
— Priya Parker (16:48)

This activity encourages light-hearted debate and helps participants feel comfortable expressing differing opinions in a non-threatening manner, fostering an environment of mutual respect and openness.

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8. Key Takeaways for Effective Gatherings

Priya Parker concludes with actionable advice for hosts aiming to transform their meetings:

1. Get Clear on Intent: Define the purpose and desired outcome of the gathering.
2. Carefully Craft Invitations: Use language that sets the right tone and expectations.
3. Facilitate Meaningful Closures: Ensure meetings end with reflections that reinforce key insights.

“Get clear on intent, get clear on desired outcome and listening and paying deep attention to the other person.”
— Priya Parker (18:37)

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Conclusion

Episode 174 of Think Fast Talk Smart offers a wealth of strategies for elevating the effectiveness of meetings and gatherings. Priya Parker's insights into intentionality, the strategic use of questions, emotional management, and thoughtful structuring provide listeners with practical tools to create more meaningful and impactful interactions in both professional and personal settings.

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Notable Quotes:

• “A good question for a group is one that everybody is interested in answering, and everybody is interested in hearing each other's answers.”
  — Priya Parker (06:14)

• “How do you hold heat without burning the house down?”
  — Priya Parker (09:01)

• “90% of the success of any gathering happens before anyone enters the room.”
  — Priya Parker (11:48)

• “Great actors obsess over how they leave.”
  — Priya Parker (14:03)

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This episode serves as an essential guide for anyone looking to enhance their communication skills and create gatherings that are not only efficient but also deeply engaging and meaningful.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Ts being purposeful in the way we come together, in the way we gather, can decide and define the success of our group communication. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I'm looking forward to speaking with Priya Parker. Priya is best known for her book, the Art of How We Meet and why It Matters. She's an expert facilitator and strategic advisor. She's worked with organizations and individuals worldwide to reimagine how we come together in both personal and professional settings. Priya, thanks for being here. I'm so excited for our conversation.

[C]

Thank you so much for having me.

[B]

All right, shall we get started?

[C]

Let's do it.

[B]

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

[C]

A huge part of what I was trying to do with the art of Gathering was interrupting the autopilot scripts that we are on in modern life. Whether it's the assumption of how a meeting is run, whether it's an assumption of how one weds or how one mourns or how one parties. And so much of the invitation to that interruption is to actually pause and ask the question, why are we doing this? What is the purpose? What is the need in this community or in this classroom or in this team that by bringing together a specific group of people, we might be able to address? And that same relationship, looking at what is the need here? What is the purpose? Why am I Doing this is as applicable to everyday conversation, because our everyday conversations are also on autopilot. Our everyday conversations are also on scripts. And scripts can absolutely be helpful. But in modern life, so many of us are looking for more meaning, more connection. If you're working in any modern workplace or join any type of association or club, we're not all the same. And so we don't have shared, inherited ways of being together. So intentionality is the first step to actually pause and ask and to look what is happening here? And what is my intent? And how do we begin to make something anew?

[B]

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

[C]

So I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, and so I think a lot about communication and helping people meaningfully connect through dialogue. And I started writing the Art of gathering in 2012, came out in 2018, and two years later, gathering was canceled. Part of what happened when the pandemic hit was that in most of our collective life, everything was temporarily interrupted. And part of what happened, particularly in our workplaces, was when every meeting collectively stopped, we began to actually ask these first order questions, which is when and where and why and how should we meet, and who decides? And so part of what has happened over the last four years, so many of our institutions, is we got off of autopilot because we couldn't meet in the same old ways. So whether it's a nonprofit asking, traditionally raising 90% of its revenue one night a year at their gala, do we do this on zoom? Asking these core questions? What happens when all of the board members can't be in the room? Do we put everyone on zoom, even if they're in the same room? Life is a series of coordination questions. Communication is a series of coordination questions. How people sit, what room they're in. And facilitators and communication experts and sociologists have thought about questions like this for years. But what the pandemic did is it democratized these questions and made everyone have to actually ask, how do we coordinate so that we can be efficient? How do we coordinate so that we can fight well. How do we coordinate so that people are off their scripts and not just giving their stump speeches?

[B]

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

[C]

Being a good question asker opens the entire world. If there is one skill that you can just get really good at as a parent, as a boss, as a teacher, as a friend, it's almost like sorcery. It opens up their sense of self, a whole entire new world of possibility, imagination, and it's a learnable skill. And when we're bringing people together who don't necessarily want to be brought together, but realize they need to, is, what is the right question? What question are we asking this group? What is the right amount of vulnerability? What is the right amount of relevance? And a very simple equation I often write about is called the magical equation for good questions, and here's what it is. A good question for a group is one that everybody is interested in answering, and everybody is interested in hearing each other's answers. So I'll give a simple example. One of my favorite questions to ask in a zoom, particularly in a large group, when you're just trying to warm people up and put it into the chat box, is what is the first concert you went to and who took you? Particularly in work context, when there's dozens of people, all of a sudden, there's so much shared context. Oh, my gosh. Toni Braxton. Wow. Madonna. Michael Jackson. I didn't realize they were that old, right? And this waterfall of so much information. And then also, who took me? My mom, my dad, my older sister, my stepsister. After my parents divorced, it was the first activity we did together. And so all of a sudden, when you have the right question, it should be appropriately bounded for the community, appropriate for work, or appropriate for intergenerational family or whatever your context might be. But learning to ask a question that sparks a group, that helps give them shared context and meaning and expands their notions of each other, is a really powerful skill.

[B]

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

[C]

My first concert was Sweet Honey in the Rock. They are an all women's acapella group in Washington D.C. and I saw it in a church and it was my cool older stepsister who was 10 years older than me. Right after my parents, my mother and her father got married and she took me with her friends and I just thought it was so cool.

[B]

You've facilitated conversations in some high stakes environments. When emotions run high. How do you recommend that we maintain focus on what truly matters without losing sight of the human element and getting sucked into all of that emotion?

[C]

I mean this is like the $10 million question that is relevant to every team. That's relevant right now in whatever nation you're listening from, which is how do you hold heat without burning the house down? And I'm biracial, I'm bicultural, I'm half Indian, half white American. In both sides of my family. We are very good at when heat arises, we're very good at just sticking our head in the sand. Right? Nothing to see here folks. And I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, but I'm a conflict averse resolution facilitator. And my deepest instincts to this day, 25 years into facilitating my hands get sweaty. My heart starts palpitating when I can feel heat rising in the room. And what I have most learned, I think I'm a relatively effective facilitator because I have deep empathy for the people in the room who also want to flee. And I have built skills as a facilitator to train myself to stay in the room. And so the first thing is when you are holding, whether you're a manager, whether you're thinking about holding a conversation with an extended family, whatever set of friends, you can only hold a conversation as deep or as hot as the facilitator themselves can hold. And so the first thing is to start to becoming aware of your own kind of relationship to heat. The second is heat is relevance. People get upset about or people get worked up about things that matter to them. And so at some level, like being a homing device for heat is something that is, it's a way of knowing like what matters to these people, what are the lines in this community, what are our shared values or our Values where we are actually a part. And so part of having a relationship to heat is realizing when heat is in the room, it means you're talking about something that matters. But the last thing I'll say is you can grow cultures of heat, and different cultures are attuned to whether or not something is seen as dangerous in terms of conflict. And in any type of team, you can grow people's muscles to normalize heated, respectful exchange.

[B]

First, I love this notion of holding heat without burning the house down and just calling it heat rather than conflict, rather than many other terms we might use, I think is really important. And really I like that notion of heat is all about relevance. It means you're touching on something that's important to people. So don't run away from it, lean into it. I find it ironic, as you pointed out, that you, as somebody who helps people engage in conflict, resolve conflict, manage conflict, are conflict averse. You don't have to be embracing of conflict to be good at managing conflict. And that's a powerful lesson. I appreciate you sharing that. I'm curious about the communication strategies you recommend for how hosts can actually encourage active participation and genuine engagement for everyone, particularly when the groups are large and some people's voices might get overshadowed by others.

[C]

The first thing, when I was a baby facilitator, one of my mentors would often say to us, 90% of the success of any gathering happens before anyone enters the room. And when you applied to gathering, that means that at first of all, when you're thinking about participation and inviting participation don't begin at the moment people enter the room or the zoom they're thinking about and being primed for what is expected of them and how to be a successful guest from the moment they receive the invitation. And so as you're thinking about what kind of participation am I hoping for? First of all, really good gatherers are really good namers. The language between the difference between a meeting versus a workshop. Right. Just the social contract between a meeting, which is sort of a vague term, versus a workshop. Right. You're already going to roll your sleeves up. There's an inherent invitation to a workshop. And this is absolutely communication. Like invitations are such missed opportunities because we think they're a carrier of logistics. Right. Name, date, time and place. And so the first way to begin to think about participation is what is the purpose of this meeting? Who actually needs to be there? Does it need to be this big? If it is this big, what are the different roles we're asking people to play? What are we actually calling this thing. And the second thing is an invitation at some level as a story versus just like everyone getting onto a zoom and be like, hey, everyone, there's 150 of you here. We hope everyone gets a chance to ask a question. Come one, come all. You. You're not actually priming them. You're not setting them up for success. It's a false notion of democracy. And so this is what I said earlier. Gathering is group coordination. It starts with language, but then it is also thinking about the structure of the group, the sequencing, where and how power is shared, and who can and should be listening based on what the.

[B]

Purpose of the meeting is in many ways. We're going back to our discussion about questions. As somebody who is doing the gathering, there are some critical questions you have to ask yourself as you just identified. What's the arrangement? What's the power? Who has to be there? What's the environment like? And those questions can help that. Language sets expectations for how the interaction will happen and how people will be treated. The work happens before the gathering.

[A]

The invitation is critical.

[B]

So few of us actually pay any attention to the invitation of the calendar invite. And you've highlighted so many ways that it can be empowering. We've talked a bit about what we do in advance, the inviting and how important that is. I'm curious, do you have thoughts on what happens after the gathering to help really cement it? You know, how things end, really impact how we feel about things. What thoughts do you have about at the conclusion of the gathering, but also after the fact? Are there things you recommend we do?

[C]

I'm a lifelong student of improv, and one of my early teachers used to say, good actors think about how they enter the stage. Great actors obsess over how they leave. You enter the stage and you have this big opening, and then when your lines are done, you just, okay, I'm done here. Right? Nothing to see here, folks. And similarly, in our gatherings, absolutely obsess over the first 5% of the opening because it sets the track for the rest of it. But also think about the last 5%. And studies show, including communication patterns, that over the course of a meeting or an experience or a conversation, people disproportionately remember the first 5% of peak experience and the last 5%. And as you said, most gatherings, most meetings don't end. They stop. Right. Oh, gotta go. Okay, great. See you next time. I gotta. Gotta jump to my next call. And I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. But when you think about and plan for the last 5%. The closing 10 minutes. The closing 5 minutes to just help people. Whenever I speak with organizations or companies, when there's people actually on the zoom or webinar the last five minutes, they'll say, how would you like to close? And I always say, we have spent 55 minutes together. Can you pop into the chat one thing you're taking from today? What is the one? What is one insight or one Aha? And then, you see, I get to see what resonated. All sorts of things happen in a meeting. And if you don't debrief at the meeting, they're going to be debriefing on the Uber ride home. Debrief with the group, make meaning with the group. What happened here? What's the meaning of this conversation? Was that the worst conversation we ever had or was that a breakthrough?

[B]

I love this distinction between ending and stopping, because most of us just stop. And what you're talking about is a sense of closure, a sense of ending. And often these endings serve as beginnings or preparation for the next gathering. Most of the time, these things get revisited. And it sounds like there's a lot of work we can do in the end of the gathering that sets us up for the beginning of the next one. And I really appreciate that, Priya. Before we end, I like to ask all my guests three questions. One, I make up just for you, and two, I ask across everybody. Are you up for that?

[C]

I'm up for it.

[B]

You've shared with us lots of great ideas and activities. Do you have a really quick, short icebreaker you like to use or you like to participate in in gatherings you're a participant in?

[C]

There's one that I actually attended for a dinner that I thought was hilarious and I started borrowing it, which is what is a unpopular, low stakes position you hold?

[B]

Mm.

[C]

Right. And so people are like, ketchup is a terrible sauce, or mustard is really the unsung hero of condiments. It creates actually some of that banter and some of that heat and allows people. It's equalizing. Everyone has a low stakes, unpopular opinion, and it allows people to laugh and starts to just warm up the crowd in a way that then actually counterintuitively shows we can hold different opinions than each other.

[B]

Yeah, I see the value in that, in that it sets the stage for discussing different points of view, but it does so in a way that has less heat. Question number two. Who is a communicator you admire and why?

[C]

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

[B]

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

[C]

Getting clear on intent, getting clear on desired outcome and listening and paying deep attention to the other person.

[B]

So really being clear on where you're coming from and being open to listening and understanding where the other person is coming from. Thank you Priya so much for your time and for your insight. The purpose driven approach to gatherings is incredibly helpful. We need to spend more time not just in the gathering itself, but in the orchestrating of the gathering and making sure that it ends well. Your advice and guidance are incredibly helpful.

[C]

It's been a pleasure to be your guest.

[B]

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart the Podcast. To enjoy more from Priya Parker, check out Think Fast Talk Smart Premium at Faster Smarter IO Premium to hear her full Deep Think episode. To learn more about gatherings and meetings, please listen to our two part mini series series episodes 124 and 125 with Karen Reed, Joe Allen and Elise Keith. This episode was produced by Jenny Luna, Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with thanks to Podium podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us.

[A]

Hi Matt here. I'd like you to consider becoming part of our Think Fast Talk Smart Premium. Premium affords you lots of opportunities to get extended Deep Things episodes, coaching through Ask Matt Anythings and access to a global community of people looking to hone and develop their communication and careers. Many people around the globe have already joined Premium. Special thanks to our ambassadors who've donated extra money to the cause. Please check out Faster Smarter IO Premium. We look forward to seeing you there.