TED Talks Daily - How to come together in a meaningful way | Priya Parker

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Looking to infuse more connection into your time with friends and family? Facilitator Priya Parker urges us to approach gathering with intention and creativity. Diving into the evolving significance of coming together both in-person and virtually, she demystifies the role of a host, outlines mistakes we should avoid and shares the potential of thoughtfully designed get-togethers to bring lasting change to communities, workplaces and personal relationships. (This conversation was hosted by TED's Cloe Shasha Brooks. Visit ted.com/membership to support TED today and join more exclusive events like this one.)

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Our lives were all rocked by the pandemic in so many ways. One key way was how it disrupted gathering with one another at work, schools, and in other social spaces. At the end of 2023, conflict mediator Priya Parker

talked with TED curator Chloe Shasha Brooks and took questions from TED members about why coming together as people and communities is so vital. She also takes us through what it takes to gather in a way that changes and connects people after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb.

If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do. And with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. And now our TED Talk of the day. Priya, you have been very generous with us at TED. You gave

a TED Talk on the Vancouver stage in 2019, pre-pandemic, about how to bring more meaning into in-person gatherings. And then you participated in a virtual TED interview in 2020 about how to do the same thing in the depths of COVID when we could only gather virtually. But now you're joining us for the third time, and I think we're kind of in another space now, perhaps a re-emergence space, when many people are now comfortable gathering in person, but some still aren't. And so as the pandemic has continued to shift our gathering practices, I'm curious how your work around the art of gathering has evolved. I wrote the book The Art of Gathering, and it came out in May 2018. And for about two years, I basically was trying to make the argument that the way we gather matters.

That the way we come together affects our lives, our schools, our culture, our workplaces. And then basically almost overnight in, you know, February, March 2020, if you all remember, you probably remember where you were, you know, at that moment, you started hearing that this sort of this thing was coming. The pandemic, by taking gathering from us, we began to see it. We began to see it as something that gathering is something that shapes us. We began to see it as we couldn't send our children to school, as we, many people couldn't go back to the office. There were many people still essential workers still going to workplaces. But when gathering was taken from us, we basically began to see not only that does it shape us, but we shape it. We literally make it up.

And so in the last two years, one of the biggest changes that I've is learnable and have been working with communities and workplaces to, we actually put out a digital course to teach people the skill of how do you gather in a way that changes people. It is a learnable skill. It is not rocket science, but so much of the way we gather is boring, is on autopilot, no longer actually attend to the problems at hand. And by the way, well before the pandemic hit, the American Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a loneliness pandemic before the pandemic hit, right? And so at some deep, deep level, we're starting to realize, oh, we shape the way we come together and maybe we should try to think about doing it differently. Yeah, absolutely. It's great that people are taking it more seriously as a skill. And I think for people who already are thinking that way, people often want to understand what common mistakes are when we gather. Some of you know, some of the things you've written about

that are common mistakes is pleasing over purpose, assuming that the more is the merrier when we host people and leaving guests to fend for themselves. Can you talk some more about those and maybe other ones? So we often assume, and there's very good intent in this, that if we sort of take care of the logistics, right? Get a location or figure out your Zoom connection and you bring people together,

like people will figure it out. And sometimes that's true. If you're a part of a close set of friends and you all love the way you spend time together, keep doing that, right? You're lucky, it's rare. But so often when we come together, we can actually feel incredibly lonely. We can feel disconnected. I'll give a simple example. You know, often in our kind of higher stakes gatherings, I have a friend of mine went to his, I believe it was his 40th college reunion. reunion, right? And there was so much focus on galvanizing the alumni coming from all over the

world, flying back to their home country, right? And at some level, assuming that when people come together, there will be magic. And sometimes there is, and you're lucky if there is. And he went, and he was so excited to go and be together with people he hadn't seen in 40 years. And he got there, and basically, everyone was kind of milling about. And there's this kind of belief that if we should sort of leave people to themselves, we don't want to overimpose, right? You don't want to make it like too structured. And there's some wisdom in there.

But basically when you leave a larger group of people to themselves, you're under equipping them to kind of get the most they can out of it. Right. He was imagining nights of stories. What have you learned over the last decades? What have your mistakes been? Right. What is the what is our shared grief been? And we forget that it actually takes a little bit of design and thought to connect people in a way that allows them to take risks, that allows them to know which conversations to have, that allows them to prime themselves and each other to know why they're there and to kind of activate that purpose. I mean, that college reunion example is so good because it's so true that events like that can just be all standing around suddenly and now what, right?

Totally. And so often, and I love the kind of the metaphor of a reunion, because whether you're listening to this and it's a college reunion, whether it's a large extended family reunion, whether it's a volunteer reunion, like whatever it is at some deep level, we are going because we want a sense of meaning. I have this monthly newsletter. It's free. You can sign up for it. And, and the most recent one was called meaning is medicine. And I started with a story of a woman that all of the stories I share, I have permission to share. So it's this woman named Amanda and it was the first Thanksgiving that her family was hosting since her grandmother had died. And they were all still pretty rattled by her death. And so first of all, 90% of the success of what happens in the room happens before anyone enters it. So Amanda called up her mother and she

said, you know, mom, I know that this is a tender time. And I'm wondering, as we bring our family together, Amanda wasn't sure, like, is this all about grandma? Is this, do we not talk about it at all? This is our shared context. Like how do we do this without being too heavy handed? And she asked her mother, what is it that you would most like to experience or feel as we bring our family together this year? Not every year, this year. And her mother said, comfort and happiness, comfort and joy. And so she, Amanda listened to that, right? She's starting to do her excavation ahead of time. And so she wrote all of her family members ahead of time. And she said she asked them to send her songs that they play that bring them comfort and happiness. So nice. And then she created that as the Spotify playlist, right, that was playing throughout the evening.

And over the course of the evening, different people were like, oh, that's my song. Oh, that's what I learned about this this time. And they found themselves, you know, humming to the same songs that their grandmother used to love. They found themselves telling stories. She found just the right meaning dial, just the right volume to honor the shared grief, to honor the shared loss, but also to give people some amount of agency and co-creation in terms of what it was. She kind of found a soundtrack, you know, literally and metaphorically to the evening. We don't gather when only during times of joy. We also, most of us all the time, there's so many complex and complicated moments. And it's not rocket science, right? It's a playlist to help her family kind of have a

moment together while they're grappling with a really big change in their shared family. We're getting some questions from members, and I think some of them will fit in right now in an interesting way. So people are asking specific things that can be challenges at gathering. So Hazel asks, what if one person dominates a conversation instead of letting everyone take part? What are some strategies for handling that? How much time do you have? I'm just kidding. Even before the invitation is to first ask, like, what is the purpose of this thing? Who do I want to be there? And at some level, who do I want in and who do I want out? And who is going to likely help achieve the purpose?

And who is likely to threaten that purpose. So a friend of mine, his name is Adam. Actually, this is interesting. I didn't put these two together, but his grandmother had passed away a few years ago before the pandemic. And traditionally in his family, they would come together a year after the death to market. And they couldn't do that in person because of the pandemic. And he got his father and his uncle to agree to let him kind of run it. They're like, we don't think we can do this on Zoom, like too awkward, too awkward. And Adams was like, let me try, let me try. And he also knew, I promise I'm getting back to your question. He also knew that there were certain family members who would just dominate, right? Particularly in a Zoom context, right? You can kind of mute all,

but then it's totally sterile. And so he sent out an invitation and he said, we're going to come together. We're going to remember granny. And if you'd like to, we want to invite anyone and everyone who would like to share a story about her that's short and sweet, just like she was, Right. And, and more than 20 of his family members came together on zoom. He kind of like played, you know, MC or whatever you want to call it. And, and because he had said ahead of time, he made this sort of joke. It was tongue in cheek. It was context appropriate. They already knew, Oh, I need to watch how long I am. And then if someone was going on and on, everyone saw that invitation, right? And so you can kind of course

correct in the chat, short and sweet, just like granny. But the last thing I'll just say about what was so powerful about him doing this on Zoom was in the traditional culture in which he came from and the traditional practice of honoring the departed, it would traditionally be an elder or a spiritual leader. And part of actually rethinking this tradition is they were democratizing who got to share her memory. And so at some level, like when we begin to think about equalizing, which goes back to how do you get someone to dominate? One, you start ahead of time. And two, when you have a pop-up rule that people can understand why you're setting it. The third is you then don't necessarily need to enter the crowd, kind of the crowd course corrects. But the final thing I'll just say is if someone is domineering and it's threatening the purpose,

the role of the host is to practice generous authority. And that is to protect your guests, to connect your guests and to temporally equalize them and to do it with humor and joy. But the group needs to be protected. That's a great, great example. And I'd love to talk about the role of the host for a moment, because I think something that comes up a lot for people, and you write about this too, is the potential awkwardness of all this, that there's this awkwardness as a host feeling like it's embarrassing to try to get people to do an activity together, or if it's too earnest or controlling. And then there's the awkwardness of just getting your guests to buy into all of it. You know, they might want to just relax and not participate. So how does a host navigate this? It's such a good question. We have been

interviewing people over the last two years to ask them, aspiring gatherers, what's your biggest challenge? And the biggest thing they get stuck when they decide they want to gather differently is in getting buy-in from their people, their community, and doing something differently. Because how we gather at some level, it's usually implicit, right? If you think about our workplaces, like how many of you have inherited someone else's meeting, right? You join a new workplace, you join a new community, and you're like, oh, Harry, now why don't you run the Wednesday meeting? And the Wednesday meeting, you're like, okay, what's that?

And it's usually created by someone else at another point in time, sometimes decades ago. And so there's a lot of ways to actually get buy-in, but the first is to realize that people might be attached to the previous form. So I'll give a simple example. Years ago, I was told about this meeting at the New York Times where it's like a 70-year-old meeting and it was called the Page One meeting. And it was, as it was told to me, it was the meeting that set basically the agenda of what seven pieces would be on the front page of this newspaper, right? Every day, seven, eight, I can't remember the exact number, on the front of the page. And at that moment in the media landscape, whatever was kind of on the front page of this newspaper, right? Every day, seven, eight, I can't remember the exact number on the front of the page. And at that moment in the media landscape, whatever was kind of on the front page of the New York Times was kind of the news of the day, right? It's the seven stories policymakers read, it was the seven stories that went out over the,

you know, the wire, all of that. And the meeting took place around this big sort of King Arthur style table. It was, as it was told to me, the editors would come and make their offers to the Olympic gods, you know, to say like, argue why it should be there, why it should be their story. And for years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, this was the like metabolism of the paper, right? Long story short, like 20 years ago, something called the internet was created, right? Then all of a sudden there was studies that showed like the majority of people were not getting their news from page one anymore. They're getting from the website, they're getting from social media. And yet this newspaper still had this, you know, this meeting.

And whether or not you are, you know, in media or journalism, you sort of think about in your own life, like what is your page one meeting, right? In your family, in your communities, in your workplaces, what's the equivalent of this meeting that people have a lot of attachment to, but it no longer serves the need. And Dean McKay, the editor at the time, basically realized that he had a ritual that people were attached to, but that no longer made sense for the need. And he did a number of different things to get buy-in. The first was we need to have a way to actually like discuss what our mission is, all the news that's fit to print, where and how do we kind of grapple around that question in a daily basis? It's not what are the seven pieces of, you know,

news to go on the front page of the paper. Anyway, long story short, he then looked at what practically when should this be? We also get attached to time. I believe it was at 10 or 11. He moved it earlier in the morning. He expanded who should be there, right? The audio team is now there. The audience team is now there. Who is at our meetings or our gatherings is often a reflection of our purpose. During the pandemic, I believe they also changed the whole thing onto Zoom. But at some deep level, the way to get buy-in is that gathering is a practice. And we have to start asking, what is the actual need? What is the felt need of our community?

Who are our allies? And then how do we start making small changes to begin to shift the way we come together so that you're not wasting people's time? How should we spend that? Right. Absolutely. That New York Times example, I think, feeds well into this question from Kati, which is, what are some best practices for honoring intergenerational gathering in the workplace? Because I imagine that meeting had a lot of generations in it over time as well. I love this question. I'll give a couple of examples. I know of workplaces in which there's, um, there are opportunities to, and particularly now in the world of remote work, a huge part of connection across generations used to in person

happen informally, right? It happened in hallways. It happened in elevators, right? The famous, like what's your elevator pitch? You have 30 seconds of the CEO, like, what do you say? I know of a workplace, I think it's a management consulting firm, small firm, where they started to realize that there was, that they were doing mentorship, not wrong, but half wrong. And they assume that mentorship is always sort of like top down. And I don't mean that just directionally, institutionally, but age wise. And one of the biggest things that they realized when they started listening to their workers was that a lot was that there are a lot of skills that younger generations are bringing in that older that that that older workforce don't have so things like um like using slack as a digital native right it was like all all of these different

elements and so they created an intentional reverse mentorship program where they would where they would where they would pair people up and that mentorship would go sort of both ways. I know a second, I know a couple of other organizations in which, again, this is particularly in a remote context, in their large town halls when their entire organization is there, the way you open a meeting really matters. And they start obsessing over creating connection in the first 5% of the meeting. And so one organization that's in as well as they create coffee rooms, coffee lines, where they're kind of synthetically creating the context that we used to have in the

workplace. And all that means is they're putting people into breakout rooms. And so often, particularly when the work, you know, going gets tough, when you have conflicts in your, in your teams, which is invariant, which is going to happen in any long-term relationship, when you actually have that cross-stitching across generations and you have ways to come together and be like, oh, that's the same person who, you know, went to the same concert I went to, you're much more likely to give them benefit of the doubt. And you're much more likely to actually, to realize that even if you have a difference on this project, these are people that know you. These are people that feel you. These are people you can pick up a phone and chat with, but you have

to design for that connection. Your mention of Slack made me think that this question from Paul would be a good one to share, which is, what do you think about using interactive virtual tools like Mural, Kahoot, polling, et cetera, to add meaning? Is there too much? Is there too little? How do you manage that? I think some of the most interesting innovations in our digital gatherings is around tools that allow people to connect more meaningfully. And often the best ideas that come up aren't like, oh, use a mirror board to do this. It's saying like, wouldn't it be cool if we could get everybody to share their best idea about the new product launch? And then asking, okay, so are there tools that exist that we can do that easily?

During the pandemic, I'll just answer this real fast. I was so interested in the people hacking together tools that didn't yet exist. Right. And so I don't know if you all remember this, but one of my favorite tweets during the pandemic was from a guy. He said something like last night. I went to a digital party. It was called the Bodicey in which every room, it was a global digital party in which every room, every zoom room was a different part of the body. So you could sort of like navigate through these different breakout rooms. And like the throat was like a place where you could, um, was like the bar and you could take shots of dyed Pepsi or whatever, tequila, whatever you're having. And, and the, and then I entered

this other room and it was the womb and everyone was in their own bathtub. Right. And, and, and, and it was like, and then it turned into this like hot tub party, but everyone was in their own bathtub zooming in. And it was, it totally broke was like, and then it turned into this like hot tub party, but everyone was in their own bathtub zooming in. And it was, it totally broke, like blew my mind that this was actually possible. And, you know, I was chuckling watching these like, like deep, deep ingenuity, right? Connections like don't let our, don't get too overwhelmed by the tools. Look for where there's desire and interest and connection and then find the infrastructure to just help it along. That is amazing. I would have loved

to have attended that. And now back to the episode. What you're saying makes me think about something you write about a lot, which is psychological togetherness and how that can come about in virtual gatherings or not. So I know a lot of what you've just shared is our examples of how we create that. But what are some other ways we make psychological togetherness virtually? You know, whether it's in person or whether it's virtual or online, every gathering we attend, no matter how senior you are in an organization, no matter whether you are an in-law in a family or whether you are, you know, a family of origin, we all walk in at some or we enter a room, we enter a Zoom, kind of asking like, do I belong here? I think of gatherings as temporary alternative worlds where we need to open them and then we need to close them. And the first 5%, the opening really matters. The opening is the highest, the invitation, what you say in the invitation, and then the opening is the highest

opportunity to help people actually feel like they belong. And particularly, and you can do that in super simple ways. In our digital course, we actually have all of these ways that people use the chat box to create psychological togetherness. In our online environment, so often that first 5% is sort of clunky. It's kind of awkward. Like, what are we doing here? How, like, ah. And in our in-person environments, actually those are the best moments

because it's when people have the most agency in a room. You can choose whether you're a front of the room person, whether you're a back of the room person, where, like, grab some almonds, have the conversation you actually want to have. In our Zoom environments, we have less agency. So for example, if you want to pop into the chat right now, drop into the chat, the first concert you ever went to and who you attended with,

who took you, right? And whether you're watching this live or afterwards, like right now, you know, I'm seeing new kids on the block, right? Led Zeppelin, James Taylor, Tina Turner, Amy Grant, Whitney Houston, right? All of a sudden you so much, the Eagles, right? Barry Manilow, Michael Jackson, Shakira, right? First of all, y'all like music, which is great. And so much is all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, wow. Like their first concert is my first concert or, oh my goodness, I didn't realize that they were that old or wow. Oh my, wow, they went to that iconic concert in Brazil.

Whoa. And gathering can build a sense of community. And so much of what we are doing here is helping us all create meaningful connection without all having to be the same. But part of the tool of creating psychological togetherness is first the deep empathy to realize you have to stitch it. You have to create it. But not yourself. Crowdsource it.

And find appropriate, you know, relevant questions for your audience, depending on who you are, to help people understand what it is. These are incredibly helpful ideas for virtual gathering. So thank you for all this. But I'd love to pivot back to in person for a moment. And there's something that you've talked about before that I think is a great example, the birthday party. So you talk about how birthday parties can be these autopilot gatherings that we assume they have to take a specific form and we're just going to go through the motions. And you instead suggest that we start with purpose and redesign a birthday party based on what we're actually craving this year. I know you kind of talked about this a little bit with the Thanksgiving dinner example, but I think something about this birthday party example is great because it's just something that most people go too many of every year.

Right. So how do we make these better? I had a friend who realized I want to have a sense this year of a more sense of adventure. And so for, so their birthday party was inviting people. They lived in a seaside city, inviting, inviting a group of friends to come and watch the Fisher women at 5.00., drag in their nets and watch the sunrise together. And part, and they, again, explain it in the invitation ahead of time. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I inviting you to do this? Also people can say no, right? It's like, love you. See you at nine. But at some level, like gatherings that are specific, that are disputable, meaning like it's not for everyone. It doesn't have to be for everyone. It's a, it comes from a real need. It also allows people to feel like

when they choose to show up, they're being of use versus being used, right? You're not like sort of squishing all the bodies into the room to show sort of like to demonstrate some point. It's actually from the inside out, which is saying, Hey, I'm feeling this. Maybe you're feeling this too. It could be just thinking differently about how we spend our time. It could be, hey, I never get to go. I always think about going hiking and I never get to actually go hiking for this year. I actually wanted to go. Who wants to come with me?

It's just, it's inviting an intentional interruption and allowing people to kind of shift away. They spend time together, and at some level, using your excuse as a birthday, if you choose, to kind of bring closer to you the life of your choosing. So pivoting a little bit into the digital course that you teach, because I think you mentioned something at one point that I think would be really interesting to hear about, which is there's some common struggles people have when they're hosting gatherings. And what are some of the most common struggles and how do you help them address those? The first unit, this is the first worksheet that we use for all of our students on how do you develop a discernible purpose? What does it actually mean to be disputable as a purpose? Is the purpose of a wedding to honor the previous generation as it

is in so many cultural contexts? Or is the purpose of a wedding first and foremost to unite these two communities, to create cross-stitching between these people and friends so that when the going gets tough, as it does in all long-term relationships, you have people tapping on your shoulder saying, remember your vows? Remember what it felt like to be there that day? Remember what you committed to each other? But these are two different purposes. And so often when we don't pause to get really clear, even within ourselves, what's the purpose of this thing? What's the need? What is my desired outcome? We just, basically, the conflict goes into proxy wars, like the guest list, right? Does the last, does the final wedding invitation go to your mother's

colleague or to your college buddy? And so the biggest thing that we skip, the biggest mistake we make is we assume that the purpose is obvious and shared. And the biggest shift to have more meaningful gatherings is every single time the more obvious seeming the gathering the more important it is to ask this question what is the purpose of the staff meeting what is the purpose of the 50th anniversary of our company what do you mean what is the purpose no really what's the purpose is it to honor the past is it on to the future is it to focus on newer employees? Is it to reignite the vows of the people who have been there longest? What is the unique and disputable purpose? And

then you can actually start deciding how you spend your time and what the story of the gathering is. That's such a powerful point that the more common the gathering, the more important this is. And maybe that's not very intuitive, I think, if you haven't been in this world before. So all that is really valuable for the host. And I think Susan's question is a really interesting one for the attendee perspective. She asks, what about the attendee of a gathering? How do they get the most out of the event? Susan, I love this question. This work is called The Art of Gathering, not The Art of Hosting, in part because I believe guests

have a lot of power. And first of all, from the moment, well ahead of time, I said this earlier, like the way we spend our time is the most sacred thing we have. And so practice what I call intentional guesting. So we've heard about nutritional diets, meaning the diets of a people sort of what do we put into our bodies, we've heard about informational diets, meaning the diets of a people, sort of what do we put into our bodies? We've heard about informational diets. What do we read? What do we doom scroll or not? And I want to introduce you to sort of an idea around a gathering diet, which is within your family, within your communities, within your friends, but within yourself.

Like to actually start thinking, not just one gathering at a time, but over time, like, how often, what does it mean to be part of a community? How often do I host? How often should I guest? What is too much? What are the rhythms of our family or chosen family in which we go out into the world? And when are we, when are we kind of at home? And to really think about, to think about that as a more intentional time time, otherwise a couple of different things happen. One is if you're anything like the people, you know, in my, in my world and myself, it's like, you kind of like intentionally say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be there. And then you have sort of last minute flaking or last minute, like that's not helpful,

particularly to anyone, particularly to the guest, I mean, to the host. But the second thing is if you once, so part of practicing the gathering diet is to think about your ratio of gatherings. But the second is to start a practice where you're being more intentional about what you choose to attend and how you attend it. And to practice what I call either the chosen or decisive yes, or the connected no. And invitations are relational, right? I almost think of an invitation as I'm throwing a ball, like the host is throwing the ball

to the guests and the guests are catching it. And the only way to not throw it back is to not answer, right? Or just kind of say maybe in the sort of modern way. But to throw it back and to then practice, you know, whenever you host anything, it can be a meeting, it can be a text thread with your friends, right? You put something out there and whether it's, you know, Sharmila or Dave who responds like, yes, yes, yes, I'll be there. It's like, oh, thank you. Right. Someone's enthusiastic about it. Someone's right. So what does it mean to be a chosen connected? Yes. If you choose to go or a connected, no,

which is to say, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for like, I'm so grateful you thought of me. We're staying closer to home this year, but I really appreciate the invitation, right? There's so many ways to say no. The final thing I'll say is when you begin to think more deeply and just observe, like the first step to becoming a more artful gatherer is literally to just start observing the moments of group life that you're in, to get curious, what's happening here? Are people interested in this meeting? Why is everyone on their phone at this dinner party? What's happening here? Just observe. And the best guests I know, sorry, the best hosts I know are really good guests. I was recently, a couple of years, a while ago, I went to the bar, a bar in the Carlisle in New York City. And every evening, as I'm told, a pianist comes out at like 5pm live piano player. And I walked in with my family at the time. And they're still my family

with my family. And we sat down, we chatted with each other and kind of like noticed the music in the background is beautiful, but kind of noticed the music in the background. Everyone's chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting. And then, and then guests came in and they sat down at a table and from the piano and they asked to move all of their chairs around to one side. And they started like listening with deep intensity to the pianist. And after the first song, they started clapping really loud. And there was kind of this like ripple that went through the room.

It was like, oh, what's happening over there? And everyone kind of turned and the piano player himself was kind of like seemed sort of surprised and delighted. And then the next song, we just kind of were tuned a bit more to the piano, right? And attuned a bit more. And after every song, and, and after every

song, basically people started really applauding and sort of respecting and, and those three guests shifted their room. They, they, they elevated us. And so whether it's in a context like that, or whether, whether it's, whether it's with a group of friends or, or a team lunch, and you realize like, we could just chitit chat or we could kind of find the right conversation to have, how might I do this in a way that creates more safety, more chosen risk, more connection? And it's a practice that is learnable and you don't have to be an extrovert. You need to just be curious. Well, I wish we had so much more time. I have like 90 more questions for you, but we have a few minutes. So maybe just to wrap up, I'd love to just ask Sam's question.

He said, is there a set of best practices for gatherings? He said online and in real life, but I know we won't have time to go on all that. So maybe just the three things that come to mind that you would share as a closing thought for this? First, I'd also direct you to my website, PriyaParker.com. We have the answer to that in something called the new rules of gathering. And the five biggest tips we have is in a workbook there. It's free. You can download it. The first is the biggest mistake we make when we gather is we assume that the purpose is shared and obvious. Don't skip asking the purpose. The second is that openings matter. Think deeply about the world you want to create.

Don't start with logistics. A third is closings matter. And most gatherings don't end. They stop. So we can even do it here. You know, spend time closing out what you most want people to remember. The majority of people that I interviewed for the art of gathering self, who other people credited with consistently creating transformative gatherings identify as introvert as sometimes on the outside of things.

And then I asked somebody like, why do you think this is? She said to me, well, I don't know about other people, but for me as an introvert, there's so many gatherings I go to and I kind of regret going to. I feel uncomfortable. I don't. And so I create the gatherings I wish existed in the world. And usually when I am creating something I want to be at, it's true for other people as well. That's lovely. That reminds me of the idea of people write books to answer the questions they have themselves.

Right. It's like solving your own problems. Priya, this has been so wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time and for joining us here on the TED membership platform. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you all so much for being so engaged in your beautiful questions. And I invite you to really just in one small way, whether as host or as guest, to take a small risk and just begin to ask, like, what is the need here? How can I serve?

How might I do this differently? Thank you, Priya. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use

welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host.

That was Priya Parker and Chloe Shasha Brooks at a TED member event in 2023. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar.

It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.