1: Comedian Baratunde Thurston was in a tight spot.
He was hosting a comedy event that was part fundraiser, part party. The location? The Brooklyn Brewery.
“On the evening in question, it was cavernous, rowdy, loud, and full of people full of beer,” Priya Parker writes in The Art of Gathering. “There actually wasn’t a stage, or even an elevated platform.
“People had been eating and drinking for a while already; … continue reading
There was a key in the envelope and a note that read: “To be continued.”
That was it. Four months earlier, Felix Barrett, a prominent London-based theater director, had gotten engaged. After receiving the envelope, he heard nothing else for many weeks.
“It was blissful torture,” he later recalled, “the whole world suddenly took on a heightened hyper-real feeling, and everything was shrouded in mystery,” writes Priya Parker in The … continue reading
“Parking for your Landspeeder, Sandcrawler, or other transportation vehicle will be provided,” read the invitation to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere.
“Simple as that,” writes Priya Parker in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. “This gathering will be playful, and it is for die-hards who live and breathe Star Wars.”
Yesterday, we looked at how we can intentionally prime the mindsets … continue reading
The short answer? Yes.
Our gathering actually begins at the moment our guests first hear of it. “This may sound obvious, but it’s not,” Priya Parker writes in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Our guests have been “thinking about and preparing for and anticipating” our event from what she calls “the moment of discovery.”
Typically, we focus on logistics. Where will the event … continue reading
Professional facilitator Priya Parker was leading a two-day retreat for a group of twenty consultants just outside Bangkok.
1: “In Thailand, and particularly at this firm, there was a very strong etiquette among the consultants that the client always comes first,“ she writes in her book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. “Accordingly, it is understood that they pick up the phone at all … continue reading
Nora Abousteit loves to throw a party.
1: “She hosts and attends more gatherings than most people I know, and she hosts more generously and seriously as well,” writes Priya Parker in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters.
Nora is an entrepreneur who lives in New York City. “Born in a small town in Germany to a German mother and an Egyptian father, she has spent … continue reading
For many years, when medical teams gathered to operate on a patient, they often didn’t know one another’s names before starting.
1: It turns out this practice had unintended and deadly consequences. “A 2001 Johns Hopkins study found that when members introduced themselves and shared concerns ahead of time, the likelihood of complications and deaths fell by 35 percent,” writes Priya Parker in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet … continue reading
1: It’s the first day of class at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. About one hundred graduate students find their seats. Professor Ronald Heifetz, a popular professor and well-known authority on leadership, sits in a black swivel chair in the front of the classroom.
He doesn’t take attendance or begin his lecture. He just sits there, staring at the ground “with a blank, slight bored look on his … continue reading
Imagine we are in a movie theater. The people in the row behind us are talking to each other. Or, perhaps the person next to us is sending and reading texts distracting us from being able to focus on the big screen.
What are our options? We can attempt to ignore what is happening or say something. Then what? Perhaps the other person stops. Or, maybe an argument ensues, ruining … continue reading
Question: Why do party guests often end up hanging out in the kitchen?
Answer: We humans don’t like big, open spaces. We “instinctively seek out smaller spaces as the group dwindles in order to sustain the level of density,” writes Priya Parker in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters.
Priya was running a two-day gathering to brainstorm ideas for the future use for the … continue reading
