5/17/18 Great conversation with @priyaparker calling into our @kuciFM studios! Author, THE ART OF GATHERING: HOW WE MEET & WHY IT MATTERS from @RiverheadBooks #TheArtofGathering • founder http://ThriveLabs.co • 15Toasts • Mrs. @AnandWrites
LISTEN to our conversation!
We gather every day – at home, work, school, in our communities – and yet we spend very little time thinking about why and how we come together. We focus on logistics, but not the meaning and power behind the details. We make guest lists without first committing to a purpose that would make our meetings matter. We say our time is precious, yet we spend our days in gatherings that fail to captivate us. Why should we care? Because how we come together defines how we connect to each other as friends, colleagues, neighbors, and citizens. Gatherings shape how we understand, make sense of, and act in the world.
Priya Parker, founder of Thrive Labs, has worked across the globe to help individuals and organizations create transformative gatherings. In her book, THE ART OF GATHERING: How We Meet and Why It Matters, she draws on her expertise and takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience.
Priya Parker discusses:
· How gatherings in our lives are traditionally lackluster and unproductive
· How we rely too much on routine and the conventions of gathering…when we should be focusing on distinctiveness and the people involved
· Why gatherings affect business deals (like Lucent-Alcatel), create worldwide phenomenon (like Diner en Blanc), and can dramatically alter the outcome of meetings (like the New York Times Page One gathering).
· Her work at Thrive Labs -- which helps activists, elected officials, corporate execs, educators and philanthropists create transformative gatherings – and how we can apply these same principles in our own lives.
THE ART OF GATHERING opens up our thinking about gatherings to all the questions we haven’t thought to ask: questions that are essential for us to come together to affect change and create lasting connections, and to make our gatherings more enjoyable, remarkable, and worthy of our time. It will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.
About the Author:
Priya Parker is the founder of Thrive Labs, at which she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, and philanthropists create transformative gatherings. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
