She looked at me quizzically. “Whatever you wish,” she said warily.
Okay, I said, “I’ll give you a name or a topic, you get a one-word response.”
“Do I get the same?” she asked with a grin.
“Absolutely!” I responded. The audience laughed in anticipation.
Pelosi leaned forward, watching intently, not knowing exactly where this was going. I wasn’t going to pounce or embarrass her, but I was trying to put some energy in the exchange and drive some spontaneity to the conversation.
Just the night before, Pelosi had been on the front lines of a big budget deal. It was Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s swan song achievement, his last big act before retiring. It passed with votes from Republicans and Democrats alike—a rare event in Washington. Pelosi had rallied support from her side. That’s where I started.
“Budget deal?” I asked.
“Hooray,” was her reply. She smiled proudly.
The presidential campaign was under way and an unlikely candidate was leading the Republican field. I invoked his name.
“Donald Trump?” I asked.
“Performer.” She grimaced.
Abroad, Vladimir Putin was rattling sabers, deploying his military.
“Russia?”
“Careful.” She scowled.
Democrats are perennially on the defensive about big government. Their adversaries like to refer to them as tax-and-spend liberals.
“Taxes?”
Pelosi paused. “Investment.”
Democrats wanted to raise taxes to pay for a range of government programs, so that one word captured their rationale perfectly. In less than a minute, we’d covered several topics—and with an amusing economy of Qs and As. Our political word association game opened the conversation with a few laughs and no speeches, and it established an informal and approachable relationship onstage. It encouraged spontaneity and set Pelosi’s internal clock and her expectations for how I was going to proceed. I think she enjoyed it. I know the audience did because I heard their reaction and laughter and I knew my questions touched on a variety of issues they were following in the news.
Opening with scene-setter questions can help you get people talking, set the pace, and frame the conversation. Figure out what you want to talk about and how, factor in the personalities you have in the room, then map out questions and anticipated responses. You can excite the imagination or you can prompt reflection. It’s your show.
Would you buy a Tesla?
Who’s the most inspiring person you’ve ever met and why?
Set the Stage, Set the Tone
When it comes to hosting, I’ve never met anybody quite like Chris Schroeder. An entrepreneur and an investor, Chris was a digital pioneer, leading WashingtonPost.com in its early days. He invested in a health-related website, built it big, then sold it for a handsome profit. He traveled the world to meet young entrepreneurs who are redefining technology and globalization, and wrote a book.
Chris is a question machine. He recalled that as a young boy, he spent hours with his Italian grandmother, watching her cook, smelling the aromatic tapestry of pastas and meat, onions and garlic, spices and herbs, and asking all he could about the recipes and the family. What was in it? How did she make it? Where did it come from? Where were they from?
Ever since I’ve known him, Chris has been like that—asking incessantly, deeply, about people, ideas, events, and the world around us. He’s an intense and caring magnet for other people as well. They seek his advice because he listens and he asks persistently about opportunities and obstacles, vulnerabilities, and trade-offs.
Exploding with ideas, Chris is driven by his manic curiosity. In his book Startup Rising, he argued that young people in the Middle East embracing technology and innovation will ultimately transform the region in positive and profound ways. For all the turmoil, Chris believes young twenty-first-century innovators are hard at work and will bend history toward knowledge and progress. He is a stubborn optimist.
About twice a month, Chris and his wife, Sandy, host a dinner party. He is a blue-jeans casual, Harvard-educated guy whose interests run from food and sports to technology and foreign policy. Having inherited his grandmother’s love of cooking, he serves up fresh pasta, great wine, homemade everything accompanied by a feast of ideas. His dinner parties are a cross between Top Chef and Meet the Press. On this night, the menu featured fresh pasta amatriciana, lamb stew with mint, and four wines from Italy. He’d sent an email to all the guests twenty-four hours earlier, commenting, “Several of you have asked kindly if you can bring anything, and the answer is no, except an Uber if you will be enjoying some of our wine.”
But think about this, he wrote:
What is something you see in your world that blows you away right now?
Or, what is obvious in your world that to the rest of us may be extremely unobvious?
By the third wine … we may figure out how to save the entire world …
Five couples gathered that Saturday evening at Schroeder’s home, big and warm and welcoming. He and Sandy made gracious introductions, since some of the guests had never met. After some socializing, we moved into the dining room for the main event.
Chris served. Sandy was happy to let him run the show. Their teenage son helped, pouring water and wine, lingering when something caught his ear. After welcoming all of us to his table, Chris slid into his role as host, first offering an observation, followed by a gust of questions. Traveling for his book had given him remarkable access and taken him to places few could visit. He’d just returned from Iran, a place that had dominated headlines and American foreign policy since Islamic revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran and took hostages in 1979. But now what? Chris told us he had met a new generation of young innovators churning with aspiration, anxious to play, defiant in their ideas, and believing in change. These entrepreneurs were more connected and more empowered than ever, using technology to network with like-minded young people. He saw them collaborating online with other entrepreneurs and innovators around the world. If they had a smartphone, they were not restricted by physical frontiers or cultural expectations. Chris told the story of a young woman who was trying to finance her software startup. She was raising the money to bring her idea to market. And there were thousands like her.
He turned to the table. None of us had been to Iran but he threw out some questions we all could chew on.
How will kids—connected by satellite TV, the internet, and smartphones—change the equation?
How disruptive can they be?
How can any government manage the expectations of this young, globally networked generation?
Could we imagine how things might play out as mullahs are challenged by millennials? What should America and the world do in response?
The table lit up.
The government will build a better firewall, predicted one person.
The kids will find a way around it, said someone else.
Governments cannot keep up with technology or with youth, offered a third.
The ayatollahs still control the country.
The world should lay low and let things play out. Young people have already created a parallel universe where they just ignore what they don’t like. Change from within is inevitable.
Too risky. The hard-liners will never let it happen.
Everyone had a place in the conversation, whether they followed what was going on in Iran or not, because Chris’s questions touched on the universal themes of youth, technology, communication, and the process of change as much as they invoked the particulars and politics of Iran. His questions invited participation at whatever level the guests felt comfortable. He selected a topic he cared about and then framed it in a way that was approachable and real. Most people don’t talk about Iran, but who hadn’t thought about the impact of smartphones and social media in the hands of kids and how they are shaping the future?