Trust and humor are the tone that lets a room relax.

principle — attributed to Kathy 'Coach' Kemper

Whether the conversation is between many people or just two, Kemper insists that trust and humor are essential. When the tone is present, everybody just relaxes and enjoys. The combination is more diagnostic than it looks. Rooms with trust but no humor turn earnest and self-important. Rooms with humor but no trust turn cynical and performative. Both registers, held at once, are the precondition for the candid conversation Kemper's salons are known for. The host's job is to model both simultaneously, which is why temperamentally serious hosts and temperamentally light hosts both have to stretch.

For salon hosts, dinner conveners, and any host whose role includes setting the affective register of the room. The principle is harder to apply for hosts whose natural mode is only one of the two.

humor, trust, atmosphere, salon