The 7-Part Sunday Family Meeting w/ Ryan Levesque
Ryan Levesque runs meeting rhythms for a living. He is the CEO of The Ask Method Company and the best selling author of Ask, and a few years ago he took the same system he uses to run his business and brought it home. The result is seven parts, every Sunday morning after breakfast, thirty to forty five minutes, and his kids were just four and seven when they started. He did not launch all seven at once. He rolled it out one piece a week for six or seven weeks, using the same micro commitment approach he teaches in his business, so nobody in the house revolted. What came out of it is a full rhythm his family still runs today, built on a rule that makes the whole thing work: none of it can come top down.
The seven parts, in order
Every Sunday starts with the date, just writing it down so there is a record. Then wins: what was the best thing that happened this week, big or small, and everyone answers. Next is gratitude, aimed at one person at a time, with one rule.
“The only rule is it has to be something specific. It can’t be like he’s a good brother. It needs to be, on Tuesday Bradley let me read his book.”
After that comes the weekly challenge, one problem the family solves together, treated like an experiment. One week it was an after school checklist taped to the wall. Another week his older son proposed a seven day vegan challenge after they watched a documentary together as a family.
Letting the kids write the values
Family values came next, and Ryan let his kids build the list instead of handing one down. It grew to nineteen before an annual planning retreat trimmed it to five.
“When you have a four-year-old helping you form family values, some of our family values are things like, we help nature.”
Family goals work the same way, broken down from a yearly vision into what gets done this week. A value like health might turn into a goal to read more, which becomes a books-per-week number, which becomes pages per day.
The rule under all of it
“The key part of all this is it can’t come top down.”
Ryan runs this the same way he runs goals at his company: ask, do not assign. What is your goal, how many books is that, how many pages a day, when will you read them. Then write it down. The meeting closes with the week ahead, day by day so nobody is surprised, and ends with a family hug.
Two things for the dinner table
Stick around and Ryan and Jon trade two more rituals for the table. Question of the day means whoever’s turn it is asks something that is never “how was your day,” something like what is one thing you did today that involved the color yellow. Happy, crappy, healthy asks for the high point, the low point, and the family’s own addition: how did you help someone today, or how did someone help you. And on whether any of it is worth keeping going, Ryan leaves it at one question.
“But is it serving?”
Listen to the full conversation with Ryan Levesque on the Front Row Dads podcast, where he walks through all seven parts and the annual retreat that keeps them honest.
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