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Leadership happens beyond the boardroom. In this Skill Up episode, Melanie Parish and Dr. Mel Rutherford explore how thoughtful hosting, seating, etiquette, and conversation can help leaders create more inclusive and connected social and business gatherings.

 

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Skill Up: Leadership at the Dinner Table

Hello and welcome to the Experimental Leader podcast. I’m Melanie Parish. I’m an author, a content creator, an executive coach, and it’s great to be here with you today. 

Hi, I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m an academic psychologist. I’m the author of The Glass Cliff: One Transman’s Leadership Odyssey, and I’m the co-host of the Experimental Leader podcast.

I think today we are here to talk about how people can skill up. So, new segment for us, and we’re excited to talk about. Sometimes we notice how there’s an opportunity for someone to just learn something that changes everything, and so we’re going to talk about that today. Do you have an idea, Mel, about what we’re going to talk about?

Yeah. So this is an idea for leaders and maybe particularly introverted leaders. So when we’re in a leadership role and we call a meeting and we’re at the head of the table, we know that we’re on and we know that that we’ve got the room and that we’re moderating whatever happens in the room. But sometimes I think we forget that if we’re organizing a social event or an informal event, we’re still in a leadership position. And I would say, especially for those of us who are who are introverted on the introverted end of the spectrum, I might call a you know it’s a party to celebrate something or a party to mark an occasion, a party for somebody’s retirement, and then I want to go disappear in the corner because I’m an introvert. But as a leader, you’re curating that event. You’re you’re not literally sitting at the head of the table, but it’s but you’re in a leadership role at this social and informal event, and I think it’s important to to be intentional in leadership at those kinds of events.

Well, and if we just take like a business lunch, like a a lunch that a leader is organizing for their the people that work with them in whatever way, and they’re the host. I I think it’s there’s some really interesting sort of nuances that I think about as an extrovert and someone who wants to you know be a little bit of a control freak. I am always very careful to think about where I want to sit, and I very rarely would want to sit at the head of the table, mostly because there’s no people there. Like you’re alone there, and so I often choose to sit in the middle of the table where all the action is. It’s great birthday tip too. If you’re having a birthday party, don’t sit at the end of the table. You won’t talk to any of your guests. And if you sit in the middle of the table, you are able to facilitate the conversation, which is also your job as the host to say, “Oh, Mary, how are? What are you doing? You know what kind of holiday plans do you have? Oh, Bill, have you heard? You know that Leo also plays the cello. You know, and this is pure social. But those those connections that you make can be so powerful, and you can do it if you’re paying attention to the conversation. And I believe your job as a leader at one of those events is to have people feel included, because all of the research shows if people feel like they are part of something, that they have social connections at work. All of the data on culture is so much more positive, and that’s something they may not be able to do for themselves. They may not have the skill. They may be shy. They may not know anyone. But making those social connections can be really important to foster as a skill for a leader,

yeah, and it’s important for a leader to remember that that function in a in a an informal or a social occasion. I also think that oftentimes there’s an opportunity for the the leader, the host in a in a social event, to take a moment during the event and name the function of of the event. It might be you know we’re here to acknowledge so and so, or if it’s just you know the end of the term, we’re here. I’ve gathered you here today to thank you for everything you’ve done this term, or or something like that. Just take a moment, take and and and focus the the the function of the event that that you’re organizing.

Well, and I mean it may be a term in academia, and it may be a quarter or this year in a more business setting. I think I think that’s really important. Should we talk about alcohol for a second at a at a. Function like this? How do you think about that?

Well, actually, that’s a good good question. We we actually in my department a few years ago we had the intention of not including alcohol, and the way that we made that shift was to to shift the event to a breakfast event, and then nobody thinks it’s odd that there’s no alcohol involved. Some organizations do want to involve alcohol, and and and and if you know if the event is a dinner, it would be hard. Well, you’d you’d have to think ahead about what you were going to do with alcohol. What are your thoughts on the on the question?

Well, I think I think it’s just intentional is really important. It can be nice to have a glass of wine with a business dinner. It loosens everyone up. About four or five wines in, things might start to get inappropriate, and and it it becomes less controllable what’s happening, what people are saying, what the impacts are, so you can have a cash bar, and then people are buying their own drinks, and they’re likely to drink less than they would if it’s on your tab. You can order a bottle of wine or a couple of bottles of wine for the table, and then there’s a limit to the wine. There’s not an unlimited supply of the wine. I think. I think. And as I’m saying all this out loud, I’m like, we don’t want like a drunken brawl at a business dinner, and we want it to have that same feeling of a family dinner or a a community dinner, and so alcohol can play a role. But it’s really, I think, the boss sets the context by: are there cocktails, or is it just a glass of wine with dinner? And if you’re the leader in that situation, really thinking about how you use alcohol in that situation is really part of the skill of it all. So,

yeah, I think it’s I think the the important thing is to be intentional and think about these issues ahead of time. There are a couple of ways of signaling how much alcohol is involved. One, as you said, is just put the bottle on the each each table gets a bottle, and that, and that, that’s that. Another is to use drink tickets. I’ve been at events where you get handed a drink ticket when you walk in the room, and and that’s your beverage for the evening. So you you know there are ways of of signaling that this is this is not a free for all. We’re we’re gonna enjoy a drink together, and that’s that.

Well, I think it it all of it is. Oh, I think there’s some other things too about a dinner, like just some basic, like where does your fork go? Like if you put your fork and knife on the right side of your plate, it that’s telling the waitress to take your plate away. It’s good to learn some of the etiquette things if you’re hosting a dinner, just to kind of be clear about what you’re doing. Sometimes families have habits that aren’t proper etiquette, and it’s fine for a family to have their own rules. But in a business context, if people are coming together, then you want to use sort of a more traditional etiquette for yourself to guide how you behave in that situation, and it it might be important that you know what those things are.

Yeah, it’s interesting because when you talk about etiquette. Some people think you’re being very stuffy and very formal, but in fact, if everybody learns these rules of etiquette, you’re actually making more space for people who have different ethnic backgrounds and different class backgrounds to feel like they’re they belong here and they know how to communicate,

Right? Well, and and even things like knowing which bread plate is yours, which I don’t know in this moment, but I often wait to see which bread plate someone else uses around me, so that I don’t inadvertently take the bread plate. I know my glass of water is, you know, my glass is on my right, and you know, even just if there’s appetizers or food on the table, to make sure that you’re passing them. If something’s sitting near you, and someone’s at the other end of the table, they won’t have a shot at that food unless it’s passed. I can’t tell you how many events we’ve been to of all kinds, where you like never get the salad because no one knows to pass the salad, and it’s sort of socially awkward. It feels hard to command that you get the salad. You’re waiting for it to be passed. That’s sort of one of the basic like flow of the table. Things that a host can really help with. Oh, could you pass that?

And these are things that most of my students I’ve never had these conversations with explicitly. But a few years ago, I had a student join my lab from another country, and he was clever enough to tell me, “I have no idea what’s going on here. Can you tell me what the rules are? So we talked about dinner time and dinner rules and how how food sharing worked and and we we had that explicit conversation.

I think it’s a good thing and I think also it’s a great mentorship conversation to have if you’re mentoring someone who’s new to your world. Hey, we’re going to order appetizers. The boss is going to pay for everything, so you want to pay attention to what you order. You don’t want to order the most expensive thing on the menu. Watch and see if the boss orders an appetizer. If he does, then you can, or if she does, You can, so there’s some there’s some watching and learning too in the process about how you participate and how you lead. So I think I think all of these things are really important, and they are leadership. And they these things people don’t know them across class, Across different cultures, they’re different, and there’s sort of a business set of guidelines that are useful because people make up things about people who don’t follow the unspoken rules.

Yeah, sometimes people are surprised to learn that the function of etiquette is to make everyone in the room feel comfortable.

Right. You you like a good etiquette.

You

Like a good etiquette. And the other thing, as a leader, that I’ll just say to wrap this up: don’t be afraid to tell people where you’d like them to sit. We do this at our dinner parties, and we put a great deal of thought into it. We often are hosting colleagues or things like that, and we put a great deal of thought into who would like to speak to each other. It’s not there’s not the the good people and the bad people. It’s that we’ve thought about who might enjoy sitting next to each other, and we’re able to facilitate the flow by thinking about it ahead of time, and that really is a host role. Even in a business context, it’s not just sit wherever you want. So, on on the flip side, if you’re going to a business lunch and it’s being hosted by someone who is more senior than you, you can say, “Hey, is there a spot you’d like me to sit, and if they’ve thought of it, there will be. And if they have, and you won’t break any rules by just sitting somewhere. And if they haven’t thought about it, they’ll say sit wherever you want, and it won’t matter. And then sit in the middle, so you’re part of the whole conversation. It’s been a great conversation today. I hope you enjoy skilling up in this way. Go experiment.

Go experiment.

 

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