How to Have Lunch with Your Employees

A brilliant speech isn’t brilliant if it misses the mark. Not knowing how your audience hears you is a key failure in speech development. You don’t need to fail.

Need to fix this?

Have Lunch

Do it privately-ish. No, no the executive lunchroom. Too intimidating unless they are at that level. Avoid the cafeteria. This isn’t a time to be overly available to your staff or other employees. Take a long hour and get Chinese food somewhere. Take off your suit coat. And turn your phone off.

Simple, Man, Simple

Don’t rely on a survey or a one-off conversation. Keep it simple. Maybe you offer,”My door is always open.” So what? Their door is also open. Go to your employees. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Brown bag it and otherwise avoid communicating, “I’m able to eat sushi at Masa in NYC and you can only afford Waffle House.” Share your meal and talk about non-work things.

What Happens in Vegas…

When you sit down, to allay any concerns, make sure the employee knows everything is confidential. You won’t tell his supervisor. HR won’t hear about it. If the employee offers something amazing over lunch, ask if you can share it.

Getting Into It

In her Harvard Business Review article How Are You Perceived at Work? Here’s an Exercise to Find Out, Kristi Hedges suggests to ask employees two things:

• What’s the general perception of me?
• What could I do differently that would have the greatest impact on my success?

I agree but I would like the approach to be less formal. Be organic.

Find a genuine unique overlapping interest. No, the local ball team doesn’t count. There’s no danger there. I don’t mean you should dig into some controversial political issue, but get away from those generic beige khaki topics that fill water cooler chats.

In my case, I might talk distance running, coffee shops, or classic rock. You never know where such conversations will go. I found out one client’s son is among the top runners in his state and how this transcended her pride in her remarkably successful business. I learned another client also read comics books as a kid. We argued if Peter Parker is more interesting than Tony Stark. Another client saw first-hand the travesty of human rights in China during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, an event which impacted me profoundly.

Don’t (Just) Listen

Avoid being the leader in the conversation. Carry equal weight. You might need to encourage this some as you are the Big Boss after all. Be vulnerable.

You aren’t there to just listen. You aren’t there to pick their brain. That’s not balance. That’s not developing engagement. The gap between employee and boss remains if you are a mere note taking manager. Discuss. Do more than sit there and ask questions. Get into it. Have opinions. If you look at some company issues, explain some hard questions you are working through. That dynamic won’t change if your heart is right.

From there, you’ll build a relationship and be able to ask honest questions and get honest answers. Morale will improve and you’ll both feel better about Monday mornings.

There’s more you can do, of course, if you are genuinely interested in bridging the gap, but do this and you’ll be on the right track.

About Anthony:

Anthony Trendl is the principal speechwriter at AmericanSpeechwriter.com, an executive communications advisory firm. His work is regularly delivered by Fortune 500 leaders, athletes and notables, and is heard in places like Harvard University, Princeton University, UCLA, Beijing, South Africa, the Netherlands and beyond. His speeches have helped raise millions of dollars, and have increased audience engagement across the globe. For speaking and media inquiries, please see here.

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