310. Expert Interview: Maximizing Networking Opportunities with Strategic Dining
Deborah Goldstein
Deborah Goldstein founded two companies to help professionals maximize their careers. Goldie’s Table Matters (GTM) enables professionals to maximize networking opportunities and business development. DRIVEN Professionals (DRIVEN): provides businesses the opportunity to increase employee retention and productivity in the modern workplace environment. DRIVEN addresses professionals holistically by offering a three-part development cycle: professional, business and personal development. Deborah is DRIVEN’s own best student, constantly learning and sharing life’s best practices and integrating work and personal life.
Maximizing Networking Opportunities with Strategic Dining
Strategic dining has been summed up as Peter Drucker meets celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain meets Miss Manners. Of course, there are many people who teach dining etiquette—and dining etiquette is incredibly important. But, some of it, with all due respect to Miss Manners and Emily Post, is a little outdated, according to Deborah Goldstein. When they speak about dining etiquette, they don’t address what’s happening in the restaurant. If you can acclimate to the restaurant’s environment, you can be more present, and you can exude your executive presence more readily. In addition to knowing basic “tabletop navigation” and restaurant logistics, follow-up after the meal is also vitally important.
Why Is This Important?
“Many corporate executives are expected to go out for business meals from the time they interview for a job until the time they retire, yet because of my lens of being “in the back of the house”—that’s a restaurant term—I realized the people weren’t maximizing a business meal. People often fail to plan appropriately for the business meal. If you had a meeting with me you would certainly do a little bit of research about me, and you’d give some thought to the purpose of the meeting and what you wanted to get out of it. Yet people fail to do that with a business meal. Hence, strategic dining was born.”
What Are the Key Lessons Learned Here?
“If you can mitigate your second-guessing at the table, you can fully focus on the business at hand, which is listening. That means listening with your ears, and eyes, and becoming mindfully involved with the conversation so you’re really understanding what makes the other people tick. You can successfully communicate what you want them to know about you.”
Connecting With Deborah Goldstein
Email: deb@DrivenPros.com
Website: http://drivenpros.com
Twitter: @DRIVENpros
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DRIVENProfessionals/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/deborahgoldstein18
