Cameron Herold discusses the importance of who leaders choose to eat with. Through anecdotes (a TED pre-conference dinner, Keith Ferrazzi, Steve Jobs, J.D. Rockefeller) and a concrete practice he used—taking five different employees to lunch every Wednesday—he advises leaders to rotate their lunch/coffee partners (including virtual meals during COVID) to build relationships across the organization and avoid favoritism.
Chapters
Just thinking about who you're having lunch with right now. I had a dinner at my home about two years ago, the night before the main TED conference, which I've gone to for nine years. And one of the guys that I or people that I invited over to my home for dinner that night was Keith Farazi, who wrote the book Never Eat Alone. And I was thinking about that dinner the other day and just thinking about, you know, who I used to eat lunch with at 1-800-got junk and curious who you're eating lunch with either virtually or in person when you're building your company. Steve Jobs used to have lunch every single day with his lead designer. And J.D. rockefeller used to have lunch every single day with his nine members of his leadership team. So just curious, who are you eating dinner with right now? Or who are you eating lunch with, you know, day to day at work and remember not to pay play favorites. So the reality is we often get into a bit of a habit where we're eating lunch with the same person or going for coffee with the same person, the same person. And the reality is, as a leader, it's about you spending time getting to know the rest of the people in your organization. So one of the things I used to do was every Wednesday I would take five people for lunch and there was a little Greek restaurant that was about a block away from our office. At one attender, God, junk mental note. I should actually go back there because the food's amazing and I would take five random people for lunch every Wednesday. So my executive assistant would set up the lunch and some days it would be three people from it and two from office operations. Some days it might be all women, some days it might be all guys. Some days it was all early stage employees, some was all late stage. Didn't matter. It was always mixing it up. And it was kind of a bit of a skip level meeting. But it allowed me to spend time with different people in the organization and rotate people through these COO lunches. It also allowed me to get to know a lot of other members of the team and get to know or get them to know me. So think about that right now. Who are you spending time with? Who are you having lunches with? Who are you going for coffee with? And you can also do it virtual as well. Just because a lot of us are not going into the office right now due to Covid, it doesn't mean that you can't have lunch with people virtually or can't have coffee with people virtually. You know, you can both decide to grab lunch at 12 o', clock, open up, zoom, and sit and snarf down food together, and just sit and chat. And it's a good way to actually connect with different members of your team, but make sure that you're doing it with people that you don't always spend time with. Get to know everybody on your team that way, but never eat alone.
