Do you dread attending meetings?
Do the rest of your co-workers, especially your male co-workers feel the same way?
Do most of your workplace’s meetings start late because you are waiting for everyone to show up?
That’s how mine were until I discovered the cure:
Food.
Nothing gets people’s attention in the office more than food.
If there are donuts or bagels in the break area, that is where you will find everyone gathering in the morning. If there is a potluck lunch and the smell of homemade food is wafting through the office, people seem to come out of the woodwork.
Food makes us feel good. If you think about every big life event and every holiday, food is an important part of it. Food creates comradery.
That is why I like using it to lure people to meetings.
For morning meetings there is the standard lure of donuts, muffins and bagels. But don’t forget about fresh fruit with homemade muffins or banana bread. While homemade food is the pinnacle of the food pyramid, a coffee cake or danish from a real bakery (not the grocery store) can rival it.
Bring in good food a few times and that guy you’ve been trying to get to attend a meeting, suddenly shows up.
Personally I hate staff meetings.
They are so freaking boring and worthless. People invent crises just so they don’t have to attend them. Issues go unresolved because everyone who needs to address the issues are never at the meeting at the same time. It is frustrating!
My cure was to hold “staff meetings” at lunchtime. And provide lunch.
Actually, I cancelled the traditional “staff meeting.”
I didn’t need my staff telling me stuff I already knew. With my first work-computer in 1987, I learned to generate reports that gave me all the information I needed. I already knew what was going on and where the problems were.
So, I created a meeting that wasn’t a waste of time and everyone liked to attend.
In one workplace, I first broke us down into 4 different groups who rotated responsibility for providing lunch. After a few weeks of the regular pizza, fried chicken and deli sandwiches, people got creative. They began bringing in homemade food. (The company reimbursed them for the cost of the groceries.)
People love to share their (or significant other’s) homemade specialty. It made all the difference because people opened up.
We spent the first half hour or so eating and talking. (People started showing up early.) As a manager this is when you find out all the things nobody tells you about. Guys especially love to tell tales and joke around with each other. I learned that the joking was typically based in an issue that needed to be resolved.
I replaced that whole formal, charts and graphs, bullet point, agenda-driven meeting with informal and productive conversation.
For the second half hour, we addressed a project problem or a workplace process that wasn’t working. Many topics came right from my team’s informal conversations.
With everyone in a good mood from eating and talking first, we had great collaboration and cooperation. We resolved the issue within 30 to 45 minutes. It is amazing what a team can achieve when everyone is in the right mood.
We became the company incubator of solutions.
Our solutions spread throughout the company.
We spent less than $125 per week on food and saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company didn’t need to hire expensive consultants to rewrite procedures and processes. We did it.
Our meetings were also a super-cheap way to provide relevant professional development for everyone. I paid for the lunches out of my “training” budget. Everyone got training, not just a select few.
Consequently, our performance soared.
Early in my career I also discovered how to use food to promote and advance myself. I used food to crash meetings I wasn’t invited to.
When management has a meeting you want in on, bring them some homemade muffins, bread or whatever you know how to make to get your foot in the door. Start up a conversation about the meeting topic and invite yourself to stay.
I actually crashed an important Saturday morning meeting with homemade banana bread.
“I made two of these last night. Since I had to stop by the office to pick up something and knew you guys were working, I brought the extra.”
It got me in the door and I didn’t leave. From that meeting I got on the project of my dreams. I then made that project a huge success.
I owe so much of my career and its success to that banana bread.
Using food to crash meetings works. But you have to bring homemade food. Store-bought is “too canned” and just not effective. I’ve watched my male co-workers try to copy my technique with store-bought. It didn’t work. (I snickered.)
Being a woman also gives us an advantage when there are important out of town visitors.
For these meetings lunch is often brought in. So, on those occasions I was never afraid to play “Hostess with the Mostest.”
I found out what time lunch was being delivered and I was at the door to greet it. I escorted the food to the conference room and took my time directing the set up. As the “hostess” it was my duty to graciously greet our guests and make sure they were well-fed and taken care of.
No, I wasn’t demeaning myself.
I was working an angle.
You see, in these meeting there is always a man whose job it is to introduce people to each other and start conversations. Typically he is the first one to approach the food. I would introduce myself and make it clear that I was not the admin, PR or marketing person.
I made sure he knew I had a job directly involved in the meeting topic.
Often surprised that a woman had my job, this man then introduced me to the other guests. And I was invited to join them for lunch. After all, that is the courteous and professional way to thank me for being a courteous and professional hostess.
Sometimes I would get invited to stay for the rest of the meeting. Either way, I made connections but more importantly, I gathered “intelligence” I could later use.
Meanwhile my male co-workers were walking back and forth up and down the hall trying to figure out how to get into the room.
Never underestimate the power of food. Use it. Leverage it.
Today many women are afraid to be associated with food whether it is store-bought or heaven forbid, homemade. They fear being cast into the realm of domesticity. All I can say is:
“GET OVER IT!!”
This isn’t the 1960’s. Men cook too. You may even be surprised by how many of your male colleagues like to talk about the food they love to cook.
Remember:
Food is universal bonding.
So, if you can use food to give yourself an advantage, then do it. After all, your male colleagues aren’t about to stop talking to senior managers about sports or cars because it gives them an unfair advantage over you.
Empowered Women Use The Amazing Power of Food To Their Advantage
To learn more, watch this YouTube video: