Networking is a critical part of relationship building and there is no event more valuable to building relationships than the proverbial “breaking of bread” with people. I personally run many group lunches & dinners and I attend even more so I’ve developed a set of tips I often pass along in how to make these the most effective they can be.

I’m going to focus this post around the concept of a “board dinner” or “board lunch” since this is part of a series around how to more effectively run board relationships but most of these tips can be broadly applied.

This will seem very specific on how I do things. You don’t have to do them the same way but I figured if I gave you my playbook you could decide what’s comfortable for you.

Another part of managing relationships outside of the board construct is sending update emails and/or making regular, short calls to board members to keep them in the loop & solicit feedback as well as to create an open channel and build a relationship.

Managing a board is a bit like flying — the vast majority of time you’re at cruising altitude with the seatbelts off and there is nothing out of the ordinary. Every now and again you hit severe turbulence where people are grabbing the arm rests and panicked about what might happen next. It is at these moments that having steady neighbors around you telling you “everything will be ok” really comes into play and having a flight attendant who really knows what to do in an emergency can make a huge difference.

These existential moments come up with companies and with boards. To the extent you have warm, personal relationships between board members you often find a deep commitment to helping each other out with even the bumpiest of turbulence. Boards deal with companies that unexpectedly run out of cash, have lawsuits with customers or suppliers, fight off nasty competitors, deal with declining sales, manage founder in-fighting and so forth. Boards also deal with “good” hard problems such as “should we sell the company now” and if so should we take cash or stock.

Because getting out of the work environment helps build stronger personal rapport and because this rapport leads to more cohesive decision-making in tough times you should consider your board meals an investment today in better decision-making down the road when you need it.

You can’t expect board members to meet for a meal every time because with 4+ meetings / year people have other responsibilities and time commitments but work with your board on what works best for them. Zero meals per year is your loss.

For any group of 8 people or more I always try to book private rooms in a restaurant and I will go out of my way to pick a restaurant that has a private room, which is infinitely more important than perfect food. Your goal is to have the best possible table discussions and to have time for everybody to get to know each other on a human level and that’s really hard if you can’t hear everybody speak. If you book in an open restaurant with a lot of noise what happens is each person talks mostly to the person to the right or left of them and a bit to the person across. This is sub-optimal — book a private room.

Reference: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/how-to-run-an-effective-networking-dinner-90b3c0794613