Every Meal Has a Silver Lining: Developing Long-term Relationships Over Food and Drink

By Doug Avery

Are you experiencing a tempestuous, relational impasse at work or a critical business deal you felt was going to sink you? Every Meal Has a Silver Lining: Developing Long-term Relationships Over Food and Drink by new author Douglas A. Avery navigates those stormy waters with twelve chapters designed to hone your relational-building skills over breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even drinks. How do you discreetly celebrate the personal, nutritional, or religious uniquenesses of others around the table with you? What conversations are appropriate and which ones do you avoid? How do you make your guest feel at ease or how do you make your host/hostess feel appreciated? What about follow up? Because communal dining in every culture carries with it specific psychological and emotional implications, Every Meal Has a Silver Lining analyzes these expectations through the use of personal and professional stories. Each chapter is short, easy to read, and designed to be comprehended independently of the others. While not a twelve-step book, Every Meal Has a Silver Lining uncovers unique principles that, combined with the intelligence of the reader, is certain to set you on the right path to developing positive, long-term relationships that go well beyond your work space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug Avery
• Release date: Sep 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301448784

Doug Avery

Doug Avery is an expert in the lighting industry with almost forty years of experience in efficient lighting technology and advanced lighting control systems. A graduate of California State University, Chico, Doug has worked for Southern California Edison, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Efficient Energy Systems, Lights Unlimited, and Lustra Lighting as well as founding Darlen Lighting Systems. Doug's career accomplishments include: The Rebuild America Business Partners program for the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of the Futuredemonstration projects, co-founding the California Advanced Lighting Controls Training Program (CALCTP) and spearheading the requirement for controllable ballasts for Title 24 in California which goes into effect in on January 1, 2014. Doug lives in Wildomar, California with his wife, Karen, and his two dogs, Mollie (a Golden Retriever) and Zack (a Labradoodle).

Book preview

Every Meal Has a Silver Lining

Developing Long-term Relationships Over Food and Drink

Douglas A. Avery

August 2013

All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Published by TRAITMARKER at Smashwords.

Text copyright 2013 by Douglas A. Avery

Cover art by Keoni Keur

Cover design by Drew MacArthur

ISBN 9781301448784

For information see www.everymealhasasilverlining.com.fgv

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Title

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One – Setting the Table

Chapter Two – Should Have Stayed Home

Chapter Three – Fortunate Mishaps

Chapter Four – Do You Remember When?

Chapter Five – Give Opportunity a Chance

Chapter Six – Cocktails Anyone?

Chapter Seven – The Formal Dinner (The Dreaded Final Job Interview)

Chapter Eight – Just Another Business Lunch?

Chapter Nine – The Honored Guest

Chapter Ten – New Reps

Chapter Eleven – The Business Conference (Dinner With Strangers)

Chapter Twelve – When in Rome … Celebrate the Difference

Epilogue – What to Do Next

Acknowledgements

Every Meal Has a Silver Lining has been a work in progress for quite some time now. Many people made it possible, beginning with my wife Karen who has always just let me be me. Randy Storch's conversation over dinner provided the spark. Brian Meeley and Ryan Hay offered early edits and incredible insights. Robbie Grayson took the raw material and put a big red bow on it. Thanks to Diane Vrkic and Troy Smothers who subjected themselves to being my alpha readers. And I cannot express enough gratitude to the following friends whose real-life stories provided the main ideas for this book: Barbara Collins, Barbara Loyd, Bill Warren, Brian Boyle, Bruce Pelton, Carl (Paco) Arrechea, Christi Birmingham, Christopher Ainsley, Dan Freeman, Daryl DeJean, Eric Woodruff, Evan Mills, Harry Haff, Heather Kirk, Jill Ayn Schneider, Jim Benya, Ken Jensen, Laura Rogers, Lou Ronsivalli, Penelope Love, Steve Jensen, Summer Foovay, Terri Ferguson, Veronica Bergschneider, Michelle Sanchez, Terri Elder, Martin Vu, Dick Sundtrom, Lynn Baylor, John Hund, Nancy Clanton, Vireak Ly, Kimberly Sutton, and Davalynn Spencer. I am grateful for you all.

Doug Avery

September 2013

Foreword

In November 2011, I took my first business trip to Beijing, China. My invitation was a big deal, because it was at the bequest of the Chinese government's very own Chinese Haban Institute. I received my itinerary for the week several months in advance and began researching how to best prepare myself to be the ideal guest. Consulting with business colleagues who had company interests in China (Revolution Studios, and Chinese Management Services), I developed a list of the intricate ins and delicate outs of Chinese culture. Accessing all of the necessary websites, I discovered what I should pack for a November winter (I would be visiting The Great Wall and Tiananmen Square) as well as how much money I should take with me (6 yuan to 1 American dollar). I secured my visa & registered my whereabouts with the Tennessee State Department. I was completely prepared.

Except for one thing. No one told me about guanxi. Guanxi (pronounced gwan-shee) is the Chinese way of cultivating long-term relationships. Being a 5000-year-old civilization, the Chinese know a few things about longevity. In all of my preparation, however, nobody told me that my integrity as an educator, an American citizen, and even an individual hinged upon my knowing and adhering to the rules of guanxi. Here are a few important things I learned that week in Beijing:

1. Guanxi is timeless. Guanxi can best be likened to courting. If you are honest, reliable, and worthy and see your potential client, employer, or business partner in the same, then you will court them at all costs. Even though they might provide you with the hotels, drivers, food and drink, don't think for a minute that you are not expected to demonstrate a high level of courtesy. Relationships in Chinese business culture are primary. Numbers surrounding money and timeframes are secondary.

2. Guanxi is harmony. Guanxi in Chinese business does not equal competition. Competition is considered to be disruptive to the natural balance of things, so avoiding comparisons and contrasts with partners and competitors is absolutely important. Everything has a time and place, and that includes relationships. Business happens if relationships are kept primary.

3. Guanxi involves food and drink! Perhaps, more than any other social activity, the Chinese determine a person's authenticity around food and drink. One is plied with alcohol to see how vulnerable he is willing to be in the presence of new friends. And one is given strange dishes to see how he chooses among never-before-considered options. If business is going to happen, it will happen because one became a part of the family around the table.

Thank goodness I included an extra week of business in the Sichuan Province, because I bungled almost every meal in Beijing. I extended my stay for another week to do business in Chengdu (Singing Success Studios, O'More College School of Design) and clearly my table manners had improved. When I ordered, I realized I was ordering food for the entire table even if I ordered what I considered to be an individual serving. When I was brought food from Pizza Hut, I better understood the communal mentality around the Chinese table (I mean, how is it possible to take individual slices of porridge?). When I ordered the spicy Sichuan noodles, I made sure to leave an opportunity for each person at the table to sample them.

I became more and more aware at each meal, and the smiles on my Chinese hosts’ faces became more and more frequent up to the last night when they offered me the Sichuan treat called hot pot. With hot pot, a large, boiling cauldron of hot spices is put at the center of the table. Portions of raw meat and vegetables are given you to dip into the cauldron for a few seconds and then eat. In addition, you are given copious amounts of alcohol. Usually, a newbie Westerner is completely undone by the heat of the hot pot and the exorbitant amounts of alcohol. One of my American business colleagues ended up passed out in a bathroom stall.

Evidently, I had courted my Chinese hosts so well that week that an argument ensued. One of my hosts was a billionaire (exclusive distributor of JBL sound systems & Wal-Mart lady shoes in the Sichuan Province). He wasn't sure of me and wanted to heat the hot pot to the normal Chinese standard which would have 1) driven me to outright refuse to eat and offend or 2) driven me to eat against my better judgment and make a fool out of myself. The host defending me, a Chinese businesswoman, argued with the billionaire who reluctantly conceded to allow only half the amount of hot pepper seeds to be put into the brew. I knew then that I was a friend for life. At least with everyone but the billionaire.

That corporate gesture in turn allowed me to express my appreciation by being vulnerable. I ate as much hot pot and drank as much alcohol as they gave me (which was reciprocated by the billionaire). Not only were we shouting and laughing by the end of the night, but we even cried together (at what I do not know). I'm even certain we swore lifelong fealty to one other sometime between staggering out of the restaurant (trying to cypher which Mercedes belonged to my host) and being dropped off at the house for bed. Those meals were definitive in my being invited back in March 2013.

Every Meal Has a Silver Lining resurrects for our Western, corporate world the ancient, Eastern sensibility about the sacrament of food and drink: that they are long-term relationships in disguise. Doug Avery delightfully captures twelve principles in motion about the successful (and a few unsuccessful) experiences of bonding around food and drink, the unexpected friendships that can develop, and the wholesome collaborations that can result.

Robbie Grayson

Franklin, Tennessee

September 2013

Introduction

Two basic ideas motivate this book:

1. We all want to succeed at business.

2. We all need to eat and drink.

Every kind of business creates situations where we need to eat and drink with coworkers, employers, and potential business clients. Sharing food and drinks—even just coffee or tea—presents a unique opportunity to really connect with them. Through simply sharing food and drink, we have the opportunity to establish and cultivate professional relationships that will allow us to be more successful in business.

It’s that simple.

However, the inability to form long-term personal and professional relationships prevents many people