The Corporate Dinner Table©

A recent Wall Street Journal article captures the value of sitting down together as a family. Although the author notes the dinner hour has been shortened to twenty minutes, even the briefest of time together helps families connect.

So too, company employees connect using the focused time and attention they spend at employee training sessions. This week while facilitating a training session at a company in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire, I reviewed communication styles using a tool called DISC® personality profile assessments and the employees raised communication issues that they wanted to resolve. I acknowledged the employees in the training session as being the experts – for with minimal prompting they were able to sort through and come up with solutions for communication issues they faced. These were communication issues with a real cost--for without fully open lines of communication, the smooth flow of work was likely inhibited along with the good feelings that should emanate from working with co-workers!

As communications strategies were discussed in the workshop, the employees came up with new approaches to current issues at our version of the dinner table. Simply bringing them together and offering an opportunity to air differences made all the difference. It is clear they left the training session with a new focus and renewed energy to deal with communication issues at the workplace.

Take away: For a more productive workplace, host your own version of The Corporate Dinner Table©. By sharing a time to air out and resolve issues of the day, conflict can be kept to a minimum.

©The Corporate Dinner Table is copyrighted by The Sarson Group, LLC with all rights reserved

®DiSC is a registered trademark of Inscape Publishing