Monday, October 17, 2011

Monday Memo: Do you lunch?

Be purposeful about building community
The women in my area at work decided to have lunch the other week.  All it took was a bit of initiative - a calendar invite (which will inevitably always forget to include people), and reservations to the Italian place downstairs.  It was straight up delightful but also reminded me that within the corporate world women typically aren't as good at men in building community amongst themselves; rather, as one girl pointed out, we tend to foster jealousy rather than support of each other.  Someone else piped up at this point and said they just wished they knew what to do to get promoted, although "guys don't seem to have this problem".

I didn't connect with all of the conversation that abounded from that, but the power of making a point to lunch definitely hit home.  We all know we're supposed to do it more often (build community over lunch, have strategic coffees, find a mentor) but I'm hazarding a guess that we don't all do that.

So this week, while we're all writing our to-do lists lets make this common knowledge a common practice and send the invite out.  Make a reservation.  Go to lunch, ladies - if not for yourself then for the girl who thinks "guys don't seem to have this problem".

2 comments :

Unknown said...

You've written about Sheryl Sandberg's TED talk before haven't you? Keep your hands up, ladies!

http://www.alicetynan.com/2011/01/sheryl-sandberg-keep-your-hands-up.html

Thanks for the reminder.

Lorna Diwa said...

Oh yes! Love that vid, and your post on it was so much more succinct than mine!

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