Assigned Seating
A Team Builder's Guide to Surviving the Holiday Table
I don’t like to tell tales out of school, but Paul and I went to a holiday dinner disaster a few years ago and I still have a bit of stuffing in my bra. (the bread kind, not Kleenex — I took that out at 13). The hostess, well meaning, in love with everything and everyone, had spent the morning doing yoga with baby goats, and the night before with Pinterest and a bottle of wine. She made what she thought were the cutest ever cue cards for conversation. They were cute. The writing somewhat first grader, the designs the same, the meaning heartfelt, the deployment dangerous.
The mistake was thinking a grumpy old man, an idealistic college student, a disgruntled middle manager who recently lost his job, and a political activist would each look at those cards and think of warm family conversations. The team builder in me looked for a nibble that might induce severe gastric reactions so my husband and I could go home. (I’d feed it to Paul; sacrifices were in order, his not mine.) Everything was yoga studio pristine, lacking any biological warfare microbes, so there we stood. Sparkling water, jicama sticks and fear were our only compatriots in the situation. (Paul won’t drink sparkling water, so he had even less comfort than I.)
I have spent years helping Fortune 500 teams communicate, collaborate and stop rolling their eyes at each other in meetings. I've worked with engineers, attorneys, sales teams, and one memorable group of accountants who got very competitive with a paintbrush.
None of them prepared me for this holiday dinner.
After years of working with people and watching what happens when you put them together, I know that the holiday table is the ultimate team-building exercise. You’ve got a bunch of people with wildly different opinions, and a much-anticipated deadline in the oven. (The turkey waits for no one, and no one waits for tofu turkey), and at least one person who hasn't read the room since 1987.
If this is your guest list, treat it like a corporate retreat. With pie.
Step One: The Seating Chart Is Strategy
In team building, we never let people sit wherever they want. Left alone, people cluster with their comfort crowd, and the loudest voices take over, words get lobbed over the bow. It’s the same at a holiday table, thus the stuffing in my bra.
Every family has one. The Debater. The over-sharer. The cousin who just discovered cryptocurrency, or a new crime podcast, or both. Do not seat these people next to each other. That's not a dinner. It's a cage match with gravy.
Instead, sprinkle them. Put the Debater next to the grandma who has heard it all and is unimpressed. Put the over-sharer next to the teenager with headphones. (They both will roll their eyes, which is a great photo op.) Put the Crypto Cousin at the far end, near the kitchen, where he can explain blockchain to the dishwasher. (Unless you like this sort of thing, then let him sit by you.)
Most importantly, put yourself wherever you can see the whole table. The head of the table was not a design flaw.
Step Two: Give Everyone a Job
The fastest way to calm a restless team is to give them a role. In Canvas Creek it comes with paint; at the holidays it comes with food. No matter the situation, I know that (most) people who feel useful don't stir the pot.
Appoint a Gravy Captain. Name a Keeper of the Rolls. Put the kids in charge of the "What Are You Grateful For" jar. Give your most opinionated relative the job of carving, because it's hard to argue about politics while holding an electric knife. (Okay, it's possible. But it's harder. Also, that electric knife cannot be used as a weapon — you have to think of everything.)
Step Three: Establish the No-Fly Zone
Before everyone sits down, announce the No-Fly List with a smile: politics, weight, who's still single, and why someone's kid dropped out of college to "find himself." Those topics stay parked in the driveway. We did this one year with sticky notes on the fridge, everyone got to put one thing on a sticky note, add it to the collage, and we let one of the children (again, sacrifices must be made) read them off. No one can argue with the cutest child telling them to behave.
Then pipe up with a few better questions. What is your pet’s best trick? What's something you’d like to try to learn? What's the worst gift you've ever given? Given is very important here, if you say worst gift ever received, the giver, who is probably in the room, may — and this is just experience talking — use the stuffing spoon as a catapult.
Step Four: Dessert Is a Performance Incentive
I'm not saying you should bribe your family with pie. I'm saying pie has a long, proven track record in conflict resolution. The hostess, in our dinner gone bad, more quickly than I anticipated, reached the end of her rope. She did not tie a knot in it and hang on, as the kitten posters suggest. No, she picked up the apple pie, dropped it (okay, hurled it) at the floor, and said, “the pumpkin gets it next.”
Quiet reigned. And then laughter. No one wants to see an innocent pumpkin pie sacrificed.
Step Five: Remember, Some of Us Are Retired. This is good.
And now, a word for my fellow grown-ups of a certain vintage.
At some point, many of us retired. Some from jobs. Some from careers. And some of us, including yours truly, have officially retired from BS.
I don't do drama. I don't take the bait. When someone at the table starts warming up an old family argument like it's a leftover green bean casserole, I simply smile, guard the stuffing and say, "I've retired from that." Then I change the subject to pie. Or fishing, which is Paul’s cue to impart a story of the one that got away, which recalculates everyone except the person who can’t imagine hurting little fish. But they’ve usually left at this point.
It's shockingly effective. People don't know what to do with a woman who refuses to engage and a man who tells fish stories. Pie, not drama, always makes a good rally cry.
I went gray, I stopped chasing perfect and I stopped attending every fight I was invited to. My Garmin sleep score has never been happier. Go ahead and retire from the things that make you launch stuffing.
The Real Goal
What I've learned from years of building teams and family dinners: Nobody remembers whether the dips were homemade or whether the tablecloth matched the napkins. (Actually, at my house, they would remember if they did!) They remember whether they felt welcome. Whether someone asked them a real question and listened to the answer. Whether they laughed.
The best teams, the best dinners, aren't the ones with no personalities. They're the ones where every personality has a place at the table.
So make your seating chart. Skip wine and Pinterest. Assign your Gravy Captain. Post the No-Fly List. And if all else fails, cut the pie early.
From my table to yours, happy holidays, friends.
