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Dinner "Alone"

March 26, 2007  |  from never eat alone blog

From Mark Goulston

Keith was out of town recently and so I had to "eat alone" as a dinner guest of Warren Bennis, who was hosting his long time friend Werner Erhard, founder of est and the Landmark Forum, at The Hump restaurant in Santa Monica.  It went so well that Werner invited me to join him and other friends for dinner the next night. 

All in all, eight hours with Werner, his partner Gonneke, Steve Zaffron (CEO of Landmark's consulting arm), Dave Logan (a brilliant rhetoretician), and my colleage Jeffrey Schwartz (one of the pioneers in the neuroscience) was like having a prefrontal schmorgasbord. I was about to follow some of Keith's building intimacy questions, but Werner beat me to the punch.  His approach was to have us sit at a circular table and never talk to the person next to us as it would exclude the others.  He then had us introduce ourselves in any way we chose, but implied that the more memorable the introduction, the better for everyone.

I was able to give a copy of Never Eat Alone to Werner who enthusiastically latched onto it.

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