Building Better Relationships

with Sarah White

This week, Samantha talks with owner of Your-White-Knight restaurant consulting, Sarah White. Sarah is also described as a political "first responder," in that she sees politics as a place where so many people are running away from it and she is running into it to do what she can to make her voice, and the voice of the people she wants to represent, heard. She would like to bring her experience in the restaurant industry to the intersection of business and politics. So, in this episode, Sarah and Samantha explore the question of how to communicate with people when you know that not everybody shares the same opinion as you.

Sarah comes from a household where it seemed like nobody agreed on anything but they all talked nonetheless. This has given her the unique ability to find common ground with anybody. Sarah believes that you can build a relationship with everybody you meet and finding common ground is the secret. Sarah says, "I have never met a person I had nothing in common with."

So, how do we start to build better relationships with people? If we can find that common ground, we can disarm people and get them to the point where they may think, "this is my person!" De-escalation is one of the keys to disarming people. Sarah believes that if we can control our tones and our pitch when we're talking with people, that's where the relationship can be built. When our words and our delivery make people defensive, it's not a good place to start. At a restaurant, if a customer says something like, "this is ridiculous, I'm never coming here again!" it doesn't give the manager much of an incentive to work with the customer and find a solution. It's not a great place to start that relationship. If we can learn to find the common ground and start on a positive note, more can be accomplished.

Sarah loves people and loves learning from other people and the stories and lessons she can glean through relationships. She believes that it takes outside opinions to truly understand something and that we all tend toward a lack of diversity in the groups we form. Politics is not Sarah's area of expertise, but she understands that her experience in the restaurant industry provides her with a unique perspective in the political field. She wants a "seat at the table" so that her voice can be heard. Not only that, but she wants people to understand that they also can be heard.

Finally, Sarah is not afraid to change her mind on things if she learns more about it. She's not afraid to learn, to grow, and to come to understand things differently as time goes on. We are all going to fail at times and failure is scary sometimes. But, with failure, there is a chance to move forward. Being the kind of person that can allow failure and to allow for growth is important to her. If somebody needs to fail 15 times in order to learn something, it's ok as long as they still want to grow and learn and move forward.

Don't ever stop learning.

Sarah White can be found here:

Politics: sarah4va.com

Restaurant: your-white-knight.com