Consultant Offers MBAs a Better Entree to Careers

In today’s competitive business environment, how you handle a raw vegetable can be at least as important to your career as how you deal with that big account.

And if you doubt it is true, Peggy Bryan Newfield will tell you the harrowing tale of the candidate for an executive position at a major U.S. computer company who blew an interview luncheon because he dunked his carrot in the dip--after taking a bite.

Reports of careers destroyed because someone used the wrong wine glass, ate out of the wrong salad plate or took the wrong napkin are music to the ears of Newfield, a social image consultant from Atlanta.

She has built a business instructing corporate types and MBA candidates on how to navigate social situations, such as learning which fork to use.

“It’s important not only to have substance, but to have style,” Newfield told a group of 30 business students at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University recently, while teaching them manners at a five-course lunch.

While keeping her tone light, Newfield made serious points to show good manners are more than window dressing. For example, she said, a job candidate who wants to convey decisiveness does not want to waver when choosing a salad or dessert fork. Or a service worker up for the post of department head does not want to alienate management by grabbing a roll without passing the basket.

“This is a competitive world and people are looking for an edge,” said Newfield. “So they are going back to looking at their social skills.

“In this age of power breakfasts, business lunches and working dinners, you can’t risk making a faux pas if it’s a big client,” she said.

President of Personal Best Inc., Newfield has been preaching the dos and taboos of table manners and other self-preservation skills to CEOs, children and even astronauts for more than a decade.

At Carnegie-Mellon, she focused on table manners for graduate students.

“No, we don’t smell the finger bowl, Jayme,” Newfield said, after catching Jayme Meredith, a business school student, taking a whiff of the lemon-spiced dish.

“I’ll never live this down,” Meredith said, looking sheepish.

The MBA students watched Newfield closely. Lynda Simpson, another student, said she was glad to get a primer on what foods to order and how to act at a business lunch.

Before the meal, the students expressed some misgivings about the point of the meal. But as the afternoon passed, they had many questions, and Newfield many answers.

Which water glass is mine? And which roll is mine? (Water’s on the right and bread’s on the left).

What if your dining companion is unaware that a piece of spinach is lodged in his teeth? (Tell him).

And with apologies to Italian food fans, Newfield warned her charges to be wary of pasta.

“It’s not wise to order potentially disastrous dishes that ooze or drip, such as spaghetti,” she said.

In fact, it might be better to eat your lunch or dinner before an important business meal.

Newfield, whose aunt was one of four U.S. protocol officials to attend Queen Elizabeth’s 1952 coronation, noted that the purpose of business dining is to foster good relations--not to eat.