Authentic Bread and Salt Dinner Conversations: Transformative experience for LRI Alumni

In the wake of a polarizing presidential election, in a time when the word “unprecedented” is now the norm, it’s easy to think America has never been less united. In this era of “us vs them,” how do we find our way back to “we”? What is the secret ingredient that can bring a divided people together again?

In Rhode Island and beyond, we’re betting on a little bread and salt.

Leadership Rhode Island’s Bread & Salt Dinners, small-group gatherings designed to foster connectivity and commonality, aren’t about what’s on the menu — they’re about ensuring everyone has a seat at the table. Each dinner’s attendees are a small cross-sector of emerging and established state leaders who are geographically, generationally and ideologically diverse. The idea is to enlighten and connect a group of individuals who most likely would not end up in the same room, sharing the same meal, otherwise.

The etiquette for a Bread & Salt dinner rules out casual chitchat with the stranger seated next to you. Instead, it calls for an everybody-listens protocol as each guest answers a question, posed to all, that encourages openness and authenticity, one that teases out the connective tissue running underneath affiliations and assumptions.

By leading with vulnerability, people begin to see the others around them as less strange, less foreign.

“At Bread & Salt we ask really intimate questions to get to the core of who a person is. That opens up the door to have conversations that otherwise wouldn’t take place and build relationships that may otherwise not have been possible,” explains Jacklyn Xavier, 2020 CLRI, LRI’s community engagement coordinator. “A lot of people are learning there is strength in their vulnerability. It’s a really solid bridge to bring people together.”

Bread & Salt dinners have an undeniably deep impact on those who attend. Post-event survey results show consistently high ratings and praise.

“I believe dinners like this are one of the most important things that LRI does,” wrote James Kwon, 2018 Xi II. “In a world full of division and polarization, we are able to become vulnerable and share stories that can actually change things.”

There is “tremendous value” in intentional, small group discussions, said Greg Garvin, 2008. “This is the core mission of LRI, in my opinion, facilitating diverse and respectful discussion on important issues that impact all.”

In a mid-November note to Michelle Carr, 2014 Kappa II, LRI executive director, Bill Allen, 1987 Eta, mentioned attending a “truly transformative” dinner months earlier. “I’ve been committed ever since then to significantly increase my annual gift. This and the other community engagements and initiatives are exactly what is needed as we head into uncertain times.”

While successful in the goal of creating wholesome new relationships, LRI is not content to stop there. To amplify the potential impact of this approach, LRI is partnering with Civity, a national nonprofit organization that works with people to strengthen relational infrastructure. Their mission — to build relationships across differences to transform communities — is directly aligned with LRI’s efforts, and Civity has its own history of success.

Civity gained traction after winning Stanford University’s Strengthening Democracy Challenge, the largest social science experiment of its kind, which sought to determine key factors that help reduce partisan polarization. Civity’s storytelling approach, which focuses on seeing humanity in an “other,” ranked #1 at increasing social trust, #2 in both decreasing social distance (when people avoid being near someone of the other party) and decreasing opposition to bipartisanship, and one of the top methods for reducing partisan animosity.

“We understand that communities need to have hard conversations about real-life, important issues to solve their problems. But in order to have those conversations, you have to want to sit at the same table. You need to see each other differently, with respect and empathy, and say — these are our kids, our neighbors, our community. You need to see that we’re in this together,” says Malka Ranjana Kopell, co-founder of Civity.

The power of a Bread & Salt conversation to build trusting, new relationships was put to the test this past summer during the national conference of the Association of Leadership Programs in Providence.

LRI, the conference host, divided the 291 attendees from all over the United States into 32 separate Bread & Salt lunch groups, all in the ballroom of the Omni Hotel. Guided by trained LRI facilitators, members of each group wrestled with the same question: Describe a time you felt that your light was extinguished and how did you manage it?

Feedback rated the Bread & Salt lunches as a top experience of the four-day event. In the months since the conference, staff from 28 different Community Leadership Programs — from California, Utah, Florida and 17 other states — have reached out to LRI to find out how to replicate the dinner discussion format.

“The Bread & Salt luncheon during the ALP Conference was such a simple, yet deeply impactful way to connect with fellow attendees,” Jessica Hendricks, executive director of Leadership Unlimited in Grand Island, Nebraska, emailed. “Our alumni have been seeking new ways to connect and I instantly knew this was the answer. Building meaningful, lasting connections has a ripple effect on communities and leaders.”

Change — true change, lasting change — is rarely a swiftly moving force. It’s messy, difficult work placing fear and distrust to the side in the name of progress. It can’t happen overnight, but as Bread & Salt shows us, it can happen over conversation.

“We’re all Rhode Islanders and we’re all dedicated to making our state a great place to live and work and play. That’s a great baseline to start with,” says Kristin Zosa Puleo, LRI’s director of alumni engagement and development. “And from there we dig deeper. We challenge each other. We listen and connect and broaden our perspectives. When we do that, these conversations can be a real catalyst for many positive changes to come.”