Ask the expert: Mixing business with pleasure

Q. My husband has recently become a CEO and I suspect that, as this company does a fair amount of entertaining, I will become part of the good image he'll want to project to clients, people who come to the corporate box at the rugby, etc.

I know that things have changed a lot since the days when stay-at-home housewives cooked in their own home for clients, but I wonder if you could give some advice on how I should handle this chore.

I'm a full-time lawyer and although I know I have just called the wife-of-CEO thing a chore, I understand that it comes with the job, in which I do fully support him.

A. The good news is you won't be expected to whip up a dinner for them yourself. But, as you suggest, there will be a fair amount of entertaining involved. Generally, the spouse of the CEO would be expected to attend if the partners of others were going to be in attendance.

Given that you will be attending, you might want to take more of an interest in what kind of events are initiated by your spouse's company. If the company is considering a range of activities and some of them are more to your liking, then make your preferences known. You might also want to discuss how many activities you could expect to be involved in, and when throughout the year - you can expect more at Christmas time, for example - so that you can be prepared and take them into account in your own planning.

Q. I graduated with a degree in physics before moving into the area of downsizing, outsourcing and outplacement, for which I have been very well remunerated.

However much of my skill has been self-taught or learned on short courses, and I have been very aggressive in my work. Over time I have sharpened my more brutal techniques into something with a little more finesse.

I now find I am having trouble networking, to the extent that it is a limiting factor in my work. Can you suggest how I might overcome this?

A. If this is a matter of skills, then you can probably tackle it in the same self-taught way that you have in the past. There are excellent resources on networking, most of which start with how to initiate conversations and engage with people effectively.

Aggressiveness and brutality usually have to be tempered substantially to be effective in this area.

You might start by looking for readings and courses on how to have conversations with people you don't know, how to remember names, as well as building your emotional intelligence. There are other resources on how to set priorities for networking.

Many people network effectively from the perspective of meeting people and making a positive impression, but they don't give enough thought to who they need to meet in the first place.

In networking, your product is yourself, and you need to analyse your market - who are you trying to establish a network with? Then, where are you likely to meet them, and be able to have enough conversation to establish and then maintain the basics of an ongoing relationship.

*

Email us a question for Dr Marie Wilson to answer