Team Dinner for Two, Please

Everyone loves a team dinner on the company’s dime, but what happens when a team dinner is a metric for something else?

In a previous role I attended an off-site with my remote teammates. For those unfamiliar, an off-site is where one or more teams, or organizations, travel to the same location to be in person with one another for project planning, building rapport, and to have fun. If you haven’t had an off-site with your team I encourage you to see if your company has a budget for one.

One of the best activities at any off-site is the team dinner. The team dinner is where the entire team gets together to share food, drinks, and conversation. An in-person team dinner can be awkward, fantastic, or even scary depending on the team but there are many benefits if planned successfully.

Benefits of Team Dinners

Those that know me know I’m a big fan of remote work. However, no amount of virtual lunches, happy hours, or other meetings can replace the benefits of an in-person team dinner. Here are some of those benefits.

• Building rapport with teammates
• Cultural and dietary diversity
• Learning communication styles
• Career growth opportunities

Most of us have fond memories of the taste or smell of our favorite meal. A team dinner unites all of your senses together in a shared experience that, if done well, can multiply the effects of the aforementioned benefits. I won’t go into detail about how all these benefits play out in practice, but I did want to briefly describe how a team dinner improved my communication with my teammates.

Written communication can be difficult to interpret, especially in a remote work environment. There’s no body language, tone, etc. I’ve had my fair share of written communication misinterpreted which led to the dreaded direct message from my manager. A team dinner allowed my teammates to see my body language, hear my tone, and experience all the other nuance associated with verbal communication outside a normal work environment. After the team dinner this experience carried over into my written communication where my teammates better understood my intent. This took a huge burden off my shoulders and led to better communication during code reviews, design document discussions, and general Slack conversations.

Struggles of Team Dinners

Team dinners aren’t perfect. They are difficult to plan and can result in uncomfortable conversation topics or actions that border what’s allowed by company policy. People, am I right?

In a previous role there was an off-site planned a few weeks after I would return from vacation. Before I left for vacation I was asked to fill out a spreadsheet to vote for the restaurants I would prefer to have a team dinner at and note any dietary restrictions. I wasn’t in charge of planning this team dinner but I figured the results would be tallied and a place chosen that can accommodate the entire team. After all, what good is a team dinner if the entire team isn’t present?

When I returned from vacation I asked the obvious question of which restaurant was chosen for our team dinner. I was surprised to learn that most of the team would be going to one restaurant while two teammates would be going to another. Now I’m not against splitting the group when it makes sense– I know it’s difficult to find a restaurant that can accommodate all dietary restrictions for a large party. I was just confused at the choice to split so far away from 50/50 when there was a restaurant on the spreadsheet that could easily accommodate everyone and was voted for by nearly everyone.

Since I was on vacation when the decision to split was made I was given the opportunity to choose which group I wanted to go with. While I was deciding I learned that one of the two teammates in the smaller group could no longer attend the off-site due to illness. This meant that the team dinner would be one group with the majority of the team and another group with just one person. On one hand being with the majority sounded fun since it would give me more opportunity to chat with more teammates. On the other hand I couldn’t possibly let just one person go to a restaurant alone– it’s not who I am. I decided to attend the team dinner for two.

Team Dinners as a Performance Metric

I went to dinner with my coworker– just the two of us. I’ll spare you the details of the dinner itself but just know it was a great time overall. Shortly after we returned from the off-site the company abruptly announced layoffs. These layoffs were, in my opinion, poorly communicated, but that’s a story better told over drinks.

I’m no stranger to layoffs. I’ve been laid off before and I understand they happen from time to time. For the curious reader, no, I wasn’t impacted by this layoff. However, the two teammates who were originally split off into a separate team dinner group were impacted by this layoff.

Being the naturally curious person that I am my mind was ripe with questions.

• Were these two people purposefully separated in a team dinner group?
• What other times have people been grouped by performance characteristics?
• Could I have prevented this by pushing harder for an entire team dinner?
• Was this just a coincidence and I was just thinking too deeply about this?

I can’t prove that this was anything other than coincidence, but it did change how I think about inclusion at off-site events such as team dinners. It also changed my perspective on what good leadership is and how transparent communication can lead to fewer headaches when planning team dinners.

Thinking back to this team dinner I don’t even remember what food I ate. However, I sure do remember how I felt during and after the team dinner and it wasn’t great. Next time you’re planning or attending a team dinner or related event think about who’s being included and what groups are being formed. The table you sit at does matter and can even be an indicator of how others see you and your performance.

Bon appétit.