Teams can begin to bond through a shared experience such as afternoon tea or a coffee break. You learned about your team members by collaborating on tasting notes and sharing favorite macaron flavors and brainstorming new flavor ideas.
What can you learn from tasting macarons and tea with others?
You may want to reflect on your team’s experience and the discussion that took place. Here are a few of the ideas that may have come up during your team’s experience:
Connect With Your Team By Establishing Common Ground
Teams can begin to bond through a shared experience such as afternoon tea or a coffee break. You learned about your team members by collaborating on tasting notes and sharing favorite macaron flavors and brainstorming new flavor ideas.
“Rediscovery” Can Offer New Insight Into Past Experiences
Some of you really know your macarons and others have had the pleasure of discovering the delectable treat this week. Sharing something you enjoy with others allows you the opportunity to rediscover a past experience with new insight.Your team consists of individuals with all levels of experience. Consider the value of “rediscovery,” Ask newer team members how they are navigating their work and share your process with more experienced team members.
Creating Space For Discovery
By temporarily shifting your focus from ‘work’ to ‘a shared norm’, you found new common ground and enjoyed each other’s company. These are the building blocks for teams that treat each other with respect and build off of each others’ ideas. The biggest ‘learning’ from the 30 minutes may have simply been recognizing the importance of deliberately creating more space for a time like this to explore ideas with each other.
You may want to begin a future meeting with a dedicated team “coffee break” to reflect on and extend the learnings from your experience. Here are some guidelines and discussion ideas we developed for your team:
Planning Steps
During The Meeting
Pick one reflection/discussion pair from the options below or mix and match!
Option 1
Option 2
Option 3
You may want to send an email to your team to expand on the experience. Here’s a draft email that you can personalize to fit your style as a leader:
Thank you for joining our “Tea and Macaron” experience this week.
Beyond a shared experience, I wanted our team to have the opportunity to learn more about each other and to learn something together. I enjoyed hearing everyone’s “history” with macarons and seeing firsthand how unique our perspectives are and how much we can benefit from our collective experiences regardless of experience level.
In a small way, sharing our own experience with tea or French desserts was an exercise in vulnerability. By revealing unique parts of yourself, your teammates discovered new ways to connect with you. I hope you continue to share these parts of yourself with the team and that you feel comfortable doing so.
Many of us were unaware of the effort that goes into creating the perfect macaron and many of us were new to true tasting. While your expertise is highly valued on our team, your ability to explore new flavor ideas and attempt something new out in the open where everyone (including you) can learn from your experiences is also extremely valuable.
I look forward to sharing more as a team and building on the connections made during our “Tea And Macaron” experience.
Sincerely,
Manager
Teamraderie experiences are designed in collaboration with management professors at Stanford University and Harvard Business School. Here are the principles incorporated into your experience:
Increase Collaboration and Trust through Shared Food
A University of Chicago (2016) study found people who consumed the same food or beverage would subsequently collaborate better and reach agreements faster. This Teamraderie experience gives your team the opportunity to consume the same (or similar) drink at the same time.
The Importance of Asking Simple Questions
A Harvard Business School (2018) study quantified the effect of asking simple questions to promote the exchange of ideas, fuel innovation, and build rapport and trust. This Teamraderie experience emphasizes posing simple questions to learn the journey of a 3000-year-old beverage and for your team to share personal experiences with tea and macarons.
Shared and Simultaneous Learning
An Ohio State University (2017) study found those who learn something at the same time report feeling more connected to the people whom they learned with and rate them as more trustworthy. This Teamraderie experience seeks to create a shared epiphany around origins of tea and the dissection of the macaron—its history and the process of creating the delicate and complex French dessert.
Teamraderie recommends the documents and publications below for additional perspective:
Author: Alice Walton, Chicago Booth School of Business
Highlight: “When exposed to deep vs. shallow conversations, participants felt happier and more connected, regardless of whether they generated the topics themselves or discussed assigned topics.”
Author: Julian Zlatev, Harvard Business School
Highlight: “Trust is a conviction that is built slowly, over a long period of time, through repeated interactions. How can we build trust under these circumstances?”