TIP: What can go wrong when you invite a team member to lunch.

Posted by Hailey Heimbach on Monday, November 24, 2025

TIP: What can go wrong when you invite a team member to lunch.

We received an email after last week’s tip, “Buy lunch, but don’t go”, and we thought the email contained some good lessons when you do want to have lunch with one of your team. (The gist of the previous tip was sometimes your team wants to bond without their leaders or managers, so let them go out without you.)

The email went like this:

I was working at a large accounting firm and was attending a senior manager meeting with the tax managing partner. He was talking about how available he is to staff etc. and made the comment "I've had lunch with everyone in this room". I replied, "not with me". The managing partner said he'd remedy that immediately and I got an invitation for lunch.

Not only had the managing partner made a rookie mistake of saying “I’ve had lunch with everyone…” he took her to the food fair and walked up to the sushi place and proceeded to order, without asking his guest if she was ok with the choice. (Can you call someone a guest when it’s lunch at a food fair?) She didn’t eat seafood, so it was basically a bowl of white rice for her. There was nothing positive in the whole experience.

The following year she was being considered and tested for partnership, but she said, “I did not trust leadership to consider me as an individual or consider the tax I practice as relevant.” She ended up declining the partnership route and starting her own business where most of her clients left the firm and trusted her to take care of them. A few years later they are still her clients, and she ended up with a much better work environment.

This was the most impactful statement in the email: “I clearly remember that lunch as one of the catalysts for me leaving the firm.”

SHEPA LEARNING COMPANY WEEKLY POSITIVE NETWORKING® TIP​
​No. 1141, November 19, 2025​
​By Gayle Hallgren and Judy Thomson

Categories: General

Tagged: General, Information, Chamber, Tips and Tricks