Should a new supervisor eat lunch with the team they manage every day?

No — Marie Sonneman advises new supervisors against eating lunch with their team every single day. That daily break is the time employees need to vent, laugh, and decompress without censoring themselves around their manager. Removing that space by showing up every day quietly erodes the psychological breathing room the team needs to function well.

Sonneman is clear that occasionally joining your team for lunch is perfectly fine — it can even build rapport. But there is an important difference between a deliberate, occasional gesture and making yourself a permanent fixture at every lunch table. When you become a daily lunch companion, employees can no longer fully be themselves during what is meant to be their personal downtime. They will naturally self-censor, and that small daily cost adds up.

This is one of the eight things Sonneman says nobody tells women before their first promotion — covered in episode 451 of Ordinary To Badass. The broader lesson: good leadership means understanding that your presence, however well-intentioned, can change the dynamic in a room. Knowing when to step back is as important as knowing when to step in.