Strange times happy hours

As a team leader, I faced many challenges in the past few months, from keeping good communication between the team members to onboarding a new hire. After a few weeks, I felt we overcame most of it, but I still missed the casual interaction with my team,
So we scheduled a virtual happy hour. I was excited about finally having casual conversations with my team members and looked forward to this meeting.
It was a disaster. A lot of awkward silences, and after 20 minutes, many members dropped from the call.
We tried it once again, and many people didn’t even show up.
Trying to analyze why virtual happy hours are not fun, I realized when we do in-person happy hours we usually split into subgroups and rotate through the event. Using video platforms like Zoom or Microsoft teams, one fellow is speaking, and all the rest are silent.
Trying to find a way to get my team members to engage with a casual meeting, I decided on an online cooking lesson.
Few days before the meeting, I sent the team a list of ingredients. We decided to start with a Shakshuka, and Israeli eggs dish. It was a blast! We cooked for 30 minutes and had a virtual lunch together. It was amazing to see the correlation between how an engineer cut an onion to how he writes code :).
So it became a tradition. We meet once a quarter for a virtual lunch, and one of the advantages of having a diversified team is exposure to new international dishes.
I can wait for the winter lesson which will be lead by our talented Philipp
Oh, and if you want to cook with us, accelerate the world transition to renewable energies, and knows how to write code, please send me a DM. We are hiring!!!