{"id":3201,"date":"2022-03-22T15:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T15:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clockwork.com\/?p=3201"},"modified":"2025-10-15T16:54:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T16:54:05","slug":"honey-roasts-what-they-are-and-why-your-team-should-do-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clockwork.com\/insights\/honey-roasts-what-they-are-and-why-your-team-should-do-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Honey Roasts: What they are and why your team should do them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is a honey roast?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Roasts (when talking about oration, not ham) are speeches to honor someone but usually fall along the line somewhere between good natured ridicule to criticism veiled as a joke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honey roasts are the kinder version of a regular roast.<\/strong> A honey roast is an opportunity to say all the wonderful things about a person completely free from ridicule and criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honey roasts at Clockwork<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago, a person was leaving Clockwork to start their next adventure. On their last day, we went around the group and each said some of our favorite things about working with that person. They were showered with love and well-wishes. We all felt warm and connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when we realized, why should we wait until someone is leaving to say nice things not only about them but to <\/em>them? Shouldn\u2019t we let the people we work with know we appreciate them while we\u2019re still working together \u2014 when saying these things may help strengthen the relationship and build stronger teams?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that realization, honey roasts started building momentum at Clockwork. One team started doing them on a fairly regular basis. That team decided to share how it was building trust and connection by piloting a honey roast at our company-wide \u201cAll Hands\u201d meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to do a honey roast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The setup and rules are simple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Enter everyone\u2019s name into a digital wheel \u2014 leadership, new joiners, everyone! (or go old-school and pull names from a hat)<\/li>
  2. Spin the digital wheel (or draw a name from the hat)<\/li>
  3. The person whose name is landed on gets honey roasted! Also, the name is removed from the wheel so there are less and less names to choose from until everyone has been roasted.<\/li>
  4. To honey roast, attendees simply raise their virtual hand in Zoom and speak in the order that they put their hand up. Sometimes we have a \u201cmoderator\u201d who calls on the next person in line to keep things clipping along.<\/li>
  5. The roast ends after 10 minutes (but you can choose a timeframe that makes sense for your team)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The only rule for the honey roast-ee is: No deflecting.<\/strong> Just say thank you!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s hard for many of us to accept compliments without qualifying them in some way. \u201cOh, it was really so-and-so who did that\u201d or \u201cI just got lucky with that one\u201d. That\u2019s why, at Clockwork, we don\u2019t expect the roast-ee to say anything besides \u201cthank you\u201d after a compliment (and even that\u2019s optional!). Nevertheless, you may still experience anxiety seeing the wheel spin and hope that it doesn\u2019t land on you. I did, and it did land on me. But you know what? It wasn\u2019t bad at all \u2014 in fact, it was really great to hear all the wonderful things my colleagues think about me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Benefits of honey roasts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The pilot honey roast was a success and we decided to make it a regular feature of our All Hands meetings. We\u2019ve done 4 now and it\u2019s added a lot of joy and gratitude to our company meetings. Not only that, it has benefits backed by behavioral science:<\/p>\n\n\n\n