Last weekend I ran the Singlife Davao marathon thanks to ZyWave, the company I work for, sponsoring a group of us.
Ran… well… I did a combination of walking and running, anyway.
In my years working as a digital nomad, freelancer, or what have you, I know that it’s always a great thing to see your colleagues outside of a Zoom call or a Slack thread.
To see the person or a version of them that exists beyond their job title.
The one who turns out to be surprisingly competitive in a group event.
The ones who cheers everyone else on even when they’re clearly exhausted themselves.
The one you’ve emailed a hundred times but never actually spoke to properly until now.
This is a meeting that you won’t be able to replicate online.
It happens when you’re in the same physical space, doing something together that has nothing to do with deliverables.
When you know the people you work with as actual people, collaboration gets easier. Asking for help feels less transactional.
Giving feedback feels different when there’s a real relationship underneath it.
It’s harder to misread someone’s tone in an email when you’ve already laughed with them in person.
Remote work is genuinely good for focus and flexibility.
But it can quietly hollow out the connective tissue of a team if nobody’s paying attention to it.
Company events are one of the few built-in opportunities to rebuild that.
So if your company puts something together, a fun run, a team lunch, a year-end thing, whatever it is…
Show up.
Not because you have to.
But because the people you’ll meet there are the same people you’re going to need when the work gets hard.
Might as well get to know them first.