How To Do Virtual Team Building On A Remote Team

How to Do Virtual Team Building on a Remote Team

Low-prep Activities You Can Use to Connect

When you think about building relationships with coworkers, you might imagine that happening in person. But many of us now work remotely, and we don’t come together in an office. 

So how can you do virtual team building? My intention in this chapter is not only to answer that question, but to help you simplify the approach. 

Virtual Team Building Made Easy

There are lots of resources on team building. On my bookshelf at home I found a book solely about team-building exercises that use duct tape. Another book provides 52 weeks of team-building activities. Yet another covers team-building exercises specifically for STEM groups. And my friend Jim Cain wrote a book called Rope Games with 123 group activities that use only rope. Clearly, there are many ways to do team building. Perhaps too many.

What I’d like to do is share some activities, ideas and strategies to build and connect your team. I want to do this using only the images and objects that live where remote team members work.

In addition to all the books I mentioned, I wrote my own with a mentor Rod Lee: Pocket Guide to Facilitating Human Connections. We used to teach team building and leadership development facilitation at Penn State University. I now run my own company, helping some of the top organizations and universities build their teams and make connection and engagement really easy. 

Leveraging Found Objects in the Remote Workspace

My favorite way to help groups work together more effectively remotely utilizes something that you actually don’t have access to when you’re in person. When we try to replicate an in-person style or method of team building, it’s likely to fall short. Virtual is just different. 

Instead, to do virtual team building, I like to use objects that exist in and around remote team members’ workspaces. You can invite your group to briefly pause, and leave their computer screen—or their “virtual jail cell” as I like to call it. Have each team member grab three objects.

Now you can give prompts for any number of intentions, purposes and focuses. Here are three I’d suggest. Grab an object that represents:

• A story you’d like to share with the group.
• Somebody you care about.
• Something you aspire to or a future you’d like to create.

One of the tools I frequently use in person and virtually to help build teams are We! Engage Cards, a deck I created with Will Wise. You can purchase these or access a free digital version on our website, www.weand.me/free. The deck is a collection of 50 thought-provoking quotes and striking images.

If you go to the link on the back of the deck (www.weand.me/engage), you can freely access 10-plus tutorials that use imagery and quotes. You’ll find some really cool group exercises there that help your team connect and promote cooperation within your team. One suggests choosing a card that represents a future you’d like to create. You can change that prompt slightly to choose an object that represents a future you’d like to create.

People generally surround themselves with things that have meaning for them. It’s very rare that you walk into somebody’s house and it feels like a hotel. People put pictures of their families on their walls. They keep little trinkets from trips they’ve taken. Whenever you’re on Zoom, or whatever platform you’re using, those “artifacts of life” are all around you. They’re a part of your context. And most are hidden from the camera’s sight. 

Invite team members to leverage this context to interact and connect. Have them grab part of their life to share with the group. Each item is a bit like a file from their infinitely long filing cabinet of life experience. Then bring that object into the little box others see you in when you come together virtually. Hold it in front of your camera. Invite other team members to be curious about what they see. 

This completely changes the conversation. Bringing objects into play turns an otherwise boring, run-of-the-mill, two-dimensional virtual meeting into this engaging 3D experience.

Through this simple yet powerful exercise, you can get quite creative with your prompts. Consider these options: 

• Grab an item that has a great story attached to it. 
• Find an object that represents a life lesson. 
• Collect three objects that represent a highlight, lowlight and insight from the past year. 
• Choose an object from the room you are in that represents your worldview. 
• Grab an item that serves as a metaphor for a unique strength you bring to the group. 

The best prompts are ones that will connect with your group purpose and culture. 

Getting Stronger as a Team

Next, you can build on the strengths of your team and identify how you can collaborate better. Maybe you want to talk about the ways you work together. How do your personalities match and blend? 

You’ll need to increase the psychological safety in the group—everyone should feel comfortable opening up—and for this, relationship building is key. Other times you may want to have a bit more pointed conversation, so you need to be comfortable and open with each other.

Ask team members to choose an object that represents a unique strength they bring to the team. No prep is required. It’s just a simple prompt that can have a deep impact. It also introduces an element of fun. There’s a reason people like show and tell. Our brains are wired to remember visual data much better than language and numbers. 

There’s something powerful about sharing a little piece of your life. If you walk into somebody’s house and ask about a photo on their wall, it makes them feel seen, heard and understood. Sharing an object that has meaning with the group has a similar impact.

You can prompt team members to share an object that pairs with a strength of theirs. I might show off my Toysmith Balancing Eagle that balances on the tip of my finger to talk about having the vision of an eagle. “I bring a certain level of strategic vision to the group,” I might say. Or, “I’m really bad at scheduling calendar appointments and managing the details. But I can see the forest from the trees.”

The brain is psychologically wired for you to remember more of what I just said than you would if the eagle wasn’t present. Using analog visuals, like objects around the home, increases retention. That’s really great for team building because it makes a single moment last. You don’t want to have this great moment that everyone forgets the following week. You want to create shared experiences. The more shared experiences a team has, the more cohesive they usually are. 

Add “Panic Picture” to Your Team-Building Repertoire 

A third exercise that utilizes images and objects is called “panic picture.” I scribbled down the phrase on a sticky note when I was on a call with a client. I was working with the Virginia Cooperative Extension. I’d sent them We! Engage Cards, and asked how they’d been using them. We were meeting to build on their strategies to increase engagement in their virtual training and programs. One participant shared a really brilliant idea that she called “panic picture.” You can do this with images you have lying around your house, like pictures cut out of a magazine or 3D objects.

It’s a great way to warm up at the beginning of a meeting. You might get to hear some unexpected stories, and have a few laughs. The directions are simple. You hold up an image or object to your camera. Then you invite someone on the call to unmute and share a story that’s sparked by the image or idea.

I might, for instance, hold up an image of a fortune cookie. I’ll continue holding it up until somebody unmutes and shares a story about a fortune cookie or an experience they had related to it. 

This is really cool because images are like a key that unlocks memories. It’s similar to when you smell something that brings to mind a past experience. Doing this is great way to get people to share stories. It leverages the brain’s desire for visual and experiential information. 

It’s a break from the norm. Sometimes to build your team up you need to do something that you don’t always do. 

Using objects in your space is also something you can do quickly and easily when you have much to do and little time. In the same way, I don’t suggest hours-long virtual meetings for team building. Instead, I’d highly recommend doing team building in bites and sips, rather than huge gulps. 

You don’t want to burn out your team sitting at a screen. You want them to be engaged and excited to build on what you’re doing—even when you can’t all be in the same space.

While this chapter has laid a foundation for building more shared context for your virtual team, there are dozens of creative and advanced strategies throughout the book.