Engaging Our Teams in a Virtual World

This scene has become too familiar for all of us as we navigated an abrupt shift from working in person, to collaborating online. But how have we adapted? What new tools or ways of communicating are ensuring that our remote teams are connected and thriving?

After conducting team building and goal setting workshops remotely for almost 2 years, here’s what we’ve learned:

Facilitation Matters

From managing the difficult personalities, to engaging the quiet team members, facilitators play a key role in encouraging dialogue while keeping everyone focused. Another role of the facilitator is to ensure the agenda is defined. This includes capturing the decisions and follow-up actions. I like to ensure those are shared out and committed to before we end the meeting. Using collaboration tools like Miro help with keeping the team engaged with visuals.

Perhaps the most important role of the facilitator is creating the dialogue. How often are we in a meeting that becomes 1 person talking, and 30 silent listeners with their camera turned off? By intentionally calling on people in a safe and friendly way, the facilitator can have a big impact on elevating the voices of all team members (and quieting those over sharers ;).

Ask ourselves: Do we really need a meeting?

The most important part of keeping remote teams engaged, is to make good use of their time. Before we schedule and facilitate a meeting we should ask, can this be accomplished on email or chat? Or, can I ask my colleagues to do some pre-work to make for a shorter meeting? If we do need a meeting, be intentional. Set an agenda so that people are aligned, prepared, and ready to contribute.

Don’t forget to have fun

The most important part of keeping remote teams engaged is to make sure we have some fun. This can mean a session that is intended to be a game, like playing Kahoots. And/or coordinating the delivery of fun items for people to use during a remote session.

We facilitated a team building workshop centered around each person setting a non-work SMART goal, and then exchanging resources to champion one another. The share outs ranged from starting a garden, to cooking more, to continuing education. The team manager was so pleasantly surprised by the outcome, here’s what she shared.

“My team had such a great team building event with Goal Champions. There were a ton of new connections made and it will encourage more meaningful conversations going forward. Thank You!

How have you been keeping remote teams engaged? We’d love to hear!