Simple Tips for Building Successful Virtual Teams

Oct 14

There’s an easy way to sincerely thank your online customers or donors. It’s quick and it makes a big impact.

I’ve had a lot of home offices over the years. My first was a windowless room in an apartment across the street from the beach in North Carolina. The breaks by the ocean were quite a perk.

Then there was the giant room upstairs in our first house. It dwarfed the desk that I had tucked next to the only window. Perhaps the vastness of the room was what made trudging downstairs for coffee seem like a huge commute.

There was the little alcove in Louisiana with windows on three sides and plants in every view. I had little bird visitors all day long. Turns out, I like birds for coworkers. That might have been my favorite home office.

After that was a storage closet in California. It had two tiny opaque windows so that was nice, but it sure was a cramped space to spend five days a week.

Now I’m in a “real” home office in Kansas, a converted bedroom with lots of windows and a view of our tree-lined neighborhood. Something about that map we hung on the wall makes it feel like I’ve gone to work when I walk into the room. It might be my second-favorite home office so far.

It’s been more than 10 years since I began my work-from-home journey in the room without windows across from the beach. For the last decade, I’ve worked with colleagues around the country on projects and programs, and managed a geographically dispersed team as well.

All this is to say that I know a thing or two about virtual work and collaboration. I’ve had a decade of experience figuring out how to create connections when I couldn’t be in the same room with my colleagues and my team. Throughout that time I’ve tested many virtual work tools and team-building techniques, and I’ve identified and implemented tools and ideas that helped bridge the virtual gap.

Therefore, when I was invited to speak to a group at a nonprofit organization about virtual work and how to be a successful virtual team, I jumped at the chance. Here’s why: Even for people who like working at their house, working from home can be HARD. Team building remotely can be even harder.

This team, like many teams all over the world, was used to working together in an office. Now they are grappling with the reality that they’ll be working from home for a while longer. Working together virtually can still be engaging and productive, and I was happy to share what I knew about how to be an effective virtual team. A lot of it boiled down to smart communication.

Here are some of the ideas we discussed about successful remote teams:

1) Video and group chat are essential for good virtual team communication.

If there is one piece of advice I give to people beginning to work as a remote team, it’s to find a good video platform and IM/group chat tool to ensure that virtual team communication is as easy as possible. The two I swear by are Zoom and Slack. Here’s why:

Zoom: I’ve used many video platforms, including Blue Jeans, WebEx and good old Skype. None compare to Zoom when it comes to ease of use and clarity in audio and video. Plus, you can update your background to hide that your office is actually a storage closet.

Slack: I’ve also used many IM platforms over the years. Skype, Sococo, GChat, Microsoft Teams. I like Slack best for teams because it has a good, modern design and easily streamlines the different conversations that naturally happen when a team works together each day. You talk to some people individually, you talk to some people as a group, and you talk to some people about certain topics and others about different topics. Slack creates a way for these conversations to still happen in real time, but virtually.

Ensuring your team has good chat and video platforms can enable them to create the interaction and connection necessary to collaborate effectively as a virtual team.

2) You must have a virtual water cooler.

Teams build connections with each other as humans through conversation, and sometimes, ideas happen in conversations that have nothing to do with work. There’s no reason those random, idea-generating, team-building conversations can’t happen when you aren’t in the same room.

Slack is a great tool for enabling virtual conversations by offering “channels,” which are essentially conversation streams. Slack installs with a “random” channel, encouraging non-work-specific chatter. This is the place to post the non-work stuff—the “water cooler” chat about random non-work topics that would take place in a physical office. Perhaps it’s the funny thing your dog did during your meeting, the good show you are watching on Netflix or how pretty the leaves are as they turn colors in fall. You’d be surprised at what a great place this random channel can become.

You can even be more intentional about non-work, relationship-building conversations on Slack. One virtual worker told me about their Fun Friday Slack questions. Someone posts a question on Friday mornings so everyone can jump in with their answers throughout the day. Questions might be:

“What’s something you say all the time?”
“What’s your favorite holiday movie?”
“What’s the best book you’ve ever read?”

3) Set goals and review them regularly.

A team without a roadmap is a recipe for disaster. Goal-setting is a crucial part of creating any successful team, but even more so when your team is virtual. I’ve found that remote work enables employees to get more done in less time (due to less distraction) but goals and strategic plans provide the structure needed to plan work and stay on top of projects, especially when team members might not get the reminders that naturally happen in an office.

Every team should have goals and a plan to achieve those goals. Clear goals set the destination and strategic plans provide the map to get there. Done well, goals and strategic plans provide a clear understanding of what the team is responsible for and when. Each team member should have goals that make sense within the strategic plan. (Even better — ensure at least some of an individual’s goals include new tasks or projects that play to both their strengths and career interests.)

The team manager’s responsibility is to review these goals often with the team and each employee, and give timely feedback throughout the year. How are they doing towards their goals? Are the goals still reasonable? Is something not working? Why? What can you do as the manager to ensure your team is able to meet their goals? What roadblocks can you remove? Where can you offer help? Where do you need to ask for help from your manager? Having clear goals and plans and checking in on them regularly ensures that conversations about what’s getting done (and what’s not) happen frequently and any issues are addressed head-on.

Goals and strategic plans are obviously important in any work setting, but they become even more important when teams are remote. Working together towards a shared goal is the definition of teamwork, so knowing those goals and reviewing them regularly is a fundamental team-building technique, especially for remote teams.

4) Always have one-on-one’s with your team.

It’s important to check in with each team member regularly, regardless of where or when you work. Regular communication is a key factor in ensuring each person understands what is going on in the team and within the organization. One of the best ways to ensure strategic organizational messages are shared and internalized at all levels of an organization is through effective conversations from managers to employees.

With remote work, these check-ins become even more important since you no longer run into colleagues and have spontaneous hallway meetings. At my last organization, my team members and I had scheduled check-ins weekly. It was their meeting, their agenda. Sometimes I’d have a list of a few things I wanted to discuss, but generally I tried to let my team members guide the meeting. I only asked for a quick project update in advance to help guide any thinking I needed to do beforehand.

These meetings are important for checking in on what’s happening on projects, but also a great time to check in on the whole person and connect as people, too. You don’t have to spend every second talking about the to-do list. How are they doing? What’s new in their world? What’s interesting them outside of work?

Connection is a basic human need. We don’t turn this need off when we are at work. Many of us crave it even more when we are working from home by ourselves each day. One-on-one meetings are a great chance to connect with team members, strengthen communication and and build trust— all characteristics of strong remote teams.

5) Create well-run meetings.

You’ve probably heard by now about Zoom fatigue. But outside of how grueling it is to be on video for hours on end, it also stinks to be wasting time in pointless meetings, especially when you are on video. It’s far easier to become distracted in a disjointed, boring meeting.

Every team or project meeting should have a leader, a point and an agenda. If everyone needs background knowledge to participate in a discussion, send out pre-reading (and build reading the pre-reading into the culture by setting expectations every time). In some cases, notes should be taken and shared afterwards. Decisions should be recorded.

Large meetings need to be even more well-thought out. Make sure there’s a great facilitator and a clear agenda. Use breakout rooms to build in conversation and networking. Ask for questions from participants in advance. Plant questions if needed with a few strategic colleagues.

And please: If you are presenting, do not read your presentation slides (or read at all, for that matter). It’s super boring and even worse when you are watching on video. (Read this post on how to practice your presentation so you won’t need to read it.)

It’s important that virtual teams guard against meeting fatigue. If everyone begins to expect meetings to be a waste of time, it will hamper the ability to work together well. Plan meetings well and people will have an easier time paying attention and will feel like their time is valued.

6) Team-building should be intentional.

Chatter in project meetings is best kept to a minimum to protect people’s time, but there should be some meetings that are meant for team-building and free-flowing conversation. While it’s harder to create meaningful events in a virtual atmosphere, it can still be done.

Invite a guest speaker to give a short talk and then discuss that topic. It could be work-related or on a completely different subject that might teach people something new. Or have one team member teach the rest of the group a new skill. Who says you can’t have a cooking class in every person’s kitchen as part of your virtual team-building event?

A team-building event may even mean getting people together in hard times to let people voice their struggles or share what’s working for them. When Covid-19 shut everything down and all of our lives were turned upside down, our team scheduled check-ins with no other agenda than to discuss how everyone was doing. It helped give insight into everyone’s struggles and even provided for some good laughs (like when my son came over to say “hi” to everyone in nothing but a diaper).

7) Networking should be intentional.

Especially in large organizations, one thing that can suffer when people work virtually is the ability to network and get to know others from across the organization. Making sure there are opportunities for colleagues on different teams or in different departments to meet and talk is a key way to ensure things get done and new ideas emerge.

Larger organizations can encourage network groups made up of people in similar roles (or other categorizations that make sense). At my last organization, we had a network dedicated to people who focused on donor communications. Our planning committee put together regular virtual events to build skills, but also to network.

One event we hosted was a hybrid coffee and moderated chat. We chose a stellar moderator who introduced a fun question as an icebreaker (“What’s the first concert you ever saw?”) and skillfully responded to every person’s answer. She created a great conversation flow even though there were 30+ people in the Zoom meeting. Then we broke out into Zoom rooms in groups of 4 to have a focused discussion around a list of questions. These groups were assigned at random so it was a great way to build connections and learn about other colleagues.

We received excellent feedback on the event and found that it made virtual networking within the organization a little easier. A virtual networking event like this could even be modified to have one short talk on a topic relevant to the group, followed by randomly assigned breakout groups to discuss a set list of questions.

There are also ways to network virtually one-on-one. A fellow remote worker shared with me that her virtual organization builds one-on-one networking into each employee’s goals. Every month, each team member invites someone they don’t already know well to a Zoom meeting to chat over coffee or tea. These are short—15 - 20 minutes— just a little time to put a face with a name and learn more about a colleague.

8) Flexibility and trust work hand in hand.

I believe that the best teams are those that have high trust in each other and value high flexibility. High trust allows for high flexibility, and high flexibility builds trust.

Allowing people the space to work towards clear and achievable goals and live their lives in way that makes sense—and reduces stress—means that people feel cared for and respected as a whole person with other obligations in life outside of work. Team members can have regular hours where they are generally available through virtual communication tools, but that should be flexible where possible. Remote work can allow for a lot of productivity, especially when flexibility is valued.

Teams that understand how flexibility and trust work hand in hand are the most successful because they create employees that are happy, healthy and willing to work hard for a team (or organization) that values them.

Final thoughts on what I’ve learned from a decade of remote work

Crazy things happen when you work from home. I have had countless people ring my doorbell during meetings, and then ring it again and again until I finally answered my door. I’ve had family members walk in and start talking to me while I’m on a call. I’ve run errands during lunch that have taken way longer than I expected. And I’ve forgotten I wasn’t on mute more than once — never fun. Sometimes remote work is frustrating. Sometimes it’s lonely. But a lot of times it means employees have valuable time to focus and to make both life and work work.

In normal, non-Covid times, I’d add to this list that it’s important for remote workers (or teams) to gather together in person on a regular basis, whether it’s once a quarter or once a year. Really nothing compares to being physically in the same room with colleagues, at least for a bit. For people who are like me — people who love talking with other people and find it energizing — being together every now and then is actually a very important part of remote work.

But right now, it’s not possible, and that’s ok. Covid has taught us that being flexible at work is doable and that entire teams and organizations working remotely can still be successful and do incredible things.

Especially in the time of Covid, it’s important to be flexible, to communicate clearly and regularly and to give each other grace. Ensure virtual communication tools are in place, goals are clear, checkins are frequent and understanding is available in spades, and you are on your way to creating a successful virtual team.

(Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash)

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