Virtual Team Building

Leading a team comes with many challenges when working together in an office. Virtual work goes one step further and adds new challenges. During this interactive session virtual leader Nahia Orduña, Senior Manager in Analytics + Digital Integration at Vodafone, shared her knowledge and made participants experience themselves, how to virtually get to know each other and better collaborate online. #VirtualLeader

A lot was expected from the third virtual #MorningSession. Participants were eager to share and learn about new ideas, best practices on virtual team building and the many tools being used for collaboration to get #inspired.

Meeting Structure

The purpose of meetings does not change when switching to virtual meetings. People should take virtual meetings as serious as in person meetings. In order to have a successful virtual meeting it is helpful everybody comes prepared, has the camera on and interacts verbally as well as in chat. In bigger meetings, it is recommended to assign a “chat guard” to make sure every voice gets heard.

During our #MorningSession we build a new virtual team in an #agile way by following a suggested meeting structure.

• Set an agenda where team members can add in Teams Planner
• Allow for introduction
• Collect agenda feedback and expectations with Mentimeter
• Set the impulse to create a project
• Discuss and gather outcomes (best practice and tips on virtual team building for a post)
• Feedback and wrap Up

Safety & Trust

During a meeting it is important to create a safe environment for the team and especially foster #trust. While this is often an issue in face-to-face-collaboration there is a risk it becomes worse in a virtual environment. Best practice discussed on how to create trust by dealing with failures and more.

• Foster a culture of failure
• Walk the talk as a manager
• Learn, embrace, celebrate failures
• Turn failures into lessons learned to grow
• Consult established evening events “FuckedUp-Nights” hosted by management
• Make sure everybody gets heard
• Speak up and share your own opinion
• Address topics transparently
• #allyship
• Ask the question “Did you do your best?”

Collaboration

The many conferencing tools offers lots of collaboration features. During the session the focus was mostly on Teams but there are many other useful tools available. In general, it is recommended to use different tools for fun and work. Here are some recommendations:

• Join a conference with a conferencing tool Microsoft Teams, Zoom
• Set an agenda with Planner tool within Teams
• Setup virtual breakout sessions in Teams with the tutorial
• Create a quick feedback collection using e.g. www.mentimeter.com and collect from participants via www.menti.com + Code
• Open Wiki-Pages in Teams
• Create Kanban-Boards within Teams or i.e. Trello at www.trello.com
• Keep your online interactive with Slido at www.sli.do
• Use Kahoot for group learning and quizzes kahoot.com
• Other Tools: retrotool.io

Engagement

Try to keep team members engaged and build a personal connection between them.

• Do things together, e.g. watch Ted Talks together and discuss it afterwards.
• Offer team chat.
• Conduct personality team tests like DISC or color test
• Find the strength in your team with Gallup Strengthfinder

Take aways

• Structure Meetings
• Building trust and supporting trust           
• Foster a culture of failure
• Use different collaboration tools
• Keep team members engaged

Looking forward to seeing you during our next virtual morning session on April 16, from 8:30-9:30 am: Please sign up here and we will send you the meeting link with the dial-in information via mail.

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