How can you personalize virtual team building activities for your remote team?
Remote teams face unique challenges when it comes to building trust, collaboration, and engagement. Virtual team building activities can help overcome these barriers, but they need to be personalized to suit the preferences, personalities, and goals of your team members. Here are some tips on how to customize your online team building activities and make them more fun and effective.
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Muhammad Mehmood"Turning Ideas into Thriving Startups | Business Consultancy for Restaurants & Tech Start-ups | Founder MM Business…
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Erin DonahueGlobal Leadership Influencer and Speaker | Recipient of the Amethyst Award for Public Service Excellence | Senior…
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Manu Prakash TripathiDigital Marketing Manager | Meta Ads | Google Ads | Ecommerce Ads | Bridging the Gap B/W Data and Marketing
Before you plan any virtual team building activity, you need to understand your team's profile, needs, and expectations. You can use surveys, polls, or feedback tools to gather information about their communication styles, work preferences, hobbies, interests, and values. This will help you choose activities that match their motivations, strengths, and challenges. You can also segment your team into smaller groups based on their similarities or differences, and design activities that cater to their specific dynamics.
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Personalize virtual team building for a remote team by understanding preferences through surveys. Incorporate hobbies and interests in activities. Consider time zones and offer a variety of interactive formats. Celebrate achievements with personalized virtual events. Plan themed virtual retreats aligned with team interests. Encourage contributions and create casual chat spaces for spontaneous interactions. Be culturally sensitive and use inclusive language. Foster team building through collaborative work projects. Collect feedback for continuous improvement, ensuring activities align with evolving team needs.
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Understanding each team member's personality style is really helpful here. It allows you not only to create team building activities that suit each style and hits their motivation preferences but also allows for successful facilitation during the virtual training. You know exactly who will be the one who needs a gentle encouragement to actively participate, who will be the one who will enjoy the spotlight most and who will have the skeptical faces (while understanding it is just how they process information).
Virtual team building activities should be relevant to your team's objectives, culture, and vision. You can align them with your team's goals, values, or projects, and use them to reinforce key messages, skills, or behaviors. For example, you can use a trivia game to test your team's knowledge of your company's history, products, or policies, or a brainstorming session to generate ideas for a new initiative. You can also choose activities that reflect your team's diversity and celebrate their differences. For example, you can use a cultural exchange activity to learn about your team's backgrounds, traditions, or languages, or a show-and-tell activity to share their personal stories, passions, or achievements.
Virtual team building activities can be delivered in different formats and tools, depending on your team's availability, preferences, and resources. You can use synchronous or asynchronous activities, depending on your team's time zones, schedules, and workloads. You can also use different platforms and tools, such as video conferencing, chat, email, or gamification software, depending on your team's comfort level, accessibility, and functionality. You can also mix and match different formats and tools, such as combining a live video call with a pre-recorded video message, or using a chatbot to facilitate a quiz or a challenge.
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I have tried a few things that have proven to be successful. First - create collaborative spaces using tools like Jam Boards or whiteboards where teams can come together and ideate while interacting with the virtual space. Secondly, recognize the value in connection on non-work related activities. I just ran a "fun session" with one of my teams because I saw they were feeling the pressure during a busy season. I put together slide deck games like logo guessing challenges and put them in break out groups to network. They have to do virtual Mad Libs activities and get silly (safely) where they can just connect for the sake and value of the connection. Works wonders for morale!
Virtual team building activities should be engaging and interactive, not passive or boring. You can encourage participation and feedback from your team members by using various techniques, such as icebreakers, polls, quizzes, games, or rewards. You can also use different types of questions, such as open-ended, closed-ended, or hypothetical, to stimulate discussion, debate, or creativity. You can also ask for feedback from your team members after each activity, to measure their satisfaction, learning, and impact. You can use feedback forms, surveys, or ratings to collect their opinions, suggestions, or testimonials.
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Make sure to pay particular attention that each team member has the space to participate actively. Everyone is different: for example, extroverts tend to be more outspoken than introverts. Keep such differences in mind to ensure that differences in personality do not stand in the way of equal participation in activities.
Virtual team building activities should not be one-off events, but part of a continuous process of improving your team's performance, morale, and cohesion. You can follow up and follow through on your team building activities by using various methods, such as summaries, reports, action plans, or reminders. You can also use different channels, such as email, chat, or social media, to share your team's achievements, highlights, or feedback. You can also use different strategies, such as recognition, appreciation, or celebration, to reward your team's efforts, contributions, or results.
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This is how I arranged events for remote teams: - once a month movie night on Netflix - Weekly Friday coffee meet up - Arranged hiking based on their locations - Sent them for team dinner events locally - Took a vote on the destination they would like to work and travel for a week - Encouraged ideas from each member - Arranged video games events remotely There are many ways to encourage participation and connect with your virtual teams. They are your assets. It doesn’t break a bank account to entertain them occasionally.
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Añadiria 3 tips adicionales: - Realiza encuestas para conocer las preferencias, intereses y estilos de trabajo de los miembros del equipo. Esto te permitirá adaptar las actividades a sus necesidades. - Ten en cuenta las diferencias culturales de los miembros del equipo al elegir actividades. Personaliza las experiencias para reflejar y respetar la diversidad cultural presente en el equipo. -Tiempo para Conexiones Informales como pausas para charlar o compartir experiencias personales. Esto ayuda a construir relaciones más allá de las tareas laborales.
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