Trust Building Activities for Virtual Teams
Effective team building is essential to maintaining openness and trust. Yet it may feel like a tall order as teams work from home. Remote employees that used to bond over dinners and drinks must suddenly redefine their work relationships. Some may naturally find ways to reconnect, while others may be tempted to close themselves off until the dust settles.
remote team activities to help you build trust and improve communication.
1. Get Personal
Virtual teams can sometimes feel very transactional and dry because everyone is usually focused on completing their tasks and getting their job done. However, getting to know your team members on a personal level is one of the fastest ways to increase likeability. You can accomplish that by learning about your team members’ families, vacation plans, and hobbies through informal discussions. Leading by example works here as well. If you share personal anecdotes about yourself, then your team will feel more at ease about opening up to you.
2. Encourage Social Interactions
Encouraging social interactions will help you create a virtual water cooler to increase team-like ability and cohesion among your team. One way to accomplish that is to start or end conversations you have in meetings that are unrelated to work. Spending a few minutes on the virtual platform, talking about anything informal is a great way to break the ice and get everyone talking. Another strategy is to use the power of small gives, where you can share articles, videos, or events (through email or Instant Messaging) that you think your team members might be interested in. You can also schedule separate meetings (or portions of meetings) that are dedicated to team building or team bonding exercises.
3. Over-Communicate
The third trust-building activity to increase trust is to “over-communicate” with your team. In other words, you need to regularly interact with them. the more you interact with someone, the more you’ll like them and become friends with them.
Repeat exposure through over-communication among your team will eventually lead to an increase in liking. So stay in touch with your team members at least once every day (or every other day), even if it’s not absolutely essential. An easy way to do this is to connect with them using Instant Messaging software or give them a quick zoom call every once in a while to check on things.
4. Meet Face to Face on a video conference
Face-to-face meetings help with establishing rapport, understanding mannerisms, and reducing miscommunication. Although bringing a team together in one room could be a large expense if your team is widely distributed, it is still worth it down the line, particularly in long-term projects.
5. Be Positive
The final trust-building activity to increase trust is to be positive with your attitude. No one enjoys working with individuals who are constantly negative and pessimistic. Although it is quite natural to go through some high-stress times while working in virtual teams, what matters is how you react during those times with your team. Having a constant positive attitude (and encouraging others to do the same) will increase the level of likeability among the team.
Conclusion
Those virtual team-building activities are great to build trust and rapport among your team. You can try all of them, and then pick one that works for you and your team.
At Rush-A-Way we have helped over 200 organizations build stronger team bonds. Now we have combined our award-winning concept with unique and creative online team games to provide a fun and effective virtual experience which engages and motivates remote teams. Our sessions are 98% effective in strengthening bonds between team members and boosting team morale, based on participant survey
