Team building online: 2 tried-and-tested methods for your online team

Our team is growing! Since the beginning of November, when Sarah joined us, the BusinessMind team has swelled to 4 members. We’re absolutely delighted! ?

When new members join a team during lockdown, or, for example, the team experiences a thorough strategic shakeup, it’s just as necessary to take time for team building and team development as under normal circumstances.

However, all too often one hears: team building can’t be done online.

And besides, we all have enough to do to keep our heads above water, what with Covid-19, homeschooling, home office and lockdowns.

Still, we shouldn’t entirely forget about team building – it could come back and punish us at a later date.

But – the good news first: Team building can be done online very well.

Team building online? It works!

Obviously, the chemistry is missing, feeling each other, having another person before you “in the flesh.” There’s no question about that.

Still, online collaboration tools such as miro or PADLET offer endless possibilities for doing team building online. Today we’d like to introduce you to 2 of them.

The Values Exercise

In the values exercise, your team members work together in several steps on their shared values.

The process begins with you posing a question, e.g. “What three values are the most important to me when working together in our team?” Your team members first think about this alone, and write their answers down on miro sticky notes.

In the 2nd step, you send them to the breakout rooms in pairs. There, they agree on 3 values together (this way, up to 3 are eliminated.)

It continues like this, depending on how large your group is. Next, the pairs meet in groups of four, then two groups of four in a group of eight, etc. And always the groups have to agree on first three, then two, then a single common value (can be varied according to group size.)

At the end a number of values remain for which fulfillment conditions have to be worked out as a last step. This specifically means: “What would have to happen for us to consider value XY fulfilled? How do we act to ensure that it is fulfilled?”

This way, you let your team members work out their values for collaboration together while at the same time working out the fulfillment conditions that go with it. This is how you pull them all into the same boat.

We recently did this exercise with 35 participants of the General Assembly of the EU project PRO-Ethics as well as with a 17-member team from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Margo Strijbosch, our client, put her experiences with this in a nutshell as follows:

“Building and expanding a team in the current crisis is a big challenge. Some of my team members have never even met in person! There was an urgent need to do team development in an online setting.

Birgit and Ben provided the perfect interactive online session where – using digital online tools – we discussed our core values for collaboration within the team and actions we could take to act upon them.

The team development session really brought the team more together – it provided some good reflection time amongst us – and made the team aware of the things that truly matter to the team (especially in these challenging times).

Birgit and Ben moderated this all in a creative manner, leaving room for everyone and with enough relaxation moments.”

The Check-In Questions

The check-in questions are simple questions aimed to get everyone talking and answered at the beginning of your team meeting or every day at the beginning of the day. Questions that suit the purpose require some creativity and elicit “out of the box” thinking, e.g.

•     What place you’ve been to in your life is the farthest away?
•    Today’s children will never understand what it meant to … XX
•     How can you tell you’re stressed out?
•     When you look back, what was your most unnecessary childhood fear?  etc.

Your participants/ team members write their answers on sticky notes. Depending on the size of the group, they can talk about it in breakout rooms or simply all together. Great atmosphere and fun are guaranteed!

This exercise also works well with PADLET, SLACK or any chat channel used by all.

These are just two of the almost endless possibilities you can use for online team building. Our tip: take time for your team, and if you’re a team member, urge your manager to take time for team culture! It’s about you, your team, your shared wellbeing. In times like this it’s even more important than before to give this attention! !

Need ideas? We’d love to help you! Or moderate an online team development workshop for you! Contact us at: birgit.baumann@businessmind.at

Best wishes,

Birgit, Ben & Nicole