18.

Team Building

We get it. Mentioning “team building” in a workplace setting can elicit many—drastically different—reactions:

Nooooooo!

Oh, cool!

Are you $%&# kidding me?

That’s because most teams employ familiar tactics, which the more extroverted members love and the lesser so ones hate. But when they work well, team building activities are an important part of the workplace, helping to develop team dynamics and morale. There are countless books, blogs, and websites out there that can give you a wealth of ideas and team building techniques to use.

Team building is important. These activities can create powerful relationship dynamics, allowing your team to bond. By learning about one another’s strengths, weaknesses, interests, and expressions, your team form the building blocks of better communication and fuel a stronger ability to grow and thrive in meetings or on group projects. And as a form of extracurricular, these activities can be a nice change of pace—room to breathe and opportunities to engage in some constructive awkwardness. Team building exercises let people feel like they’re in the safety of a laboratory where they can try new things, and even if a few things spill over or blow up it’s all part of the plan, not a mistake or fallout.

Here’s the rub: How do you translate team building effectively for the virtual workplace? In this chapter we’ll open our bag of tricks to reveal a few virtual-exclusive team building activities you might not find elsewhere.

Let’s Level Set, Shall We?

Let’s get one thing clear: Team building in a stationary environment is easier. There. We said it. It’s truly easier. And 75 percent of most team building activities are basically exclusively designed for people who are all physically present in the same room. Think about it: The Human Knot? The Marshmallow Challenge? The Egg Drop? The Office Olympics? These classic activities are fueled by being able to see and touch your teammates. They’re basically impossible to carry off in the virtual workplace without some heavy virtualization or editing.

But don’t worry. This is less about being “creative” or “inventive” and more about truly understanding the power of team building and how that effectively translates over email, text, messenger, phone, or video. Because, yes, when it comes to team building, you should use all the classic virtual office tools at your disposal. That makes it far more fun.

In Team Building, All Tech Is Good Tech

Some forms of workplace technology are better than others, depending on your needs, but when it comes to team building, more technology is better than less. By this we mean that leveraging multiple forms of office technologies is a great way to make the activities feel more “physical” to those in the virtual setting. Get creative!

So, does this mean you should have a fax-off event? Hmm. You know what? Maybe.

To help paint a picture of how to use something other than a fax machine, we’re going to share several virtually dynamic team building activities you can use at your next team building or employee engagement event. Some are virtual riffs on old standbys and others are more unique. Enjoy!

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Easy, simple, and fun. A virtual workplace scavenger hunt can take so many forms: It can be educational, where everyone is learning while playing; it can be constructive, where the hidden objects build to something bigger; or it can be a generic, simple, fast-paced activity in which groups collect or gather a certain number of things just for fun.

Keep it variable. Don’t just have teams search for things around their house or office (such as cling wrap, a stapler, throw pillows), but also have them find things online (for example, a link to a YouTube video, a cut and paste of song lyrics, a screenshot of the geolocation map of your favorite hot dog shop).

You can also add variety through the vehicles for proof—stipulate that one task has to be sent to the whole team via email. Another could be that you have to text the next person searching on your team before they can start looking. Make another something you have to show to everyone playing on camera. This makes it a little more frantic, but a whole lot more fun.

Coco Chanel Challenge

Coco Chanel famously said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take at least one thing off.” She may have been talking about bracelets and baubles, but this is a fun idea to apply to simple office tasks. For example, have people pair off and write each other emails, except instead of using their hands, they can only use their elbows. Or have everyone on camera, but facing away from the camera, try to fold a paper airplane while their partner explains how to do it; then compare notes. Essentially, do something normal, but take one thing “off” to make it more interesting, virtually.

Endless Possibilities

Ask everyone to share a random object from their home or office (they can show it on camera or take a picture and text, IM, or email it). Then ask everyone else on the team to guess what the object is and how it’s used. This activity works best when everyone shows something that is unique, odd, or difficult to figure out, because it frees the other participants to come up with wild and creative answers. It’s also a fun way to get a virtual “look” into each person’s home and life without making them vulnerable or feeling too pushy.

A Few More Thoughts

Determine your purpose before you plan. Why are you doing team building? To build morale? To offer some ice breaking opportunities? To “get away” from your desks for a bit? To help your team grow and gel? No matter the reason, there are any number of team building activities that work virtually to meet your needs. You just need to do a little research and map out how they’ll accomplish the goals you want to achieve for your team.

Consider creating a team building planning committee. Just because you’re a manager doesn’t mean you have to come up with all the bright ideas alone. Create a small virtual committee (a pre–team building team) with other people who love the idea of running smart and simple online activities. This is a great management tool, but an even better place to exercise delegation and democracy skills.

Give introverts room to breathe. One of the biggest complaints about stationary workplace team building activities is that introverts suffer under the pressure and stimulation of all the talking, touching, and madness. In a virtual team building event, you can significantly limit those elements by making activities less about talking and more about doing tasks, like the Virtual Scavenger Hunt, or performing activities over email or text, rather than having to be on camera or the phone.

Signing Off

By now we hope we’ve convinced you that team building is not terrible—terrible team building is terrible. And if you don’t have a plan to bring these exercises to a virtual playing field, you risk them becoming pretty terrible and falling flat. So don’t just have fun with virtual team building, get smart too. Use the entire platform of your workplace technology. Get others involved early. And determine your purpose before you start, so you can avoid blindly searching for activities, and focus on ones that will work for your team and your goals.

Oh, and lose the whistle. Anyone who thinks it’s cool to bring a whistle to a workplace team building event—stationary or virtual—is a horrible person. We stand by that truth.