One of the most common scenarios I am asked about by team leaders is how to help geographically dispersed team members become more cohesive and operate with a strong sense of team unity. Sound familiar to you too?

As they say, there is no substitute for face time; and I would agree. I am big fan of face time. For most organizations with virtual teams however, face time is not a frequently occurring situation (especially in a down economy). And building a cohesive team requires frequent, intentional interactions. It is important to regularly look for and talk about the things the team does well and to engage in retrospective dialogue around setbacks and “failures” to learn as much as you can and keep the team moving forward.  Below are three suggestions to get you started.

1. The foundational step in creating a cohesive team is building trust. Towards trust building, it is useful for people to spend time getting to know each other and exploring their similarities and uniqueness. Prepare 2 or 3 “self-disclosure” questions prior to each meeting and have every team member take a turn responding, round robin fashion. Questions can progress from fun trivia type questions to more meaningful or work-related questions as the trust builds. For example, “What is your favorite vacation spot?” is a risk-free question, while, “Who in your life has most influenced your career? What did he/she do?” may feel more risky to some. The purpose is to allow for discovery of the things people have in common and to gain greater insight into what makes each other tick.  Team members might rotate the job of coming up with the questions and facilitating the discussion.
2. Another important step towards trust building is providing the space for team members to discuss individual expectations and the values that are important to them as a member of the group. Ask team members to think about what they value most in relationships and come prepared to each share their top 3 values. After each team member shares his/her list, explore commonalities and themes. Build this into the team’s Guiding Principles or Operating Agreement and have each team member verbally agree to uphold. This leads nicely into an opportunity to proactively talk about the area where most teams have trouble: accountability. Explore questions like: “How will we know that we’re doing/upholding ‘abc value’? What will be different or enhanced?” “What will we do when someone violates a guiding principle?” “How will we handle accountability?”  This could all be done in one long meeting or divided into segments to be facilitated over a few team meetings.
3. As trust builds and the Team Guiding Principles take shape, plan 10-15min at the beginning of each team meeting for a “team process check-in.” This is the time, before the team begins discussing the tasks at hand, to focus on the process of being a cohesive team. At each meeting, pose a question for the team to explore together. Examples include:

• What’s good about the way we’ve been making decisions together? What’s working well for us?
• What would you (each team member) like to see more of regarding our communication about “abc”?
• Let’s reflect on Project X (just concluded). Name 1 or 2 things we did really well and how it contributed to the project’s success.
• What wins or successes are we celebrating today (remember to include the small everyday ones)?

Consider what might be possible when your team engages in this level of Everyday Teambuilding throughout the year. What results could you expect to see that you are not seeing today?