3 Fun and Easy Virtual

Team Building Activities

Virtual teams can feel very lonely.
Remote employees are typically focused on their
own silo, and rarely interact informally with their
peers and managers like they would in a regular
office.

Meetings in particular can feel very transactional and

dry.

This is one big disadvantage of virtual teams – you

lose what’s called the “water cooler” effect in a
regular office, where team members bump into each
other at the water cooler and talk about things
unrelated to work.

Although such minor interactions can be trivial, their

impact is quite significant on team performance.
They have a tremendous positive effect on overall
team morale and happiness.
So as a team leader, you should put in a concerted
effort to create activities that help increase those
team bonding factors.

The objective of
those team
building games
The objective of those virtual team building activities
and games is to help you:

 build trust among your team members

  increase the level of cohesion and intimacy among
your co-workers

 learn more about your team members on a personal

and professional level

The activities are very simple to implement, yet have

a huge return on investment for you and your team.

Who are those

virtual team
building activities
for?
The following activities and games are designed for
virtual teams of 4 or more individuals that are either
just starting out (i.e., in the forming stage of team
development) or have been working together for a
while on a collaborative project (i.e., in the storming
stage or beyond).

Those activities are especially helpful for teams that

work closely together and interact multiple times
throughout the week by using IM software,
teleconferencing, and other virtual team tools.

The activities are not very applicable however, to

teams that are working on short contractual work,
such as a small team you hire through Elance to
design a website for you.

 
What you need for
the virtual team
building activities
You will need the following before conducting the
virtual team building activities:

 Dedicated time: you need to dedicate some time

either at the beginning or end of a virtual status
meeting, or to set up a completely separate meeting
focused on the activity itself

 A screen-sharing/ collaboration tool: to share

your screen where everyone can see what you’re
presenting on
  A teleconferencing solution: for folks to talk and
listen in (like a regular phone teleconference or a
web-based audio one)

 A main facilitator/ leader: who will help moderate

the activity. Ideally, this would be the virtual team
manager or project manager of the team

Tools like Google Hangouts, Skype, WebEx and

GoToMeeting all work great for screen sharing and
teleconferencing.

3 Virtual Team
Building Activities
Here are three fun and easy virtual team building
activities and games:

#1 “Little Known
Facts About Me”
The objective of this game is to connect with your
team members on a personal level.

Most virtual teams don’t have a lot of time to mingle

or chit-chat, so this game is great because your team
members can open up and learn about each other’s
backgrounds.

Here’s how it works:

Ask each team member to send 3 personal facts
about them only to you as the facilitator. They
should send this information to you a few days
before the meeting so you have enough time to
consolidate it.

It is important to tell the team members that those

facts should not be related to their current job (and
preferably not known to other members of the team)
to make it more fun.

You will then enter those facts in a spreadsheet in

random order. On the day of the meeting, you can
then share the spreadsheet on a screen, and ask
each team member to guess who that fact belongs
to.

The spreadsheet will look something like this (I’m

showing only 3 team members here for simplicity):
You would start with fact 1 at the top by reading it
aloud and asking each of the team members to
guess who they think that fact belongs to by
speaking up. You’ll then type those guesses in the
spreadsheet while sharing it on a screen where
everyone can see.
Once that row is complete, you’ll move on to the next
fact, and so on.

After filling in all of the rows, you can start at the top
again and start filling in the right answers in the
“Correct Answer” column. Asking the person with the
associated fact to speak to it a bit is always amusing.

At the end, you as the facilitator can then tally up the

scores of all the different team members to see who
got the most guesses correctly.

This is a lot more pleasurable than it actually sounds,

because as you go through the facts, the guesses by
the team are hilarious. And the facts you find out
would reveal quite a bit about each team member’s
background.

 
#2 “Video
Roundtable”
The objective of this game is to increase the level of
intimacy among your virtual team members.

Video conferencing is one of the least utilized

features of remote teams, yet it is one of the most
important to build trust.

I think people shy away from using video because

they are just generally uncomfortable with it, or
they’re just too busy to “fix themselves up” to be
camera ready (and prefer to keep working in their
PJs  – like me   ).
However, video conferencing is a great way to
increase the level of cohesion among your team.

In the Pyramid of Communication (where the higher

up the pyramid, the more intimate the team is), video
conferencing is only a couple of levels below the
best form of communication: face-to-face.
Side note: I talk in-depth about the pyramid of
communication and how it can help your team
become more effective in my bestselling Udemy
course about managing and influencing virtual teams

Here’s how this activity works:

Set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour for a “video

roundtable” meeting every 2 to 4 weeks.

The goal of the meeting is to have everyone join a

video conference and get an update from all the
team members about what’s going well and what’s
not.

This is not a detailed status update to discuss issues

or risks (which should have their own separate
meeting), but rather general feedback about how
things are going with the team. In addition, everyone
must share a single personal update about them to
spice things up.

The key to making the activity work is two things:

First, explain to your team members ahead of time

that it’s mandatory that everyone use video, and
second, that every team member will get the chance
to talk. This way, you’ll ensure that everyone has
their web cams ready ahead of time, AND is
prepared to give an update.

To add some structure to this, you can limit

everyone’s responses to 6 minutes each, and have
them answer three questions

1. What’s one thing that’s been going great lately?

2. What’s one thing that can be improved upon?
3. What’s one thing that’s been going on with you
personally?
A sample response could be:

1. “We’re doing great with the latest requirements

document – we finished it ahead of schedule and the
customer is happy. Big shout-out to Mike for helping
us last week and walking through it in detail with our
lead engineer.”

2. “One thing we could do better is be a bit more

responsive in email. I realize we’re all very busy, but
we had to wait 48 hours for a response from the Ops
team, and this is going to affect us negatively in the
long run.”

3. “A personal update is that I’m heading over with

my wife and 3 kids to the Bahamas during my
vacation next Friday. We’re all super-excited about
it, and Charlie, my youngest, is looking forward to
swimming with the dolphins.”
The idea is to avoid “presenting” anything. The focus
should be on the person talking because it’s a Video
Roundtable, and team members are free to ask or
comment on any of the responses so that it feels like
an open forum.

Having the video turned on is awesome because you

can read everyone’s facial and body expressions as
they speak, and it’s like you’re all sitting in a large
conference room.

An optional idea is to ask everyone on video to bring

along their favorite beverage – coffee, tea or soda –
to the meeting so that it feels like a virtual coffee
break.

#3 “Two Pictures”
The objective of this simple activity is to share visual
images with your team members.

Here’s how the activity works:

Ask everyone to share two pictures (again, not

related to work) about their own personal families or
hobbies and spend 5 minutes talking about those
pictures. Other team members are encouraged to
ask them questions to learn more about their
backgrounds.

There are two ways to play this game:

 Dedicate 30 minutes for a separate meeting

where all team members share those 2 pictures in
turn and talk about them.

 Dedicate 5 minutes at the beginning of a regular

(unrelated) status meeting where only one person
 shares their pictures during that meeting, and the
others can do so in subsequent meetings.

This is somewhat similar to the “Little Known Facts

About Me” virtual team building activity, but it’s much
simpler & quicker, and focuses on pictures instead of
text.

The visual component makes it an incredible game

that imprints memories among your team members.

If you don’t have time for any of the other games,

this is definitely my favorite one because of its
simplicity. It’s also the next best thing to having your
own personalized office cubicle where you display
personal memorabilia for your co-workers to see.

Here are some ideas for pictures you can share:

 Pictures of your family (including kids and pets)

  Picture of your home office or space where you
usually work from (people love seeing this for some
reason)

 Pictures of your last vacation

 Pictures of your hobbies

 Pictures of something interesting you found online

(like a gadget you want to buy)

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. You can even frequently play all 3 of
them at different times during your team’s
progression.

Here’s a quick recap:

1. Little Known Facts About Me – a game where

each member guesses published facts about their
teammates
2. Video Roundtable – a video conference where
everyone has to use video and talk about general
& personal feedback
3. Two Pictures – an activity where everyone shares 2
pictures about anything unrelated to work, and
spends 5 minutes talking to the team about them

I hope you found those virtual team building activities

helpful!

Cheers,

Hassan
P.S. – Update Feb 2017 – For a very limited time,
I’m offering a free copy of my #1 Amazon Bestselling
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