Richard Keller

Virtual Team Building: Assemble Your Team Standup comics have a rough life. One night, their audience laughs at everything they say. On the next, the crowd can be deader than a room of zombies fatigued from eating brains. You may not want multiple laughs in a virtual team-building meeting. However, ensure your messages get through. This increases project excitement and helps attendees remain engaged for extended periods. The website Bizzabo reports that only 66% of virtual participants maintain their focus after 20 minutes. The remaining participants multitask or ignore the presentation. Consequently, problem-solving and meeting deadlines become difficult. As a leader, you must know the team before beginning any exercises. Therefore, build a cohesive and productive foundation to increase momentum. Then, tailor additional presentations for maximum engagement. Find out who's coming. Research attendees and their skill base. If you’re a small-tomedium business (SMB) owner with an outsourced team, review their websites or LinkedIn profiles. A brief investigation establishes initial talking points. Conduct one-on-one conversations. If you conduct a remote team-building meeting without knowing the individual players, you start at a disadvantage. You don’t know them and vice-versa. As a result, you can’t properly tune your presentation because you won’t establish even minimal trust. Try to connect through one-on-one conversations before the initial meetup. A five or tenminute talk should provide a glimpse of who the employee is and their potential contributions. At the minimum, it helps you match names to faces. Connect with their peers or direct reports. Interacting with team members' peers or direct reports may provide some useful background information. Further, it might offer insight into future team members if problems arise. Tailor your content. Generate your presentation once you understand your audience. Don’t completely revamp it if you have a concrete goal. Instead, examine your ideas and sync them to the majority of the team’s strengths. Ask for feedback. After your opening meeting ask for the team’s opinions on pace and material. Begin by requesting positive critiques rather than outright complaints. Be prepared for their honest responses and hold back on unproductive retorts. Remember, you chose this way to enhance upcoming virtual meetings.