The problem is obvious to most remote or hybrid team leaders.

Your people are overwhelmed… exhausted with stress… and perhaps feeling a lack of support.

The people that they would have built supportive relationships with at the office are now located in another state.  The office conversations that would have happened when people bumped into each other or peeked into a coworker’s office aren’t happening.

And so, as a leader, you have already defined the strategy.

But you know that the implementation and execution of that strategy are being affected by the lack of connection and collaboration that your remote team members are experiencing.

And while the problem has prompted many leaders to try new ways to build relationships on remote teams, those attempts seldom have the intended positive impact.

Maybe the well-intentioned connection activity was held after work and poorly attended.

Maybe your team felt like it was just a one-time band-aid with little real impact.

Whatever the reason, many attempts to strengthen remote team relationships fail because they are missing two important elements… ALL truly successful corporate teambuilding events, whether they are remote or in-person, emphasize the importance of RELEVANCE and REPETITION.

First, RELEVANCE is important because nobody wants to waste their time – it is far too precious a commodity for your faculty.  If you want to strengthen relationships and inspire collaboration, you need to be clear about the reason for the event or activity!

So when you make the decision to plan and invest time and energy in putting together a connection activity to improve collaboration and morale, you want to be sure everyone understands why.

Second, REPETITION is vital… because teambuilding and culture are ongoing.  They require constant attention and reinforcement, or they will begin to fade.

A team culture-building keynote speaker may improve morale and inspire your people to be winning teammates for a few days after the program – but you need to plan on continuing with connection activity ideas that will sustain the improved morale and deepen those remote connections.

SO HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

The answer is that you will want to commit to SIMPLE and CONSISTENT activity –

You cannot just schedule an occasional or annual experience that you hope will be sufficient.

So – you begin by identifying the WHEN.

Think of an appropriate time when you will have the opportunity to invest in a connection activity.  Your initial (and perhaps most meaningful) thought may be about how you could do something in your weekly meeting. That would be fantastic.

In fact, I put together an entire blog article on productive team meetings  (with a useful template download) about how you can use your weekly gathering as an opportunity to build relationships and celebrate impressive efforts.

Maybe you have a morning get-together one day each week that you schedule specifically for connections and morale.

Maybe you do something every two weeks.

But you need to set aside the time that you will need to accomplish your goal of improved relationships and collaboration, because a recent study found that  80% of employees feel stressed due to ineffective communication” (Go Remotely 2020).

And, if you succeed in developing stronger connections, Gallup reports that “connected teams demonstrate a 21% increase in profitability” (2020).

Next, you will want to fil the time you have set aside by choosing one or two of the following useful remote team connection activity ideas below.

And if you maintain your commitment to them over time you will see a significant positive impact on your culture, morale, and collaboration.

CONVERSATION CARDS

These are high-quality, colorful, plastic-coated mini-sized cards that you will be able to use (and reuse) for years. Conversation cards are a 54-card deck of questions that will spark meaningful and interesting conversations among the people on your team.

To use them with your remote team as a connection activity, you can simply draw a card and have each person in your group answer it out loud.

In meetings with more than 10-12 people attending, simply create breakout groups of 5-6 people and have them share with each other.  You can modify the breakout groups each week to ensure that different people get to learn about each other and share information.

The entire activity usually takes less than 10 minutes.

Do this consistently at every meeting, though, to ensure that your people get the benefit of sharing and learning about the people they will be depending on.