7 team building ideas for remote teams

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Take the first step
• Activity #1: Discuss a question related to the situation
• Activity #2: 2 truths and 1 lie
• Activity #3: Photo gratitude
• Activity #4: Showcasing your favorite room at home
• Activity #5: Large team round table discussion
• Activity #6: Self-awareness personality test
• Activity #7: Joke game
• Further information

Introduction

After almost a month of confinement, it's quite normal to see a certain breathlessness in your teams. Now, what can you do to re-energize your troops? My intention in this article is to offer you some easy-to-apply tools that will have an immediate impact on motivating your troops.

But before we start, why is motivation on the wane? The containment honeymoon may have lasted a week or two, but the reality is that your teams are now faced with several major challenges that are undermining their motivation:

• They receive less and less recognition and feedback than usual;

• They have no one to share their daily lives with, and feel isolated and alone;

• They have no one to make them responsible for their work;

• They no longer have the day-to-day human contact and energy of the office.

In addition to work-related factors, your employees are confronted with a number of personal issues: the anxiety, uncertainty and sense of powerlessness of the current situation. What your employees really need right now is a space to be listened to and to express themselves. At Hubu, we believe that the greatest gift you can give them is a space to connect, discuss and laugh, so that together, you can improve your lot. After all, we're all in this together, and the key to motivating your team lies in creating moments that "feel good".

Take the first step

If your team is working remotely, give yourself the gift of putting the following on your agenda a Zoom team call twice a week (minimum). The frequency of your calls can be greater. We suggest Zoom, as the quality is excellent and you can create sub-groups of 3 to 6 people to allow people to express themselves more. Give these team calls a name, name a clear intention and put it on the agenda by inviting the whole team.

Here's an example of the intention of these team calls: "to create a space to discuss, laugh and be together so that, overall, we can improve our lot." As you begin your team calls, reaffirm the intention. This will let everyone know why they're there, and they won't feel they're wasting their time. If time allows, go for a warm-up period. As in sport, the warm-up period is a way of getting ready and warming up for the main activity that follows. Here are some warm-up ideas:

• A quick look around to see how things are going;

• A breathing, meditation or visualization exercise using the power of inspiring music.

Now that you've taken the first step towards bringing your team together, and everyone's in the right frame of mind, you're ready to start your team building activity. Here are 7 ideas for team building activities to boost remote team motivation.

Activity #1: Discuss an issue related to the current situation

Choose a question from the list below. You can also compose your own. Ask your team the question. Create sub-groups of 3 to 6 people on Zoom to allow participants to exchange ideas. Define a time keeper in each group and give each participant a few minutes to express themselves. Here's a list of questions you can use:

• Do you prefer to work from home or from the office? Why or why not?

• What worries you most about this whole situation?

• What do you find most difficult about being at a distance? The easiest?

• What's your biggest challenge during this crisis?

• What's a typical day like for you?

• What does your office look like? Show it to us!

• What does your morning routine look like?

Once the group is back together, invite participants to share their answers. You can do several rounds, recreating new sub-groups. If you want to take the exercise further, you can ask a question that implies a solution, so that the team can find answers to the current situation. You can then consolidate everyone's answers in a document so that everyone can make commitments.

• How do you stay motivated at home?

• How do you stay productive even when working remotely?

• What's your trick for keeping morale up at home?

• How do you re-energize yourself to counteract the shortness of breath of mid-life?

Activity #2: 2 truths and 1 lie

This activity is a classic and goes with the theme of fun and lightness. Ask your team members to prepare 3 stories about themselves in advance. Ask them to choose 2 truths and 1 lie. They take turns telling their 3 stories. The group must then guess which of the 3 stories is the lie. You can use the Zoom chat to take a vote once a participant has told all 3 stories. The winner is the one who manages to outwit all his or her colleagues!

Activity #3: Photo gratitude

Ask your team members to prepare a photo that is meaningful to them. Divide participants into sub-groups of 3 to 6 people to share why the photo they've chosen is meaningful to them. Once sub-group sharing is complete, return to the large group. Ask a few people to share how they recognize themselves in the photo of another person in their group.

Activity #4: Presenting your favorite room in the house

Ask your team members to connect via their cell phones. Divide your team into sub-groups of 3 to 6 participants and ask each participant to present their favorite room in the house. Each person is asked to tell a story about the room and why it's meaningful to them. Once you return to the large group, ask each group to share its story. One person in the group should tell the story of another.

Activity #5: Large team round table discussion

This activity is a classic from the Gazelles method. Go around the large team table answering the following statements:

• His coup of the week;

• His priority for the week;

• A blockage that prevents him from moving forward.

If you have a large team (>15), choose only 1 or 2 of the 3 statements, otherwise it may take a few hours to go round the table. Another option is to divide your large team into random or departmental sub-groups.

Activity #6: Personality test to get to know yourself better

An online personality test is a great way for your team members to get to know each other better. Here's one I recommend: the 16 personalities test. This test is inspired by the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) model. Accompanied by the test, you can ask the following question to get your team thinking:

• What surprised you most about the test?

• What does this test tell you about your behavior in this time of crisis?

• What strengths have you discovered about yourself? How will you continue to build on them?

Ask everyone to take the test in advance and send you their results. With the results from the whole team, create a graph to see which personality type you have most in the team. You can also take the analysis a step further by comparing the number of introverts and extroverts, or feeling and intuition.

Activity #7: Joke game

This activity is a great way to end the week in a light-hearted and humorous way. Gather the whole team on Zoom and select the mode that allows you to see everyone on Zoom Room. Ask the "team comedian" to host this activity. The host begins telling jokes. The aim of the game is to be the last person to laugh. If you laugh, you're eliminated, and you have to cut off your camera. Once eliminated, participants can "stool" their colleagues if they see them laughing.

Here's a good repertoire of jokes for this activity. If you want more, you can order one of the "Dad's Jokes" games. on their website.

Further information

By setting up team-shares like these, not only will you have a little fun, but your employees will be more motivated and engaged than ever. Start with the first step: put the virtual activity on the agenda, and you'll already be giving your employees and the whole team a great gift.

If you want to take your approach a step further and create strong links with your team, or if you don't feel comfortable leading this type of activity, we have built the TeamTalk game. Available in virtual or physical form, TeamTalk is your ally in generating sincere and constructive team conversations. In the form of a card game through which gifts are exchanged, TeamTalk facilitates inclusion and enables all team members to express their voice and let their colleagues shine.

Hubu: Because We Are.