How to Build an All-Star Virtual Team

Before we dive deep into the topic.

We need to get this out of the way.

What do you call a team that is not working from the same location?

Remote Team or Virtual Team

Drumroll, please….

According to Google, the term used more often is ‘Virtual Team’ with almost close to 2400 searches monthly.‘Remote team’ comes in a far second with only 590 searches a month.

Now that we have got that out of the way, the rest of the article I will be using ‘Virtual Team’.

Now let’s dive right into it.

What are the steps to build an All-Star Virtual Team?

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate:

The most important part of building a virtual team is communication. As simple as that might sound its important that we keep typing or talking on a video call.

The best example I have of this is when I watched a couple of professional streamers play PUBG on Twitch last year.

They kept giving updates I will give you a few examples of how trivial some of their statements were.

‘Found a grenade’

‘This window looks a little tilted’

Communicating with their team gives their teammates a view of their screen.

Gamers are the early adopters of this whole virtual world we are in right now.

The advantage of clarity in communication pays off in pressure situations. Either with the client or when you are one kill away from a Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

Clarity while Communicating:

Its a sub-topic to my previous point but as important as the previous one.

Let me give you an example using PUBG again.

This is the difference between how a professional and an amateur calls out where a bad guy is.

Amateur: There is a guy there

Professional: There is a guy 300 degrees West. In the three-storied building top floor.

This makes a world of a difference between being dead in 5 seconds or coming on top of the situation.

You need to be precise when communicating with your team members as well as clients to reduce friction.

As it is in all cases when it is a pressure situation the need to communicate with clarity amplifies 10 times.

You need to get things done: (GTD)

The best virtual teams out there have a task list with the task set for each individual contributor.

The task list will need to have a start date, due date and a progress meter to check the progress.

The tasks should communicate exactly what needs to get done.

You have to be a ruthless task editor.”

Remove the ones that are not moving or add tags like ‘On-Hold’ for the ones that you are not going to work on.

Have zero sympathies for the tasks that exist with no due-dates and no one assigned to it.

Get rid of them.

In short, you need to Get Things Done and develop an environment that helps you to do so.

Running effective virtual team meetings:

Every effective virtual team meeting has to have the following characteristics:

Stable Internet Connection, check audio and video settings — this is 2 minutes of work.
The organizer needs to let the team know in advance why are we meeting
At the outset of the meeting, the organizer needs to announce where we want to be at the end of the meeting.
Golden Rule — Keep it to as short as possible, don’t do meetings for 2 hours.

During the transition from the office to a virtual environment is the water cooler conversation.