Following on from last month’s blog about how physical activity sessions benefit your remote team, there’s another subject I would like to spend some time on: building strong relationships when your team work from home.

It’s a tricky thing to do.

When positions are fully remote, it’s hard to find opportunities for spontaneous conversations – the ones that create the closeness and camaraderie that makes teams work seamlessly together.

We’ve all had a few years of trial and error with working from home. Now that it’s here to stay, here are my tips to help managers build relationships within their remote teams.

Speak face to face

Let’s start with the easiest way to build relationships – speak to each other face to face. Instead of relying on phone calls, emails, or Team chats to stay in touch, make surethat you have regular video calls with every member of your team.

As daft as it might sound, video communication will make each person in your team more ‘real’.

Seeing each person’s face on screen helps you to learn their body language and the specifics around how they communicate – which will make you a better manager.

But more than that, putting a face to the name helps your remote team to build an understanding of one another and a sense of togetherness.

You should try and help people feel they are all in the same room, even if you’re scattered across the world.

Create personal engagement opportunities

Make sure you schedule pockets of time during the week that let people step away from work and connect personally.

Virtual coffee breaks are a popular example, although be warned: if you only plan one for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, people may struggle to break away from their duties as it could totally interrupt their flow.

I would suggest arranging longer virtual lunches - perhaps surprising your team by sending some food to their home. Allocating a chunk of time for this shared experience will not only make people feel valued, but it will bond them at the same time.

Encourage 1-2-1 conversations

The most popular sessions we run at Club Synergy are our NETwalks. And I would love you to use our setup to build strong relationships within your remote team.

A NETwalking session should start with a full group catch-up on Zoom before you assign different members of your remote team into breakout rooms in pairs. Then they get their jackets on, put their earphones in, and head outside for a good old chinwag!

If you’re pairing people together for the first time and you want to find a quick way to move past the awkward small talk, try posing a Kickstart Question before your pairs head off on their virtual ‘walk n talk’.

I use this technique in pretty much every NETwalk. Here are a few questions that have been posed recently:

• What was the most rebellious thing you did when you were younger?

• What album or song have you listened to most in your lifetime?

• Who in your life do you wish you had met sooner?

These thought-provoking questions will get people talking about deeper topics,which helps to build relationships much more quickly.

Make sure you plan enough time for each pair to have a proper conversation. Ten or fifteen minutes just won’t cut it. Our NETwalks usually last for an hour, to allow the conversation to develop and change depending on the people partaking in it.

Not only will your remote team get the brain-boosting benefits of fresh air and new energy from getting some steps in, but they will leave the conversation feeling a whole lot closer too.

Facilitate in-person teambuilding

Finally - if you can - try and create opportunities to bring your remote team together in person.

If travel arrangements wouldn’t be too complex, why not host an away day every year?

This way, you can bring your team together to brainstorm about work-related issues, come up with creative new ideas, and push new initiatives forward – plus give people time to have the kind of casual, water cooler conversations that can be so missing from remote working environments.

Hopefully, this blog post has got your brain cogs whirling with plenty of ideas on how to build relationships within your remote team.

If you want to learn more about team-building strategies such as Club Synergy’s NETwalking sessions, book a call with me and we can chat through the detail.

Or why not experience a NETwalk for yourself, to see if it is the right fit for your remote team? Our community of like-minded, enthusiastic, and supportive business owners are ready to help you kick-start your working week with open conversation and time in the great outdoors.

Book your session here. Did I mention your first time is free?