The presentation includes Ice-Breakers, Team activities and Tools that I like.

1. Keys to managing a successful distributed
team

2. What challenges do distributed
teams face?
Poor communication
Disconnection from the team
No sense of belonging
Loneliness
Lack of trust
Boredom
Unmotivated team

3. Wait!
@ChrisHardie - Automattic

4. Ricaris: 100% distributed team
• 25 countries
• Working around
the clock

5. HR in numbers
• 67% of current team members and team leaders have
been in the company for 5 years.
• We have meet in person only 7 out of 228 employees.
• Team travel budget in 6 years: 480€ total.
How do we do it?

6. 1-Recruiting
• Not everybody can work remotely.
– Be autonomous by nature
– Have a certain degree of self-motivation
– Be a good communicator, at least in
writing
– Share or relate to the company’s vision
and values
• Set clear expectations

7. 2-Company Culture

8. IMPLEMENT Company Culture:
New hire tunnel
1. “Good vibes” handbook:
• Clear expectations
• Ground rules
• Break paradigms - multicultural team
2. We care. Speed courses.
3. Daily mentoring during the first 2 weeks.
All procedures must be well documented and
available.
Company culture

9. KEEP Company Culture
• Repetitionwith creativity
• Team Leaders set example:
– Value alignment
– Close accompaniment
– Assertive feedback
Company culture

10. Keep Distributed Teams Healthy
• Active listening
• Knowledge of the team and their aspirations:
– Personality tests
– Team activities
• Trust
Company culture

11. Keep Distributed Teams Healthy
• Weekly feedback: 43% of highly engaged
employees receive weekly feedback*
• Real empowerment and support
• Show warmth
• Identification with company values
• Repeat why each person’s work is important
• Involve team in goal settings
*Towers Watson 2012
Company culture

12. Keeping Motivation: Monthly
Congress
1. Intro: Fun ice-breaker or personal info
sharing
2. Into the circle: share company and team
information
3. Course or development activity/Bonding and
Belonging
4. Fun activity
Company culture

13. Ice-Breakers
Two truths and a tale:
• Objective: Fun, increases trust.
• Each person must make three
statements about him/herself, one
of which isn't true.
• Example: I have two brothers, I
was born in Australia, and I have a
motorcycle.
• The group must guess or vote on
which statement is the tale.
• Tip: Use a whiteboard to keep track
of who is best at deceiving the
others. He/she is the winner and
probably the one with the craziest
life!
Group connections:
• Objective: Fun, increases trust and
knowledge between team members,
reflection on communication and
asking questions.
• Team members have 2 minutes to
discover an interesting, surprising,
and separate connection you share
with each person in your team.
• Share your discoveries with the
rest of the group.
• Follow with a discussion about
what kinds of questions were
made, how many, etc. until a
connection was reached.
Company Culture

14. Ice-Breakers
Sharing wisdom
• Objective: Increases trust and knowledge.
• The assignment for members to look back over their work careers and
determine the 2 most important pieces of wisdom they have learned and share
them with the group.
• The topics can be different ones like things they have learned working in a
team, working with different managers, etc.
• Follow with a discussion where you guide the team into talking about how they
felt before, during, and after the moment and how they feel about it now that
they have acquired that knowledge.
• Tip: If the team is too large, make teams of 4, with each group having different
levels of knowledge.
• Ask people to prepare the activity a couple of days before the meeting
Company culture

15. COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES
Motivation Killer

16. Communication challenges

17. Always use video
80% of the message we receive comes from body language
Communication challenges

18. • Make communications warm
• Get personal
• Regular feedback
• Team Leaders always available
• Document everything
• Use available tools: whiteboards, screen sharing,
task management tools,…
A new way of communicating
Communication challenges

19. BEATING LONELINESS
Motivation Killer

20. Beating loneliness
• Promote virtual water coolers
• Break the virtual world:
– Pay for co-working spaces
– Promote and pay for city/regional face-to-face
meetings
Beating loneliness

21. Private social media
Beating loneliness

22. Team activities
• Do activities to increase identification with
company and team:
Beating loneliness

23. Sense of belonging
Create a mascot
• Spend 5 to 10 minutes brainstorming with your team to generate a list of personality traits and skills
that an ideal team member would possess.
• Your list should contain items that would be common for any team, as well as traits unique to
your specific team.
• Encourage team members to go beyond the obvious.
• After brainstorming, use the drawing feature of your online collaborative tool to create a team
mascot representing your ideal team member.
• It's fun to create your team mascot together in real time, with all team members contributing
something to the drawing. Make a stick figure that has all the characteristics in it.
• As a facilitator, you need to make sure that each person’s contribution is represented at least once
in the figure.
• Bring the stick figure to an artist (it can be a person in the team) and turn it into a cool-looking
mascot. Add the company colors if possible.
• Use it in presentations, and you can even make T-shirts and mugs with it and send them to the
team members.
Beating loneliness

24. Beating boredom
• Promoting participation in transversal projects
• Project related contests
• Possibility to change projects or tasks
• Provide growth
• Activities outside the project
Motivation killer

25. Motivation drivers:
• Provide development, feedback and empowerment:
Gratitude + Why
• Listen to the team:
• Use 1:1 meetings to gather information
• Show you care:
• Get personal
• Send real gifts

26. Motivation drivers:
Have fun:
• Create playlists together
• Telegram groups
• Photo contest
Coolest graffiti
in your town
Best
moment
in 2014
World Cup
Madness

27. Specific Tools
• Social Media:
– Socialcast.com
– Thoughtfarmer.com
• Project management:
– Wrike, Redbooth
– Spotlightppm.com
– blossom.co – Specific for Agile
• Virtual office and virtual water coolers: Sococo.com
• Team activities: Managing-virtual-teams.com
• Measure engagement: Officevibe, Moodapp, Tynipuls
• Know your team: PlayPrelude
• Use white boards, share desktops,… think outside the box!

28. Managing-Virtual-Teams.com
• Workshops for Managers and Team Members
• Facilitate Team Activities
• 1:1 Consulting
Skype: annadanes
anna.danes@managing-virtual-teams.com