Building and scaling up teams in a virtual environment — lessons from 2020
By: Shireen Ali
Tags: Leadership, Organizational Culture, Team Management, Virtual Team Building

Working with virtual teams is now a reality and 2020 has brought about a radical shift in the way we work with teams. However, at the beginning of the year it was almost an unknown territory for most of us managing and leading teams. I learnt a few valuable lessons this year in building teams as I scaled up a completely new team successfully across two different sites — virtually in 2020.

1. The 90-day onboarding plan — For a team with a significant number of new hires (60% of my team was new hires) joining virtually, it is critical to have a clear onboarding plan. While a large part of the logistics can be managed at an organization level, it is important to have a specific plan starting from who is the new joiner going to work with, what is the learning plan going to look like and what are the areas of work that they are going to get involved in. Facilitate connects with other leaders which helps them understand the organization better and build an overall sense of engagement with the organization and not just the immediate team.

2. Involve the team: Share responsibilities with existing team members who can champion and drive some of the areas — e.g a buddy champion would have the responsibility of ensuring every new joiner has a buddy assigned before they join, a training champion could drive the internal learning plan for the team , an engagement champion could ensure the team is meeting up to have fun! Assigning ownership across the team creates a sense of shared purpose towards building up the team

3. Identify and communicate areas of expertise — Identify areas of expertise that you may want to build within the team and have 2–3 members focus on each area of expertise. In my case, as I was building an analytics team in a new domain, I identified various sub products as areas of expertise where I wanted the team to build business and analytics knowledge. Outside their business deliverables, this also gives the team opportunity to connect and brainstorm on a regular basis in smaller groups — similar to what we would have done in a physical office, while at the same time helping build the overall knowledge quotient for a new team.

4. Actively cultivate a culture: Culture is the most important asset for building up a team. In a physical environment, culture is built as an outcome of shared interactions and values– as they say it takes a village to build a culture. In a virtual environment, there needs to be an active effort to build and sustain a team culture. Encourage the new team members to speak and ask questions in meetings, incentivize collaboration by rewarding team members for helping others or sharing important tasks and leverage your 1:1s to build trust and know more about your team members on a personal front.

5. Be conscious of the ‘unconscious’ bias: With a move to virtual, came the added pressure of ensuring team productivity does not get impacted because of remote working. This sometimes can result in a bias towards assigning the most critical tasks to team members who have a history of being able to deliver , leading to a lopsided balance in terms of work for some and a delayed learning curve for others. While this is one of the easiest biases to creep in , it is important to be aware of other such biases as well as the onus of connectivity lies largely with leaders in virtual environments

6. Communicate 1:1–1:1s are usually a great tool to ensure a regular connect with team. Unlike the physical office where you could walk by and catch up with a team member over a cup of coffee, increased frequency of 1:1s is a must to compensate for the lack of informal connects (weekly/fortnightly at least). Use your 1:1s to not only communicate goals and specific tasks but to build up a personal connect with your team members, especially important for a new team.

The way we work has changed forever and the new normal is here to stay. As we continue to learn on how to manage virtual teams better , it would also be interesting to understand how some of the constructs around culture and diversity which are critical for a team’s success and are largely fostered by human interactions evolve in an increasingly virtual world.