1st of many firsts
During this abnormal-normal period, many experiences, regardless of length of time on this planet, stretch us and our thinking.
This week was possibly one of my elephants in the room in terms of the delivery of a virtual international team event.
My challenge was to continue developing an international team from Mexico, the US, Russia, Poland and India to maximise their performance as a leadership team through these unusual COVID-19 circumstances.
But the real challenge was that, for obvious reasons, this was my first foray into a virtual team event, and the next was being able to manage 23 such individuals through Zoom on my laptop!
A learning curve
What a learning curve, and I’m pleased to report a genuinely fantastic experience and feedback from all who attended.
As a result of the event and the reaction received, it proved that team events/building like this can successfully be undertaken to an amazingly high level with a modicum of skill and flexibility.
Challenges
The main challenges and learnings from me which may be of interest were as follows:
Unlike being in the same room and able to use your peripheral vision, the scanning of 23 small pictures, with the obvious time delay due to locations (I should imagine), meant that it was an exhausting process for me as the facilitator attempting to connect with everyone almost as 23 individual processes every minute.
Surprisingly, the focus of individuals using Zoom as the medium worked to our advantage, heightening the experience as they, too, had to super focus on me and their colleagues. The feedback from this session, which I’m also receiving from my one-to-one sessions, would appear to add value to the overall session.
This virtual team learning event would appear to be almost steroid-induced in the speed of learning, meaning that I could cover more significant ground in less time with greater effectiveness.
There are advanced learnings when it comes to virtual teamwork. However, I believe these are hugely valuable to the overall outcome and worthy of consideration and adoption.
Outcomes
Overall, what a great session (as feedback by the team) and superb learning for me and the team as a whole. I am unsure if I will ever go back to face-to-face one-to-ones or even, as I write, team face-to-face sessions, as the learnings to date and the pace of change would all point to this new and effective way of working.
We must learn to let go of past clunky, time-inefficient, planet-limiting methodologies.
Looking forward to my next virtual team event in the following weeks.
Anyone who is interested in understanding more, please feel free to reach out.