How to be a Better Virtual Teammate

“On the count of three, everyone slap their teammates in the face…”

Today’s topic is near and dear to practically all of us — How to avoid rolling your eyes during video conference calls. That sounded negative. Let’s change that to “How to be a better virtual teammate”. Much better.

If you want to be a good virtual teammate, then you really only have to do three things: Be present, be engaging, and be supportive. The first one is just like it sounds — literally be around for people to contact. I may or may not have advocated for pretending your router is broken before, but that’s not in the spirit of being a good teammate. The second means we should enjoy talking to one another. Take an interest in how people are doing and share some tidbits about yourself. Get to know one another. Finally, teammates gotta support each other just like brothers gotta hug. If Tommy is having a rough day, help him out. He’ll return the favor when you’re having a rough day. Or else he’s dead to you. The End.

What’s that? Two paragraphs doesn’t count as an article? Fine, how about some tips on what you can do (and not do) to build camaraderie from a distance? Just try not to call them team building activities. We all have flashbacks to “tell us your name, title, and three interesting facts about yourself” that we’d like to forget.

• Let’s start small. Pick a theme for your virtual meetings and have people change their video background to fit the theme. You could do dream vacation day, favorite childhood toy day, or what’s for dinner day. Word to the wise — Don’t attempt this when the subject matter is contentious. It’s hard to strike the right serious tone with Hello Kitty behind your head.
• Play a virtual game together. A good friend of mine developed a virtual scavenger hunt for her team. Pick a bunch of random stuff and send out the list to everyone. Let your team express their creativity and negotiating skills when defending their finds. A doggie daycare yearbook is still a yearbook. “Something that needs to be washed” could be laundry, a dirty dish, a pet, or your hair. Some people can pull off not washing their hair daily. I am not one of those people.
• Have your team try the one word story game. Give everyone a sequential number and then start them off with a word The next number in the sequence adds a second word to the story, the third person adds a third word and so on. Pretty soon you’ll have a chain of nonsense that you’ll be proud to call your own. You’re right, it is dorky, but it’s also hilarious. Try it once and if you don’t like it then you don’t have to say another word about it.
• Ask thought provoking questions to get to know each other on another level. My fellow cheese-fry-loving co-worker Brian Stone discovered that the way you eat corn on the cob is very symbolic of your personality. There is apparently a typewriter method and a drill bit method (among others). One method could mean you have OCD tendencies, another method could mean that you’re dangerously unstable. How do your teammates eat their corn on the cob? What else do they do incorrectly?
• Things to avoid: Don’t fake enthusiasm It takes significantly more energy to pretend to be more excited than you actually are. You’ll eventually get exhausted, and then you’ll snap at your boss, who will then snap back, at which point things will escalate to maligning each other’s level of intelligence, then middle fingers start flying and then HR gets involved. Save yourself the hassle. When you’re feeling a mild level of interest, put on your mildly interested face.
• Make sure your team understands that participation is voluntary. Mandatory Fun is a great Weird Al album, but it’s a lousy way to run a meeting. If you try it, then you’ll see a few mildly irritated faces among the crowd.
• While we’re at it, don’t force everyone to have their cameras on constantly. It really is okay to take a “camera off” day. You take sick days when you’re sick, mental health days when you need a break, so let’s make it acceptable to decide to not show ourselves on camera for a while. You’re the boss of your face. Just don’t get up in someone else’s face about it.

The best tip — Don’t overthink it. If you care about the people you work with (and show that you care) then you’ll be fine. Everything else is just details. Just like remembering to wash your hair.

-Philip