How can you design virtual team building facilitation training that builds trust and improves communication?

1 Know your audience

Before you plan your virtual team building facilitation training, you need to understand who your participants are, what they expect, and what they need from the training. You can use surveys, interviews, or assessments to gather information about their roles, skills, personalities, motivations, and challenges. This will help you tailor your content, format, and delivery to suit their learning styles, preferences, and goals. You can also use this information to create relevant and realistic scenarios, cases, or examples that resonate with your audience.

2 Choose your tools

The virtual environment offers a variety of tools and platforms that you can use to facilitate your team building activities. You need to choose the ones that match your objectives, budget, and technical requirements. Some of the common tools include video conferencing, chat, polls, quizzes, breakout rooms, whiteboards, shared documents, and gamification. You need to test your tools beforehand and make sure they are compatible, reliable, and easy to use. You also need to provide clear instructions and support for your participants on how to access and use the tools.

3 Design your activities

The core of your virtual team building facilitation training is the activities that you design to engage your participants and help them achieve the learning outcomes. You need to design activities that are relevant, interactive, fun, and challenging. You can use a variety of methods, such as icebreakers, brainstorming, problem-solving, role-playing, storytelling, feedback, and reflection. You need to balance the amount of time, energy, and complexity of each activity and ensure that they align with your objectives, tools, and audience. You also need to consider the cultural and linguistic diversity of your participants and avoid any potential misunderstandings or conflicts.

5 Evaluate your training

The evaluation of your virtual team building facilitation training is important for measuring its impact and improving your future practice. You need to collect and analyze data from different sources, such as surveys, tests, observations, or interviews. You need to measure the effectiveness of your training in terms of the achievement of the learning objectives, the satisfaction of the participants, and the transfer of the skills and knowledge to the workplace. You need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your training and use the feedback and insights to plan your next steps and actions.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?