Leading a remote team of 250 people was hard. So I built something to make it much easier.

Back in 2003 when I started Le Cool I had no idea that we would end up building one of the largest remote teams in the industry. Due to the character of our business it was fundamental for us to have a large local presence in all the cities we covered. As our business grew we went from a handful of people in Barcelona to 250 people across the world.

What was the hardest part of leading people across three continents?

That is easy to answer. Building culture. To get people to bond and connect. To foster a culture of collaboration where teams could develop ideas and build upon each other’s work across cities and cultures. Where people would have a sense of belonging and connection, despite having spent little, or no, time together physically.

To achieve great things it is fundamental to be able to start with an idea and develop it together. To get the most out of everyone on the team. In an environment where everyone feels safe to make mistakes. Where people trust each other and offer support. Where we learn, grow, fail and win. Together.

Now that is really hard to do in real life, where everyone is sitting in the same room together. And when people are spread out across 15 countries, from the UK to Mexico to Thailand, it is back breakingly hard.

Feeling lonely and disconnected - a real pain that is growing

The number one pain point of remote workers is feeling lonely and isolated. This is no surprise. While team building activities are rare and hard to do well for co-located teams, for most remote teams they simply never happen.

Over the last four years I trained and worked as a virtual facilitator, leading meetings with people from Sweden, China, Spain, South Korea and another 20+ countries and learning a lot about how to run meetings that are really great. I started thinking about how useful it would be if I could take everything that I’ve learnt and make it available in a tool so that many more people could benefit. And so I did.

How do you help thousands of people? Build software.

Last year I started building a new kind of software to make it easy for remote leaders to do team building virtually. To make it possible for their people to bond and do meaningful work, together, in real-time. I decided to call it Teeming (like Meeting but with the T and M switching places).

What is Teeming?

Teeming makes it easy to do different activities together while being on a video call. Run interactive work sessions, do real-time problem solving, start an ice-breakers or a run a feedback round. Teeming makes it easy to have fun while also doing work together. My favorite is starting the session with a game of trivia (yes, it does that too).

Teeming is the tool I wished I had back when building Le Cool. Actually I wish I would have had this tool for every single virtual group meeting I have ever led. ??

Running a session with Teeming is great fun. And you can use it with whatever video platform you are currently using. Just start a new session, pick an activity and then share your screen over video with your people.

I could go on and one about how fun and engaging it is (about how participants interact throughout the session by answering questions, vote anonymously, adds ideas directly from their phone or pc, etc. etc.) but here is a better idea. Why don’t you give it a try for yourself?

I am super stoked that this project has seen the light and I am convinced you will find it incredibly useful as well.