Building High-Quality Connections on Virtual or Hybrid Teams
Make work better: No matter what kind of team you work on, find easy ideas for strengthening relationships and making work more enjoyable
Not long ago, I asked team members from a single organization to tell me about the people they felt connected to at work. Their answers were a “best of” list of work relationships:
The colleagues who make them laugh, even when things are tense.
The vice president who makes time for team members who need support.
The team members who picked up slack for someone after a surgery.
The IT colleague who always responds to help requests with good cheer.
These individuals weren’t just good co-workers; they made the work better. And one thing that stood out to me about their list: being face-to-face wasn’t required to be a good colleague in these ways. Even on virtual teams, these peers were making each other’s work better.
Building high-quality connections
University of Michigan’s Jane Dutton and colleagues research “High Quality Connections” (HQCs). HQCs are brief interactions between two people that both perceive as positive.
Think about the word connection. We sometimes use it to mean an acquaintance, a contact in our email account or someone on LinkedIn. But in this case, it’s more like “connective tissue,” the networked web that connects us to one another, and through which real relationships and real productivity flow. HQCs strengthen connections among people so they can work better together.
We have an HQC experience when we feel good and healthy, we have a positive feeling toward the other person, and the other person feels the same way.
When we’re lucky enough to have relationships full of these HQC moments, we’re more likely to feel happy and engaged in our work. Seeking out genuine points of connection with colleagues is worth the time because it helps your team perform better. Workplace friendships make work feel more meaningful.
High-quality connections on virtual teams
HQCs really matter on virtual teams. Building strong connections among remote teammates helps the team work more productively. Creating trust between teammates may be especially important if your team is new.
Research shows the qualities we most want in a virtual teammate are often relationship-based and grounded in good communication. The top desired qualities include:
Sharing information,
Collaborating, and
Being proactively engaged.
All of these task skills can be accelerated by encouraging appropriate non-work conversation. By swapping dog pictures or chip dip recipes, we create a better workplace.
Gallup’s Q12 survey measures workplace engagement; over the years, they’ve found that having a best friend at work leads to fewer safety incidents, more engaged customers, higher profits and greater employee engagement.
10 tips for building connections on a virtual (or any) team
Leaders in high-performing organizations often tell me they don’t have time for small talk. “There’s too much to be done to make time for chit chat,” they say.
By minimizing the value of relationship building, they’re overlooking one of the greatest tools in a leader’s toolbelt: the ability to make work better by making it more enjoyable.
Stronger relationships make long days bearable; work friendships help us feel more connection to our work and increase our engagement. We’re likely to be physically and psychologically safer, and definitely more likely to see greater results. And all this is true on virtual teams, as well as in-person or hybrid teams.
You cannot afford not to make time for relationship building.
Here are 10 ideas for getting started:
1. Start meetings with intentional check-ins
Begin each team meeting with a brief personal moment where everyone shares something non-work related, like what they’re looking forward to this weekend. Not comfortable talking about anything that happens outside of work hours? Then have people name a small win or share a shout-out to a colleague.
2. Create virtual coffee chats
Schedule informal 15-minute video calls with teammates just to catch up, like the spontaneous conversations that happen in physical offices. Encourage team members to manage this on their own, or pair different team members each month to build across-the-team relationships.
3. Share appropriate personal content
Exchange pet photos, local weather or favorite recipes to build the personal connections that create trust and engagement. One fun way to do this is with a semi-annual “I recommend” conversation. Everyone is invited to share one thing they love, often a book, podcast, product or song. This practice can easily move to Slack or Teams. New connections are built as you find similarities or introduce one another to favorite things.
4. Practice active listening and empathy
When teammates share challenges or successes, respond with genuine interest and follow up in later conversations to show you remember and care.
5. Be proactively communicative
Share information openly, offer help before being asked and keep teammates informed about your progress and availability. Missing signals is easy when working remotely. Make them obvious. One executive recently told me the secret of her success was “annoyingly repetitive communication.”
6. Celebrate wins together
Create virtual celebrations for team achievements, birthdays, or personal milestones through video calls, shared messages or even sending small gifts. One small team I know assigns someone to gather funny memes, well-wishes, photos and silly stories designed to delight their colleagues on their birthdays. This takes zero dollars and a small amount of effort, rotated among the team, but brings a big measure of joy.
7. Use video when possible
Turn on the cameras during meetings to create more personal connections through facial expressions and body language, making interactions feel more human. Nothing feels less relational than staring at a Zoom grid of black boxes.
8. Create shared virtual experiences
Organize online team activities, such as virtual lunch meetings, online games or presentations, to build shared experiences. One low-lift option: plan a 15-minute coffee break and ask everyone to “show and tell” something meaningful from their home, give a virtual tour of their home office, or (for laughs) share their worst school photo from childhood.
9. Be vulnerable and authentic
Share appropriate challenges you’re facing or mistakes you’ve made to create psychological safety and encourage others to be genuine too. This is essential if you’re the team leader — nothing establishes psychological safety and a sense of connection faster.
When we offer a small vulnerability, people often respond in kind. Someone mentions being stressed about college applications for their high school student, and someone else responds that finding a nursing home for their grandmother has been stressful as well. That may seem like a minor exchange, but it creates a small safe space that may come in useful on the next team project.
10. Improve your questions
Finally, because it’s easy to feel misunderstood at a distance, ask better questions to strengthen your understanding of your colleagues. Invest in high-quality questions to ensure you understand what your virtual colleague is thinking.
Check out my short TEDx video for tips on asking unpredictable questions that deepen your understanding.
These practices help create the positive, mutually beneficial interactions that characterize HQCs, leading to better team performance, increased engagement and safety (both physical and psychological) and more meaningful work relationships, even in virtual environments.
Don’t let distance keep you from building connections. Establish good relationships, and good results will follow.
This article first appeared at Smartbrief.
BONUS QUESTION
Last week, a friend, who is also a regular reader of this column, greeted me by asking, “What’s something you’re looking forward to this week?”
That led us straight into a short but meaningful conversation about our young adult children.
His question was a great example of asking something less predictable than “how are you?”
Here’s another alternative question that I like:
Tell me the headlines. What’s news in your life these days?
Got another alternative question you like? Share below!
Photo by Diva Plavalaguna.