In the last few months, the world has turned into a huge laboratory of innovation, and has set out on a quest to find ways to keep functioning despite global pandemics and social distancing.
And of course, the most obvious way was pumping up the digital world, in our case, virtual events and remote team activities and making it easy to sell them.
But the question is, do these activities live up to expectations? Or are they weaker alternatives to real-life ones? Well, I'll let you, the reader, decide!
So how does a virtual team activity take place?
For this example I will use my favorite activity - Heroes of Troy. A compelling, mythological story with good lessons for teams that is fresh out of the digitization oven.
As with any successful event, matching the audience, its objectives and the proposed program is of paramount importance. Clarifying the objective of the event with a person in the organization, as well as sending out an invitation that piques the participants' curiosity, are the first steps not to be skipped for an online event. What's extra compared to a normal live event is that you need to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the platform used for the meeting, whether it's Zoom, MS Teams or a fully customizable one like MyConnector.
For groups looking to get immersed in a story-rich experience, see how the team operates in a virtual environment, and then talk about it, Heroes of Troy is a unique option.
On the day of the event, after welcoming the participants, we ask them to find a super team name and choose their favorite mythological god in a short team huddle in their virtual room. They then share this information with each other to set the mood and break the ice.
In order to create interaction and set the right expectations, our goal is to deliver a clear brief and a great challenge for the teams. In Heroes of Troy, the team's mission is to guide Paris and Helen to safety out of Sparta and into Troy as they overcome numerous obstacles and recruit the largest army. Strategy, communication and teamwork are more than necessary to accomplish the mission successfully. On top of that, teams also receive an information pack with possible roles, details about the journey, a map and access to the website where they set and control the route they choose.
Teams are on their own, but the facilitator's role is to guide participants so that they can have an enjoyable journey. This involves clarifying possible technical issues, but also asking the right questions if teams get stuck along the way. This guidance can be subtle or consistent depending on the objectives discussed at the beginning and the circumstances of that team.
In most cases, groups working together are included in our activities as this makes communication easier and increases the involvement of each participant.
After the activity is over and the teams have reached their destination, it is always interesting to reflect on the journey. Teams start with similar resources, but very often achieve different results. The debrief at the end of the activity is the perfect place to look at the team's progress, discover the key element of their success and sediment the learning. On top of that, it's also the perfect place to celebrate successes and offer prizes, however simple they may be, from a box of chocolates to a themed souvenir.
All in all, it is a joy to see the reactions of participants to such activities, even though they are remote, words like “I didn't even notice how the time passed.” and “I felt the challenge was just like real life” keep coming up.
Of course, nothing can replace real-life work, but this kind of work is simply something else, in the same way that virtual work does not replace real-life work, it just comes with something extra, it is another dimension or extension of it, a necessity due to distance, globalization, cost or just a simple choice to access a larger pool of talent.
So this is how remote activity takes place in theory. Sound tempting to you? Our advice is to try it in person, either in an open demo - click here - be with your team.
