Consulting · Team, Leadership & Motivation

Online Team Development and Consulting for Virtual Teams

Team Development and consulting for online teams:

  • Your team is spread over several cities, countries or continents?
  • Are you faced with the challenge of building a high performance team that needs to work closely together but rarely meets face to face?
  • Should goals, tasks, responsibilities be clearer, should processes and communication improve, and all this online?

In our online Team Development, we focus on the potential of virtual working. This requires new processes, new skills, and a new kind of leadership.

In our online Team Development

  • you will learn what is required for efficient virtual teamwork
  • we develop a tailored framework for smooth online collaboration with you (methods, tools, workflows, rules, best practice advice)
  • we help with delivery and implementation
  • and you learn how to lead remote teams particularly well

The challenges of virtual/remote teamwork

Trust
Usually grows only slowly, but disappears fast (the more virtual, the faster!)
Reliability
Not knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the individual team members
Projections and misunderstandings
Fast escalation because of little personal contact
Communication
A missing grapevine means, in effect, no short official channels and a harder time exchanging information quickly

That's what virtual/remote teams need

Awareness

Awareness of the challenges and the pitfalls – and of how to steer around them

Good habits

To offset the remote/virtual handicap

Tools & skills

To systematise virtual collaboration and make it easier

Clear workflows & agreements

strengthen trust, make collaboration easier, reduce friction

Training and support

Using tools skilfully, extending capabilities, practising remote team leadership, and Team Development for remote/virtual teams

Team Development, Consulting and Coaching of Virtual Teams

Working in remote teams carries greater complexities than working in face-to-face teams. Among other things, meaningful compensatory actions are needed to overcome the disadvantages of physical distance. This is done by

01 building team cohesion and trust continuously
02 clear agreements
03 well-established processes
04 reliable internal "delivery relationships" between the team members,
05 developing a shared mindset
06 implementing tools that serve the purpose

Two essential levels are thus addressed here:

  • Mindset, trust, good team leadership
  • Tools, rules, procedures

Our approach for the support of remote high performance teams

  • Clear responsibilities,
  • sensible distribution of tasks
  • motivating objectives
  • established processes
  • Conveying a "framework" for smooth virtual collaboration

A supplementary coaching for managers / team leaders has also proved particularly effective in securing lasting team development.

Proven actions

The following actions have proved particularly effective for working together in the virtual space:

Creating an effective virtual workspace

A virtual workspace is a place where tasks can be coordinated and completed and where the connection to the team can be strengthened. We help you

  • set up the virtual workspace best suited to you
  • make sure the team really uses it
  • and we help implement efficient working processestailored to your team, based on "best practice" from our many consulting projects

Important factors include:

  • Effective working habits, e.g. reducing the time spent on meetings and emails by setting up cloud-based asynchronous workspaces,
  • Less stress
  • and an invitation to, and the means for, continuous innovation

In this phase we support the team with a mixture of training and group coaching.

Building trust and commitment

Good virtual leadership makes the difference.

The mechanisms for building trust in virtual teams are highly context-dependent and have to be improved constantly. Management control does not work at a distance either.

We help your team replace this control with accountability and motivation, which makes the work far more rewarding and more productive.

Your benefits from our training/coaching:

  1. Insight into the opportunities, needs and weak points of your team
  2. Selecting and implementing the best tools for collaboration
  3. Virtual training in using the tools and in putting collaboration and leadership on a new footing.
  4. Clarifying responsibilities, roles and interfaces in virtual teams
  5. Why shared guidelines and objectives matter, and how to develop them
  6. How to improve the collaboration and joint development of your virtual team overall

Additional services for team leaders and managers

01

Coaching for team leads

to strengthen them in their new role as virtual managers

02

Coaching for team members

on specific topics such as cultural differences, conflicts of interest, trust, team roles, differing working styles and personal preferences

03

Facilitation of workshops, project kick-offs, mediation

with all the know-how of experienced organisational developers and change managers

04

Workshops for generating ideas

online, remote, activating, efficient.

Your benefits

Assurance in leading distributed teams

through a better understanding of the (new) distributed team situation and of the challenges and opportunities of distributed collaboration

A stronger sense of team and belonging

by deepening the relationships within the team with the help of virtual team rooms and team rituals.

Efficient teamwork that works

through transparency and clearly agreed responsibilities, workflows & interfaces.

Resolving conflicts and preventing future escalation

through our targeted coaching of the team leadership or manager

Our trainers for online Team Development

Juliane Neumann

Juliane Neumann

Consultant and coach

Areas of focus: distributed working & remote teams, Team Development, digital change, agile working in distributed teams, training managers in distributed teams

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Stephan Dohrn

Stephan Dohrn

Consultant and coach

Areas of work: distributed working & remote teams, team development, digital change, psychological safety in teams, agile working in distributed settings, leadership and entrepreneur coaching, change management.

To the profile →

Free initial consultation

Not convinced yet? Try us out in a free initial consultation:

01

We discuss your challenge together

02

We set out possible solutions

03

If you are interested in taking things further, we draw up an outline proposal

04

Costing of the work involved

Here you will find all the information you need:

What our clients say

What clients say about our work with distributed teams

A big thank you for facilitating the workshop. We came out of the day as a team, with a good sense of togetherness and a clearer picture of the way ahead. The workshop was well worth it.
Johannes Becker Johannes Becker Learning and Development NRW.Energy4Climate GmbH
Everyone was very happy with your facilitation. The agreements we reached together are working wonders. The team workshop did us a great deal of good.
Annette Pramann Annette Pramann Team Leader Jobcenter Berlin
You were a real asset to our team development. Many thanks.
Stefan Polter Stefan Polter Head of Department Investitionsbank Berlin
Your attentive, well-grounded facilitation and the inspiration you brought helped us a great deal. The team was delighted too.
Norbert Klein Norbert Klein Head of Department Landschaftsverband Rheinland
Thank you for this team development process. I am glad we booked you.
Sabine Bohl Sabine Bohl Team Leader Stiftung SPI
The team development was genuinely excellent preparation for our strategy retreat.
Kerstin Schlick Kerstin Schlick Team Leader Action medeor e.V.
A very helpful, well-run workshop. The results served us well through the restructuring phase too.
Andreas Kogler Andreas Kogler Deutsche Telekom AG
Many thanks again for the excellent collaboration, the organisation and the very good workshop results.
Jan-Michael Wolfer Jan-Michael Wolfer Head of Production voestalpine Automotive
The change management training was very good. You understand the subject in real depth, and it shows.
Christian Hauswirth Christian Hauswirth Head of Internal Consulting MIGROS / M-Industries (Schweiz)
You prepared our workshop thoroughly and precisely. Both the method and the facilitation fitted our objectives very well. We were able to carry on working very successfully with the results. Many thanks.
Hans Helmreich Hans Helmreich Head of Division Bayerischer Rundfunk
Four days of workshop and still playful, creative, inspiring and well structured, with good methodology. Thoroughly recommended.
Dr. Siegfried Gelbhaar Dr. Siegfried Gelbhaar Head of Event Management Deutscher Bundestag
Thanks again for the excellent workshop — we have already started putting the first ideas into practice, and enjoying it.
Eva-Maria Bauer Eva-Maria Bauer Human Resources Generalist Dywidag AG

Free initial consultation

Our offer: training in interactive workshop methods.

Are you looking for in-house training or do you need support in planning and running activating workshops? We have more than 21 years of experience in training and applying interactive methods and would be glad to advise you!

Free initial consultation
Free initial consultation