How To Build Culture On A Remote Team

Talent flows from teams.

For over a decade, we’ve known that individual performance hugely depends on the team they are placed on. Top performance hinges on whether their teammates, their manager, and the organization they are a part of give them the support and resources they need to do their best work.

So, it’s worth asking, “What makes those teams so great?” Especially in the world we live in now—where a majority of those teams are actually working remotely—it’s worth asking what makes for a great team culture in and around remote teams. What are the elements that help a virtual and remote team thrive that other underperforming teams lack?

Importance of Team Culture

The single best study on a great remote team culture was conducted a couple of years ago before all of the madness and the forced work-from-home experiment that many of us had to partake in started. It was conducted on virtual teams from multinational organizations that were also cross-functional teams. 

These were the most boundaryless of the boundaryless teams, meeting virtually, most on video calls, and collaborating asynchronously because they were all over the world. Despite the distance, the team’s culture was the biggest difference between the teams that thrived and those that failed to perform.

Despite not being together in the same physical location, the culture members felt when they worked with the remote team had the most significant influence on their performance.

Elements of Remote Team Culture

In this article, we’re going to review the two key elements of team culture that were uncovered in that experiment: shared understanding and shared identity. Plus, as a bonus, we’ll review one thing we know from more and more research that makes for a great team culture in any situation: psychological safety.

It all adds to the three elements of a great remote team culture.

Shared Understanding

The study of virtual teams uncovered the first element of a thriving remote team culture: a sense of shared understanding. Shared understanding refers to one’s ability to know the team and the knowledge, skills, and abilities of everyone else on the team. 

Also, my ability to know what their communication preferences are, what their work styles are, and when they’re available and when they’re not available. 

Shared understanding also refers to the context that they’re working in. I know the situation they’re facing. You don’t get great collaboration without a deep understanding of every person on your team, what they’re great at, what they need help with, how they like to ask for help, and the situation and the context they’re working in. 

All of it stems from a sense of shared understanding.

There are a few actions you can take right away to build shared understanding on your team—whether it’s a newly formed team or a team that you’ve been working with for a while, but your sense lacks that shared understanding.

You could try things like having people give a virtual office tour to share the context in which they’re working. In this case, you encourage teammates to pick up the laptop or move the webcam around, show the team where they’re working from, and then explain why they chose to build that environment. 

This is great because you not only get a sense of the context that people are working in, but you also get a sense of what they use to stay productive. You could do a little twist on that by asking the team to go on a “scavenger hunt” by grabbing a few specific items around the house or in their office. 

In this case, you’d say something like, “Find one thing that makes you productive and one thing that makes you laugh,” and give the team 60 seconds to grab the items and bring them back. 

Then you start the show and tell. 

The last thing you could try is to build buffer time into these virtual meetings. Jump on the line five or ten minutes early so people have time to chit-chat. Likewise, when you dismiss the meeting, don’t close it out immediately.

These opportunities to interact and share a bit about where and how they work make members of a team much more understanding of how their team works and how they can work best together.

Shared Identity

The second element of a thriving remote team culture, another that was uncovered from the study of virtual teams, is a sense of shared identity. 

Shared identity refers to the extent to which I feel like the team of people that I’m on is a real team. This is going to be a big hurdle for a lot of organizations as we move into this work from anywhere in the world. 

When some of the team members work in the same place, and others are scattered all over the world, it will be easy for colocated members to start thinking of themselves as the “team” and the remote teammates more like second-class members. We know we want the project team to be the one that feels like a team, but distance can have a significant effect on our minds and what we consider to be the actual team. 

So, thriving virtual teams build a sense of shared identity so that people feel like they’re connected to the team that’s actually a part of their project. 

You can share your identity with multiple teams. The point is that you’re building as much of a sense of us and a sense of team in this virtual setup as you would if you also were a part of a co-located team.

Like shared understanding, there are actions you can take right away to start building that shared identity. Building buffer times into meetings, as we covered above, but you can go further and plan shared meals or other unstructured times for socialization and bonding. We know from research, at least research on in-person meals, that sharing a meal builds a sense of community. 

While it may not be the same from a distance, you can take steps to enhance the experience, such as ensuring everyone’s eating a similar meal or building meal preparation time into the experience. Regular shared meals also become a ritual, one of the most powerful actions you can take to build a shared identity. Rituals can be large or small, but they have a big effect.

You get to decide as a team what your ritual is, but you do need to decide on a ritual or something your team does that most organizations don’t do. So that there’s a sense of identity whenever that ritual is acted on.

Psychological Safety

The final element of a thriving remote team culture, another uncovered from the study of virtual teams, is a sense of psychological safety. Psychological safety is a mutual trust and respect held by everyone in the team. 

Psychological safety means that people feel safe expressing themselves fully, talking about their ideas, and discussing what’s going on in their lives. This helps build that shared identity and understanding. 

If people don’t feel safe expressing themselves, then they won’t express themselves to the level that you may need to capture their full knowledge, skills, abilities, and energy.  Psychological safety is marked by mutual trust and respect, which are two different things. Trust is what I feel when I feel comfortable being vulnerable with the team, and respect is what I think when I feel that the team has received that vulnerability and honored me. 

Both are important.

As the leader of the team, trust and respect start with you. Pay attention to the ways that you communicate with the team, and pay attention to how you respond when they present ideas. 

Are you responding in a respectful way? Or are you responding in a way that explains why this will never work? 

Pay attention to what you say and how you say it. If the team doesn’t understand your humor or chosen tone, you might unintentionally make them feel less trusted or disrespected, which could affect everybody else on the team. 

One thing we know about uncivil behavior in the workplace is that most teams take their cues from the leader and use what the leader is doing to guide what they can get away with.

Trust and respect start with the team leader, but it doesn’t end with them. It spills over into the whole team, and as it does, it builds a sense of psychological safety.

Embrace Diversity and Inclusion

Remote teams stem from different cultures, backgrounds, professions, and geographical areas. This diversity offers many opportunities and opens doors to fresh ideas. But at the same time, it’s quite a challenge to manage the team and give them an all-inclusive team culture.

Leaders can create a culture where everyone feels respected, valued, empowered, and welcomed. They can easily contribute their viewpoints, which the whole team will value.

One way to do that is to remember that your team will be working in different time zones. The leaders should conduct rotational meeting times so that no one feels disadvantaged.

Then, efforts must be made to recognize and celebrate each cultural holiday or event to create a sense of inclusion for the whole team. For example, if someone on the team celebrates the Lunar New Year or some other religious or cultural event, just sending out a thoughtful message will show your respect and create cohesiveness in your team. 

Another thing you need to be mindful of is encouraging the quiet members of the team to express their ideas. You can conduct anonymous polls or shared documents where they can write and express ideas.

Use Technology to Connect

Without technology, remote work would never have been possible. Technology is needed not only for work and to maintain a team culture.

You need the tools to see how your team members interact and connect.

You can create dedicated channels for your team members to have casual conversations, share their problems or interests outside of work, and connect with each other regardless of distance. 

You can also use virtual whiteboards, the Donut app, and similar apps, which are also great for interactivity and team building.

Celebrate Wins and Milestones

Recognition of efforts is one of the most important elements for building camaraderie amongst diverse teams. It is the heart of culture.

However, in virtual settings, it can be challenging to celebrate wins and applaud team members’ milestones. 

Conduct themed Zoom parties or dedicated recognition ceremonies to make the people feel special. You can also send handwritten notes, gift cards, or care packages to the team members to let them know their efforts are well-regarded and valued.

It doesn’t have to be a huge event.

Focus on being consistent about them and sincerely celebrating each win to keep the team motivated and build a positive, inclusive culture where people feel at ease performing and contributing positively.

Wrap Up

When you consider these elements—shared understanding, shared identity, and psychological safety—you quickly realize that colocated teams also need these elements of team culture. 

However, colocated teams might “luck out” and have the individual personalities of the team generate some of this culture. On a remote team, these actions need to be much more intentional. It will take work, but in the long run, it will make much less work for you and help ensure your team truly does its best work ever.

HOME_AboutDavidBurkus

About the author

David Burkus is an organizational psychologist, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of five books on leadership and teamwork.

Recommended Reading

How To Lead Creative Teams

Creativity is a team sport. It’s been that way for a long time. But the level of teamwork required to solve problems and find innovation has increased over the last decade and even century. Most of the simple problems of the world have been solved, and the ones that remain are too often too complex […]

The Foundation of High-Performing Teams

High-performing teams are often perceived as having extraordinary talents and capabilities, but they are not that different from regular teams—at least in terms of composition. Research indicates that high-performing teams are not just about having exceptionally talented individuals. Instead, they excel in understanding how to collaborate effectively and harness the diverse talents within the team. […]

Scroll to Top