Whilst I have been focusing on editing the book on Leading Virtual Teams, I have blogged a little less about what we have actually been up to as a Virtual Team… So this is a post about a great activity we have recently done: Team chat & bake.
We chose a mail order baking kit for vegan & gluten free lemon cakes, which should be made easily and quickly within an hour which we set aside.
As a team we considered whether we wanted to have video chat whilst baking or use text chat, and we all voted to use text chat only, so we posted messages and shared pictures as we went along.
One of the things we really enjoyed about the activity was to spend some time together as a team without having to focus on a particular deliverable. It felt more like a social activity and we also enjoyed sharing jokes about how we were getting on with the recipe. It worked great to all make the same recipe as we could compare our experiences and tastes.
The cost of the activity for us as a team was around £20 a person, and it took around an hour for us to bake the cakes… and start eating them. We scheduled the activity to take place before lunch, enabling us to move from the baking activity to lunch which worked well.
What worked especially well for this activity was the chat element, which allowed us all to engage as much or as little as we felt comfortable with. Combining hanging out virtually with making (and eating) some practically is a great combination to engage Virtual Teams – bringing a more tangible dimension to a distributed activity.
This is so fun, Maren. Love it!