“Promoting team bonding is important for the success of any project. However, this is harder to do when the team is based in different locations. Office teams have the opportunity to go for after-work drinks and occasional lunches together. However, it is harder to bond as a team when some colleagues have never even met each other face-to-face. As the project manager for a geographically dispersed team, why not be creative about how to get your team together? Depending on your budget, you could maybe try and get the team together at least once a year so the company can put a face to a name, and get to know a little about their colleague through various team building activities. Other ideas could be building a virtual team room, where team members can share more informal information about themselves to their peers. It is very important that team members are on good terms which will make the communication that much easier. And finally, being aware and sensitive of language barriers can help teams bond and grow their working relationship. When remote teams are based in different countries it is very likely that they speak different languages too. Guidelines for language for phone calls and teleconferences can make things more natural and uniform. Having meeting notes from all verbal communication can help people whose native language was not used in the conversation.” – Chloe Hashemi, excerpted from her article, “How to Manage a Project with a Team that Works Remotely” for Project-Management.com, click here to read the article in its entirety.