The New Telephone Game: Team Building

By Jill Kurtz
Online Career Tips Contributor

Telecommuting and remote work is on the rise. Among the many implications of this phenomenon is that we meet and collaborate via telephone more frequently. This removes the ability to see the people we are interacting with as well as the opportunity to interpret body language.

If you are facilitating a meeting with one or more colleagues by telephone, here are a few team building skills to keep in mind.

• Take time for introductions. Even if you think everyone knows one another, take time to let everyone introduce themselves and present some details about their relevance to the project at hand. This allows everyone to understand who is participating and also to associate a voice with each name. Also important, it gives everyone a context for each person’s participation.
• Give everyone a chance to weigh in. Invariably, some people on the call will feel comfortable chiming in without being prompted. They will share their thoughts, even if that means interjecting when someone else is speaking. Others will wait their turn. As the leader, you need to be sure to call on each person so everyone has the opportunity to be heard.
• Generate working documents. Prepare an agenda in advance of the telephone call and document the discussion. Listening takes a lot of focus, so note taking may be harder for participants during a telephone meeting. Help everyone to stay on the same page and validate all the contributions by documenting and sharing meeting notes.
• Use one (or a very few) tools. Don’t let technology be a barrier to participation. Use the same phone line or teleconferencing software for each group meeting. This allows your team members to set up and become comfortable with one tool so they can focus on their participation in group meetings and not on the technology being used.
• Give guidelines that help everyone follow good telephone etiquette. Nothing is more frustrating that being on a call with someone with a poor phone connection or television noise in the background. All participants should be in a quiet place with a reliable phone connection. They should eliminate distractions so the phone conversation is as much a focus as the discussion would be in the case of a face-to-face meeting.