The Remote Team Cohesion Lab is part of a suite of workshops designed to strengthen organisations’ abilities to achieve social change through empowering individual and team structures. This lab series is a collaboration between Sarah Allen, drawing upon her expertise as the Mozilla Festival Senior Director, and Dirk Slater of Fabriders, who has nearly 30 years of experience convening people in diverse contexts and settings.
Below is a reflection [from Sarah] about a recent 4-day lab they facilitated with a remote team to cultivate a more cohesive, supportive, and aligned process for a team culture.
The desires behind the design
During our many chats, Dirk and I focused on working through the thorny issues of blending open, participatory models with event design. We approach team-building from complementary angles: Dirk brings insights from adult learning and his experience as a facilitator and trainer. At the same time, I focus on nurturing community through co-designed experiences.
I like to think Dirks’s work is the heart and fuel to ensure the experiences I co-design with communities can thrive with agency and momentum.
We had a chance to work through the Lab with a remote team full of heart and a real sense of friendship while they sought new organising methods to support their impactful and vital work. Below is how we mapped the four days
Remote Team Cohesion Lab
Session 1 – Determining our big picture
This is all about returning to the start so each team member can rebuild with the same understanding and learning of organisational and team goals.
In our first session, the team drafted Epitaphs of how they want to be remembered in a future where their vision of success has been realised. As teams are multiple facets with real people who have hopes, desires, and dreams in their positional role and with the organisation, we lead a session that explores team roles and how they contribute to that vision. Collectively, we then defined the problem the team is trying to solve and imagined how team cohesiveness could strengthen the team’s ability to solve the problems.
Key prompts that drove discussions:
- What are your personal motivations for doing the work?
- What is the problem the team is trying to solve?
- How might people behave differently as a result of the team’s efforts?
- How should the team be remembered if the effort it was working on is successful?
Session 2 – The sum of our parts
My favourite session, was when we created an agenda where the team gave the time and space to bring a more personal element into the lab. Here, it’s essential to reconnect with our experience in life and the skills we have built over our careers as these inform how we collaborate and co-design as a group of colleagues invested in each other’s success to ensure the work’s success. To start our second session, we asked the team to share the tasks they needed to complete in the morning before they started work. They investigated their roles and how they support other team members. The team then considered how previous team members contributed to the team’s ability to achieve success and with the larger organisation.
Key prompts that drove discussions:
- How does my role contribute to the team’s success?
- How do my team members contribute to my role?
- How have previous members contributed to the team’s ability to achieve success?
Session 3 – Strengthening Collaboration
This is Dirk’s favourite day, Strengthening facilitation skills through exploring personal learning experiences, adult learning theory, and a workshop format called ADIDS. The team considered how they could strengthen team meetings and drafted designs for the weekly team meetings using the resources and tools from the earlier sessions in the day.
Key prompts that drove discussions:
- What is a collective, organisation or group effort that motivates and inspires you?
- What is a recent positive learning experience that you’ve had?
- What are the desired outcomes of the team meetings?
Session 4 – Mapping our future
At this stage of the lab, we need to move towards thinking about the utilisation and the building of the learning into real tangible resources for the team to build upon, starting from the dream version of the near future and where the team might be in the next nine months and three years. Each person also did the same exercise as individuals. They compiled the milestones the team is committed to completing between now and April 2025. We all finished the session by compiling the tasks we will accomplish due to participating in the lab.
Key prompts during this session:
- What are your dreams for what the team can accomplish in the near future?
- What should the team be able to accomplish in the next 3 years to ensure success? In the next nine months?
- What are the commitments we have to accomplish in the next nine months? Where are their synergies? Conflicts?
Through the four sessions, we sought to create little personal moments between team members that captured and offered glimpses of each other’s lives, whether through sharing morning rituals or personal anecdotes. We created some fun but informative games and shares, showing how close this team was and their massive respect for each other.
Conclusion: Empowering Remote Teams for Success
As explored throughout this post, our 4-day lab offers a unique and powerful approach to revitalizing remote teams. By guiding participants through self-discovery, shared understanding, and collaborative planning, we aim to create an environment where teams can reconnect, realign, and reimagine their collective future.
Key takeaways from our lab include:
- Reconnecting with the big picture and organizational goals
- Appreciating the diverse skills and experiences within the team
- Strengthening collaboration through improved meeting structures
- Mapping out a clear path for future success
Perhaps most importantly, this lab provides an easy, open space for team members to rediscover their connections as individuals beyond their professional roles. By sharing personal experiences, morning rituals, and even participating in fun knowledge-testing games, teams forge stronger bonds that translate into more effective collaboration.
The feedback from participating teams has been overwhelmingly positive. Many report improved communication, heightened motivation, and a renewed sense of purpose in their work.
“The Remote Team Cohesion Lab helped my team to connect better on a human and professional level. We came out of the lab sessions with more defined goals and shared commitments to work together better to achieve them. The thoughtful design and facilitation helped us to be honest and reflective, and as a manager, I got to know my team on a deeper level and feel better equipped to lead them forward!”
Can we help you?
If you’re part of a remote team facing challenges in cohesion productivity or simply looking to take your collaboration to the next level, we encourage you to consider this lab experience. It’s not just about team building – it’s about creating a foundation for long-term success in the digital workspace.
Interested in learning more or scheduling a lab for your team? Don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ll happily give you an hour to learn more about your context and advise you on building cohesion for your remote team. Together, we can transform how your remote team works, collaborates, and achieves its goals.