My BEST Advice For Growing Healthy Virtual Teams

Over the last four years, I've spent almost $30,000 hosting in person meetings for my online team. And I can tell you without a doubt, I have made that money back at least 10 times over. And that's because we've solved some of our biggest problems and gotten some of our most profitable ideas by having meetings in person. So today I want to share with you the three big reasons why your online team needs to have in person meetings. And I'm also going to share with you some of the best practices that I've learned from, from hosting these in person team meetings over the last four years. Let's dive in. Hey there. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. My name is Michael King and I'm the creator of the Connected Accountant. But I'm also the CEO of KFE Solutions, a top rated fractional CFO firm. And my entire firm is online or virtual. We literally have people everywhere from here in Dallas, Texas, to Mexico to Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York City, Canada. We're all over North America. If. And there's so many amazing benefits to having an online or a virtual team. The biggest benefit, I think, is I have almost an unlimited talent pool. I can literally hire anybody anywhere in the world that I want to without being locked to a particular geography. There's also significantly lower overhead, for obvious reasons. And another one of my favorite reasons for having an online team is that I don't have to worry about physical office space as my team expands or contracts. But there's also some downsides to having an online team. One of them is you really miss out on that water cooler talk where people just get together kind of on an impromptu basis and talk about what's going on and share ideas with each other. I also think that one of the drawbacks is the fact that you can't just get a team of talented people in a conference room or a big office room and get a dry erase board and just solve big problems together. Sometimes you really just kind of need to bring the team together and say, hey, this is what we're dealing with. Let's hash out a solution. You lose that a lot of times with an online team. But I found that there's actually a way to kind of get the best benefits of both worlds. And, and that's by having periodic team meetings in person. And I remember it wasn't long after I brought Carlos on my team four years ago. He was, he was my first hire. We met for an in person meeting in Houston, Texas. For a day, in fact, we sat in a restaurant just the Two of us for about six hours and just kind of collaborated and did some goal casting and those kinds of things. And we've been having those meetings ever since. As the team has grown, we've continued that practice, and I can tell you, it's been such an amazing experience to do it. So let's go ahead and dive in. I want to share with you three big reasons why having team meetings in person is critically important, even if you have a virtual team. The first reason is you get a new level of brainstorming and creativity when you get people in a room together. I mean, it's just facts, people. When you get smart people in a room together, the amount of brainstorming and creativity that comes up is just unmatched. When you've got thousands of miles of distance and, you know, a piece of glass in front of you, it just doesn't quite work the same way. Because when you're sitting in, like a conference room or an office or something like that together, shoulder to shoulder with somebody on your team, you've got a big whiteboard in front of you with a problem that you're trying to solve, and the lady sitting next to you comes up with this great idea, and that prompts you to think about something that could also work. And then Fred across the table, he remembers because of what the two of you said, something that he tried at his old firm that worked really well. And everybody's like, oh, my gosh, that's a great idea. You start feeding off of each other's energy, and next thing you know, you're solving the problems at hand and coming up with solutions to even bigger problems. And for some reason, that just doesn't happen on Zoom. That's why having these in person meetings is so important, because this is the time for you to be talking about the biggest challenges in front of you, the biggest problems that you've got to solve, because the brainstorming and creativity that comes from having smart people in a room together, you just can't get that on Zoom. The second reason that meeting in person is so important is because of the fact that collaboration plus connection equals trust. And what I found time and time again is that the level of collaboration and teamwork after a team meeting goes up like 10x. And I think the reason for that is when you get the opportunity to look someone eye to eye, when you get the opportunity to shake somebody's hand, when you have the opportunity to sit next to somebody for a day or two and collaborate and brainstorm and solve problems together, it Deepens the relationship. It deepens the connection that you have with that person. In deeper relationships and deeper connection result in trust. And so then when everybody goes back to their respective offices throughout North America or wherever they are, that deepened trust means that they feel safer. And when people feel safe, they're more likely to do things that make them feel vulnerable. For example, they're more likely to raise their hand and say that they need help because they feel safe. They're more likely to pitch new ideas because they feel safe. They're not worried that they're going to get berated or looked down upon because they have that trust and safety. And for some reason, those types of deepened relationships and connections and trust, it's just really hard to replicate that via Zoom. The third reason that meeting in person is so important is because in person meetings lead to a different level of buy in from your team. As the CEO of your firm, when you stand in front of the team and you share your vision for the company, you share the goals that you want the company to achieve, you share the direction that you want to steer the ship. When people can see your energy and your passion and your excitement for the why behind what you're doing and how you're going to do it, it creates this, this whole, like, unparalleled level of buy in. People want to be part of that. When you're standing in front of them and they can actually see you and kind of feel your energy. You know, I think it's, it's a little bit similar to kind of like listening to your favorite band on the radio versus seeing your favorite band in concert. Actually, wait a second. Nobody listens to bands on the radio anymore, do they? God, I feel old. Let me try that again. You know, I think it's kind of similar to listening to your favorite band on Spotify versus listening to your favorite band in concert. See a band in concert, you're able to kind of absorb their energy and their excitement. There's something about the ambiance. And when you're able to do that in an in person meeting, show your energy and your excitement, it really does bring an entirely new level of buy in from the team. And for whatever reason, that's just not something that you can do by having meetings on Zoom or Microsoft. Teams just can't happen. One of the questions that I get asked a lot of the time is, okay, Mike, I know that team meetings are important, but I don't know what in the world I should be doing in a team meeting to make sure that I get all the value possible out of it. So I thought I would share five best practices with you that I've learned over the last four years. And the first one, hands down, super important. You want to have a written agenda. And not only do you want to have a written agenda, I want to really encourage you to send it out to your team a couple weeks ahead of time. And the reason for it is simple. You want people to be bringing ideas to the table. You want people to be prepared for the meeting so that when you sit down and you start talking about the problems, the challenges, the goals, they've already had a chance to really kind of put their thoughts together. Because, like, really in these meetings, you want to call on people, you want to solicit people to provide their input. And if you don't let them know what you're going to be talking about ahead of time, they tend to feel kind of put on the spot. And nobody likes feeling put on the spot. But also just giving them that couple weeks of time to brainstorm and like kind of really, you know, marinate on the problems at hand or the goals that you want to solve, you're going to get a completely different level of response from people. They're going to have a different level of depth to the things that they're bringing to the table. So really take that time and be deliberate about putting together an agenda and think about the goals and the outcomes that you want to have at the end of that meeting. Share it with your team a couple weeks ahead of time. Future you will. Thank you for doing this. The second thing that I know is so important, big best practice. And honestly, I don't see a lot of people doing this. Even a lot of our multiple eight figure clients when they have team meetings, they're not doing this. So pay attention to it. You want to make sure that you're sharing the wins, the misses, and the lessons learned since your last meeting. The wins are super important to celebrate because you're hustling, you're grinding, everybody's working hard, you're in the muck. And a lot of times when you're in the muck, it's easy to lose sight of the fact of all the great things that you've accomplished over the last quarter, the last six months, the last year, whatever the case may be. So be really intentional about thinking through those wins that you've had over the last however long. But I also want you to be sure to think about the missed opportunities or those misses, those things that haven't gone so well since the last meeting and for no other reason. This helps keep you as the CEO, humbled and grounded, but it also reminds the team that, hey, we've done a lot of things great, but there's some really key areas where we need to improve. And for me, a lot of times, thinking through those misses becomes some of the things that we brainstorm about and collaborate about later on in the meeting. And the third part of that was the lessons learned from both. So it's one thing to know, like, what what were the big wins were and what the big losses were. But peel the onion back and really ask yourself and your team, what were the root causes for those things? What are those things that were the lessons learned? Because at the end of the day, what you really want to do, like, yes, it's great that you had the wins or the misses, but you want to do more of the things that were working well, and you want to stop doing the things that didn't work. And if you're not intentional about identifying those lessons learned, then those learning opportunities are completely lost. And that's really, to me, the value of wins and losses is the lessons learned that come from them. So make sure you're working that into your agenda. The third thing that I want you to think about, what's been going right and what's been going wrong inside of the firm. And so kind of examples that you might think about there are, how are communications internally going? How's collaboration going amongst the team? How well are you doing at meeting deadlines? How well has hiring been going? Social media? Think about all the different things and just think about what's working right now, what's been working for the last couple of months, what things feel like. There's a lot of tension or there's a lot of friction, and identify those, call those things out, and talk to your team about the things that you see going right or wrong. And actually make sure you're asking them. You know, what do you see that's working really, really well for the team right now? And what things do you feel like there's some tension or friction and use this opportunity in person not to, like, avoid those things, but to really kind of embrace them and use this opportunity as a chance to kind of figure them out and solve them. The next thing I think is so important. Best practice. This is where I think most of the. A lot of the value, maybe not most of it, a lot of the value will come from, is do a goal review. And so what I like to do on goal reviews is I start by rearview mirror looking. You know, hey, last time we got together, this is what the goals that we set were. How have we done as far as accomplishing those goals? Have we met the milestones? Have we executed well at a task level? What's worked and what hasn't worked as far as goals go? But then this is the opportunity where you as the CEO, really want to sit down and do that future casting. You want to sit down and let the team know, like, hey, look, this is where I see us going over the next quarter, the next six months, the next year, maybe even the next three years, and share your vision and your goals with them and then be really, really intentional about getting their buy in. Are these the things that we need to be focused on? You know, is a lot of times is the CEO of our own firms will we get blinders on, you know, and we miss some of those opportunities that might be out there. So really get feedback from your team and say, hey, are these the right goals? Is this the direction that we should be heading? And then ask them, how can you contribute to these goals? What ways can you help the team accomplish these goals? What things or resources do you need so that you can be successful in helping the larger team be successful? So really use this as an opportunity on the super high strategic level to get buy in and collaboration, but also on the tactical task level tasks as well. Make sure every. Everybody's super connected to what you're doing. Make sure that you're talking about goals during these team meetings. The last thing that I'll share with you, make sure you do this right. As accountants a lot, you know, we like to be like, super dialed in on the business at hand, but make sure you build in some time just to have fun together. You know, I think one of the most fun things that we've ever done as a team, this was Bosh about two years ago now. We had a pretty intense two day planning session, but at the end of it, we went axe throwing, right? I mean, like the whole group of us when we rented out this axe throwing kind of thing, if you've never done ax throwing, I highly recommend you do it at least once. It's a lot of fun. But everybody got a chance to go in. We had little teams. So there was like this, you know, kind of mini team building thing going on. And we're just having a lot of fun. We had chick Fil A nuggets and sweet tea and stuff like that for dinner. We went for just a couple hours. And the cool part about it is that the, the axe throwing in Chick Fil A exercise, it really didn't cost more than, I don't know, 200 bucks all in for, you know, two or three hours of hanging out and having fun together. But the relationships in the team building and just kind of getting to know each other on a different level, I 100% know that it was well worthwhile. So I say share all that with you because I want to make sure that you build in time for having fun. Now, listen, I know that as a virtual team or an online team, as a CEO, you look at that and you're like, gosh, it's going to cost me a lot of money to bring everybody together. Because absolutely, if you're curious, yes, you should pay for travel, hotel, food. It's going to cost you a couple thousand bucks, maybe more, depending on the size of your team, to bring everybody together. But I can tell you again, as somebody that spent over $30,000 over the last four years, the profit that has come indirectly from that, not the revenue, but the profit is 10 times that because of the problems that we've solved, the goals that we've set in the collaboration, the trust and the relationships that were built from those in person meetings. So I really want to encourage you, sit down and maybe think about having your first in person meeting, set that agenda. Don't think that it's got to be something that it has to be this bougie, fancy experience. Find some entertaining, kind of fun activity to do at the end. And I promise you, your team will thank you, future you will thank you. That's all I got for today. I can look forward to seeing you right here next week on the Connected Accounted. In the meantime, have a great day.