Hi Caryl,
I definitely agree with the face to face meeting for a start being very beneficial. Incl. social elements. Building personal rapport is very important.
A few points I found helpful:
- take turns with being in the "bad" time zone for virtual meetings, i.e. it should not always just suit the US with Europe and Asia to suffer from inconvenient times
- simple thing: make sure everybody is aware of time differences and how they change around daylight saving switch
- build awareness for English native speakers so they realise what is easy and what is difficult for others to understand
- when a variety of accents and levels are present in a conf call, it's easy to create frustration,when people don't understand each other and stop asking. Facilitators should summarise every few minutes. Online minute taking shared life on the screen also helps to avoid surprises, when the minutes are sent.
- Online collaboration tools help a lot. We use a Confluence wiki. Important to establish a simple set of rules how to use it
- Some kind of virtual water cooler for social chats or quick project related questions - as simple as a Skype group chat
- monitor comms - it is too easy for people to pretend to have nothing to discuss and skip meetings. Encourage regular and ad hoc virtual meetings and phone / Voip over email
- celebrate together. Successes as well as personal events like birthdays.
- if your company culture comprises after work activities, then do encourage them in the virtual team as well. E.g. online games - ideally one including Voice, but at least a chat, so it's not just task focused