One of the questions that comes up frequently around virtual teams is the issue of team building, how, when the personnel are distributed across a number of locations, can you build a team and maintain a collegiate environment for personnel to operate. There are fundamentally two different approaches that can be considered when starting to think about team building in virtual teams, face to face events and virtual events.  The face to face team building events are only really available for teams where the budget will allow everyone to gather together for the initial and subsequent events. This is typically either a virtual team made up of groups located reasonably close together or where only a small part of the overall team is located remote to the core. Virtual teams with large groups dispersed over large distances or even small teams with very limited budgets are not going to be able to arcade face to face team building events. These teams must therefore find ways to undertake team building activities by distance. Why Team Building Matters Team building is a way to establish relationships between personnel. Properly conducted, team building allows personnel to move up the relationship curve from complete strangers to acquaintances relatively quickly. Teams starting out with no previous relationship, will spend much of their first period working together getting to know each other and coming to understand how their new colleagues think and operate. By undertaking a team building session these same personnel get to know these things quickly, allowing them to get down to their tasks quicker and become more productive more quickly.  Face To Face Team Building There are many different ways to conduct face to face team building, and many organisations providing excellent material along with numerous books on the subject. Regardless of the approach thats taken, there are a few things I recommend for face to face virtual team building that may differ from team building for a co-located team. * Cultural sensitivity - When planning and holding team building events for virtual teams the material and approach must be sensitive to all of the cultures involved.  What may work in one society could be a complete disaster in others, some cultures will prefer to be involved in team building exercises that are open and gregarious while others will prefer to be more reserved and introvert in their activities. Holding team building that places the quiet cultures in an environment where they have to share personal details and behave in ways that are uncomfortable to them will not build a strong team and may even be destructive. * Allow extra time - Allow time in the team building event for the personnel to undertake some self determined activities.  This could include quiet, small group discussions, facilitated sight seeing, or whatever activities the personnel want to experience, so long as it is undertaken by groups of personnel from more than one location.  Building shared experiences will allow them to have common points of reference once they return home. * Include some work activities - Set some tasks for the teams to undertake while they are together around how they will coordinate and share work once the project starts. get them to agree the foundations for their collaboration between them and where appropriate document it in flow charts, charters or some other similar form. Remote Team Building In contrast to face to face team building, remote team building presents a very different set of challenges for organisations, not least of which may be time differences, access to the required technology and the availability of the right personnel at the appropriate times. As such, remote team building will often be a slower, more organic exercise when compared to face to face. As with face to face virtual team building,