Keeping Dispersed Teams Engaged

Virtual Corporate Wine Tasting:

Virtual Corporate Wine Tastings: After a year of working remotely, it is hard to celebrate wins and build comradery among dispersed teams. How do you gather for milestones when annual sales awards, end-of-project dinners, team retreats, and client appreciation receptions are not feasible in person? Move into a virtual environment, of course.

As positive psychology author Eric Karpinski writes, happier employees are more engaged and productive. Taking employees out of their usual roles for a fun learning activity can foster engagement, as Quantum Workplace suggests. As TINYPulse notes, it signals commitment if management organizes virtual learning opportunities for the entire team, workforce, or client group.

At the start of the pandemic, I wondered how I would have kept teams engaged while working remotely in my corporate executive past life before founding a winery. Since I am owner and winemaker of Et Fille winery in Oregon, I began conducting virtual corporate wine tastings and have found that virtual wine tastings can be effective team builders for three reasons.

Virtual Corporate Wine Tasting Benefits:

First, they take employees out of their usual roles of individual contribution or niche experts and allow a safe place to be a novice. In my virtual corporate wine tastings, my first question is how participants rank themselves on their wine knowledge and confidence on a scale of 1-10.

Hearing a boss say, “I am intimidated when I go wine tasting because it might expose how little I know about the subject”, breaks down hierarchy through a vulnerable moment. It can also create an opportunity for a quiet non-leader to emerge as an unexpected subject matter expert with valuable comments about wine. Participants are not expected to know the answers or be experts, which can allow authentic connection.

Second, it creates a common experience for learning together. A key goal of the virtual tasting should be for all to learn, regardless of how much they knew about wine at the start. If the corporate wine tasting provides an opportunity for feedback and audience participation, it becomes a memorable experience where the team learned about new content and one another.

Third, conducting virtual wine tastings allows remote teams to be guided by a winemaker, regardless of where participants live. When I have teams that are in states that don’t have a significant wine country, I tell them that if they didn’t already have a winemaker friend to ask questions of, now they do. Living near a key wine region is no longer a barrier for entry. If one goes on wine tasting trips infrequently, there isn’t always full access to a winemaker as there is in a virtual tasting.

Virtual Corporate Wine Tasting Tips:

What are the tips to execute a successful virtual wine tasting?

Keep it focused, as Forbes advised. Schedule tastings for 60-75 minutes to allow time for some casual banter before getting started and moving at a brisk pace. Our brains are wired to perceive contrast, so tasting 2-3 wines is ideal as it allows participants to observe differences.

Select an engaging winemaker to lead the corporate wine tasting so that it is lively and they can “read the Zoom room.” Finding a wine educator that can guide participants through award winning wines in an approachable manner is key, but selecting a winemaker allows participants to learn about the winemaking process as well.

It can be even more relatable if the winemaker has a corporate background. I begin my wine tastings by relating to the audience. I share that my background was in corporate health care with companies such as Genentech and Accenture and that my education was as a Wharton MBA, which allows me to relate to their experience.

Provide the winemaker context prior to the tasting, which ensures that she knows your business and can customize content with analogies or remarks that are tailored to your team.

Know the technology to avoid disruptive glitches. I prefer Zoom for its simplicity and ease of interacting, but will use whatever corporate platform a client uses so that participants are comfortable. Mute all participants when the tasting starts and encourage individuals to unmute themselves to ask questions and use the chat.

Provide time for question and answer to keep it interactive. I usually encourage questions in the chat throughout the tasting and then allow 5-10 minutes at the end for live questions.

With these tips, you can create a successful virtual corporate wine tasting experience to keep your remote team engaged and appreciated.