3 Tips for Teaching Virtual Team Building Workshops for Companies (For Virtual Magicians)

At the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, hundreds of large companies such as Instacart, Dropbox, and Spotify switched their employees to be remote workers. In the two years that have followed, this trend showed no sign of reversing, and more people are working from home today than ever before. This is very good for the environment. Not only does it save on gas, it liberates millions of people from driving and wasting time commuting, giving them much-needed extra sleep. There are many positives to this new trend, but working from home doesn’t come without disadvantages as well. Many teams that work apart don’t get a lot of time to engage, communicate, and interact with their coworkers. This is where corporate team-building activities can save the day! There are numerous benefits to team-building workshops, including increased communication, better planning skills, higher employee motivation, and improved employee collaboration. Fun activities like learning magic can help employees see each other in a different light and allow them to connect as a group.

Many of us have heard of corporate team-building activities. However, you might not know where to begin when offering them virtually for remote workers. But with just a little bit of planning, this is a great option because there are a variety of opportunities that can open up to you if you start offering virtual team-building workshops. By having this as an add-on or stand-alone activity you can get more work with companies that pay well, and set yourself apart from other magicians. But where to begin?

1. Use magic tricks that utilize easy-to-find household items for virtual team building

This is very important, especially if you are teaching magic to people all over the world who may have different resources or shops available to them. As a rule of thumb you should generally avoid tricks where people need to buy any specific magic props that wouldn’t organically be in their home. This makes the magic more impromptu and stronger, but it also makes it an easier sell to your client. Make it as smooth as possible for them to book you. You may also want to avoid teaching tricks involving paper money. I’ve noticed many foreign currencies (outside of America) are plastic instead of paper, and therefore harder to fold, which can make certain tricks much more difficult for beginners.

2. Teach in gallery view for virtual team building workshops

When teaching virtual magic you want to be able to see everyone, to make sure they are all on the same page. A good tip is that when you’ve taught a certain step, pause, and say something like,“Once you’ve folded the paper please hold it up so I can see everyone is on the same page before we move on.” Having physical markers or visual check-ins with everyone can make it easier for you, as the instructor, to see where everyone is at, even when you have a giant screen full of the team’s individual videos. 

Generally, when you start a lesson you will have it on “speaker view” so that you can perform the trick and see yourself first, then switch to “gallery view” to ask them how they might think it’s done, and then begin a group discussion. Getting their creative juices flowing and encouraging them to problem solve as a team before revealing the real secrets will set you apart as a teacher. 

3. Breakout rooms are your friend when doing virtual team building

Not all virtual video platforms have breakout rooms, but if you can convince a client to switch their team to Zoom for one day you will instantly see the benefits of using these to teach a class. Before breakout rooms existed you would explain a trick and ask if anyone was brave enough to perform for the entire group. Oftentimes, in a group of adults, in my experience, there would be nobody. Until entering breakout rooms! Now, at the end of a lesson you can (in seconds) split everyone into small rooms of 2-3 people and let them each perform in a more intimate, non-judgmental environment for just a few team members.

You can also break them into rooms at the start of the virtual magic workshop to have them meet each other more in depth and share something about themselves. Imagine if you had everyone do that in a large group – it would take hours to listen to every employee introduce themselves. Breakout rooms provide everyone with a chance to participate and feel seen in a speedy way (which eliminates Zoom fatigue). It also allows all of your pupils to immediately practice what they just learned in a less intimidating, more intimate environment. Hands-on learning where people take immediate action helps to retain information for much longer than passive learning. After break out rooms you can open up the main room for questions so that people can discuss and share what went right and/or what went wrong when they were in smaller groups. It’s such a game-changing way to break up a longer workshop and keep everyone engaged.

Thanks for reading this Blog. Virtual team-building workshops are such a fabulous experience you can offer to your corporate clients, and I hope you can utilize some of these techniques and ideas to help new groups of humans get excited about magic. Yay magic!