As conversations surrounding psychological safety continue to grow, a leader’s role takes on even greater significance in fostering that culture of trust. Research indicates that the most impactful style of trust is socio-emotional trust, or relational trust – I trust you because of the relationship we have, and the emotional intelligence that’s brought to the conversation. In this session, leaders review the psychological safety communication strategies of high-performing teams to allow for new ideas to succeed, diversity + inclusion initiatives to prosper, and the important, vulnerable conversations to happen effectively.
Leaders Aren’t Born – They’re Made.
At The Leadership Laboratory, we engineer specialized team + leadership development workshops designed exclusively for virtual teams and remote work environments. We understand that distributed teams face unique collaboration opportunities that require innovative leadership solutions addressing digital communication, remote engagement, and asynchronous workflow management. Our approach centers on developing virtual team leadership capabilities that excel through, technology integration, and flexible work arrangements.
From fully distributed teams, hybrid teams, and virtual teams with global reach to managers of remote workers, our research-based methodology ensures practical implementation and enhanced remote team cohesion. We recognize that virtual teams bring diverse perspectives, technological fluency, and adaptive working styles – our workshops maximize these inherent advantages while introducing essential remote leadership frameworks.
Suggested Leadership Workshops: Virtual Teams
The Art + Science of Psychological Safety
Designing A Culture of High Trust & Emotional Agility
Learning Objectives:
- Define the concepts of EMOTIONAL AGILITY and PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY, and explore the building blocks that allow this to prosper in an individual level and within a team environment
- Explore the five common “THINKING TRAPS” that get people stuck, and practice five communication and trust-based “ESCAPE ROUTE” strategies to help yourself and others break free
- Empower team members to speak their minds, and encourage emotional openness from others
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Psychological Safety
- Building Trust
- Effective Communication
Learning Objectives:
- Experiment with interactive exercises to enhance active listening, setting others up for success, challenging the status-quo, and confidently stepping outside of our comfort zones
- Embrace the concept of “YES, AND” to build upon the ideas of others in an effort to strengthen interpersonal, team, and organizational relationships
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Collaboration + Trust
- Effective Communication
- Openness to Change + Innovation
IMPROVing Team Collaboration
Embracing “YES, AND” to Foster Leadership & Build Trust
Understanding the fundamentals of improvisation enhances core communication in personal and professional settings. Improvisation requires participants to think on their feet, be in the moment, and use enhanced active listening skills, all of which play a role in our success in the work we do on a daily basis. In this workshop, participants will gain an understanding of how to fully embrace “YES, AND” and other core principles from improv for increased collaboration, trust, and enhanced team dynamics.
Shift Happens: Innovation in Times of Change
Leveraging Design Theory for Strategic & Creative Transformation
In times of change, innovation isn’t just an advantage—it’s a necessity. This workshop equips participants with practical tools and strategies to embrace uncertainty, reframe challenges as opportunities, and foster a culture of creative problem-solving. Using principles of design thinking and adaptive leadership, teams will explore new ways to generate ideas, test solutions, and drive meaningful change, ensuring they stay agile and future-focused in an ever-evolving landscape.
Learning Objectives:
- Define the CURRENT STATE and FUTURE STATE of the team’s collective goals and objectives
- Experiment with design thinking methodology to begin ideation of creative, implementable action plans to fully realize your team’s ideal future state
- Leverage positive psychology to create future-focused, behavior-based outcomes
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Strategic Thinking + Goal Setting
- Creativity + Innovation
- Positive Psychology & Growth Mindset
Learning Objectives:
- Identify current decision making practices, both on an individual and team level
- Discover The Four Phases of Team Development, overlaying the model to spark dialogue on the current state of team dynamics
- Measure individual and team-based decision making success, and develop an action and implementation plan of new leadership competencies
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Data-Based Decision Making
- Consensus Building
- Effective Communication
Survival Simulation
An Experiment with Team Effectiveness & Decision Making
During this interactive and experience-based simulation, the playing fields are evened and participants are tasked with a specific objective to ensure survival. Leveraging their decisions, teams are able to measure their individual and group effectiveness, and walk away with a deeper understanding of the four stages of team development, and experiment with tools to enhance their approaches to decision making on their own and as a team.
Why Virtual Teams Choose The Leadership Laboratory
Virtual team development requires specialized approaches that address the leading without physical presence. Remote teams need connection-building strategies, digital communication mastery, and trust-development techniques that work across time zones and platforms. The Leadership Laboratory delivers virtual team workshops that are engaging, technology-enhanced, and specifically designed for distributed work environments.
Our research-backed virtual team workshops are strategically facilitated and interactive – strengthening your remote leadership effectiveness and team performance. We understand that virtual team members demonstrate exceptional self-direction, digital collaboration skills, and flexible problem-solving capabilities. Our mission is to leverage these existing strengths while introducing remote leadership competencies that enhance virtual presence, asynchronous communication, and distributed team dynamics.
Whether your team encompasses remote department heads, virtual project coordinators, or distributed team facilitators, The Leadership Laboratory creates focused, evidence-supported workshops that reinforce current capabilities, increase virtual leadership impact, and generate superior remote collaboration, digital engagement, and cross-timezone effectiveness. Anchored in behavioral psychology and remote work research, our framework prioritizes connection enhancement over siloed individuals, emphasizing relationship building and digital team success.
Our virtual leadership training workshops utilize modern methodologies crafted specifically for remote work settings, producing tangible improvements in virtual team communication, distributed leadership presence, and remote collaboration effectiveness to foster meaningful, lasting transformation across your digital organization.
The Leadership Laboratory operates nationwide with both in-person and virtual healthcare leadership development workshops. We proudly serve healthcare organizations around the world and throughout the United States across the country, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Austin.
Building tomorrow's leaders today.
The Leadership Laboratory works across multiple industries - including start-up and established technology firms, non-profit and government agencies, finance companies, healthcare organizations and more. We are proud to collaborate with individuals and teams of all sizes.
Contact us and say hello! We're excited to get to know you and share our ideas on learning + leadership development.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Collaborating Partners
“I laughed harder than I have in a while!”
Our workshop was engaging, informative, rejuvenating and pure fun. I laughed harder than I have in a while! This was a phenomenal way to get more comfortable as a team.
— Director of People, SpotHero
“You made this easy to apply and implement”
You listened to our needs and adapted on the spot to incorporate leadership lessons. Every element was backed up by research, and you made this easy to apply and implement.
— VP / HEAD OF PEOPLE, WARBY PARKER
Meet Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is the founder of The Leadership Laboratory, and leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning & leadership development to his work. As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Patti LuPone, as a recording artist for Netflix series Sense8, and at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center. In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator for high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2016. As a Learning & Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked as a one-on-one coach and group workshop facilitator to organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries, including technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel. Jacob holds a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master’s of Science in Communication from Northwestern University.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Typical Size of Virtual Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
At The Leadership Laboratory, we customize each learning experience to align with your team and culture. Traditionally, we recommend between 20 – 30 participants per workshop, though often work with groups as small as 5 to as large as 5,000+. Knowing your audience size can help us to design a workshop partnership to maximize engagement and participation, and honor each participant at their respective knowledge and experience level.
Are Virtual Teams Leadership Development Workshops Available Both In-Person and Virtually?
Yes! All of our programming can be facilitated on-site, virtually, or in a hybrid format (virtual facilitation to an in-person audience). For both on-site and virtual workshops, we traditionally recommend a lead time of 6 – 8 weeks to get your top choice of date for a facilitated partnership.
How Do We Choose Virtual Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
When working with a new partner, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. One of the first questions that we ask is “what would you like this audience to do differently as a result of this collaboration?” – in other words, what are the skills or behaviors you’d like this group to have, or the knowledge they want to possess?
Once we know and define these learning objectives, we can work backwards and partner with you to determine what content can support in making those goals a reality. For a sample list of workshops, feel free to check our Workshop + Experiments pages, or browse the Workshop by Industry or Workshops by Role pages for additional recommendations.
How Long are Virtual Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
Each of our workshops is designed to be approximately 2.5 – 3 hours in length. For on-site partnerships, most groups opt for two back-to-back workshop topics to create a full day of learning. For teams looking for sessions outside of the standard length, please contact The Leadership Laboratory to discuss more customized options.
Can We Customize Virtual Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
Yes! At The Leadership Laboratory, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. As we collaborate with you to learn more about your goals, we can incorporate information about your team’s culture, organizational strategy, and industry trends to design an experience that truly resonates, with easy-to-apply concepts that lead to long-term, positive behavior change.
We know that each participant has their own unique learning goals, and have designed our leadership development experiences to customize our content to each person in the moment. We kick-off each workshop with an opportunity to learn more about the goals of each participant in the room, and align the experience to what is most top-of-mind for them. This differentiated learning allows us to adjust to each unique participant, as well as honor the diverse perspectives, roles, and experience in the room.
Does The Leadership Laboratory Work with Individual Virtual Team Members?
At The Leadership Laboratory, most of our workshops are designed for teams or groups of leaders within organizations. As we focus on customizing each leadership development experience to the unique elements of each organization’s culture and team’s communication style, our work is focused on sessions that departments or groups within the same organization can participate in together, as opposed to sessions that individuals can sign up for on their own.
For individuals looking for one-on-one development, The Leadership Laboratory offers select executive coaching and thought partnership opportunities. Feel free to reach out directly for more information.