​Today we get to a 10th team tool you may want to bring into your conversations this fall. As I’ve written in the past four posts, teams which excel are great at both Relationships and Results.
On the performance front the work of Robert Mager and his performance tree can be invaluable in helping to shape our conversations:
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Tool#10- Performance Tree - Mager
One of most powerful frameworks I have shared with leaders and their teams around performance is Mager’s Performance Tree.
Mager created the Performance Tree as a way to get to the root cause of performance issues. This is a valuable tool, and conversation prompt, for team members and their team leaders, particularly in a virtual setting.
Mager’s Performance Tree takes us step by step through a series of questions around the performance issue. Many times we are quick to jump to “Training” as the solution, when in fact a performance challenge may be due to resourcing, work flow or the environment.
What are you doing as a team to get to the root cause of performance issues?
 
I hope that you have enjoyed the Ten Things to Do With your Team this Fall series of posts. In case you missed them, do check out these other four posts: (insert urls for all)
1707 – Wednesday September 4 – Tips 1 - 3
1715 – Tuesday September 11 – 10  Things to Do with Your Team  part 2 – 4 and 5 – Mapping out key work flows, and role clarity.
1716 – Wednesday September 12 – 10 things to do with your team #3, Tips 6 and 7 which looked at connections and vision.
Also be sure to take a look at Tuesday's post on Creative Thinking and Working Around Decisions (Tips 8 and 9)
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What do you want to incorporate into your team meetings this fall?
 
Enjoy,
Jennifer

Teams like to have fun! When the word team building comes to mind, Fun is often the first thing that does emerge. What are you doing to have fun on your team? Spending time together to get to know each other in a social context can be invaluable in creating stronger bonds. AND, it should be supported by a focus on what needs to get done as well.
Here are a couple of ideas on different team building processes:
 
 
Getting creative thinking happening:
Tool #8 - Word Grams – Creative Thinking
Word Grams were a popular approach in 1990s training, and a great energizer for training of all kinds. Research some word grams online and use them to warm up the space for creative thinking in your next team meeting. Here are some examples:
 
 
Creative Thinking is important today given the complexities that exist, the need to think “outside of the box” and the need for innovation.
 
Tool #9 – Working Around Decisions
Team members and leaders face decisions every day.
A 2015 article indicates that we make 35,000 decisions a day, including 227 on food alone. Read it here.
Helping team members make better decisions is critical for team alignment and success.
Across the span of a day, we may be making decisions around resourcing, priorities, relationships, and what gets our attention.
What are the tools and processes you want to build skills in with your team? Consider the Decision Matrix. Steven Covey’s Urgent/Important matrix is probably one of the most familiar, and popular ones that exist. There are many others so do some research around tools you can bring in to  help team members make better decisions.
Check out this article from Concordia University on the 7 Steps of the Decision Making Process, which also includes a focus on some of the challenges we can have with decision making. Read it here.
 
What is important for your team to take action on right now? Let us know using the comments below.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

It’s Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations Tip. This week’s tip takes us into the realm of Virtual Teams. The last section of Effective Virtual Conversations focuses on virtual team issues – developing your team, virtual team leadership and other related issues.
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With the remote and virtual work space continuing to grow, getting clear on the way we want to foster virtual teams is critical
 
Central issues facing virtual teams include:

• Building relationships
• Building Trust
• Creating connection amongst the team
• Providing clarity
• Being intentional

 
Let’s look at each one of these in turn, starting with trust given that people are unlikely to engage if the group does not trust each other. Trust in the virtual and remote space usually exists within the frame of the program. As such, it’s important to think about what you are doing to build trust, and what’s taking away trust.

Going hand in hand with trust is building relationships. Relationships in the virtual space are peer related.

In that light, putting an emphasis on creating connection amongst the team on a regular basis, formally and informally is key. It’s important to remember that as great as technology has become, it’s still hard to replace the intimacy of a face to face experience. With that in mind, is there a way to create a touch point once or twice a year.

Providing clarity around instructions, work flow, requirements is also key. Make sure that assumptions are not being made about project. It can help to focus on end results and be over communicating (without micro-managing). Consider how you want to check in that everyone has the same understanding, and is working from the information that they need.

Being intentional means many different things. In the virtual space it can mean being focused about what you are doing. While there is always a lot of “winging it”, being intentional with the important things can be important.
These five issues are important for the entire team – not just the relationship between the leader and the team. What can you be doing to focus on these issues?

Enjoy!
Jennifer

It's the last official weekend of summer - how did you spend it?

I wanted to take this opportunity to look back at some of the topics I've covered over the last few months including:

Saturday weekly journaling prompts - As some of you may know, last month I released the first of a series of workbooks and planners. The first one, entitled, The Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner, is geared for coaches. Other editions are planned for remote professionals and team leaders.
A valuable process for learning and reflection is journaling, and if you haven't taken note of my weekly journaling prompts, you can start at any time. Take a look at them here. We are at #15 in the series.

I've also just passed the #200 mark of the Team Building Questions and Tips, which come out on Thursdays - Catch up on any you haven't read here.

Also, the Monday series on Effective Virtual Conversations tips has also continued. We are over #60 in the series. View them here.

Over the last few months I've also covered a series of posts including

10 Things to Do with  Your Team This Fall - Read them here

I look forward to stepping into fall with you in a few days. Don't forget that I'll be hosting a half day business planning virtual retreat this Thursday from 1 - 5 pm Eastern, geared to give you time and space for planning AND for taking action on key areas in your work. It's fully virtual and you can join from anywhere. Cost: $97. Email me to reserve your spot.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

This week’s weekly journaling prompt gets you to consider the question “What’s your secret sauce?”. What’s the one thing that sets your apart – as a leader? A team?

If you are just joining us for these weekly journaling prompts, check out the others here.

My intention in sharing these weekly journaling prompts is to provide you with a space to pause and reflect on what’s going on.

In my decade plus of work as a global professional as a leader with the United Nations and other international aid organizations I kept a journal religiously. While they are tucked away in a safe place, I look forward to going back and re-reading these as a later date. They not only will serve as an important memoir for me, but at the time, writing was a wonderful way to capture what was going on, connect the dots of my work and life, make sense of the experiences I was having (commonly referred to as “sense-making today”, clarify priorities and also have an outlet.

If journaling is not something you have considered before, here are two articles which point to why journaling can be important:

Nancy J. Adler’s Harvard Business Review Article – Want to Be an Outstanding Leader: Keep a Journal.
LifeHack’s article “Journal Writing: Five Smart Reasons Why You Should Start Doing it Today”.

Have a great weekend!
Jennifer

When I started the journey with blog post #1 of the Teams365 blog back on January 1st 2014, I didn’t really know where it would take me. Two more books later, and more than 1700 blog posts, I think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of conversations with teams and leaders these posts have also infused.

Just recently, perhaps due to blog size, or other, the search function on the site has changed. It means that you can’t go back and search posts earlier than this year. While you can still find them through tags and dates, it may mean that it’s harder to find older content. That makes these Friday posts even more important where I reach back, and share, an older blog post.
 
Today I am reaching back to one from September 2014, entitled “What’s the WIIFM” . It was Teams365 blog post 265 and here’s what I wrote:

#Teams365 #265: What's the WIIFM?
9/22/2014
0 Comments
 
The WIIFM, or the What's In It For Me, is an essential leadership concept to keep in  mind.

WIIFM has connections with employee engagement, developing and delivering stellar presentations, recognition and motivation.

Let's first look at motivation. Psychology posits that we get motivated through our internal drive, or externally. As leaders, helping our team members connect around What's in it for me when faced with a new project or task, helps increase the internal motivation. It also may provide us with some cues as to what we can do to provide external support for those individuals, given what they find motivating.

In developing presentations or public speaking, helping your audience connect with their WIIFM (What's in it for me) creates a richer learning experience. We should always be trying to design presentations (content, approaches, flow) from their perspective as well.

Employee engagement and recognition continue to be hot button topics. WIIFM is central to engagement and puts our team members in the heart of being part of the driving force of what creates an engaged workforce. Create a habit of asking people to consider their WIIFM and contribution with new initiatives, and as change processes happen.

Finally, in recognition (something we don't often get enough of), lead from individuals WIIFM. 

Where else could you get people you work with to consider the WIIFM?


Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer

We are at a milestone of 200 Team Building Questions. Today’s question gets you to think about the question “What’s going to help you to be successful?”.

For the last 200 weeks I have brought you a different question each Thursday. My intention was to get you as a team into different dialogue.

As a former team leader myself, I know how challenging it can be to constantly be coming up with new questions to ask the team. That’s why I created the Teams365 Team Sparker Deck. Launched a few years ago, this 3.5 x 5.5 inch deck consists of 52 different questions (the first 52 in the series). Team leaders can pick a different card each week to share in their team meeting.

I’ve heard of teams using this as a wrap up question for the team to consider across the week, and other team leaders have indicated that they use it at the start of the week.
Pick up a copy of the Teams365 Team Sparker Deck – Tips 1 – 52 here.

​​The second Volume – tips 149 – 200 (the more visual cards) is going to be available in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

​Best,
​Jennifer

​We’re continuing to move along with more things you’ll want to focus on this fall with your team, to support them in getting results and building relationships. We know that teams which excel have strong relationships – they know who is who and who does what, what people’s strengths and prefeerenes are, and great teams are also good at getting results.
 
Area #6 – Building Connections Across the Team
It’s likely that your team composition may have changed at some point during the year. Does everyone know each other?
If you are looking for some quick icebreakers you may want to consider these resources:

Wilderdom’s Group Portal – including their index of different activities and resources. While this is incredibly vast, you may find some that pique your curiosity and can be adapted for your team. Check them out here.

BusinessBalls listing of a variety of exercises under the “recommended resources” column. Find them here.

Since 2005 I have hosted the Group Coaching Ins and Outs blog. One series I have focused on are different exercises and resources coaches will want to add to their toolkit. Take a look at these dozen plus posts here.
 
Using Visual Cards to spark conversation – The 40 Ways to Work with Visual Cards e-book, highlights 40 different ways you can use any visual card deck to spark dialogue and learning across your team. Pick up a digital copy of this resource at our website here.
 
Area #7 – Revisiting Your Vision and Making it Tangible
One of the most important things teams can do to create alignment in the fluid working space, it to have a shared vision. When did you last revisit your vision, and what you are aiming towards? Team vision statements can have different time windows, as well as formats.
This fall, you may want to dedicate some time in your team meetings revisiting your vision and making it tangible. In the realm of coaching, we work with our clients to create STRUCTURES. A structure is usually a visual or tangible item which serves as a reminder.
In working with your vision this fall, what’s the one way you can make it tangible?
Here are some ideas teams I have worked with, have created structures for themselves:

1. A photograph of the team vision/story line they have created together. This has been circulated and in one instance, became the screensaver for the team.
2. Using tinfoil, creating a solar system with each planet representing different elements, and milestones, of the journey.
3. Ringtones to remind the team of key taglines/mottos shaping their vision and aspirations.

What can you do to revisit or create your team vision for the fall, 2019 or the next fiscal cycle?
I’ll be back with more team activities ideas next Tuesday so stay tuned.

Best,
​Jennifer

Last week I started a four-part series of blog posts on 10 Things to do with your team. If you didn’t catch Wednesday’s post on ideas one through three, catch up on them here. 

Today I wanted to cover 3 more things:
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Area #4 – Mapping out key work flows – Many teams today, especially virtual teams, don’t have a good sense of how work fits together. This is an important area to explore at the macro-level with remote and virtual teams, given the “domino effect” that can happen across a team when one person does not complete work on time, or as planned.
As a team you will want to consider key activities projects you have until the end of the year. One at a time, map out the key tasks of the project or activity. What’s the sequencing? Who is responsible for what? What needs to happen before the next person can start, or complete, the work? 
As you map this out  - and it can literally be a mapping on a white board or white screen, or a set of post-it notes – identify
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Area #5 – Role Clarity
Going hand in hand with work flows, and what people are doing, is clarifying with team members their roles. This is often one of the areas teams struggle with the most. It is common for roles to be undefined, duplicative, and gaps may exist.
In clarifying roles, you may want to consider these types of questions:

• Who does what on the team?
• Where is there overlap?
• Where is there a gap?
• What are the areas which are not being covered?
• Is everyone in the right role (i.e. are people’s strengths being leveraged? Consider who is good at getting things done vs. planning, starting things vs. wrapping them up)

Tomorrow I’ll be spotlighting two more ideas you might want to incorporate this fall with your team.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip, #61 in the series, brings us to the topic of virtual team leadership. In my book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I explore the many skills required by virtual team leaders and virtual team members alike. These include:
Working Across Differences
Intercultural know-how
Innovation
And Resilience and Agility
As we consider each of these skill areas, team members of all kinds require these skills in order to be effective. What are you doing to build the skills in the areas.
For more posts on these topics, check out my past posts on the topic.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer