Teams365 Blog

TEAMS365 #2280 – Weekly Journaling Prompt 92 – 6 Words to Describe My Life

3/28/2020

We are continuing with the focus on the six words series. This week’s post gets you to consider the question – “How would you describe your life?”

Additional questions you may want to consider are:

What are the things that have defined you?
What else is important to note?
What are you known for?
What moments have defined who you are?
What is important to note about focus?

Enjoy your reflections!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

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TEAMS365 #2279 – Flashback Friday: Teams365 #1743

3/27/2020

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This Friday I am reaching back to a 2018 post – Teams365 #1743 which includes different ways to be building out connection as a virtual team. For some teams today, the stakes are high in terms of keeping things going.

Here are some ideas to keep your team moving:

#TEAMS365 #1743 Creating Connection and Building Community - Virtually

In today’s business context, the ability to build strong relationships with our team, and our other stakeholders is critical.

A starting point to create connection and build community is to find common connection points. Whether finding common ground by discussing the shared results you have OR starting with finding a personal connection, building community is critical for information sharing, knowledge expansion and innovation. Most professionals don’t operate in silos, yet, when they are working remote or virtually, it’s common to feel “alone”, or operating in a vacuum. The ability to connect with others and build strong virtual relationships and networks is a core skill area for virtual professionals.

How do we go about creating connection and building community virtually?

Six areas to consider:

1. Find points of common connection – what is the common ground and purpose you have in your relationship?

2. What is critical for success for your work together? Discuss what is important from each perspective in terms of success. Note what is similar and different.

3. Understand how people prefer to communicate – Big picture? Details? Frequent updates or summary journals? Direct? Indirect?

4. On a macro-level, who is important for you to build relationships with? How do you do this? Is it by joining LinkedIn Groups? Connecting on other social networks? As you look to these larger communities, what are the core themes/areas people are exploring? What are the trends? What are the virtual meeting places?

5. Be clear on what you are after and what you are asking to connect around. Like any networking and community building it can be important to be clear and focused on WHY you are doing it. What is your end goal? Intention?

6. Create parameters around HOW you are going to do it is also important – Before it becomes an all-consuming activity, are you going to spend 10-15 minutes a day connecting on social media? Are you going to dedicate one-hour a month to reaching out and participating in a virtual community event? What’s going to avoid scope creep around time spent?

Best,
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2278 – Team Building Tip 280 – What does each team member need?

3/26/2020

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This week’s team building tip gets you to have a discussion (virtually) about what does each team member need. This is even more important at this time when teams are likely not seeing each other. Our personalities and our styles are likely to get magnified in the remote space, making it even more important to focus in on some discussion around what each team member needs.

Have discussion today around:

What does each team member need? Consider – focus, motivation, feedback, communication
What can others expect from each team member?
What are teams able to do in terms of focus?

Given that you are likely to be meeting virtually, spend time going around and hearing from each person about what they can focus on, and then what they can provide to others.

Teams are as strong as their connection. What’s important for to you strengthen?

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2277 – Projects to Keep Us Moving in the Remote Space

3/25/2020

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Today’s blog post is all about projects to keep us moving in the remote space. What are the projects you want to work on in your space? What’s going to help you keep focused and motivated? What are those projects which you have always wanted to work on?

Beyond the immediate need, what else is important for you to be focusing on?

Depending on your work, you might consider:

Catching up with colleagues and taking time to reach out for a virtual conversation/1-1
Updating records and projects
Clearing out items which no longer serve a purpose
Revisiting your vision – what’s important right now? What is important to keep an eye on in the big picture?
Spending time focusing on what is important and connected to your vision
Reviewing the focus of work and impacts you have had
Catching up on paperwork/administrative tasks
Getting your finances in order
Taking time to ensure that you are focusing on family projects and routines
Carving out time to get through the pile of books/podcasts/blogs you have said you always wanted to focus on
Starting a memoir

What are the projects which are going to fill you up? What are the projects that are going to help you focus in on what’s important for you right now?

Enjoy your projects!
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2276 – Teams in the Remote Space

3/24/2020

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In this month’s Effective Virtual Conversations newsletter, I shared an excerpt from an e-book I created a year or two ago on virtual and remote teams. I wanted to share this excerpt with you here as well, knowing that many professionals today have needed to shift their conversations to the remote space.

In the remote world of work, many things get magnified as our touchpoints before less frequent. We are framed by the screen.

What do you notice about your team and their focus?

When making the transition over to the remote space, it’s important to go back to the basics around team work and our team culture – Who are we? How do we do things? What’s important to us?

Providing the team with time to connect and share what they are working on is also an important part of the team process.

Don’t forget to go back to the foundations of effective teamwork, commonly known as the Six Factors. Here’s how I’ve described them before in Teams365 1920:

“One of the frameworks I continue to share with teams is what I call the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. These are six things that teams need in order to excel. The ingredients come from the research of professionals including: Katzenbach and Smith (The Wisdom of Teams), Hackman and Wageman (A Theory of Team Coaching) and others.

As you step into the new month, as a team you’ll take the pulse of where you are on a scale of 1- 10 in each of these six areas:

1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
What is your purpose? Your mission? Why do you exist? Does everyone hold the same understanding? What does this mean practically for your work? What priorities does your purpose or mission naturally create?

2. Shared behavioral norms
How do you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team? What behaviors and habits exist? Which ones are supportive of exceptional performance? Which ones aren't?

3. Shared commitment
What are team members committed to? What will you get done, no matter what? Is there anything that needs to be dropped off the list?

4. Shared performance goals
What are key goals for the team this year? What are key individual goals? How do your goals align? Overlap? What does success look like for each member? For the entire team? Does everyone have an understanding of the key goals of others on the team and how they feed into them?

5. Shared team practices
Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event. What practices support your relationships?

6. Clear Roles
How do our roles overlap, align and connect? What changes, if any, are needed this year around your roles giving your priorities?”
A quick activity to undertake together is to have some discussion around how you are doing in each of these areas this week, especially if you are now operating in the remote space."

Check out the many posts I’ve written on remote teamwork including Teams365 #2130 – Remote Team Toolbox.

Best,
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2275 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #137 – Communication

3/23/2020

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Clear, and effective, communication is at the heart of any great virtual work. Whether we are communicating with our colleagues, our boss or stakeholders/customers, we want to be sure that we are clearly communicating what’s important.

In the remote and virtual space, communication takes many forms – from instant messages, to texts, to email. In these instances, we lose a lot of the tone that helps us pick up on cues about communication. Phone is also another important channel not to forget, as it does provide for the layer of TONE to be heard.

The best channel to incorporate for your work may be streaming – whether you come together on a Zoom call or a Skype call. This can provide the rich, visual cues that help us get a total picture of the person we are speaking with.

Effective virtual communication also involves another layer of effectiveness and that includes checking in that our message has been received as it was intended. What are you noticing about how your messages are being understood? Today’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip is about COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE to reflect that important messages will need to be reinforced in different ways. If there is something important which needs to be shared, how do we ensure that we speak it, reinforce it with a written message, and maybe reach out for a one-on-one conversation?

Another channel available to us is also using images to anchor in the ideas we want to communicate. What are the icons and images which will support the conversation? What can you do to support the reinforcement of the messages you want to share?

As you think about your conversations this week, what’s important to reinforce?

Enjoy your conversations!
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2274 – Weekly Review

3/22/2020

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Welcome back to Sunday’s post, taking a look back at this week’s Teams365 posts.

What’s going to provide you with focus and/or a break this weekend?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2273 – Weekly Journaling Prompt 91

3/21/2020

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This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to consider the prompt of “6 words to describe my home:”. What are the six words you would use to describe your home?

Spacious? Cozy? Homey? Showcase?

Our homes are our sanctuary as well as a purposeful place. How would you describe your home? What’s important to note about your home?

Best,
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2272 – Flashback Friday: Plan A Virtual Co-Working Session #1729

3/20/2020

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Given that a number of professionals are needing to move to the remote space I thought that it would be appropriate to return back to past post on planning for a virtual co-working session. Remote work can feel isolating, so what if you met up for a block of remote work together?

Here’s what I shared last year in a post around Planning a Virtual Co-working session:

From leaders who manage teams which work remote most of the month, to project teams which span the globe, from remotepreneurs leading virtual businesses, remote work is on the rise.

We’ll be following many of these trends and taking a deeper dive into the adventures of the Digital Dozen™, twelve different types of remote professionals. I hope that you’ll join us and will follow along at the new website here.

With so many professionals jumping into the remote workspace, I am hoping that the years of writing on remote work, and virtual teams here at the Teams365 blog will be of service.

With that in mind, I wanted to highlight an earlier blog post - Teams365 #1729: Plan a Virtual Co-working Session

As we move into fall, it can be very useful for teams to continue to put attention around getting things done WHILE connecting. A favorite activity I continue to facilitate is GET IT DONE afternoons, which really become Virtual Co-Working Sessions. They are a derivative of the virtual retreats I have been offering for teams, business owners and leaders since 2007.

Virtual co-working sessions may range from one-hour sprints, to four-hour blocks, to full day sessions.

Three considerations to making a virtual co-working session work include the following:

1. A platform where you can all meet, see each other and converse for periods of time.

Streaming is often best; however, others may appreciate the ability to take their work on the road and call in at time.

2. Focus – collectively and individually. Consider these questions:

What’s bringing you together today?
What’s the focus – is it to do something collectively or individually?
What outcomes do you want?
How do you want to break it down – meeting every hour for check-ins? Meeting more frequently?

3. Scheduled Checkpoints

A way to share and keep the momentum going throughout the day. I have found that virtual group and team sessions have been the seeds for some amazing new ideas and cross-pollination. Be sure to build in blocks where people are not only checking in around what they are doing, but also consider the value of building in some time for sharing of learning or insights.

Looking for inspiration on what you might do in a virtual co-working session? Consider these ideas – they are all real programs I have facilitated over the years:

One-hour virtual sprints for planning on the team or individual level
30-minute brainstorming/innovation sessions geared to create new product and or service ideas
Four-hour GET IT DONE sessions where groups of solopreneurs connect virtually to take focused action once a month on things on their list. Check-ins are once an hour.
Four to eight-hour Virtual Retreats, where each hour has a dedicated focus and theme to explore and/take action on. For example, an hour dedicated to creating a business plan, an hour to marketing approaches, an hour for project work).

Looking for a facilitator to host your next virtual co-working session? Contact me to learn more about this service I offer.

What could a co-working event look like for you?

Enjoy!
Jennifer

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TEAMS365 #2271 – Team Building Tip 279: What will help with focus?

3/19/2020

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Focus and attention are key parts of business success today. It can be very easy to get off track, or down the rabbit hole of distractions. Focus has become an area that is getting explored in greater depth these days.

It’s not always just about whether you are focusing or not, but it is also the question of “What are you focusing on?”. Are you focusing on the things that are immediate and urgent, or are you working on those issues which may be what Chip Heath calls “upstream”? The more proactive, systemic issues, which I would call proactive or strategic. In another week I’ll be leading some strategic thinking training and what we know about strategic thinking is that it’s part creative, and a large part proactive. It can incorporate, WHAT IF, as well as WHAT THEN.

Professionally, I entered the workforce in the early 1990s and was privileged in my work in the non-profit world to be exposed to a lot of strategic thinkers and planners. This shaped a large part of my work as a leader and facilitator in the global sphere during the 90s and early 2000s. Some of my frontline work was in economies moving through significant transition and change. I had not realized until recently that some of these older stalwarts of strategic thinking had transitioned out of the workspace (which makes sense as I think of age).

We know that in disruption it’s as important to be agile as it is to have an anchoring vision and strategy. What are you aiming towards? How are you holding the tension of strategic thinking along with agile approaches? I do believe there can be an AND. What about you?

Enjoy your focus this week on the main question of “What will help with focus?” as well as “And what do you want to focus on?” or “What’s important to focus on?”.

All the best,
Jennifer

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Teams365 Blog

TEAMS365 #2280 – Weekly Journaling Prompt 92 – 6 Words to Describe My Life

TEAMS365 #2279 – Flashback Friday: Teams365 #1743

TEAMS365 #2278 – Team Building Tip 280 – What does each team member need?

TEAMS365 #2277 – Projects to Keep Us Moving in the Remote Space

TEAMS365 #2276 – Teams in the Remote Space

TEAMS365 #2275 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #137 – Communication

TEAMS365 #2274 – Weekly Review

TEAMS365 #2273 – Weekly Journaling Prompt 91

TEAMS365 #2272 – Flashback Friday: Plan A Virtual Co-Working Session #1729

TEAMS365 #2271 – Team Building Tip 279: What will help with focus?

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