This week’s Team Building Tip #221 is “To Magnify things 10x we can….”.

Magnifying things that are currently working well, and augmenting them, is a great way to accelerate business, and/or augment what you are already doing. When things are working well, it can be important to continue doing what you are doing but doing more of it or magnifying it in different ways. This can be particularly important as it relates to marketing and/or getting your message out.
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What can magnifying something 10x look like?

1. Increase the frequency of doing something – if you do it monthly – consider offering it/posting it 3 x a week.
2. Team up with someone else to expand your reach, or partner with a whole collection of people.
3. Consider what other platforms you can leverage to expand your reach. If something only goes out to your mailing list, could this be posted on your other social feeds – FB, LinkedIn. Does your mailing list sign up have a call to action?
4. Apply the pareto principle to determine what is really important and is giving you value and then to strategically focus on that area only.

Linked with this week’s post around the 3 Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, magnification may only mean small tweaks, building onto what you already have so that you are not starting from scratch.

What can you do to magnify things?

Best,
Jennifer

Tip #15 – Avoid analysis/paralysis: get into action

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” – Neal Donald Walsch

When starting or launching new initiatives it can be valuable to just get into action. It’s easy, and can be alluring, to spend time doing more research. I continue to meet a lot of coaches who fail to move into execution stage because they are just not “sure”. They need to do a “bit more research”. The more data we have, the easier it may be to slip into “analysis/paralysis”. This can be a place of overwhelm or “STUCK” for many business owners. There usually is a place where you have “enough” information and can get started.
The tagline for the Coaching Business Builder, and PlanDoTrack, is:
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“Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum”

Key to business success is to Get into Action!
As Nike says, “Just do it”.

Consistent action is key for building business in today’s ever-changing world. We often do not know what’s going to have impact until we get it out into the world.

Even in creating group coaching processes, it’s key to get things into action, rather than fall into the analysis-paralysis trap.  We don’t need to know everything, or even anything. We need to trust our clients. Things will change right up to the moment we meet our clients.
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So, how much mental energy are you spending in trying to figure out what your clients really want? Holding ideas and thoughts in our head takes up a lot of space. How much mental energy are you spending just thinking about things, considering best and worst-case scenarios without getting into action?
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Conversation Sparkers

• What is the consistent action you want to take daily in your business?
• Who can support you in determining when “enough is enough” and you need action?

​Best,
Jennifer

3 Rs to Content Creation
Tip #14 – content creation: Repurpose, Reuse, Recycle

“Recycling turns things into other things. Which is like magic.”
– Anonymous

Do you have to start from scratch? Part of the challenge of moving so quickly in today’s workplace is that we may not be harvesting what we have already created, as well as leveraging learning and results regularly.
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If you’ve gotten good results from something (for example, an email campaign, an article, or a social media post), what it the next iteration of that?
In magnifying our content, we can:

• Repurpose
• Reuse
• Recycle

Let’s look at an example. Perhaps you led a speaking engagement on Emotional Intelligence. Chances are you did a lot of research into the topic and there are things that can be REPURPOSED. Are there some resources you can point your clients to as an extended resource to them? A new offshoot be a one-page resource list (TED Talks, books list) OR a checklist for them to complete?
What are the things that can be quickly repurposed into other formats?

At the same time, there may be many ways we can re-use, and leverage things already created in our business. From reusing processes so that we avoid pitfalls, to reusing a proven checklist we have created and is road-tested in another program, reusing is key.

A third way is to recycle. In content creation, recycling is key. A very popular way to design programs is to build it through small packets or modules. You might have a one-hour module on Emotional Intelligence (EI) in general, another on building EI in your team, and a separate one around “Self-management”. These could be recombined, or recycled, for future programs, creating a whole new resource!

Activity
Take a look at all the content you have created. Note it down. This could include blog posts, Instagram stories, Facebook Lives, etc.
As you look at what you have created already, consider:

• What are the things your clients are looking for related to your already created content?
• What are the vehicles they would like that in? (Think blog post, Instagram post, video, e-book, other)?
• What would the 3Rs look like – repurpose, reuse, recycle?

Conversation Sparkers

• What can be repurposed into a new format?
• What could be reused?
• What can be recycled to create something new?

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation Tip is number 79 in the series.

The tip is a reminder of the importance of pacing and interactivity in virtual conversations. Whether it’s keeping the pace moving and making changes every 2 - 5 minutes as in a webinar, or whether it’s mixing things up and making it more interactive in your next team meeting, by structuring in at least 2 or 3 engagement opportunities for everyone, a rule of thumb which may be useful to aim towards is an engagement touchpoint every 5-7 minutes, especially when groups are not as connected or content is heavy.
Engagement touchpoints in these calls might look like:

• Asking a question and having people comment via chat
• Getting people to annotate on the screen where they are calling in from, or which of the shown items is their favorite
• Using polling to capture insights and ideas from the group

If you are working with a virtual or remote team, you might use a variety of engagement strategies to create alignment and/or connection, or more awareness of who the team is. This might include:

• Breakouts so different team members with similar or divergent areas share with each other for 5-10 minutes
• Using the whiteboard to do real-time planning – for example, if you have a new project which has come on board, can you map it out together using annotation?
• Use screenshots to capture key agreements and next steps – rather than going away to type up notes, can you be more strategic about capturing agreements and notes as part of your agreements. Circulate the screenshot (which is often saved as part of the recording) to everyone as the visual reminder.

What can you do to create more engagement in the virtual conversations you are facilitating?

Best,
Jennifer

​This weekend we’re going to go through the video montage of the 7 questions that made up week 7 of the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series. Take a few minutes to note the questions I explored over at the CoachingBizBuilder Instagram page and consider jotting down your responses to each question. Just like posts on Saturday, these questions are meant to get you thinking about, and into action, around your work or business.

If you enjoyed these questions, you may want to pick up the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Two hundred eighty five pages in length, the first 125 pages are a workbook for virtual and remote professionals. Exploring topics including virtual and remote business foundations, your own internal ecosystem, and marketing/positioning, plus success tips, virtual and remote professionals of all kinds – entrepreneurs, leaders and team members - will find it of interest and value. Pick up a copy for yourself, or your team, and bring it in as a resource for your team meetings and team development this year.
Pick up your copy here.

Note the last 160 pages are a series of undated planning pages. With valuable annual, quarterly and monthly resources, the planning pages provide an opportunity for desk-based analog planning.
 
What’s your favorite question this week?

What's going to move your work and focus forward?

Enjoy!

Jennifer

This week’s Journaling Prompt gets you to dream a little. To consider what’s possible for your work. In this week’s journaling prompt you are asked to consider “If we were given an additional $500,000 this year, I would…..”
Take a few minutes today to dream about what would be possible if money were more plentiful.
Consider:

• What would you focus on?
• What would you put attention around?
• What would you say yes to?
• What would you say no to?
• What are the elements you would let others do?
• Where would you place your attention?

As you complete your journaling, then take a look at what you have captured. What’s important about it?

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

One of the resolutions I commonly hear from Team Leaders is to spend more time working with their team on developing and doing their best work. As a team leader, you may not necessarily bring past experience or a vast repertoire in leading team development initiatives. That was certainly the case for the dozen plus years I led teams. As a writer and coach, team development is a significant area of focus and support for teams.
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With that in mind, I wanted to take us back to a post from January 2017 where I shared a listing of 12 different team development activities which were the part of the Team Development a-z series. Given that we have the weekend coming up, I hope that you might take some time to check out these various options you could bring into your next team meeting.
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Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1125 – 26 Team Development Activities Part 1:

Over the past few months a key focus here at the Teams365 has been our posts on different team development activities you can incorporate with your team. Whether you are an intact team, project team or virtual team, these 26 quick activities can support you on a range of topics from boosting connection, to clarifying goals, to leveraging your strengths. If you missed any of the blog posts here are the first 13 of the full 26. I'll create links to the next set in an upcoming blog post this week, or feel free to view the whole series here.

Teams365 #1063 A is for Assumptions. View it here.
Teams365 #1064.  B is for Boundaries - View It Here
Teams365 #1065 C is for Conversation. Read it here.
Teams365 #1067 D is for Delegation. Read it here.
Teams365 #1070 - E is for Exceptional. View it here
Teams365 #1071: - F is for Foil Modelling. Read it here.
Teams365 #1072 - G is for Goals. Read it here
Teams365 #1074 H is for Habits. View it here
Teams365 # 1077 I is for Innovation. Read it here.
Teams365 #1078: J is for Jeopardy - Read it here.
Teams365 #1079:  K is for Knots. Read it here
Teams365 #1080: L  is for Life-cycle of teams and groups . Read and view it here
 
As you consider these options, what is important to foster a focus and conversation around as a team?

Enjoy!
Jennifer

This week’s team building tip gets you to explore the question “One change which is needed….”

Not every team may be comfortable asking this question as it might surface things that are “out of focus”.

By not asking questions like this we may erode trust and loyalty in the team. How is that you ask?

The skill of “constructive interaction” or debating alternative view points, has been found to be a critical skill for teams today.
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Author of Teaming – Amy Edmonston – calls it “speaking up”. The ability to question and instill provocative conversation is key for strong relationships and also problem solving for teams (and individuals) in today’s business context.

In building a culture where questioning is fostered, it may necessitate a change in the way a team operates, and the level of comfort the team leader has. It may also involve the creation of shared agreements of how debate and discourse will operate, how it may or will feed into any changes and/or what next steps are from any discussion (i.e. will it feed into decision making, or will it influence decisions?
What’s needed on your team in order to have constructive dialogue?
 
This is #220 in the series which started back in 2014. You are invited to check out the new digital licensing option to bring 52 of the first series of tips into your current team meetings. You can purchase a set of 52 of the first of the 2015 series of cards in digital format over at our Potentials Realized Store. Once purchased, you’ll receive a link to access each of the weekly question in JPG format.  You can incorporate these into your slide deck (as is) for your weekly team meeting or send it out as a “conversation sparker” for the team throughout the week.

Over the years I have had teams use the questions in many different ways. Check out the series of 52 questions here. You can purchase a digital license for $35 US -that’s just a little more than 50c a question.

The backstory to this product takes me back to my former role as a virtual team leader. While it would be great to have the time and creativity to do this on my own, I was always looking for great questions to prompt conversation. Unfortunately, I did not find many. When I started my own performance improvement business in 2004, many of my clients started commenting that they really liked having a focusing question of the week. Flash forward to 2014, when I started to “systematize” these through the weekly Teams365 Team Building Tip. Check out series one (which incorporates 52 tips from the 2014/2015 season). We’ll be adding additional ones throughout the year!

Best,
​Jennifer

Tip #13 – Get the important stuff out of the way

“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
— Jim Watkins
 
It is likely that even with the best planning, finding time to execute and get things done can be a challenge. Today’s business context of ongoing change and disruption, means that things can change on a regular basis, requiring ongoing learning and iteration.

Against this backdrop, it can also be important to focus in on items that are moving you, and the business, forward.
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With this in mind, what are the windows you have available (or can create) to get the important things out of the way? This might mean starting your day early, or working late into the night, to focus on projects that require quiet work spaces.

Activity

• Review your monthly or quarterly goals.
• Review your Top 3 or 5 Goals.
• What activities are not getting completed in a regular way?
• What needs to be focused on more?
• When will you schedule this in? For example, is this the first thing you want to do every day? Is it worth arriving at work 30 minutes earlier to make sure it gets completed? Could certain activities be delegated to someone else?
• Break larger tasks down to smaller chunks if you have not done so already. Consider what smaller milestones exist and put these in your schedule.
• What are the regular action steps you will undertake to make it happen? Work backwards noting additional mini-milestones.

Conversation Sparkers

• What are the most important tasks that are going to move your work or business forward?
• When are you scheduling in these?
• What habits are going to help you get the most important things done?

Best,
​Jennifer

Tip #12 – Build in regular time for review

"Big thinking precedes great achievement."
— Wilferd Peterson

Part of productivity is about building in pause points to reflect and think about what’s working and what’s not.
Building in time for regular review helps to:

• Identify where we are getting our results
• Observe the patterns that are occurring
• Think about where we want to go
• Identify what is important to be able to move forward

 
Some of the pitfalls we may experience in review is number one we don't have the data our memories are not good at remembering and capturing where we were at different points in time.

With this in mind, I've included in number of monthly daily trackers in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack. They get you to regularly track and capture your key metrics. Perhaps you want to track sales. When did sales and revenue come in for the month? Was it on a Friday or was it on Monday?

Another metric you might want to be tracking is social media. How many followers did you have on July 1st? November 1st?

Building in time for regular review helps us to identify what's working and what's not that then gives us the opportunity to make a change.

Activity

Identify the metrics you want to track in your business. Make note of these and start tracking them. Consider using colors to highlight. As you review them consider these questions

• What do you notice about your metrics?
• Where are you spending a lot of time?
• What is giving you impact? What is not?
• What changes do you want to make?

Conversation Sparkers

• “What we focus on expands”.  What do you want to focus on more?
• What does the data say?

Best wishes,
Jennifer