​It’s Sunday and time for another video montage.

This week we are exploring week 6 of the series. These daily prompts have been posted over at my CoachingBizBuilder Instagram site. If you are on Instagram, let's connect!

I have been sharing these daily questions since September 21st, any many professionals have found them a useful prompt for their thinking and action.

What are the questions that capture your thinking this week? What’s important to take note AND action on around your business?

Best,
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you thinking about, and writing around, the question “If I could go back in time, I would….”

Sometimes it can be useful to look backwards to look ahead. What are the inflection points, or events, you would change if you could?

I hope that you enjoy spending a few minutes this week, writing about this question.

Keep in mind the flipside “If I could go forward in time, I would….”

​With best wishes,
Jennifer

This week for the FlashbackFriday post, I am reaching back to a post from last January – Teams365 1465 where I shared tip 4 of the Kickstart for 2018.

In that post I shared more about priorities, a key topic to help us keep on point for the year.

Here’s what I wrote:

"As a leader in my late 20s, responsible for global programming and leading an organization of more than 100 in South America, I learned very quickly that regardless of how many goals were on the place, priorities were critical. I was struck by the concept of Steven Covey’s Big Rocks – or how we need to attend to, and add our big rocks – or priorities first, therefore allowing us to fit in all the smaller things around them.

With this end in mind, I’d like for you to consider the goals you have set out for yourself for 2018.

​As we step into 2018, the first Teams365 series of the year is the Kickstart Your 2018 - 8 in 18. 8 days of reflective prompts to get you thinking about, and writing about what you want to create this year. Check out the other posts in this series here, and I hope you'll follow along by grabbing a pen and a journal (you can start at any time!):

Day 4 questions in the series get you to think about the most important priorities. Consider these questions today:
1. Looking at my list of goals (for the year, month, day), what is most important?
2. What time have I scheduled to get these done?
3. When will I be most effective on working on my priorities? 
4. What could get in the way of me attending to these priorities?
5. What do I need to say YES to, in order to knock these priorities out of the park?
6. What do I need to say NO to, in order to focus more on my top priorities?
7. Who can support me in being successful with these priorities?
8. What other resources do I need for my priorities?
9. What do I need to delegate, or defer, to get the priorities attended to?
10. What’s the hard end date to get these done? As we know, many tasks expand to the amount of time we give them. This is commonly known as Parkinson’s Rule."
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What are your top 5 priorities this month? This quarter? Where are these visible to you?
 
Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

​This week’s Team Building Tip gets you to think about the question “Key relationships for the year are….”.

In today’s matrix and virtual world, relationships are still a foundational part of business success. One of the challenges  however is that it’s not as easy to “get to know” our partners who might be several time-zones or thousands of miles away.

It is important to be proactive and build in time building relationships with our partners. Where possible, try to stream, so you can see each other, and like face-to-face meetings, spend time listening and learning about their work, their priorities and preferences around how they like to work.

This week as a team, make a list of relationships which are key for the year. Think about your biggest projects and also what relationships can help you move ahead in the longer term. Building in time for yourselves as a team to get to know each other better as well.

Enjoy the conversations,
Jennifer

:TIP #11 – CIRCADIAN RHYTHM : WHEN ARE YOU AT YOUR BEST ?

“Perhaps the main conclusion to be drawn from studies on the effects of time of day on performance is that the best time to perform a particular task depends on the nature of that task”. – Simon Folkard quoted in Daniel Pink’s When, 2018, pp 22.

Are you a night owl or a morning bird? As a school girl in the 1970s, I remember teachers getting us to think about when we were at our best. Flash forward to the late 1980s and early 1990s and discussion around circadian rhythm.
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Daniel Pink’s most recent book WHEN further delves into the research. He writes, “Our moods and performance oscillate during the day. For most of us, our mood follows a common pattern: a peak, a trough, and rebound. That helps shape a dual pattern of performance. In the mornings, during the peak…. most of us excel at …analytic work that requires sharpness, vigilance, and focus. Later in the day, during the recovery, most of us do better on…insight work that requires less inhibition and resolve.” – Pink, 2018, pp 26

Activity
Questions to consider:

• When are you at your best? Check out the Munich Chronotype Questionaire to learn more.
• When are you able to focus most?
• When are you able to get the most work done?

Take a look at your schedule and think about the major tasks that could be reschedule to better meet your energy needs. 
Make the change now.

Conversation Sparkers

• What is important to note about the ebbs and flows of your day, your tasks and your energy?
• What tasks could benefit from being scheduled in the times when you are most productive? When you are not as focused?

 
Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

#10 – Support Action and Clarity with 3 Bullet Points

Communicating in business is usually about creating clarity so that people can take action. If our message is lost in transmission, we may have lost an opportunity to support change, missed a sale, or weakened a relationship.
Brevity is key to effective presentations and business communication. It helps us stand out and helps our message be memorable.

The latency and recency effects assert that we remember the start and the end of things. What are the key messages that you want people to remember? Keeping the latency and recency effect in mind, it is best to include the main points at the start and reinforce these again at the end.

Starting and wrapping up your presentation with 3 bullet points can be an effective way to boost retention of your message.
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Rather than going into a long description, boil it down to 3 bullet points.

Activity:
Think about your upcoming presentations or marketing messages. What are the key points you want to communicate? What do you want to get across?
Think about the presentation. Write out the three bullet points you want people to remember. 
Now think about the audience. What is important to them? What action do you want them to take? 
Now rewrite your three bullet points. 
As you think about the overarching arc of the presentation, what can you do to reinforce these three bullet points at the start of the presentation, and at the end?
Insert it now!

The 3 bullet point tip is also useful beyond communication, in light of overall productivity. Simpler is better. It helps us focus. As it applies to time management, a the start of the day identify what are the 3 core items that MUST GET Done. If all else fails, what are those 3 things?
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Conversation Sparkers:

• What is the message you want to communicate?
• What do you want people to remember, and take action on?
• What are the three bullet points?

 
Thank you!
Jenn

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 77 is “Vary Approaches”. The key to more engaging virtual conversations on webinars, in conference calls and also in virtual team meetings is to vary approaches.

Most technologies today allow for a variety of ways to keep the conversation going. You might choose to:

• Use breakouts – and have people pair off or meet in smaller groups.
• Use annotation and mark up their thoughts on the screen, circle their responses.
• Incorporate a poll. You might integrate an external poll such as Kahoot, or use an internal polling function on platforms like zoom. Polls can be used to incorporate people’s feedback and shape the call, or to get insights and feedback on different ideas.
• Use more visuals. Visuals of all kinds can also create a bit more focus and engagement. Whether it’s a provocative image, a mapping of a process flow, a model which, or a photograph which creates a metaphor for a complex issue.

If you have a 30-minute meeting incorporating one or two different approaches can make it more memorable, which in today’s world is important, given that many professionals spend the day moving from meeting to meeting, with each meeting becoming a blur. In terms of next steps “Being Memorable” is key to landing near the top of the to do list!

Enjoy the start to your week,
Jennifer

For the last few weeks we have been taking a look at the Daily prompts I share through the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at my Instagram CoachingBizBuilder feed.

As some of you may know, about a month ago I released the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for virtual and remote team members and leaders. Part workbook geared to support reflection and learning around self-awareness and what’s important, part undated planner, the publication serves as a prompt and self-directed learning space.

This week we are taking a look at Week 5 of the series. View the video montage of the 7 prompts here. You might want to grab a journal and pen and note the questions. You can reflect on a different one each day, or look at all of them at once over the weekend. I started a journal with my reflections to the questions and it’s already serving as an interesting resource and reflection portal.

Best,
Jennifer

This week’s journaling prompt is #32 in the series. I started these last summer and they are an invitation to take a few minutes to reflect and focus on what’s important for you right now. Whether you take 5 minutes or 15 minutes, journaling can provide a useful pause to:

• Reflect
• Connect the dots

 
This week’s WJP (Weekly Journaling Prompt) is “A daily practice which is helpful is….”.
​
Many writers such as Charles Duhigg in the Power of Habit address how important habits can be. At the foundation of habits are daily practices. Things which we can do regularly.
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Enjoy!
Jennifer

​My 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, takes a deeper dive into creating more engaging virtual conversations. With many meetings shifting into the virtual space, being able to host effective virtual meetings and conference calls is critical. The added complexities of not always seeing each other, or being able to follow up directly, means that meetings are not always effective.  Check out this past Wednesday’s prompt on 8 Essential Meeting Questions (Productivity Tip 9 of 19 for 2019), as well as stay tuned to the upcoming post on Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversation Tip.
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I’m reaching back today in this FlashbackFriday post to Teams365 #1015 where I shared these additional tips for creating more engaging conversations:

“Key to creating engaging and interactive virtual events is in pace and interactivity. To avoid the death by conference call mode, consider how you are able to adjust pacing for maximum interactivity.
Different ways to change pace include –

• Asking a question
• Getting people to annotate using pens, markers
• Asking people to comment in the chat box
• Creating breakout groups. Just like in person events, many services allow you to use breakout groups. Whether you pair people automatically or manually these can provide for a deeper level of conversation. Consider what opportunities you can leverage with breakouts and also how much time is needed for people to have a good discussion. It can take people several minutes to set themselves up as they arrive in their virtual domain.
• Creating a pause where you get people to take notes or complete an activity in silence real time
• Introducing a different media – i.e. showing a video you have created, or introducing a cartoon

What approaches do you want to use to introduce different pace changes?”
 
Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer