It’s Friday which means that it’s time for a Flashback Friday. Here’s a look back at a post from February 2018 – 4 Essentials Ingredients for Collaboration.

With relationships and collaboration being an essential skill set for leaders and team members of all types, I thought it fitting to make our Valentine’s Day post this year all about collaboration. Whether you are collaborating across your own team, or with others, collaboration allows us to tap into resources we do not have available, harnessing the talents of our network. Collaboration may be discrete for a fixed project, or longer for ongoing initiatives.

In today’s post I wanted to cover four essential ingredients for collaboration:
​1. Be clear on why you are collaborating
2. Consciously design your partnership: What do you bring to the table? What is important for you both?
3. Regularly check in and adjust
4. Consider what end result you are looking for
 
Let us look at each one of these in turn:

1. Be clear on why you are collaborating
​Collaborating for collaboration's sake does not equal success! Why is this collaboration occurring? What is possible due to the fusion of your skills and abilities? What outcomes are you looking for?

​Partnerships and collaboration are not always a straight road. It's important to be clear on:

• why you are collaborating
• ​what you hope to gain from the partnership
• ​what you want to gain
• and what your expectations are

​Spend some time as a partnership exploring this and coming back to it throughout your work together.

2. Consciously design your partnership.
​Take time to intentionally, or consciously, design your partnership. Building in time for focusing on the relationship can be as important as creating or doing the work together. In a recent newsletter article  I shared several of the partnership planning questions I have written about over the years.

​In my writing I talk about at least four stages where you will want to focus conversation - pre-program/partnership, at the start, during the work and at the end of major projects. Refer to chapters 12 of Effective Virtual Conversations or Chapter 11 of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

3. Regularly check in and adjust.
Regular check ins will look different for each project. Ask yourselves regular questions such as:

• What’s working well?
• What progress have we made with this project?
• What are we learning and need to make sure we do? We stop doing?
• What changes are important going forward?

​4. Consider what end result you have in mind.
As Steven Covey wrote years ago "Start with the end in mind". Our end result shapes our action. As you engage in every conversation think about the end result you are aiming for. How does this influence your partnership? What roles you play? What attention you have? 

​These four factors - clarity, conscious design, check in, and end in mind - support partnering and collaboration to be a flexible, fluid process. What is important for you to consider in your own work?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Team Building Question gets you thinking about the question – “Where would we benefit from a micro-pause?”. Teams are often running so fast that they are not taking time to stop and reflect. Micro-pauses are short, focused and brief. It may mean meeting together for only 15-20 minutes. These done regularly may even be more effective than other more long-winded meetings. In fact, they might shorten those longer meetings.

Micro-pauses can take a number of forms:

• From quick 5-10-minute individual reflections
• 15-minute team huddles (in person or virtually)
• 20-minute reflective pauses on a series of questions
• A 10-minute break or movement period you take during the hour when your FitBit indicates that you have not yet walked your 250 steps

What could a micro-pause look like for you?

Questions you might consider asking at a micro-pause are:

• What are the priorities we are working on today (notice alignment, clarity and resourcing around each one)?
• What is helping you get our results today?
• What’s getting in the way of focus?
• What else is important to note about our work?
• What are the questions you have about other’s work and ours?

Let us know what you are doing to create more of a pause in your work…and what you find by building in these micro-pauses!

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

Communication flow is key to work today – whether we are in person, or virtual/remote. Today’s post shares with you 8 Essential Meeting Questions to be asking every time you are preparing for, and leading meetings. The recent impact of COVID-19 has disrupted operations for many global businesses. One key area that’s been disrupted is that of meetings.
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Let’s take a look at the 8 Essential Virtual Meeting Questions I share in my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations.

1. What’s the purpose of the meeting?
2. What takeaways do we want?
3. Who needs to be on the call?
4. What preparation is needed for us to be most effective?
5. What pace to we want to keep it engaging?
6. What will help keep the focus?
7. What is absolutely essential to cover?
8. What follow up might be required?

(Source: Chapter 9, Effective Virtual Conversations, Jennifer Britton, Copyright 2017)

As you consider your next meeting, what’s important? What’s going to help it be the best meeting possible?

Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon (Kindle and Hard-copy versions available).

Two other things which will help you maximize this virtual conversation in the remote meeting space are:

1. Having an agenda. Being sure that the agenda is what people want and that you stick to it! Unlike a face-to-face meeting where people may have lots of time to come and go, stick to the agenda.
2. Be clear with responsibilities and accountabilities. One of the nice things with virtual meetings is that you may be able to record them (check local legislation around what is feasible and/or part of company policy) and have them transcribed quickly as a record of next steps. This can save hours of meeting notes!

What’s going to help you with your remote meetings?

Looking for more support on thriving when you need to move things remote? Let’s talk about training or consulting support for your organization, or have your folks join us on one of the Wednesday One-Day Virtual Facilitation Essentials programs. These one-day Virtual Train-the-Trainers are geared to get professionals up to speed in leading virtual conversations of all kinds – meetings, team building events, retreats and coaching sessions. Learn more about the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program here. 

Best,
Jennifer

This year has already had a number of factors which have made working from home a necessity rather than a perk. Whether it’s been weather or health related, some people aren’t quite set up for a great working from home set up. Today’s post gets you thinking about what’s going to help you keep your work flowing, even if you have to work from home.
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Consider these items:

• Remote (or direct) access to the key files and information that you need. Do you know how to get into the files you need to keep working? Are they accessible?
• A way to keep meetings running: Zoom may be a great option to set up for your team.
• A way to keep project work meeting: Co-working is also easy when you are able to set up conversations with team members on zoom. What are the conversations you want to build in on a daily or weekly basis?
• A secure and solid connection.
• Passwords and access codes
• A dedicated work space as free from interruptions as you can have.

What are the things you need access to right away to keep your work flowing?

For more on remote work, please check out the remote work tag.

My 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, explores many of these topics as well. Pick up a copy at Amazon.

Later this month I'll be releasing a new White Paper on Remote Work - Getting Up to Speed in a Hurry. Sign up to receive a copy. It will be send when it is available - likely March 1st.


All the best,
​Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip reminds you to “Catch people doing things right”. A challenge in remote work is that we don’t always see people in their natural work setting. Feedback, in general, may be missing when we work remote and sometimes it can feel like we are operating in a vacuum.

In order to help team members excel, feedback is needed. Both positive feedback and constructive feedback when things aren’t going well.

So how do we provide feedback when we don’t see others in action?

Build in review reflection touchpoints. This might include mid-project or end of project reviews. These can involve sharing works in progress (or completion) where there’s a specific focus on sharing and receiving feedback.
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Build in co-working opportunities where it is live and virtual. This can provide a sense of everyone’s different working style. What might a co-working opportunity look like? It could be undertaking a 4-hour block of work together with the group coming together at the top of every hour. I facilitate these as part of the different remote coaching services I offer to group members who join me for an annual basis. With benefits of both ongoing accountability and getting things done quicker, it can be really interesting to have people share a snapshot of their work, real-time. It’s not only inspirational for us but can be a validating factor for those sharing the work. It also opens the door for informal feedback like – “Have you thought about….” OR “Have you considered looking at…..”. While we may operate in isolation, it can be important to benefit from peer wisdom and sharing.

Job shadow virtually, where feasible. Can more junior team members shadow another team member? Be an active observer so they can learn from others?

What else might you do to encourage job shadowing?

Finally, are you building in a culture with your remote team of having people share accomplishments and successes at team meetings? There might be a Star of the Week, or the Month. While this may not motivate everyone, it can build a great practice of building in a pause, so people note what they have done.

Enjoy your focus on thinking about feedback in the remote space and catching people doing it right.
 
Have a great week!
Jennifer

This week we covered a variety of posts related to working remote. If you missed, them, be sure to check out:

• Yesterday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt around Support
• Friday’s Five Ingredients for Successful Collaboration
• Thursday’s Remote Work Enabler around Boundaries
• Wednesday’s post around What’s different with work in the remote space? – Part 2
• Tuesday’s post around What’s different with work in the remote space? – Part 1
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip around Prioritizing in the Matrix Environment (when you are part of a couple of teams)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
​Jennifer

Happy Saturday! It’s time for another Weekly Journaling Prompt. This week’s prompt gets you to reflect on, and write about, “I feel supported by….”.

Consider:

• What supports you?
• What does support look like for you?
• Visually, what are the images or icons which represent support for you right now?
• If you don’t feel supported, what’s missing? What’s the type of support you want? What could support look like visually for you in the future?
• What support can you offer others?

Enjoy this weekend’s Weekly Journaling Prompt!
Jennifer

With this month’s focus on partnering and working more collaboratively, a key ingredient of remote work, I thought it might be interesting to reach back to one of the Team Leader Breakfast Café Recordings I did a few years ago in 2017. While this isn’t the entire call, here are the five areas I highlighted as Five Key Ingredients for Successful Collaboration. You can listen into the original audio over at Teams365 #1152. Here’s what I shared in that audio:

What we know about great collaboration and great partnering is that a number of essential elements are in place. Typically partnering works best when we have a set of complimentary skills.

When partners are too similar, or teams are too similar we can create a lot of blind spots. We may have great bench strength in certain areas like the ability to execute results or to build relationships. And we may be missing certain skills that are essential, like strategic thinking.

That's great to drive for results, but if we're not clear on why we're driving for those results or if they're the best ones, then we may find ourselves in some challenges.

Another key principle in making collaboration work is making sure that we're leveraging people's strengths. As I have written many times here at the Teams365 blog, the research done by the Gallup organization points to that when teams that have the opportunity to use their strengths on a regular basis they are more productive and members generally have higher quality of life.
If you haven't had a chance to do any strength-based work with your teams, please reach out and contact me to discuss a Team Strengths Day. I use a number of strengths-based assessments in my work as a coach, as a trainer that can be brought into one-on-one conversations or work with your entire team.

The more we know ourselves, know what we're good at, and also know where we might find struggle, helps us be more effective. We can communicate that to others.

Teamwork is just like an orchestra. It’s not about being the best at everything, or even trying to. Teamwork is about making sure that we have the right people on the right instrument in the right seat, leveraging their strengths as best as possible.

As research has shown, it's much easier for us to do well in our strengths and to try to mitigate against our weaknesses.

Back to collaboration –two other factors really make it work well.

The third one is PLAN. Partnerships, great teams, great collaboration don’t just materialize. It happens with some planning.  In my several of my books including Effective Virtual Conversations, I share more about the Arc of co-facilitation and some of the questions you can ask when you plan.

And number four, I wanted to mention which intentionality. So, as you go about your teamwork and or developing new partnerships, maybe you've been tasked with leading a new project. Maybe you've been tasked with pulling a group of experts together. Think about questions like how do we blend our skills or what do we each bring to the table?

Also, you want to make sure that you're feeling connected because we know that connection creates safety. Psychologically, if we think we are too different, it's very hard for teams in groups to move forward. So, a question around that might be getting people not to think about what they bring that’s unique, but also what is it that they bring that is similar.

In making teamwork and collaboration work take some time to get to know each other. Ask yourself questions around strengths and what's important, what will success look like for each of you as well as what will success look like for you collectively?

The fifth area I wanted to mention in terms of just getting or making collaboration, partnering really work is to make sure that you have deep levels of trust.

Trust is really the foundation of so many things. If we don't have trust, it's very hard to move into the deeper dialogue to feel that you are being supported, to know that someone has your back. Then in building trust, we want to undertake consistent actions that represent our intentions. We want to make sure that it's in proper alignment with where we're going, and we also want to make sure that we have things like transparency in place as well as feedback loops.

So just to quickly run through these five areas, again, things to think about as you're entering your partnerships, future projects, future collaborations.

1. Number one, how do we bring complimentary skills to the table?
2. Number two, what are our strengths and how do we leverage those?
3. Number three, have we built in enough time for planning related to that?
4. Number four, how intentional are we being?
5. And finally, what are our levels of trust?

I hope that you'll check out some of our Teams365 blog posts related to this topic. Some of the most popular posts of months have included the six  barriers to collaboration . Also check out making mentoring work virtually. Whether you are partnering with others face to face or in the virtual realm, in the same company or across the globe, these principles hold true.
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Interested in learning more or want individual or team coaching support around this? Looking to have a virtual team day facilitated to do some work around strengths? Please reach out to me by email at info@potentialsrealized.com and let’s set up a conversation.
 
Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you thinking about our second remote work enabler. You can find the first remote work enabler here. 

The second remote work enabler is to create boundaries. Boundaries are key in the remote space in order to focus.

What is key is being efficient in managing boundaries, especially if you are part of a matrix team and/or working across many sites. There can also be a challenge of ensuring that there is a good balance or integration of your work and life, especially when you collaborate and work with others in different time zones. This balance may look different that what a 9-5 job could look like, perhaps having you start work at 5 and run to 3 with breaks in between to get to the gym, or for a swim (as I do!).

What are the things that help you focus in your work as a remote worker? What boundaries might you need to integrate into your work?

Best,
​Jennifer

Yesterday’s Teams365 post explored four key differences when working remote – Autonomy, Skills, Connections with others and the Matrix.

In today’s post, I wanted to share four additional differences when working remote – focus, motivation, and inner drive, to relationship building and visibility.

In general, many things get magnified in the remote space – from clarity, or lack of clarity, around communication, processes, roles, goals; to what we actually see on the screen. This means that we may need to be more intentional in sharing information, checking assumptions and confirming that our messages were understood in the way they were communicated.

Motivation - When working remotely, a lot of us need to rely on our own inner motivation and self-direction to get things done. For those who like to work autonomously, it’s great! Being clear on what we need to excel as a team member, leader or business owner is key.

As I wrote yesterday, “No person is an island” and we do want to make sure we are clear on our strengths, and style preferences. It’s also key to note that when we over leverage our strengths, that they can become a blind spot. In the remote space this may mean that they get over magnified. So, if I have a love of learning I may keep learning, rather than getting work done. What are the strengths you are able to leverage? What’s important about your work? What drives you? What do you need to be aware of in case it gets over magnified?

For more on Motivation and Remote Work, check out some of the episodes of the Remote Pathways Podcast. 

You’ll also want to check out Week 6 of the 52 Weeks of Remote Work.

What is important for you about motivation in the remote space?

Context - One of the major challenges in the remote space is that we see each other usually only through the small window of the screen. As I write in Effective Virtual Conversations, a great activity to undertake is “what’s outside your screen”? What can we do to share more about the context of our work? That might include:

• Sharing a little more about your desk
• Sharing what’s outside your window
• Talking about what is a priority in your work
• Sharing more about the way work is done, or preferences are in your location (especially if you are a virtual team)

What context pieces are important to share?

Visibility and proactivity - Visibility and proactivity is key in the remote space. Some remote workers feel that their careers get stuck because they aren’t visible like those in an office space. I would invite a perspective that visibility is less about where you are, but how you approach work. What are you doing to be visible, to bring people together, to connect with peers and other stakeholders, to be proactive in connecting on a regular basis with your boss and team?

Regular co-working sessions may provide an opportunity for learning more and connecting with your peers, as well as hearing what you are working on. These sessions may run for an hour, half day or more. 

What is important for you to explore around visibility? What do you need to be more proactive about?

Focus - For many remote workers, productivity can actually increase when moving to work in the remote space. A study by Stanford Business School, headed by Professor Nicholas Bloom found a 13% increase in productivity by those who WFH (Work From Home). You will find a copy of the original publication here at Prof. Bloom’s site.
 
For another interesting article on the same topic check out Scott Mautz’s Inc article.

Even though there are differences with remote work, it’s still important to focus in on the basics of high performance. Be sure to check out the posts I have written on the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. How are we being clear about the ROLES, GOALS, PRACTICES of our work, in addition to connecting in with our vision and mandate, and being clear bout what success will look like?

Tomorrow, we’ll explore another remote working ingredient for success – managing boundaries!

See you then,
Jennifer