Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

teams365 #2638 - Week in Review

3/21/2021

Welcome back to another Sunday. This week we focused on a variety of topics including:

Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt #143 – This Quarter I…

Friday’s Flashback exploring Hybrid work 101

Thursday’s Team Building Tip 283

Wednesday’s Zoom Fatigue really is real, and four things you can do about it

Tuesday’s Hybrid working – the next iteration of the workspace?

Monday’s Stand Out Virtually Principle: Strong process

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2637 - Weekly Journaling Prompt 143

3/20/2021

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you thinking about your last few months and this quarter of the year. AS we move to the end of Q1, what do you notice about your focus and achievements.

We don’t always stop to pause and consider our quarterly blocks, often only looking at it from a monthly or even weekly basis.

Many researchers have found that work naturally flows in a 90 day cycle. AS you go to take stock of your work since the beginning of the year, I hope that you will enjoy the prompt of “This Quarter I….”

Consider:

What you achieved?

What you overcame?

What you are grateful for?

Who you connected with?

What you learned?

What strengths you leveraged?

What values you lived?

What you said no to?

What you are proud of…

What is left undone

Enjoy this week’s reflections and I hope you will also take a look back at all what you have written in recent months as well.

Enjoy your weekend!

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2636 - Flashback – Hybrid Work 101

3/19/2021

This week I am reaching back to a December 2021 blog post I entitled Hybrid Work 101. Here’s what I wrote about what is starting to really emerge as the “next way of working”:

TEAMS365 #2543 – Hybrid Work 101 – Making It Work
12/16/2020

Not so long from now, as a vaccine becomes a reality for many, teams, organizations and businesses are likely to be making the shift back into the office for some. With hybrid work arrangements, it’s important to take a look at the following:

Head back to the basics of teams,

Remember the Remote Work Enablers – these are all still important as we move into hybrid work arrangements, the 7 remote enablers are still critical levers for successful workplace results and relationships. The 7 Remote Work Enablers includes:

Connection
Communication
Clarity
Community
Culture
Collaboration
And Consistency

Which area, or areas, could use more attention?

Revisit your processes - What needs to change when some people are in the office, and others are still working from home, what work processes need to change?

Keep everything simple - One of the mantras of 2020 has been to “keep everything simple”. The complexity is around us when we work remotely, and when we shift to hybrid work arrangements, new layers of complexity emerge – some people working at home/others in the office; a sense that things have returned to how they “once were” when in fact we may be a different business than we were before.

Keeping things simple involves simplifying our practices and processes.

What do you need to simplify?

Related to this is to ensure that there are ways to keep things moving in a way that works for the different styles. Consider bringing things online and moving things forward in a way that works for those who remain virtual and those who are in an office space.

It’s likely to be many more months before a hybrid workplace arrangement exists. What do you want to take note of?

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2635 Team Building Tip 283 – Results Check

3/18/2021

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you to stop and pause and have a check around results. One of the positive outcomes of the pandemic’s remote work experience has been our enhanced focus on getting results.

This week, with your team, spend some time, noticing:

What results have you achieved – this month? This quarter?

What is really giving you traction?

What are you noticing about impact? Relationships? Clarity of goals? Roles?

What objectives need further clarifying?

What ingredients are giving you success?

What feedback loops are working to provide input and focus?

Enjoy your conversation this week and be sure to note what you are focusing on and what’s next.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

TEAMS365 #2634ZOOM FATIGUE REALLY IS REAL, AND FOUR THINGS YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT

3/17/2021

A few weeks ago, researchers from Stanford published research around the psychological impact spending hours per day on video conferencing. Led by Jeremy Bailenson they found four reasons why there is zoom fatigue:

Intensity created by the “Excessive amounts of close up eye contact
The fatigue created by seeing yourself constantly in video chat
Video conferencing “dramatically reducing our usual mobility”
A higher cognitive load in video chats

The research also proposed several solutions for these four elements including:

Using audio functions, not just video function all the time
Incorporating more movement into your calls
Adjusting your screen to minimize your face size,
or even hiding your view and only viewing others on the call.

If you have been following my writing for a while, you’ll note many of these practical suggestions showed up in my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations. It’s great to see that the research is now catching up with the best practice of creating highly interactive, and impactful virtual conversations.

Let’s connect to discuss how you, your organization or team needs support in navigating current state and future conversations and workflow. Book a call with me here to discuss.

Participate in Stanford’s research study which is developing a Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale:

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2633 Hybrid working – the next iteration of the workspace?

3/16/2021

As some locations start to get their populations vaccinated, workplaces may be reopening in the not so distant future. In some cases, some organizations will go back to work, in other cases they may become hybrid, with some people in the office, and others working from home.

The hybrid workspace can be even more challenging in terms of support, than the all in-person realm, or all remote workspace.

Having worked in the hybrid world for many years, here at Potentials Realized, we will be widening our program support for teams, as well as consulting services for organizations to more explicitly support hybrid working arrangements and teams. We feel that this is an important part of the next phase of work and economics.

Here are some interesting pieces of recent research about the hybrid workspace:

“Among the challenges of managing a hybrid workforce, 30% of business leaders are most concerned with maintaining corporate culture. Thirteen percent of respondents reported concern over creating parity between the remote and in-office experience; 13% also are concerned about providing a seamless employee experience.” – Gartner Study, June 2020 - https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-07-14-gartner-survey-reveals-82-percent-of-company-leaders-plan-to-allow-employees-to-work-remotely-some-of-the-time
“output driven metrics” along with “Regular meetings to touch base, say once a day at a set time can set the expectation and answer any questions that need answering. From there, it’s a matter of trusting your team to get the job done and making adjustments as necessary.” - https://www.theventuremag.com/hybrid-work/

A November 2020 study noted, “More than 20 percent of the workforce could work remotely three to five days a week as effectively as they could if working from an office. If remote work took hold at that level, that would mean three to four times as many people working from home than before the pandemic”. - https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries

Smartway2 study found that 92 percent of people surveyed in fall 2020 wanted to return to the office. They would prefer one of the following:

to work mostly from home with occasional office time (40%)
to share their time equally between home and office (31%)
to work mostly at the office with occasional time at home (21%) (Source

What’s next in your workspace? What’s important for you to note? What is important to start thinking about?

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2632 - Stand out virtually principle: strong process

3/15/2021

This week’s Stand Out Virtually principle is all about creating a strong process so you can leave space for the individuals, teams and groups you work with, have space to explore, connect and learn. When we are part of a remote or hybrid team, it is important that we are intentional with our focus. Structure and process, which includes having team norms and shared agreements, is critical for success.

It is this structure that helps to create trust and safety, as well as connection.
Examples of strong process include:

Creating shared agreements of how you will operate together.
Focusing on 2-3 topics for each conversation. If there are too many topics and it is unclear, it is unlikely that we will be able to move forward with ideas.
Providing people with an opportunity to focus on what’s important
Clarifying our end outcomes.
Creating a strong culture in whatever virtual or hybrid context you operate within. Culture is HOW we do things here.
Leaving time for synthesis at the end of the call

What are you wanting to incorporate into your next calls?

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2631 - Weekly Round up

3/14/2021

Welcome back to another Sunday. This week we focused on a variety of topics including:

Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt 142

Friday’s Flashback Friday

Thursday’s Team Building Tip 282

Wednesday’s 10 Quotes on Team Innovation

Tuesday’s Time Blocks

Monday’s Stand out Virtually Principle: Add Value, Don't Take Up Time

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #2630 - Weekly Journaling Prompt 142

3/13/2021

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is a special one. For many, myself included, this weekend marks the one year anniversary of the onset of the pandemic here in Canada. It was a year ago this weekend that so much changed.

As I reflect on my writing, and journaling, over the last year, it’s been interesting to note the hopes, fears and shifts along the way.

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you thinking about the question “I long for….”. The response today may be different than what you would have written a year ago and my guess is that it is likely different than where we will be next year.

Enjoy the reflection!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

TEAMS365 #2629 - Flashback Friday

3/12/2021

Almost six months ago in October 2020, I published a post entitled, “Four things remote teams need in the last few months of the year” as Team365 #2493.

Given that there is no expiration on any of these, and they are valuable at any time of the year, I thought I would bring them back as this week’s Flashback Friday. AS you go through and read them, what do you notice?

Here’s what I wrote:

TEAMS365 #2493 - Four Things Remote Teams Need In The Last Few Months Of The Year

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326