A focus for us here at the Teams365 blog during the month of June 2017 has been on questions to incorporate into your upcoming conversations - whether you are speaking with your team, holding one-on-ones, or leading a virtual meeting. Having a robust series of questions at our fingertips is an essential leadership tool.

Another significant focus in our work is on supporting leaders to develop enhanced coaching skills. The ability to deeply listen to what your staff is saying, and ask questions to help prompt new awareness, insights and connection. That's the impetus to head back to a post from February 2017 entitled 20 Coaching Questions for your next conversation. These are questions you may want to incorporate into upcoming conversations. Notice their impact.

Here's what I wrote last year in Teams365 #778:

For more than a decade now I’ve had the privilege of running coaching skills training - for leaders, professional coaches, HR professionals and trainers. Regardless of the context they have been within one of he core skills for coaches to develop is the art of the powerful question;
 
One activity which can be useful tis to develop a list of questions which you can use in upcoming conversations. While you would never use all these at one tie, here’s 20 of my favorite:

1. What’s the most important goal you are working on right now?
2. What’s really important about that
3. What could get in the way?
4. What additional supports would help you be successful?
5. What perspective are you in around x?
   
6. What’s another perspective around that?
7. What else?
8. 3 adjectives that describe….
9. If you were to make one change that made the biggest difference, what would it b?
10. If you were to do something in the next 24 hours, what would that be?
11. What impact would it have?
12. What’s aligned?
13. What’s not aligned?
14. What would “wild Success” look like?
15. What will help you focus?
16. What’s our vision?
17. What’s at the core?
18. What is really important?
19. Who is an ally for you in this?
20. Imagine it is now 5 months down the road. How will be you know you have been successful?
    

What other questions do you want to ask?

Notice the impact of these questions as you go out and have dialogue with your team and/or peers.

Have a great Friday,
Jennifer

It is Thursday and time for another Team Building Tip. Today's question gets you to think about the question "What is the one thing that would accelerate our results?". Take a few minutes this week to discuss this question. You may also want to check out my recent one-on-ones question around acceleration as well - view it here.

Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer

As we start winding down our June series on one-on-one questions you might want to bring into your next team meeting and/or individual conversation, we arrive at one of the final six factors for high performing teams - shared performance measures and goals. Yesterday's post looked at the concept of Mission, and last week we looked at shared team practices and shared commitment.

Teams which excel are clear on their goals and how those goals are measured - what we also refer to as shared performance measures.

As you consider your work right now, have some dialogue in these areas:

1. What are our top 3-5 goals this month?
2. Are the goals SMART-E? Specific? Measurable? Achievable? Realistic? Timely? and Exciting?
3. What does success look like for each major goal?  Do we all share the same vision of success?
4. What does each one of us do to contribute to the achievement of that goal?
5. What are the things that could get in the way, or derail, the goal? What will help, or enable, the goal?
6. What are the measures we will use to know that we have reached the goal? (Time, money, other....)

What other questions are important to consider, and have dialogue around, as it relates to goals?

Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

 It's time for another series of leadership questions and one-on-ones for your team. Last week I looked at two of the Six Factors for High Performing Teams - Teams365 #1267 - Shared Commitment, and Teams365 #1266: Shared Team Practices. 

Today we are looking at the topic of mission, another key ingredient of clarity for teams that excel. Whether you are helping people consider their mission on an individual or team level, use these questions:

• What’s our mission?
  
• Why do we exist?
• Who do we serve?
• What do our clients/customers/stakeholders say about us?
• What is the one thing we can do, which no one else can do?
• What are our competitive advantages?
  

As you think through these questions, what do you notice?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

In late July, my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, will be released. It's the culmination of tips and best practices for leading teams and conversations in the virtual space, a focus of mine since the 1990s, when I was leading teams across countries in South America connected only by radio.

Every Monday I'll be sharing a tip from Effective Virtual Conversations with the hope that it will be useful in your work.

Today's tip is "Setting Everyone Up for Success". Pre-planning in the virtual space can shift a call from being a time-waster to an expedited conversation.

Some things you might want to consider doing in setting your team or group up for success with your virtual call includes:
1. Thinking through any pre-work or pre-reading people should do before they join the call. This can be shared on your intranet, Slack drive or other file sharing service.
2. Having a clear agenda to follow that everyone has fed into. One of the traps of virtual meetings is that people are often bouncing from one meeting to the next. Being proactive with who needs to be on the call (think decision maker or information required) is important as it's often hard to pull a virtual colleague into a meeting last minute.
3. Keeping accountabilities visible. One of the challenges with today's digital world is that we don't always have the same immediate visual cues in front of us,  as we may have had with team work which was co-located. What are the things you can do to keep accountabilities visible for everyone in different locations? Is there a weekly dashboard you send out? A photo which can be put on as a screen saver? Something else to keep things visible.
4. Being vigilant with follow-up. Follow-up and circling back is even more important in the virtual space. What will help with follow-up for your team? What one on one conversations (voice and email) are important to have? What feedback and update mechanisms are in place so peers can also keep each other in the loop

As you consider "setting everyone up for success" what comes to mind for you?

Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer

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It's Sunday and a day of rest. After having surgery earlier this week, I've been reminded of how important it is to know your limits.  It is also important to slow down, in order to speed up. For the next four to six weeks I'll be taking it easy with recovery. As someone who loves to usually be on the run with a million things to do, slowing it down and enjoying the small steps has been my lesson of the week. What has been your lesson this week?

Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

In about a month's time, my newest book will be released. Entitled, Effective Virtual Conversations, Geared for leaders, coaches, trainers and team members, this book is about sparking more effective virtual conversations. From webinars, to virtual team meetings, we live in an increasingly digital world, where for many of us we build and leverage virtual relationships all the time.
Here's a brief description of some of the elements of the book:
Step by step, you’ll develop not only the necessary skills to communicate and lead across a constantly changing range of platforms, but the confidence you need to build interpersonal connections, facilitate events and successfully translate almost any activity to the virtual realm. You’ll learn:

• Essential elements and core skills of virtual conversations
• Understanding – and avoiding – the “Death by Conference Call” mindset
• Safety, Connection and Trust – the Triad of Virtual Learning
• The importance of understanding cultural differences
• How to design a successful virtual event from start to finish
• Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
• Creating exceptional virtual and remote teams, and developing resourceful virtual team leaders
  

“Effective Virtual Conversations is a valuable resource for virtual team leaders. It is generous with useful knowledge that can be used for day to day management and includes a variety of references for further reading. I particularly like the practical activities which can be used for virtual team development.” -- Jocelin Caldwell, BA ACC RRP CCDP, Vice President Operations

Featuring a wide range of simple and practical toolkits, worksheets, activities and more,  Effective Virtual Conversations will give you the tools you need to boost the connection, trust and engagement of your virtual events, setting everyone up for success in the virtual space whether you are a team leader, project manager, coach or trainer.

A week ago, I did a second pre-launch call, this one focusing on the Triad of Essential Elements for any Virtual Conversation. The call ran for 30 minutes and you can view it here. Enjoy!


 

 It's Friday and time for another Flashback Friday. Today I have reached back to a post from 2014 on Harnessing Your Differences, a key theme for so many teams today. You can read the original post here.



Here's what I wrote in that post:

Today's quote comes from All In, a book by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, which we included on the Essential Leadership Reads list a few weeks ago.

High performing teams are ones who know their differences and are able to effectively work across these differences. What research continues to show is that teams who bring complimentary strengths are stronger.

Throughout the year I've been pointing to various assessments, resources and tools which will help you as a team dialogue around what makes you unique - as individuals and as a team. Some of the ones I have spotlighted since the beginning of the year are:

StrengthsFinder 2.0  - read more about what I have written about strengths this year here.
VIA Strengths - click here for more info
Everything DiSC  - click here fore more info
Five Behaviors of A Cohesive Team - Click here for more info

Regardless of what resource you use to identify what makes you unique, it's important to have dialogue to notice where the overlap is, where the gaps are, and how you as a team want to work across differences.  An essential part of the team building and/or team coaching process is about identifying how the team is unique and what roles each team member can play.

Questions to consider:
What does each team member uniquely bring to the team?
What are the differences which exist? How does this help you? Hinder you?
What gaps exist?
What do you need more of  on this team?

Interested in exploring your team strengths and/or styles more? Contact me to discuss what this could look like through a retreat or team coaching process.

It is Thursday and time for another team building tip - #11 in the series. This week take some time to discuss the question "Something you should know about my work is....".

Many teams are not aware of what each other does. Taking time to strengthen knowledge and information in these areas whelps to clarify roles, see overlap and share information about priorities.

What other questions would be useful to have some discussion around?

Take a look at other Getting to Know our Team questions here.

Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer

Today marks the official start of summer and for me the start of several weeks of medical leave. You'll see my posts continue thanks to the ease of auto-scheduling.

With a new season kicking into gear, it's a great time to take a pause to think about your programming for the next quarter, as well as consider some special project work.

Here are some questions you may want to think about as you step into summer:

1. The greatest opportunity facing me right now is....
2. The greatest opportunity facing the team right now is...
3. By the end of summer I/we will have accomplished....
4. The one habit I want to cultivate is...
5. The one task/thing I need to say no to it...
6. Consistent action around _______ (fill in the blank) will lead to ______ this summer.
7. Lessons learned i can apply going forward are.....

What projects are you going to take on board this summer? Some possible project ideas for team leaders could include:

• Holding more regular one-on-ones with team members
  
• Working on that special project that you have flagged, but haven't taken action on
• Reviewing roles with the team to see what is working, and what needs a tweak
• Considering what reporting mechanisms are going to support better goal setting - for example - a one page plan
  
• Creating a guide/playbook in your area of expertise (ie. on-boarding, project management, meeting management)
  

Take a few minutes to make a list of the different special projects you might consider focusing on this summer.

Enjoy the start to this new season!

Jennifer