Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

#Teams365 #192: Listening and Coaching as a Leader

7/12/2014

When is the last time you listened? Really listened? When your team member come to you do you stop what you are doing, turn to them and give them your full 100% attention? Notice for yourself this week what you do when someone calls for your attention. Do you really give them 100%?

In my work it is very common to observe leaders continuing on with their email or task and not even stopping and turning to listen to a team member who has popped their head in the door (or cubicle). How does that behavior impact connection and trust?

This week, take stock of the way you listen to others. Notice the differences at different times of day.

Some other things to notice when listening:

What does the pace and pitch of the speaker say? Are they rushing, going slowly?
How do the words align with their body language? Align with the pace?
Are you already thinking about what you are going to say, or ask before the other person has stopped?
What do you notice about about listening in general? What changes do you want to make?

Activity:
In your next coaching conversation notice what you are listening to. What are you paying attention to?

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Contact us to set up a time to discuss leadership, teamwork and coaching needs for your team or organization
(416)996-8326

#Teams365 #191: What Coaching Is, and Is Not

7/12/2014

All sorts of behaviors get “labelled” coaching in today’s business environment. I often hear a wide range of descriptors when I deliver coaching skills training with leaders - new, seasoned, and emerging leaders.

After leading dozens of coaching skills training over the years one of my favorite coaching descriptions comes from a former SME , Doug McLaren, who I co-faciltiated with for years. As he said, Co-Facilitation is a “Conversation with Intent”. You can find more about what I write about coaching for leaders in chapter 10 of in my latest book From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

Whether you are a leader coaching their team, and internal coach “professionally coaching “ others, or an external coach working with a team:

What coaching is…..

A conversation with intent

Focused on the present and geared towards the future

Focused on performance and relationships

Grounded in awareness, goals and action

Elicits what the person being coached knows

What coaching is not….

Simply a conversation with no direction

Focused on the past

Navel gazing

Telling others what to do

Mentoring, Advising, Consulting

In fact, the International Coach Federation identifies eleven competencies for coaching, in which all coaching models should be grounded. These range from ethics, to designing the coaching agreement, to listening, goal setting and planning, designing actions, and creating awareness. Personally, I use these in all training of coaches I undertake - leaders, as well as the thousands of coaches I have supported in the last ten years as they develop their own group and team coaching work.

As you consider coaching how would you define it?

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Read more about our Coaching Skills Training for Leaders
Set up a conversation about how we can support you and your team best
(416)996-8326

Teams365 #190 : Five Essential Coaching Skills

7/9/2014

Leaders and managers continue to be called upon to coach their staff and teams. Our seventh cartoon in the Teams365 series illustrates these five essential coaching skills for leaders. We will be exploring the topic of coaching skills for leaders in the next week or two.

The five skills are:

1.      Builds trust and gets to know your team members

2.      Asking Questions to stimulate thinking, support action and awareness. Questions to build on what team members already know.

3.      Listening - really listening

4.      Goal Setting – Supports SMART-E Goal Setting

5.      Focuses on Accountability and works with your staff member to check in around their progress regularly

Coaching in general is all about supporting you team in creating awareness supporting and action. Action, and getting things done is critical in today’s business environment. At the same time, action, without insight can lead us astray. Leaders play an important role in helping team members work through, and think through decisions, perceptions and other areas

Activity

Consider these five areas. On a scale of 1-10 where do your strengths lie?

Future blog posts this week will look at each of these areas.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized - Leadership | Teamwork | Coaching Skills Training for Leaders
Supporting Team Leaders One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Consider joining us for an upcoming Teams365 Team Leader Coaching Group
(416)996-8326

#Teams 365 #189: Four Ways to Build Connection in the Team

7/8/2014

Four Ways to Create Connection within your team:

Trust is a foundation for successful teams. In order to trust each other, people need to know each other within a team. Today's blog post includes four quick activities you can use to create connection within your team. You may want to bring one of these into an upcoming team meeting, or use at an annual retreat session.

1. On a rotational basis have each team member provide a short (and informal) presentation about their work/role, priorities and what connections they see between their work and others on the team. This might only take 10-15 minutes of the meeting, and can be invaluable in helping each team member get to know each other, as well as understand the myriad of priorities which exist on the team.

2. Use a visual deck and have each team member select a photo of what their vision is for either their work or the team. Use the same question for each team member. Enabling people to choose from photos often makes the sharing feel less risky than leaving the question hanging wide open. CoachingToys.com has a variety of decks to choose from. I've also spotlighted the Conversation Sparker Deck we have created which includes both photos and questions team leaders can select from.

3. Ask each team member to share one thing about their past experience that they are really proud of. We know that allowing people to lead from strengths boosts productivity and also positivity within a team. Another way to phrase this question is "What is one strength you bring to the team?" See past Teams365 posts on strengths here.

4. Have people create a logo which represents what they uniquely bring to the team. I call this the personal logo activity and expand on it in my book Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010).

This month bring consider bringing in one of these activities to your regular meetings. What's the impact for team members - in the short term? Longer-term?

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Authorized Partner of the Everything DiSC and Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team
Leadership | Teamwork | Retreats | Coaching Skills Training
(416)996-8326
Starting Soon - Teams365 Coaching Groups - new groups starting in August and September

#Teams365 188: Nine Questions to Bring into your One-On-ones

7/7/2014

A few weeks ago our cartoon featured the importance of regular, and quick one-on-ones with Today's post includes nine Questions to Consider Bringing Into Your One on One Meetings. These five to ten minute conversations build connection with your team members, and more importantly support them in getting work done.

Questions usually shape this quick converstion, and some new leaders may wonder what should I be asking. Here are nine questions you may wish to incorporate:

What have your successes been this week?

What have you been focusing on?

What’s your number one priority?

What’s working well?

What’s not?

What type of support do you need from me (as your leader)?

What do you need from others?

What’s going to support you in being successful?

What do you want to celebrate with others?

Try these questions out as you undertake your conversations this week. Which ones do you notice really resonate with your team members?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized - Leadership, Team Coaching,

#Teams365 #187: Great Teams

7/7/2014

Today's quote comes from Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. As a team coach I share this quote with many of the teams I work with, as we start our work together. The ability for team members to trust each other completely, and feel safe in pointing out the downsides, mistakes and "warts" are all critical to building a high-performing team.

What's the level of trust in your team? What activities do you use to boost trust within the team? A few weeks ago I spoke to a group in downtown Toronto on building trust within your team. We talked about behaviors like transparency, follow-through, and ownership as key in creating a safe environment, conducive to healthy behaviors, not toxic behaviors like we spotlighted in our last team cartoon.

What activities will your team benefit from this coming week? What actions will you take to demonstrate and build trust?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Authorized Partner of the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team(TM)
Interested in learning more how your team can build trust and become a more cohesive team? Email me for more information or contact me directly by phone at (416)996-8326

Teams365 #186: WHAt Is Really Important?

7/5/2014

This week's Conversation Sparker Cards(TM) question is What Is Really Important?

As you hopefully have some quiet time this weekend, reflect on the question of What Is Really Important?

You may want to consider this from the perspective of what is really important to:
You
The Team
The Organization
Your STakeholders/Customers

How do these align? How do they not?

If you were to plan your activities this week according what is really important, what are they?

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC
Potentials Realized - Leadership, Teamwork, Coaching Skills for Leaders
Conversation Sparker Cards(TM) - A great prompter for your next team coaching
(416)996-8326

Teams365 #185: Time to Celebrate

7/4/2014

This week marks two national holidays in North America - Canada Day and the 4th of July - which provide those living in each country with the opportunity to pause, reflect and celebrate. It is a time to celebrate our accomplishments, what we are grateful for, and it is also a time to articulate who we are as a nation.

As you return back to work, what do you need to celebrate in terms of your accomplishments - as a team? A department? An organization?

What are you grateful for?

Who are you and what do you take a stand for?

This time of year is also an important time to pause and rest and recharge. I hope that you are able to create some space for renewal.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Teamwork
(416)996-8326

Teams365 #184: Virtual Meeting Tips

7/3/2014

AS we saw back on day 179, conference calls can be a big "time sucker". The "death by conference call" process does not have to occur. Here are six tips for keeping your next virtual meeting on track: * Have a back up - make sure technology is really working for everyone. How accessible is the technology to everyone? Would it be useful to reduce it to the lowest common denominator, so all can participate equally?

* Set a clear focus for the meeting. This includes sending out agenda items, and assigning time frames

* Establish roles - Roles include that of note taker and timekeeper. If you are on a web based platform set a timer. Assign times to each action or agenda item.

* Ensure everyone who needs to be there, really is

* Have a scribe/notetaker capture the minutes, and circulate them

*Review agreements at the start and end of the call

What other tips would you recommend for making virtual meetings most effective?

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC
Potentials Realized
Coaching Team Leaders
Supporting leaders and teams to do their best work through coaching, mentoring and better skills
Stay tuned for the Teams365 Team Leader Foundation program, and Coaching Groups, starting soon!
(416)996-8326

Teams365 #183: Why Mentoring?

7/2/2014

Mentoring is important for a number of reasons including capacity development on the part of mentors, as well as institutional strengthening as a larger cohort of leaders is created.

ATD, formerly ASTD, has done quite a bit of research on mentoring, both formally and informally. Today's quote provides further insights as to why mentoring is important.

Why would mentoring be important in your organization? Who would benefit? Who could play a mentoring role?

Interested in learning more or exploring how mentoring could be of benefit in your organization? Please check out of the resources available through the Mentor RoadMap(TM). You can also schedule a 30 minute exploratory session with myself and colleague Susan Combs to identify how mentoring could be of benefit to your organization and its leaders.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT
Potentials Realized - Supporting leaders and teams to do their best work
(416)996-8326