Today marks the last day of July and it's a great opportunity to pause and take stock of the month, and do some planning for the month to come. Today's post includes several questions to consider as you pause:

What were my major achievements this month?
What do I want to celebrate?
As I consider my goals (and resolutions) I made at the start of the year, how am I doing with these on a scale of 1-10? Which ones are becoming new habits or something I can check off?
Which ones need to be let go of?
As a leader, what have I noticed about my team this month?
As a leader, what notes should I make about performance issues (if I haven't done it already!)
The thing that has helped me be most productive this month has been ______
The thing that has helped me be most successful this month has been ______
The thing that has helped me be happiest this month has been ________
The thing that has helped me be most healthy has been _______

Looking ahead to August....
My priorities are:
My goals are
I want to......
I'll be really happy at the end of the August/at the end of summer when I.....

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
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Today's 47th team building tip gets you to think about how you are managing, or supporting the team. Are you supporting the team as a collection of individuals or are you supporting the team as a team?

Take some time this week to think about how you are supporting the team as a team.
 Are you:

Working with the team to create a shared vision for where you are going?
Helping people understand how their roles connect with and fit with each other?
Creating opportunities for people to build relationships with each other on the team (not just with you)?
Providing opportunities for people to understand how their individual goals connect with team goals and organizational goals?

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(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support you or your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Today’s post looks at 8 key areas you will want to touch on during your first mentoring conversation. These include:

What are the mentees/proteges  goals for the mentoring process

What are each of your roles and responsibilities?

How will you measure success?

What will you do if things go off the rails?

What are your preferences around meeting times?

What will you do, and what is acceptable if you have to reschedule meetings?

Also, take a few minutes to potentially map out the focus areas of each mentoring conversation. What are the focus areas you want to look at? I would say from reviewing hundreds of end of mentoring process feedback summaries that people would have preferred to create more structure rather than less throughout their mentoring process.

What will help you prepare for each mentoring touchpoint?

What other areas might you want to be in dialogue about?

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer
Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team

The kick off of any mentoring relationship is key. Many mentor and protégé pairs may struggle with what they want to ask each other during this meeting, and what they may want to cover. Today’s post looks at five key questions to cover during the mentoring kick off:

1. What are your goals for the mentoring partnership – having 3-5 goals (depending on the period of mentoring involved) can help to frame and maximize each conversation touchpoint.
   
   
2. As the mentor, what role do you want me to play? Mentors can play a variety of roles, from cheerleader and motivator, to someone who inspires to. They also can hold you accountable to taking specific actions you have identified.
   
   
3. What are your expecations of each other?
   
   
4. What are the parameters and preferences around your meetings – length, time of day, location preferences etc.
   
   
5. How will you track progress and measure success? Depending on the frequency of your meetings it can be useful to have mini-evaluations along the way. Starting with your first meeting, discuss how you will track progress and measure success.
   
   

Tonmorrow’s topic is 8 key areas for your first mentoring conversation. Stay tuned. You can also read yesterday's post on 3 Keys for Good Mentor Matches.


Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team
Visit our sister site MentorRoadMap.com for more information about our mentoring training and support services through our collaborative partnership of the Mentor RoadMap(TM).

Mentoring is a wonderful low, or no, cost way to build capacity. Generally pairing a more seasoned professional with a more junior one, Mentoring is continuing to make a comeback in terms of being a useful development modality. It’s a wonderful cross-generational tool as mentors often learn as much as mentees or protégés, the person being mentored.

Today’s post looks at 3 keys for good matching. What we know about the most successful mentoring matches is that mentors and proteges are matched well in terms of what the mentee is looking for, and what the mentor can offer. Depending on the type of program this may be related to a specific job function, or industry experience, or a combeination of leadership competencies the protégé is looking for. Those responsible for pairing will want to think carefully about how the pairings are completed, and what people should do if they don’t perceive a good match. Setting up the expectations around matching go right back to the recruitment stage so make sure everyone is clear how matching will be undertaken and what people can expect.

Skills which the mentors bring also makes for a good partnership. IN addition to technical skills we know that mentors are appreciated when they listen and frame their support in terms of what the protégé really wants.The ability to ask good questions is also an important skil set to have.

Finally, pre-planning on both the part of the mentor and protégé also helps to make mentoring move more smoothly.
Prior to the first meeting it can be useful for each party to consider:

1. What they bring to the mentoring partnership?
   
   
2. What they want to get out fo the experience. For example, portages hopefully will have specific goals they want to work on.
   
   
3. What will they do when things get difficult or challenges emerge?
   
   
4. What are their boundaries with respect to meeting times, location and frequency?
   
   

Tomorrow’s post will look at five questions to discuss during your first mentoring meeting.

'Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer
Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team

Today's Sunday audio focuses on four tips for overcoming procrastination. Have you been pushing off projects that are important lately? Listen into this short six minute audio post which includes four quick tips to get you moving.

Enjoy!

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team

Today's 6 Leadership Questions looks at key questions for virtual facilitation including:

1. What's the pulse and energy of the group right now?

2. What pace change is needed?

3. What conversation do we need to have?

4. What key learning have you had so far?

5. Who else's voice should we have at the table?

6. What specific actions will you take based on our conversation. Who will you be accountable to?

What other questions do you like to ask in the context of virtual faciltiation?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team
Virtual Facilitation Skills Intensive starts September 15th - Tuesdays 5-8 pm ET by phone, skype and other virtual platforms -each wee is different (5 weeks)

Today's Leadership Toolkit focuses on five resources you may want to tap into for further resources around Virtual Facilitation.

1.  A past article I wrote on Five Principles for Virtual Facilitation

2. Facilitate.com also provides some excellent resources

3. Both of my books dedicate at least one chapter to virtual facilitation including Chapter 7 of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching and Chapter 6 of Effective Group Coaching.

4. Read all past posts I have written on Virtual Facilitation Skills here

5.  A great article on 12 Trends for Mobile Learning in 2015 which you can read here at their site

What resources do you recommend to others around virtual facilitation?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer



Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support for you or your team
Join us starting September 15th for the Virtual Facilitation Skills Intensive as we take a deep dive into the practice and art of virtual facilitation. Space is limited - click here to learn more and reserve your spot.

Trust is the foundation of any high performing team. As leaders we play a key role in setting the bar for high trust environments. Today's team building tip gets you to stop and pause and think about the state of trust in your team at the moment.

What are the things that are building trust on your team?
Our actions create trust. Things like creating transparency, walking our talk, modelling open and honest communication. Taking responsibility for successes and mistakes. Modelling and inviting accountability.

What are the things that are destroying trust on your team?
Behaviors can quickly erode trust. Gossip, lack of follow-through, "dropping the ball" and lack of follow-through. What are the things that are destroying trust on your team?

An excellent read in this area is Stephen Covey's Speed of Trust. He goes into 13 behaviors which build trust and also talks about how trust can be destroyed more quickly than it is built.

I hope that today's team building tip provides an opportunity for reflection, dialogue and action for you and the team around trust.

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(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support you or your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Even the most seasoned of us as virtual facilitators, myself included, need support to create masterful facilitated experiences in the virtual realm. This post explores several supporting roles which can make the difference between a good and a masterful facilitated experience.

When considering the roll-out of a virtual program you will want to keep in mind:
1 What are all the moving parts - lecture, interactivity, breakouts?
2. What technology issues might people experience?
3. And of course, what the platform is. A bridgeline alone is often not as complicated as say a webinar platform with screen sharing, polls and breakouts.

Depending on what you are using you may want to have a co-facilitator who can take the lead on certain facilitated sessions, or a producer who will look after the technology end such as getting people on board, and also moving people into breakout configurations.

Regardless of whether it is a co-facilitator or producer you will want to:
Consider which roles each one of you will play  throughout the session, and during different activities
Where are the major transition points where you may need to switch over control or presenter status - i.e. polls, breakouts?
What are the key points along the timeline you both need to be aware of - walk through the entire program and make sure you are both on the same page
What will you do if "technology" happens?
What are your requests of each other - for example, as a big picture person myself, I often ask my co-facilitator to help me keep an eye on the finer details such as numbers, details etc.
How will you have each other's back? Similar to what will you do if "technology" happens, this  is about considering how you will support each other.

For more questions to ask  yourself during co-facilitation, and how to prepare, please download this bonus digital chapter which accompanied my first book Effective Group Coaching on Co-facilitation. I hope that you enjoy it!

Best wishes
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork | Mentoring Skills Training
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time(TM)
Contact us to discuss coaching or performance support  for you or your team

Wanting to grow your own virtual facilitation skills? Consider joining me from September 15 - mid October on Tuesdays from 5-8 pm Eastern/2-5 pm Pacific/Wednesdays 7-10 am Sydney for the Virtual Facilitation Skills Intensive, a 15 hour hands-on learning program where you will learn and practice virtual facilitation skills in a small group setting. Click here for more info.