Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

July 31st, 2016

7/31/2016

Teams365 The Month in Review and Planning for the month ahead - July/August

7/31/2016

As we go to wrap up the month of July and step into August, it's another opportunity to take stock of the month that was and do some planning for the new month Try to carve out 10-15 minutes today to reflect on the following questions:

What have been your major achievements this month?
What do you want to celebrate?
What do you need to wrap up?
What needs to get carried forward this month?
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 when I or when we.....

Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#Teams365 #942: Delegation Article: Your Keys to Success: Effective Delegation

7/30/2016

To further reach out to more leaders, I'm just starting to post some articles on LinkedIn Pulse. The first one posted earlier this week was entitled Your Key to Success: Effective Delegation. You can read it here.

Questions to consider:
What are the items you need to, or want to, delegate?
What will this free you up to focus on?
What will ensure that this delegated task is successful?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#Teams365 #941: New Team Leader Tip #13

7/29/2016

As a new team leader a lot can feel overwhelming, especially in those first few day and weeks. Earlier this week I indicated how important it is not to compare yourself to your predecessor. Another way to boost your confidence is to lead by your strengths. Research continues to show that undertaking activities which leverage our strengths are easier, and we may also complete them faster. While mitigating our blindspots or weaknesses are important, this will take more energy.

Consider these questions:
What are you good at?
What activities do you find easy?
What skills allow you do to things quickly?
What do others say you are good at?

Knowing your strengths and being able to lead by them allow us to ease into our role.

Some of the coaching work I do with leaders and their teams involves working around strengths. Interested in learning more? Contact me to set up an exploratory call.

Resources you may want to check out yourself include:
StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
Strengths Based Leadership - Tom Rath and Barrie Conchie

Have a great weekend!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#Teams365 #941: Team Leader Tips 10-13 in Review

7/28/2016

This week we have covered a wide variety of tips for new team leaders. In shake things up a bit I have done a short video to review our four tips of the week. Enjoy!

This week we looked at :
Teams365 #941: New Team Leader Tip #13 - Identify your strengths. Read it here.
Teams365 #939: New Team Leader Tip #12 - What Do You Bring that's Unique to this Role? Read it here.
Teams365 #938: New Team Leader Tip #11 - Predecessor Advice. Read it here.
Teams365 #937: New Team Leader Tip #10 - What do you want to, or need to, delegate right now? Read it here.

I've put these tips into a short 3 minute video - enjoy watching!

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

Teams365 #940: Team Building Tip #94 - Presence

7/28/2016

It's Thursday and time for another team building tip. Today's team building tip gets you to think about your Presence. Presence is related to our being and how we show up.

What does that mean for you as a leader? What words or adjectives do people use to describe you as a leader? A professional? A team?

Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

July 27th, 2016

7/27/2016

Today's New Team Leader tip gets you to think about what you bring that is unique to this role?

It's important that we don't compare ourselves to the leader before us. What do you bring in teams of skills, experiences, and practices which are unique? How do you want to communicate this? What expectations do you want to share?

Take a look at the other new team leader tips we've covered in the last few weeks here.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#Teams365 #938: New Team #Leader #11 : Predecessor Advice

7/26/2016

Today's New Team Leader tip gets to you think about your predecessor's advice. sometimes we have the opportunity to do handover with the person who were are replacing. I have always said that their insights provide an important perspective around the work, the role and the team. AND, it's only one perspective. As a new team leader it can be very important to develop your own perspectives based on what you see, and what you hear from everyone.

If you do have access to your predecessor, questions you might want to ask include:
What are the core components of the role?
Where do you spend most of your time?
What did you find most challenging? Easiest?
What were key points of the team's history?
Who are key resources for me? The team?
What do you see as key priorities for the next ...?
Any other advice?

What questions do you have for your predecessor?

Best
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#TEams365 #937: New Team Leader Tip #10

7/25/2016

We are at New Team Leader Tip #10 today. Tip #10 gets you to think about what you want to, and can, delegate. Delegation is an area both new and experienced team leaders struggle with. Matching the task to the team member, being clear on what success will look like, and making sure that you both check in around progress are three areas which are critical for successful delegation.

Questions to ask yourself right now include:
What are the tasks I can delegate?
What are the tasks that I can only do?
Looking at my list of things to be delegated, what's a priority?
Who would benefit from doing this?
What support would they need in order to complete it?
What resources do they need?
What authority or responsibility do they need?
What do I need to share about how it fits into the bigger picture?
What do I need to share about how it is important and what happens if it is not completed successfully?
What are the key milestones?
When will I check in?

I'll be putting up a new Pulse post on Linked In around Delegation this week. I hope that you will enjoy it!

Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer
Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326

#Teams365 #936: Sunday Quote - Simplify and Appreciate

7/24/2016

Many times we are on the quest for something, bigger, brighter and better, and we fail to appreciate what we have and what is working. How does this resonate for you right now in your work or personal life?

Work related stress is on the increase, and for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere it is summer and for some of us, a time to pull the throttle back for a few weeks. Lao Tzu's quote gets us thinking about what does work, which may take some of the pressure we carry around to do it bigger, brighter and better.

Over the last few weeks I have been doing more reading as part of research for an upcoming book I am writing for leaders, and I continue to be surprised by how many business authors are also espousing simplification. With concerted effort and choices made int he last 12 years, July and most of August finds we working remote out of the cottage. These are some of my most productive, and creative months of the year, and with technology today I keep things running in a way most people, and clients, don't immediately notice. I do notice however in the amount of stress and pacing that usually takes a few weeks to drop off. Even for these few short months of the year, downsizing from a large house to a small cabin helps me appreciate the important things, which often are the biggest, and boldest and brightest.

Where are you simplifying right now? What impact is it having?

Enjoy your Sunday which I hope has space for some downtime,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Looking for more tips and ideas to support you in your work as a leader? Sign up for our monthly newsletter, full of tips, resources and hacks for leaders and team members looking to realize their potential. Sign up at http://bit.ly/teams365news
Phone: (416)996-8326