How much silence do you include in your virtual work? Is there any silence at all?

Many virtual fqcilitators shy away from provding silence and puase points during their programming. Consider the impact and value of silence in in person programming? Chances are as you think about it you might consider the real value introverts and those that need a little more time for processing find when silence is given. Why not consider incorporating a little more silence in your virtual programs? This could include:

Pause points for people at the start of the call to get grounded, or capture their ideas in a worksheet/online notes.

• A pause point at the middle of the call for people to note what they have learned so far.
• A pause point throughout or at the end of major sections to capture their learning in a one page plan or a one page sheet which they are going to take forward within their work.
• A pause point at the end for people to take notes on their learning
•  A pause point or 30 to 60 seconds of silence before you ask them to speak
• A pause point at any time for people to notice what their breathing is like (fast, slow, rushed). There is increasing research about the benefit of incorporating more mindfulness training in our work wit professionals of all kinds. This does not need to take a lot of time, and may simply involve introducing your virtual group members to pause points to notice their thoughts or what their body is saying throughout your virtual calls.

What pause points do you want to provide during your virtual learning process?

Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Today's Sunday leadership quote comes from John Buchan who captures the essence of a vast majority of leadership approaches today, which is to uncover "the greatness that is there already" in the teams that we work with.
How do you view leadership?  Is it an "uncovering", a "teaching" or other?

Tomorrow marks the end of the month and Tuesday the start of november. Here's a few questions to reflect on in the next few days as you consider your results for october and goals for November:

1. What have been your successes and accomplishment  - in October? So far this year?
2 What are you most proud of?
3. What are your key priorities for November? The rest of the year?
4. What key relationships have helped you so far? Which ones need more attention?
5  What has helped your successes? What has hindered?
6. What does your team need to be acknowledged for?

Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326


Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

You may have noticed that for the first time in almost 3 years our posts didn't go out this week on a daily basis.  While they were ready to go, I just didn't have time to get them out. It was one of those really busy weeks that was full of great work. It was so full that each night I fell into bed minutes after the long workday was done, unable to get our regular posts up.
This week was full of relationships and conversations, taking precedence to getting the blog out.
Once in a while we get to see the fruits of our labor from years before and this week I had it happen not once, but twice, It was the inspiration for today's quote. What impact have you had today that might leave a lasting impression?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer
Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Authorized Partner
Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner
Contact us and let us know how we can support you in helping your team reach its' full potential - (416)996-8326

Today’s virtual facilitation tip is about the less is more principle. Things in the virtual realm usually take longer than in the person realm -except of course our travel time!

When you consider integrating the less is more principle into your virtual work – whether it’s a meeting or a webinar ask yourself, what does Less is More men in terms of:

1. Process – What are the essential elements of what you are going to do?
   
2. Content – what are the core elements you want to fit. Remember there is a threshold of different teams which can be learned at any time. What are the core 3 or 5 topic areas for the time you have together? If there is more that you want to cover, what can be assigned as pre-work? Post – work? What’s the best vehicle and volume to work from?
   
3. When we take over the space virtually we don’t leave room for those in the virtual space to engage. If trust levels are low and connection is minimal it may be perceive to be very risky to speak on a call. Consider how you might be able to pair people and create connection throughout your work. This could be done through breakouts and/or paring people between calls
   

Keeping the less is more principle in mind helps to avoid overwhelm. Notice when enough is enough with the groups and teams that you work with.
What does less is more look like in your work right now?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer
Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Authorized Partner
Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner
Contact us and let us know how we can support you in helping your team reach its' full potential - (416)996-8326

My 107th team building tip gets you thinking about the foundational issue of trust. Whether you are a team leader or a team member, trust is a foundational issue. When low trust is present we may see behaviors such as gossip, lack of engagement, lack of connection. When trust levels are high people are more open to taking risks, collaboration and are generally bringing their best selves to work. This week take a moment to look at what are the things that are building trust on the team right now. What is destroying it?

i've done many posts in the past on trust including our Teams365 Cartoon on the topic back in 2014.
Here are some other posts we've had on the topic of trust:

Teams365 #610: Four Ways to Build Trust. Read it here.
Teams365 #608: Trust Builders and Destroyers on Your Team - with our Trust Cartoon. Read it here
Teams365 #404: Trust the Glue That Binds Teams Together - Listen into this 8 minute Sunday Audio post from 2015

What's the conversation you want to have about trust right now on your team?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Authorized Partner
Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner
Contact us and let us know how we can support you in helping your team reach its' full potential - (416)996-8326

The skills of intuition, and adaptability are key as virtual facilitators. Today's 15th Virtual Facilitation Tip looks at going with your gut and using the skills of blurting, pivoting and moving!

Unless we are having everyone stream their camera, a lot of time we are having to rely on energetic nuances and our intuition when we can’t see everyone. Going with your gut can be important in reading the room. What does your gut (not mind) say?  As part of intuition it can be useful to share things like : it seems like energy has just dropped. When we are on the mark, this can help to build connection and rust. When we are off the mark we should not be attached to it. Increasingly we are finding the scientific roots to intuition. Here's a link to a recent Toronto Star article on the Scientific roots of intuition - The Science Behind Going with Your Gut.

The ability to pivot in calls is also a core skill. The ability to work on our feet can be a core skill for virtual facilitators. The ability to move in a different direction when energy levels are low, or the ability to change in the moment is part of pivoting, where we may wind up in a very different place than we had planned, in service to the group we are working with.

Movement is also important in virtual programming. Keeping people’s focus and fighting against the common multi tasking nature. Some webinar leaders recommend changing the pace every 1-2 minutes. Depending on the complexity of topics involved you may want to move between breakouts and more large group discussion. As mentioned in Virtual Facilitation tip #8 – make sure you leave enough time for breakouts if you chose to use them and provide clear instruction on how long people have and what questions they should talk about.

This week notice how your intuition, as well as ability to pivot and move influences your calls.

Best wishes,
Jennifer


Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326
Check out our Foundations of Teamwork on-demand course here

Virtual Facilitation tip #14 gets you thinking about your presence. In coaching, presence is one of our core professional competencies. Presence is all about who we who up and what we are like. As a virtual facilitation our energy, approach, even language creates the room in which we are meeting. It is important to not underestimate how much your tone, pace and pitch has on setting the energy for the call, even more so if people can’t see you as in a streaming call.
 
What three adjectives would you use to describe your presence?

 Is it energetic, welcoming, hurried?

Think about it for yourself and you may even want to get feedback on this. We are not always aware of the energy or tone we create so if you have someone else listen into your call, or take a few minutes to listen back to one of your calls.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326
Check out our Foundations of Teamwork on-demand course here

Our 13th (lucky or unlucky!?!) virtual facilitation tip gets you thinking about having back ups. There are a variety of technical issues that can go awry and having a back up is always a good thing when not only working with groups, but especially virtually. Some back up items you may need:

1. Back up computer system -once in
2. Contact details for participants – in the event your main system goes down, how will you be able to reach out to the wider community
3. Back up bridge line or Webinar line
4. Back up materials – on usb key and potentially hard copy
5. A number for your IT support – whomever that may be!

 
There’s nothing worse than experiencing a tech glitch while facilitating. Consider what, and where, you want to have these things on hand. Given that many of us work virtually it can also be important to think about how you store these to travel with you.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE – do a dry run using all your material and the different technologies using the system you will be facilitating from And remember….while practice makes perfect it may still not mitigate against ALL the tech challenges that can arise.

Have fun,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326
Check out our f Foundations of Teamwork on-demand course here

 
 

Today's Sunday quote gets you thinking about the stretches you are encountering and how they are helping move forward the results and relationships of your work  (and life).

Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

Two weekends from now I will be welcoming a small group of leaders, and coaches to a two day coaching skills training program for team and group coaches. The program  - Group and TEam Coaching Intensive - is a two day dive into the best practice, skills and techniques of group and team coaching. It's geared to professsionals who want to expand the coaching conversation to more than more person, specifically in organizational settings (for example, coaching entire teams, or coaching new groups of leaders) or those who want to develop and lead their own groups (virtual or inperson such as group coaching for business owners).

Over the two day program we will be exploring:

1. What is team coaching? What is group coaching? How do they differ with each other? With individual coaching?
2. What are the essential components of any group and team coaching processes? – start to finish, even before you get in the room/on the phone line
3. What skills and behaviors are required by great group and team coaches?
4. How do you evaluate group and team coaching work
5. The Lifecycle of Teams and Groups -What happens within groups
6. Considerations for virtual and corporate programs
7. What are some of the key learning points, pitfalls, for both new and experienced group and team coaches.
8. Practice and feedback on  your own group and team coaching skills – each coach will lead a 25-30 minute group coaching process with the group during the program and will receive written and verbal feedback
9. What tricky issues might arise and how do you address them?
10. How do you market  or position group and team coaching – filling your pipeline
11. What activities and exercises can you use with group coaching
12. Working with the  group and team to create powerful accountability assignments

This program is offered once a year in the Toronto area - November 5-6 - and once a  year in Muskoka, CANADA (July or August). It can also be brought in-house for internal teams of coaches or leaders. The program is approved for 19 hours of CCEs (including 17 hours of core competencies).

Registration includes:
The two days of coaching skills training around group and team coaching;
Access to an additional 15 hours of presentations on topics related to group and team coaching;
A robust program manual - full of resources for you to use after the program
A group follow-up call one month after the program

Download more info about the program here.

Cost: $1095 CDN plus HST - total: $1237.35 CDN
Save $200 when you register with a colleague

Reserve your spot and register here. 4 spaces are still open.

Visit our store to reserve your spot in our November 2016 program - November 5-6 in Downtown Toronto. Hours: Saturday- 830 - 430, Sunday 830 - 4 pm ET

Questions? Please reach out to me by email or phone (416)996-8326