Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

#Teams365 #1390: Weekend Quote

10/21/2017

This week's quote comes from Patanjali who wrote "When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb".

Teams today benefit when they focus on creating the trust needed so they can be bold and bring their best self to work. Whether it's a focus on having courageous conversations, or taking responsibility and accountability about what's working and what's not, it's important for teams to "dedicate" and "commit" to taking the action they want to take.

What are you noticing about how you as a team are:
- Committing yourself to excellence?
- Trusting each other?
- Being bold?
- Bringing your best with effort every day?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#TEams365 #1389: #FlashBackFriday: 4 Best Practices for Year-End Team Retreats

10/20/2017

I am starting to receive a number of emails and phone calls from teams who are looking to organize their year end functions. It's only about 70 days until the end of the year. What are you as a team hoping to complete before 2017 winds down? How will you be preparing for your best year yet in 2018?

I wanted to bring forward a post that I wrote late last year which was posted on LinkedIn Pulse. It's entitled "4 Best Practices for Year-End Team Retreats" and is geared to anyone who is starting to think about what your year-end retreat can look like. I hope that you find this useful as our FlashbackFriday this week. Here's what I wrote in that LinkedIn post:
"It’s that time of year for parties, year-end team retreats and other events. Are you maximizing the amount of time and impact of these team events?

Having supported year-end programming for teams and organizations for many years I thought it would be useful to share four focus areas you may want to consider as you start preparing, planning and perhaps facilitating your year-end processes.

Number One — What’s the purpose? If you had to distill down the top two or three takeaways from the retreat process or that off site, what is it? The purpose of our year-end function can impact the structure and activities undertaken in the program.

Is the purpose of your year-end event:

to build connection?
to share important information?
do some goal planning?
to build understanding across the silos, that may exist within your organization?

I’d encourage you to think about the top two or three purposes of the upcoming program and link to consideration #2.
Number Two — What is the connection to the business? Think about what is the connection to the business. It’s still very common in today’s world for people to just go through the motions of a traditional annual year end party and /or event.
Are you really maximizing that investment of bringing people together?
Could you build into that luncheon a half-day session before or after, to do some work with your staff teams to support their development, to help them look at their skills and strengths and styles and also to share with them, you know, and help them connect to the link with your business.
What opportunities do you have already formalized for bringing people together at year-end? What changes or additions do you want to make?

Number Three — Do you want to do it all alone? Many organizations today have a committee and amongst that committee membership, there may be some members who would be very comfortable in facilitating your year-end team or organizational process.
So, think about who might be best equipped to do the work? Is it you, members of that committee or maybe you are interested in bringing in an external facilitator?
One of the things we do, is either we come in and facilitate or develop activities which you can facilitate yourself.
Think about how you might be able to leverage the resources you have and or bring in some special guest speakers or external resources to contribute to the environment that you want to create.
Number Four — How are you going to take this forward?One of the biggest challenges that we see in learning and development today is this continued lack of transferability to the work place.
This was what drew me to focus more on the area of Coaching which places an ongoing emphasis on accountability and transferability to the workplace.
One the things I like to encourage organizations that I partner with to always thinking about is – How will you sustain the conversation? How will you take this forward into your work?
Hopefully any year-end retreat process or year-end meeting will have an action step and a very formalized action planning stage. Remember to build in time in the new year to revisit your commitments and accountabilities.

Here’s a quick recap:
Number One - Think about the purpose. What are the top three or four reasons or things that you want people to take away?
Number Two - What’s the link of the year-end program to the business? Is it just to have fun or something else?
Number Three - As your approaching your year-end processes, is this something you want to do or do you want to bring in a facilitator? A third option perhaps is to have something designed for you, so you can facilitate it yourself.

And finally, Number Four. What are the takeaways? How will people sustain the conversation? When will you check in on your actions and commitments?
I hope that you’re finding these ideas valuable, practical, and of course, implementable."

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#Teams365 #1388: Team Building Tip #157: Risk Mitigation

10/19/2017

Today's Teams365 team building question gets you to think about the topic of risk. In my former world of work with the United Nations, I spent quite a bit of time working in the realm of disaster management. This fall's events - from hurricanes to wild fires - has reminded us all of the concept of mitigation. We cannot totally prevent things, but we may be able to minimize impact.

Today's team building question gets you to think about the question "What do we do to mitigate risk?".

As a team this week you may want to:
- Discuss what risks current exist
- What are you doing to minimize impact?
- What are potential threats on the horizon?
- What changes are you making to the way you work so that this does not derail you?
- Where else are you needing to mitigate risk?
- Is there anywhere you need to take more risk?

Enjoy your conversation,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#Teams365 #1387: 20 Focus Areas for Virtual and Remote Team Development #8: Strengths

10/18/2017

In today’s post, we’re exploring strategic planning for virtual teams. How do you make it happen?

Helping team members understand their strengths helps teams leverage their skills and harness their capabilities. Gallup has also found very compelling results when team members are able to bring their strengths to work every day.

In addition to the StrengthsFinder, teams may also want to investigate another strengths assessment that being VIA Strengths – Values in Action.
The following is a short warm-up activity to more detailed discussion as a team around your assessments

When I’ve seen you at your best….

Time: 15 minutes
Materials Needed: None

Instructions:
Virtual team members need acknowledgement as well, particularly as they may receive less feedback that teams who can see each other face-to-face.
This is a short activity which would be part of a
Ask team members to think about one person on the team who they have liaised with, or worked closely with (virtually) in the last quarter. At one of your team meetings you will give people the opportunity to share with that colleague responses to the following questions:

I see one of your strengths as….
I appreciate …..
Going forward, as we work together I’d like to ask you to ______
You bring ….. to our team.

This is an activity which will cultivate positive emotion and will bring team members closer together. Teams need positive reinforcement, as well as constructive feedback. For more on the concept of constructive feedback, check out the Foundations of Feedback series I did. It will be of interest to teams of all kinds who are hoping to build more of a feedback culture.

Enjoy your Wednesday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#Teams365 #1386: Virtual and Remote Team Activity #7: Identifying Strategic Goals

10/17/2017

Identifying strategic goals - Virtual and Remote Teams

It's critical as a virtual or remote team having discussion to identify strategic goals. Even if organizational goals are set, it's likely that those on the ground will be the one who need to implement any key activities, and they are likely to be the ones who may have best knowledge of what's feasible and what's happening in that location/ or around that focus area. One of my favorite activities to undertake is strategic issues mapping with teams, where we ifirst brainstorm all possible options. Next we dtnify the short term, medium term and long term activities at a macro level. This frame can also be country-wide or global issues. Finally, once all ideas are down on the whiteboard, you prioritize the key goals (according to what your frame is).
For virtual or remote teams you may have national plans and regional plans in addition to global plans.

In Teams365 #1177 I indicated that one of the common mistakes made by virtual and remote team leaders was that they do not involve their team in planning and goal setting. Check out that post here.

When going to facilitate strategic issues mapping here's wha you will need to do:
Prepare a blank slide with the strategic issues map on it (see today's slide). Determine what the different layers are for having the focus. Is it short term, medium term, long term?

Amount of time needed - 30 - 120 minutes (could be done in multiple settings)
Materials needed: Annotation ability for everyone. Blank slides and a slide with the strategic issues mapping.

Instructions:
First ask each individual team member to reflect and create a list of the top 3-10 strategic issues they see at their location?
Collect these on one screen -either by having everyone share one at a time or having them annotate their list in a specific spot on a blank slide. Take a screen shot and/or save this.
Next get people to identify whether the issue is short term, long term or medium term. Decide as a tam what those time frames are (i.e. short term is the next quarter OR is short term the next year).
Next, transfer the items from their strategic issues list to the round map. There will be lots of ideas. At this point get all ideas on the table.
Go round and group common issues. Get comments on what issues are showing up.
Finally vote on which ones in each area are priorities. Who is going to take on the task of moving these issues forward?

Have a great Tuesday,
Jennifer

#teams365 #1385: Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #

10/16/2017

This week's Effective Virtual Conversation Tip #17 comes from page 24, where I write "Trying to transplant an in-person meeting or teaching approach in the virtual world may fall flat".

Consider what happens when you try to transplant these ways of working to the virtual space:
1. The "talking head" approach to presentations where it's a one way passage of info - Result: disengagement
2. Calling someone into the meeting while you are mid-stream. Result: they may not be available given the time zone difference
3. Share materials to use real time - result: everyone may be on different devices - mobile, phone, in front of a computer - so people may not be able to access the materials.

While virtual facilitation is not that different, it does require that we adjust and adapt our skills and approaches. It is prudent to NOT ASSUME what works in the in-person world will work in the virtual space.

Masterful virtual facilitation requires pre-planning. Planning in terms of:
* How you will engage people throughout the call and through your presentation
* Who needs to be available
* What materials need to be distributed, when
* Ensuring the technology or platform you are using is the best one (i.e. can everyone do breakouts from the different devices they are calling in from)

Activity:
Think about upcoming virtual presentations/meetings you have. Consider what changes/adaptations you want to make in terms of:
Pre-planning
Engagement
Materials
Participation
Technology/Platform

For more Effective Virtual Conversations Tips, please check out our other Monday tips here at the blog, or our dedicated site for the new book - EffectiveVirtualConversations.com.

With 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

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

TEams365 #1384: Teams365 Video: Leadership Practice - Feedback

10/15/2017

This week's Sunday Teams365 video brings to life Teams365 $1296 and the Leadership Practice of Feedback. In fact, feedback is a skill set needed by leaders and team members alike. In this short two-and-a-half minute video I cover several ideas around feedback and building a feedback culture. Part of building a feedback culture is providing regular positive and constructive feedback. If we are giving too much positive feedback and saying that everything is fine, we may be overlooking the "oops", mistakes and performance changes needed. If we spend too much time focusing only on constructive feedback people may lose motivation, as their strengths and contributions are not being recognized.

This is part of our weekly Sunday series which brings to life past Teams365 blog posts. I hope you enjoy it.

Suggestions on past Teams365 posts you'd like to see brought to life? Drop me an email.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#Teams365 #1383: Weekend Quote

10/14/2017

This weekend's quote comes from Eloise Ristad who wrote "When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel".

In today's business world, a lot is being written about the importance of creating an enabling environment for people to take risks in the business context, without knowing if the solution they are looking for will work. This is part of innovation. Part of creating that type of ongoing learning context is giving the team "permission to fail". If team members are unsure of what will happen if they take a risk, things will continue status quo. And we know that status quo thinking is not the thinking needed in many industries today.

Check out these different articles:
Ron Ashkenas and Lisa Bodell's article in HBR on The Reason Your Team Woln't Take Risks. Read it here.
Salim Ismail's Entrepreneur Article 3 Ways Companies can Foster Smart Risk Taking. Read it here.
Josh Linkner's article in Inc on 7 Steps to a Culture of Innovation. Read it here.

What is the environment you are creating as a team around risk?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#TEams365 #1382: #FlashbackFriday: Feedback

10/13/2017

One of the recent themes I have been focusing on here at the Teams365 blog is how do you foster more trust in teams so that you can have more innovation in the light of disruption, and as you will see in tomorrow's weekend quote, you can encourage more risk taking. These activities pre-suppose that teams are comfortable in giving feedback to each other. I've done a number of posts in the past about providing better feedback and what's important about it. I'll also be stepping into a number of team engagements later this month on providing feedback, so I wanted to revisit this again.

Here's what I wrote in #Teams365 #1296: Leadership Practice - Feedback:

eadership Practice – Feedback
One of the areas many team leaders struggle with is providing feedback. Sometimes feedback has not been well modelled to us, or we may not operate in a feedback culture. Creating the context of regular feedback - both positive and constructive – can be an important shift in changing the way people work and interact. When feedback is sparse we may inadvertently create a culture where team members move below the radar line, and people are afraid to take risks. When we create a culture where feedback is offered on a regular basis – both positively and constructively – we are often able to take more risks and try things out in an iterative fashion.

Several keys for providing feedback include:
Make feedback regular. In moving to a feedback culture we want to make sure that we are providing feedback to our team members in both positive and constructive ways. Poor performance, or performance that is not meeting the mark should not be a surprise at formal performance evaluation moments.

Leaders alone may not be the only ones providing feedback. Building the capacity within our team to provide peer feedback can support a shift to an overall feedback culture. In building the capacity within team members to provide feedback we want to make sure that we train people in providing feedback. It can be useful to start with comments like “ I see one of your strengths as…..” or “I appreciate it when you….”. Constructive feedback from the perspective of “one thing you might want to try is…..” or “one are you may want to focus on is….”.

Be sure that in providing feedback you are speaking to observable behaviors not personality issues. A major trap in feedback is that we attribute poor performance not to things we see, but to heresay or assumptions. It is important to provide feedback on things we have seen ourselves.

Practice giving feedback in authentic ways. When feedback cultures are not established it can feel awkward to provide feedback and it may not be modeled in different voices. Providing team members with the opportunity to provide feedback using a framework mentioned in the last point, may start to build the muscle and confidence around feedback, along with a common framework with different voices.

For more posts on feedback, check out these past Teams365 posts;
Teams365 #525: Three Keys for Providing Effective Feedback. Read it here
Teams365 #1252: Preparing for the Feedback Conversation. Click here to view it: http://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1252-preparing-for-the-feedback-conversation

You may also want to check out the Foundations of Feedback series I did last year in 2016.

This Friday’s post will provide an overview on 4 Essentials with Feedback: http://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-398-four-essentials-with-feedback

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What is important for your team to explore right now around feedback:
- How to give feedback?
- How to prepare to receive feedback?
- Sharing how you want to receive feedback?

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

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!

#Teams365 #1381: Team Building Tip #156: Catching you off-guard

10/12/2017

Today's team building tip gets you to think about the question of "What could catch us off guard?". in today's world of on-going change, disruption and complexity, teams are being impacted by the "unfathomable".

Think about some of these recent "unbelievables" or "unfathomables" in the business context:
Amazon moving into the grocery space with the purchase of Whole Foods
Natural Disasters such as the recent Hurricanes Irma and Maria completely obliterating country-wide infrastructure, with potential for the rebuild to be via solar;

With massive disruption comes significant change, and what impact does it have on the team level? With this week's team question "What could catch us off guard?" I hope that you might not only think about think about the question but also consider some other layers such as:

How would you as a team be prepared for completely reinventing what you do, or how you do it?
What would remain the same for you?
What would change?
Would things like your values survive as an anchor? What might change?
What mindsets would you need to flourish?

In today's era of disruption, it is important to pause regularly and have discussions that do seem outside of the box. What do you notice as 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
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations - Conference calls? Webinars? Virtual coaching work? Pick up a copy of my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, at Amazon. You can also purchase a copy direct from our site, signed by me!