Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

#Teams365 #1055: Conversation Quote

11/20/2016

Recently we've been exploring the topic of virtual facilitation and one of the books I've been reading is an "oldie but a goodie" - Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together by William Issacs.

A huge part of my work is around facilitating richer conversations, and helping leaders do this themselves. In coaching we often talk about crating the space for a good conversation - the container. Issacs reminds us that "the field of conversation is made up of the energy, atmosphere, and memories of the people who are interacting".

How do those three things - energy, atmosphere and memories or history - help or hinder the important conversations you are having right now? What do you notice about how these shape your virtual or digital conversations?

Have a great Sunday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#Teams365 #1054: Weekend Leadership Quote

11/19/2016

Today's weekend leadership quote comes from Max Dupree who wrote:
"When we think about leaders and the variety of gifts pople bring to corporations and institutions, we see that the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts".

What have you done this week to help your team bring their best self to work and use their strengths? What opportunities can you set up next week?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer
Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#Teams365 #1053: Virtual Facilitation Tip #27:

11/18/2016

Our 27th Virtual Facilitation Tip is a reminder to always get a pulse check throughout your virtual calls. Whether it's a meeting or a training session it can be very useful to get feedback so that you are not making assumptions about what people are thinking, learning and feeling about the process.

The three questions I like to use throughout the day for longer virtual learning events, or at the end of a first session, are:
What worked well?
What are you taking away?
What can we do differently next time?

In past posts I have written about the host function of the virtual facilitator's role. It is important that we are looking for ongoing iteration based on the group members needs. It is also important to remember that what works for one group may not work for another.

Questions to consider around this area:
What questions are you asking to get real-time feedback on your virtual conversations?
What trends are you noticing?
What assumptions have you been holding?
What changes do you want to make?

Have a terrific weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#Teams365 #1052: Team Building tip #110: Ingredients for successful Collaboration

11/17/2016

Today's 110th Team Building Tip gets you and your team thinking about what are the ingredients for successful collaboration. For many teams today the ability to collaborate effectively is a differentiator between good teams and exceptional teams. Check out what I have posted on Collaboration here at the Teams365 blog in the past.

Before we look at five ingredients for successful collaboration it is important to keep in mind "Why are we collaborating? Is collaboration needed?
Morten Hensen in his book Collaboration poses this very question.

Once we have determined that collaboration (rather than another strategy such as going it alone, or competing etc) is the best route, we want to then think about a couple factors:
1. The Relationship - What's important about the relationship with that person or persons? Why is collaboration the best stategy. What are their strengths? What are yours? How can you together create more?
2. End Result - What will success look like? What is the shared responsibility for the end result? Why is this end result important? What do you each need to do individually in order to be successful?
3. What's important - When looking at the relationship, the results and everything else, we want to be asking ourselves "What's important about this". This question helps us get "out of the muck" connecting our actions with the bigger picture. It can support enhanced motivation or engagement, as well as also confirming at times that collaboration isn't the best strategy and shouldn't be undertaken.
4. What's at stake? - Another question to be asking is "What's at stake?". If this is successful - What happens? If you are not successful - What happens?

If you are using this as your weekly team question spend time asking yourselves these four questions around the issue(s) you are to collaborate on.

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#Teams365 #1051: Virtual Facilitation Tip #26: Get People up and Active

11/16/2016

Today's Virtual Facilitation Tip #26 encourages you to get people up and active! We often think that we need to sit for the entire virtual process. As more and more becomes apparent about the health impacts of a sedentary lifestyle, it's going to be even more important to get people up and active.

Virtual learning can be mobile learning and in your work consider how you can get people up, away from the screen and get active.
Some possible ways to do this includes:
Use a platform which has a mobile app which allows people to connect from their mobile devices. One reason I use Zoom is because of the wonderful options for connection for group members. They can call in from a desk top or lap top, from their mobile device or from the phone.

Building in experiential and kinesthetic processes into the virtual learning design. This might involve doing something individually or collectively from your office. For example, I often do work with leaders and we explore some of their strengths. If I'm working with a group that is from the same organization, I'll send out a document with the names of the skills which they can print off on their computer. We then are able to work with these labels in each location. It makes for a much more exciting, memorable and interactive call.

Using time "offline" during your call for people to get up a do something. In my own work over the years this has been the common part of the virtual retreats I run. We meet for approximately 15 minutes as a group online and then have the remaining 45 minutes spent offline. During that block there are usually some opportunities to get up and get moving.

What other approaches might you use to get people up and moving in your calls?

Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#TEams365 #1050: Virtual Facilitation Tip #25: Make Connections Visible

11/15/2016

Today's Virtual Facilitation Tip encourages you to spend time on your call for people to create connections visually. A large part of the learning cycle is getting people to make connections.

In a virtual program mindset, creating connections visually could include mapping things or drawing out a roadmap. Over the next few weeks I'll be hosting a series of virtual planning retreats for business owners and leaders who want to create a pause point for some 2017 business and program planning. We'll be using the frame of a roadmap throughout our planning process.

Visually creating connections could also involve constellation work which gets you to map a series of relationships. Check out this article from the Human Systems Institute which goes into constellation mapping around relationships.

The benefit of giving people time to do this is that it creates a visual anchor and clarity around next steps.

What are the opportunities in upcoming virtual events for you to create connections? What approaches do you want to use to make it more visible?

Have a great Tuesday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

#Teams365 #1049: Key Year End Team Building Prompts - Virtual Teams

11/14/2016

At the end of the year it is can be a great opportunity to bring virtual teams together. It's an opportunity to take stock of what the year was like and also look at what lies ahead for the current year. What do you have planned for your virtual team? Bringing people together could be as simple as hosting a one hour year end call, or as elaborate as bringing in an external facilitator (like us!) to facilitate a full day virtual (or in person) team building session.

In a year end activity you may want to:

Provide acknowledgement for what everyone has done
Provide a summary of the different activities/milestones people have achieved
Explore and set goals for the upcoming year
Create your vision for the upcoming year
Identify a theme for the upcoming year
Schedule in key dates (the old adage being what doesn’t get scheduled doesn’t get done). As a team talk about the different activities you want to participate in in the new year. When will they happen?
Have fun!

Key questions you will want to explore during your time together include:

What’s been your biggest success this year? (Get each person to reflect individually)
What’s been our biggest success?
What have you learned about yourself?
What’s important for you to do more of next year?\What’s important fo you to do less of next year?
What doe you need to stop doing?
Who do we need to build better relationships with?
What activities need to be refined?
How do we keep things on our radar screen?
What can we do to augment or maximize our successes?
What can we do to mitigate the downfalls we experienced this year?

A couple of other tips:
It might be great to take it out of the office, provide a secret gift exchange amongst team members or even make it a regular activity for each quarter
What are the additional questions you want to ask and consider in your work together?

Curious about what might be possible for your team? Email me to discuss how we can support you in creating a memorable, and impactful, year end team event (in person or virtual).

Best
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
I'll be hosting a 4 hour virtual retreat this Thursday between 12 - 4pm ET which is open to the public. Geared for business owners (or leaders) who are wanting to create their 2017 vision and business plan. More info here.

#Teams365 #1048: Sunday Fall BAck: YEar End Meetings, and Planning for 2017

11/13/2016

Sunday's are a great day to catch up on past items. This week I wanted to direct you to a couple of our past Teams365 Team Leader Breakfast series. These fifteen minute audios will be of interest to not only team leaders, but also for business owners and team members themselves.

You may want to check out the following Team Leader Breakfast Cafe Calls (each 15 minutes)
November 2014: Year End High Impact Meetings and Events
December 2014 Breakfast Cafe call: New Year Planning

Click here to listen into both calls

I'll be hosting a series of virtual retreats in the next few weeks for those who want to engage in business or program planning. Join me for a hands-on four hour block of time to roll up your sleeves, and put pen to paper. More info about our year end virtual retreats here.

Enjoy your Sunday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Check out our newest on-demand course: Teams365 Teamwork Foundations
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365

#Teams365 #1047; Saturday Quote

11/12/2016

AS Buddha wrote centuries ago "It's better to travel well than to arrive". Where are you noticing that the journey is richer than the destination?

Have a great weekend,
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

#Teams365 #1046: Virtual Facilitation Tip #24: Emojis

11/11/2016

Today's Virtual Facilitation Tip gets you thinking about how to incorporate emojis in your virtual training sessions. They are a great tool for not only engagement but feedback. Here are five opportunities for you to incorporate emjois into your next virtual session:

As a check in at the start of the call - have people select and share the emoji that represents them as they start the call

Mid point do a check in to see how people are feeling about their learning. This is a great pulse check.

At the end of the session, have people choose an emoji which represents their learning experience with you overall that day.

Two other ways we can incorporate emojis are to:
In communication skills training, get people to select emojis which represent each of the character's mindset after showing a difficult conversation.

In leadership skills training for virtual leaders have group members listen to a voice only call between a leader and their team members. Get people to select an emoji to represent how you think the two parties are feeling. Then show them a video recording of the same conversations where you can see their faces. How accurate were they?

Emojis are not only fun (or silly to some) but they can be used as a great indicator and tool for learning.

Have a great weekend,
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
Last call! Join us this coming weekend in Toronto for the November 12 -13 Group and Team Coaching Intensive - 2 days of team and group coaching skill training (approved for 19 hrs of CCEs with the ICF)