This week's Team Building Tip gets you to think about the question "What are you most proud of accomplishing this year?". There may be a myriad of ideas that rush to mind, and our accomplishments may be multi-fold.  As a team, or as individuals, taking time to think about, and note our greatest accomplishments can set the stage for planning for the new year.

Last weekend I shared this week's Teams365 Video - Questions for Year-end Planning. You can view it here.

Have a great Thursday and wrap up to November!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

For many years my work was as a Program Director. We often say that program management is like project management on steroids, where programs may be the culmination of a number of smaller discrete projects. Consider a program such as a post- natural disaster rehabilitation  (or in other words, what many countries are going through now after the hurricanes of this season). As a Program Manager and Director I was very aware of how important project management skills were not only to me, but my entire team, which was spread across multiple countries. As a virtual team having a shared set of skills, practices and processes, helped us to be effectively, reduce duplication, and achieve results. Our 18th focus area in the 20 Areas for Remote and Virtual Team Activities is therefore Project Management.

Regardless of what project framework you are using - Agile, traditional or other, rojects need to come in on scope – on time, on budget and scope. As virtual teams it is important to be tracking projects on a regular basis as it is likely that one task not completed by one team member may have an impact on another part of the team. Getting into the regular practice of sharing project updates before your project status meetings, using a Red, Yellow, Green task chart, can be valuable in helping team members visually see what needs attention, before you come together for discussion. With the prior knowledge of what needs attention you can spend your time on the project status meeting working around actions and solutions on issues which have been flagged. This saves a lot of time rather than having people check in and go-round.
 
Tool – Project Status Reports
Time – Step 1 – Submit Red, Yellow and Green light reports prior to meeting. Pre-submission of project status reports to cut down on report back time.  Status meeting may run for 20 – 60 min or more, depending on how efficient the team is.
Questions to use:
Taking a look at the project status reports:
What needs attention as it has been flagged yellow – needing attention?
What needs urgent attention as it has been flagged red – needing attention urgently?
What could this red flag derail or get in the way of?
What needs to happen in order to shift this to yellow or green?
What exact steps are needed?
Who is going to be responsible for this?

Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

We are back to the 20 different activities for virtual and remote teams and have finally made our way to Intercultural skills and knowledge. This is an area which can help teams excel in terms of their understanding of each other, and it can also be a major source of misunderstanding and conflict.

Intercultural challenges are some of the greatest challenges for virtual teams. Without stereotyping team members it can be very important to recognize what team member’s natural working style may be, and how their home office (country of residence) may place emphasis on how things are communicated (direct/indirect), value of hierarchy  (hierarchical versus participatory ), as well as how much is done independently versus in a group. What often emerges in virtual teams is creating a team culture which may not necessarily be the synthesis of all of the team members. As part of your team development process, consider who you are as a team and what you value. As you read through the upcoming culture scales, where do you reside along the continuum?

Keeping in mind the work of Geert Hofestede where we have cultural variances across:
Individualism-collectivism;
Uncertainty avoidance;
Power distance (strength of social hierarchy)
and masculinity-femininity (task orientation versus person-orientation).
Long-term Orientation
He also added Indulgence vs Restraint
View his six areas here. Culture scales also often include Direct and Indirect – consider how direct your communication may be.
 
Another framework you may want to explore is that of Erin Meyer author of The Culture Map. She distinguishes between 8 different culture scales

• Communicating: explicit vs. implicit
• Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback
• Persuading: deductive vs. inductive
  
• Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical
• Deciding: consensual vs. top down
• Trusting: task vs. relationship
• Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoid confrontation

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-culture-map-8-scales-for-work-2015-1
 
As a team it can be very useful to have dialogue and even map yourself along these cultural continua, one at a time, having dialogue around where you naturally fall. This activity could take upwards of one entire team meeting of an hour.

As you look at each of the culture scales (Hofstede, Meyer or other), have discussion around these question:

1. What does activity under this culture scale look like?
2.  Where is your home business context along this scale?
3. Where are you  as an individual professional along this scale? (Pause to have the team note what’s similar/different/interesting along this continuua)
4. Where are we as a team? (Pause to have the team come to consensus or agreement around where you are on this continuum and what that looks like behaviorally).

What is the culture of our team?
What are the five or six adjectives we use the describe our team?

As a wrap up ask the team to share what is important about each of those areas.

Helping the team understand who they are as a collective, helps to create clarity around their own culture, “behavioral norms” and how things are done here. This provides consistency and more alignment across the team.

What are the conversations which are important to have in this area for you as a team?

With best wishes
Jennifer

WIt is Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations Tip. This one is tip #23 in which I wrote "Change is the new norm in the virtual domain. Being able to lead through uncertainty, and not always having all the details or knowing the context, is key to virtual team leadership"  - Effective Virtual Conversations, pp 330.

Shifting to leading virtual and remote teams means that we need to empower those on our team. They will usually have more details that we might.

Leading through uncertainty is a new norm for leaders of all kinds. What are some tips for leading through uncertainty? Consider these ideas:

7 Top Tips for Leading Through Uncertainty by Sarah Lewis at Training Journal. Read it  here.

Financial Post's Article - Where to Focus When Leading Through Uncertainty - Read it here.

Kathy Bennett's book - Living and Leading Through Uncertainty: Developing leaders' capability for uncertainty

What tips do you have for others in terms of leading through uncertainty, whether your team is in person or virtual?

Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer

This week's Sunday Teams365 video brings to life a handful of year-end reflection questions. As we move into the end of November, it's a great time to carve out 15 minutes to take stock of the past year, making note of what's worked, what you've accomplished, and what you've learned.
Stay tuned for an upcoming future focused planning video for 2018!
I'll be hosting a couple of year-end virtual planning retreats in the coming weeks - if you are looking to carve out some time for planning, I hope you will join me!

Today's Leadership quote comes from Fred Hilmer who wrote, " Leadership requires five ingredients - brains, energy, determination, trust and ethics. The key challenges of today are in terms of the last two - trust and ethics".

What do you see as essential ingredients for leadership? What would you indicate is the role of trust and ethics in your work right now?

If you are visiting us for the first time, please check out past posts related to:

Trust
Leadership
Teamwork.

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

This week's Saturday quote comes from Winston Churchill who wrote "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm". 

​Two of the core themes I find myself speaking to leaders of all stripes these days are around experimentation and motivation. In today's business context, what worked yesterday may not work today. Becoming comfortable with trying things out that do not work, while still maintaining the motivation to keep experimenting is key.

​Questions to consider:
​What things haven't worked recently in your experimentation?
​What have you learned from these experiences?
​How have they shaped your next steps?
​Where would you put your level of motivation and enthusiasm around this project area?
What changes do you want to make?

Have a great Saturday,
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
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Contact us and let us know how we can support you in helping your team reach its' full potential - (416)996-8326

For many, this week signals the wind-down of the  year, and the start of many team and organizational events. I thought that it would be appropriate to reach back to some of the year-end questions I posed last December, for this week's #FlashbackFriday post. Whether you are taking stock this week, or later next month, they are good questions to be reflecting on, and sparking conversations around.
​
Here are ten questions to support you in taking a look back at the last year:
1. What's been your biggest success this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?
3 What habits have most supported you this year?
4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?
8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
10. What and how will you celebrate the successes of this year With whom?

Enjoy your reflection!

Have a great day,
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) and Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
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
​Looking for more cool things to do with your team? Check out our Potentials Realized store for books, e-manuals, and the Conversation Sparker Cards.
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

As many of my colleagues and readers pause for Thanksgiving today, it provides me an opportunity here in Toronto to stop and pause and say my own thanks.

I wanted to take a few minutes through today's post to say THANK YOU! What started as an experiment back on January 1st 2014, has now become a weekly and daily habit of writing. Thanks to the thousands who have joined me on this journey over the years, whether you are a leader, a coach, a student, a manager, a professional, a..... In my travels, I know many of you have found insights here which has helped you in your work and conversations.

As time starts shifting forward to 2018, I am looking forward to stepping into my 5th year of daily blogging. That's a lot of writing and it definitely helped me shape my book released this summer - Effective Virtual Conversations, as well as the manuscript I am working on this month for Virtual Teams and Leaders (more to come on this in later 2018!).

I hope that you will take a few minutes today to say thanks, whether you are celebrating Thanksgiving or not. This year's holidays, starting with our Canadian Thanksgiving which we celebrated last month, have taken on new meaning for me, after moving through significant surgery earlier this year, I am feeling like I am getting back on my feet - almost there! And a big thanks to those who have supported me through my recuperation, and getting back to work!

What are you grateful for today?

Enjoy it,
Jennifer

Our Wednesday post brings us to the 16th in the series of the 20 different activities for remote and virtual teams. Today's posts brings us to work-life issues, a topic near and dear to many remote worker's heart. With timezones stretching across teams, and the potential for working very long hours, having dialogue around what is the balance between work and life is critical. Focusing on creating systems to track and support team members with enhanced boundaries is key. A starting point is to figure out what, and how, each person is working on the team.

Work-life issues for virtual teams can be very important, especially when your team is global and the potential to be working round the clock is real. We are increasingly hearing more about the business case for rest and renewal, and sadly over the course of the last decade since the annual vacation deprivation study began.

Here’s what I wrote back in 2006 based on the new annual Workplace Vacation Study: (link to http://biztoolkit.blogspot.ca/search?q=vacation+deprivation) :
Every year Expedia undertakes an International Vacation Deprivation (TM) Survey, looking at vacation habits of employed workers in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France and Australia.

This year's (2006) results included:

• 33% of employed adults in the US usually don't take all their vacation, with the average worker surveyed giving back an average of 4 days to their employer. This translates to 574 Million Vacation days/year worth, $75.72 Billion.
• 24% of employed adults in Canada usually don't take all their vacation, with the average employed person giving back an average of 2 vacation days to their employer. This translates to $5.1 Billion dollars per year.

The results of the whole 2006 Expedia survey can be found at www.vacationdeprivation.com.
I was interviewed last week by Kavita Gosyne of the Metro News here in Toronto. She was looking at the importance of vacation for all Canadian workers, and particularly for young professionals. As I mention in her article, vacations are important for workers of all ages. As I stated, "Not only is vacation time good for the employee, but it is good for the company. "A lot of it comes down to the difference between working and working productively. Are they(the employees) working at optimal productivity? Work-life balance impacts company productivity and profitability. It makes (good) business sense.".
What is the state of work-life balance for you? For your company? Are you fully recharged and working at optimal productivity levels? If you would like more information and resources I would invite you to visit my sister blog, Your Balanced Life!

Here’s a quick activity you can undertake as a virtual team – Time Tracker
Time needed 1 week plus 10 -15 minutes:
Materials needed: Pen and paper

Have team members track where their time is going over the course of a week. They may choose to do this by noting their day in 15-minute blocks. It might include: Start of day, projects (take a look at my own mapping from a few days).
Once the team has completed this, come back together and share your insights around key components like:
Meetings
Collaboration with others
Project Focus
Administrative tasks – report
Reading
Personal Development – Training/Coaching/Mentoring
 
It may also be interesting to share your individual and group start and end times.
What does work-life look like for each of you? What does it mean? Depending on your own team this may be a very eye-opening conversation as it may also point to some significant differences in the team – i.e. who embraces a work-to-life mindset (i.e. I work so that I can have money to meet my needs and do what I want) or a live-to-work mindset (I work because of the joy, and benefits of work).
As you have these discussions and undertake this work, what do you notice? What changes if any are needed?

Enjoy your Wednesday,
Jennifer