Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

#teams365 #3060 Week in review

5/22/2022

This week we took a look at Strengths in today’s workplace, as we dive into Chapter 16 of Reconnecting Workspaces. Here’s what we covered in the last week:
Saturday – Weekly Journaling Prompt
Friday’s Flashback around Strengths and a short video from 2017!
Thursday’s Myth of Remote and Hybrid Work
Wednesday’s Principles for Remote Work
Tuesday’s – Reconnecting Workspaces – Magnifying Strengths
Monday’s – Strengths in Focus

Have a great weekend!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3059 Weekly Journaling Prompt – What’s

5/21/2022

Welcome back to another Saturday Weekly Journaling Prompt. This week’s prompt is “What I do to activate my strengths is…”
As we have seen this week strengths are an important approach to accelerating in today’s workspaces.
Enjoy this week’s prompt!

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3058 Flashback Friday: Video – Working With Strengths with Your Team

5/20/2022

I thought it would be interesting today to take a look back at a short 5 minute video which was part of the A-Z of Team Development series from 2017. It actually hasn’t dated so enjoy today’s flashback and video –

We are at S in our A-Z journey of different team development activities. S brings us to strengths. There is a huge business case for creating environments where strengths are leveraged within teams. From my many years as a team developer I have found that having dialogue and doing work around helping team members understand their unique contributions and strengths can go a long way. It can help a team understand where their collective strengths are as well as gaps. It can also help a team understand where they may be overcompensating or overfocusing because of their natural abilities.

There are many great resources to look at Strengths including StrengthsFinder 2.0, as well as the VIA Strengths Survey which focuses more on Signature Strengths.

Listen in as I share a little more about strengths in this short 5 minute video:

What can you do to focus more on strengths?

Enjoy the conversation,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3057 Myth of Remote Work

5/19/2022

We all can do things equally well. Research has found you can develop strengths, but it takes more effort grow weaknesses and to complete tasks which are not in your arena. Research by Gallup indicates that helping team members leverage their strengths has an impact on productivity, engagement, reduced turnover, and increased sales.210 Strengths Based leadership does not mean that people focus only on work that leverages their strengths;
they find opportunities to lead from those strengths as often as they can, as they will find
completing tasks easier, quicker, and better when able to do so.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3056 Principle for Remote and Hybrid Work

5/18/2022

Helping people connect with their strengths can lead to a more engaged, more productive workplace.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3055 Reconnecting the Workspace Tip: Magnifying Strengths

5/17/2022

Building a strengths-based culture helps people bring their best selves to work. In times of uncertainty, change, and disruption, we may lean more heavily into our strengths, even to the point of overuse. What strengths are getting overmagnified? Which ones need more attention?

Connect team members with their strengths through activities geared to magnify strengths, such as:
• Rolling out team strengths exploration sessions
• Matching project roles to strengths
• Providing peer feedback about a colleague’s strengths in action

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3054 Strengths in Focus

5/16/2022

“Focusing on strengths is the surest way to greater job satisfaction,
team performance and organizational excellence.”
– Marcus Buckingham

For the last few weeks we have been focusing on coaching and mentoring, both modalities offering an opportunity for leading with a strengths-based approach.

The empirical research around strengths is quite compelling. In times of disruption, change and transition, strengths are an important element to lean into.
Gallup has undertaken decades of research on the topic of strengths and has found that individuals and teams that are able to lead more by strengths, are:
•       6x more engaged
•       3 x more likely to report having excellent quality of life
•       8.9% more profitable
Also, teams which focus on strengths have 12.5% greater productivity
(Gallup Strengths Center)

During transition, change and disruption, collaboration becomes an even more important element to activate. Whether we are part of a partnership, or a team, it is important for explore what each person brings, and how these uniquely fit together.

What are you doing to explore strengths?

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3053 Week in Focus

5/15/2022

This week’s Sunday Week in Review provides us with the opportunity to focus on two areas – mentoring and meetings. Both are critical for today’s evolving workspace.
Take a look back at these posts from this week:
Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt on What Will Create Flow
Friday’s Flashback – Five Hybrid and Virtual Meeting Tips
Thursday’s Five Benefits to Mentoring
Wednesday’s Activate Mentoring in Today’s Workspace
Tuesday’s focus on Meeting Tips
Monday’s Reading from Reconnecting Workspaces

What’s going to support you in continuing to do your best work in this changing context?

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3052 Weekly Journaling Prompt: What will create flow?

5/14/2022

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets us thinking about the question of “What will create flow?”. Flow is a key state for high performance in today’s workspace. Research from CZ..and others has found that flow gets created when:
INSERT Flow

It’s in these moments of flow that we can really create grounding. Consider these questions:
Where and when have you experienced flow?
Where were you?
What is going to support you in creating more flow?
What’s going to help you create more flow in your day.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

#teams365 #3051 Flashback Friday – Five Hybrid and Virtual Meeting Tips

5/13/2022

In keeping with this week’s reach back to the BizToolkit blog I thought it would reach back to another blog post, this one which includes 5 Virtual Meeting Tips, as appropriate for the hybrid space today as it was back in 2008 when I wrote the post:

Tip 1 – Establish Ground Rules or Ways of Working for the Group

This is an essential for any group process. Spend time at the start of your work together to develop common ground rules or ways of working to frame how you will work together. These should be written down and circulated to the group as a reminder.

Number one rule -- Don't assume! It's very dangerous to do when you are in a room together, and even more so for when you are working across time, geography and cultures!

Some examples of ways of working for a virtual team might include:
* Start and end calls on time
* Rotate call times to meet the needs of different team members in all time zones
* Respecting all team members ideas and perspectives (which does not mean agreeing with all of them, rather respecting them)
* 100% Focus on the meeting at hand (and not surfing the net, reading other materials, sending emails during the call)

What else would you include in your group’s groundrules?

Tips 2 and 3 – Be respectful of time
A major challenge, and opportunity, of holding team meetings across distance and timezones, is that participants may be calling in at different times of the work day (or even before or after work). Some team members may be gearing up for the work day, others may be winding down.

Virtual Team meeting management requires respect of time on two levels:
1. Start and End the meeting on time. If the meeting is set to 60 minutes, make sure that the meeting is 60 minutes
2. Set calls at times convenient to the group -- for example, setting a 10 am call Toronto time, would mean 7am for someone in LosAngeles, 4 pm in Germany, and midnight in Japan. Take a look at where your team members are located, and if necessary, rotate call times to make the convenience equal for all members. If a majority of members are based in a similar time zone, ensure that the call has enough leverage and substance to warrant different time zone team members calling in in their pyjamas.

Tip 4 – Have an agenda - and one that works!
A really common pitfall for most teams today is the Death by Meeting syndrome, so wonderfully captured in Patrick Lencioni's book of the same name.

Lack of an agenda or roadmap for in-person meetings can be deadly, and for virtual teams exponentially so!

Some quick tips for virtual team meeting agendas include:
* Circulate the agenda a day or two before the call (keeping in mind the impact of weekends in different time zones)
*Recap at the end of all calls: agreed action points, who will be accountable, next steps
* Time at the start of meetings for a short update from all callers
* Ensure that there is enough time for all essential items to be covered. If you find that meetings consistently go longer than 60 minutes and you just can't squeeze it all in, what about going to a 75 minute, or 90 minute format?
* Circulate the key meeting points or a recap next steps as close to the end of the meeting (within hours,not days of the meeting end). A simple template approach can be quickly used for this.

Tip 5 – Build connections outside of the meeting
Virtual Teams often start off with great gusto and energy. The lack of face to face meetings can make it difficult for some teams to sustain the inital energy over time.

Wherever possible, create opportunities for team members to build connections outside of the meeting. Whether it is holding formal face to face meetings on an annual basis (strongly recommended, and in great frequency than every year!), or creating informal virtual networking functions outside of the usual team meetings, time spent by the team outside of the formal meetings can help to support the team's development and sustained performance.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.