Audio is making a big comeback in a lot of ways, given the popularity and presence of Google Home Minis, Alexa’s and other audio assistants in our kitchens, homes and cars.

Since the Team365 blog began back in 2014, I’ve dedicated Sunday as a day where I’ve been sharing either audios (what you’d find up to about 2016) or videos (most of the new Sunday posts from 2016 onwards).

Given that there’s some great content that’s still relevant (yes, even though the context is changing so much, things do remain the same!) which I thought would be useful to spotlight a couple of times a month in a From the Vault Series where I’ll reach back into our repository and share past posts.

Here are three audios from 2015 that I think you’ll like, aligned with this month’s topic of teamwork:

Ten Questions To Be Asking As  A Team Leader (Teams365 #376 – 22 minutes) 

Three Problem Solving Tools (Teams365 #488 – 9.5 minutes) 

Hosting Effective Virtual Meetings (Teams365 #390 – 10.5 minutes) 

What new audios would you like to see? I’ll be starting to schedule some of our November and December posts in the next few weeks so do let me know what content you’d like to see here at the Teams365 blog for the end of 2018 and start of 2019.

Looking forward to our 3:30 pm call!

Best,
Jennifer

This week’s Journaling prompt gets you to reflect and write on the statement of “I am most looking forward to…”

Building in time each week to reflect ad write in an unstructured way helps to focus, clarify and sometimes even ease the mind.
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The Huffington Post published an article last year by Thai Nguyen entitled “Ten surprising benefits you’ll get from keeping a journal” highlighting some of the benefits of journaling ranging from support to goals, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and others such as. Read the article here.

What do you see as the benefits from writing a journal?

For more than a decade as I lived and worked throughout Central and South America, working for the UN and several grassroots development organizations, I kept a regular daily journal. Journaling has always been an amazing tool for me to:

• Capture ideas and events
• Clarify thoughts and explore options
• Identify themes in my work and life I may not have connected before
• Help to identify and focus on priorities

If you have missed any of the past Saturday journaling prompts, view them here. 
 
Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

​This week’s FlashbackFriday post takes us to the territory of two past posts which explored the teamwork skills of Listening and Working Across Differences. If I had to categorize the different areas teams prioritize as wanting to get better in, or develop, it’s often in these two areas.
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Let us take a look back at two posts I’ve written – one on Listening, and one on Working Across Differences.
 
First, here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1103  on Listening. Read it here or below.

“Exceptional teams don't usually emerge as exceptional. They develop over time skills in different areas.

​The first area we are going to look at is Listening. In a team context listening is of utmost importance - it's listening on multiple levels. Listening to what the other team member is saying, and also listening for how it connects with your work. Listening is also hearing the emotional and requests behind the words. When teams are in conflict, there is usually a request behind each complaint that exists.

​In listening we want to listen on multiple levels:

​1. To the words that are being shared. This in fact only comprises about 8% of the message.
​2. To the tone, pace and pitch of the statement - what do you notice about the energy and impact of how the words are being spoken? This comprises more than 30% of the message.
​3. To the body language. What do you notice about the person's gestures? How they are standing? What does their body language say about how open or closed they are? Body language comprises about 55% of the message when we are in face to face settings.

​One of the challenges with team communication today is that so much is done by instant messaging or text in which we have no tone or body language to help make sense of what the words really mean. The impact of this means that words and the way they are interpreted are heavily influenced by the levels of trust and connection that exist within the team. You may be interested in checking out these two posts for boosting trust and connection in your virtual teams:

​Teams365 #258: Create Connection within Your Virtual Team. Read it here.

​Teams365 #610: Four Ways to Build trust in your team.

​There are some past posts I've written on listening, which is also a paramount skill in coaching. Take a look at these past posts related to listening:

​Teams365 #914: The Foundations of TeamWork - Listening - Read it here

​Teams365 #192: Listening And Coaching as A Leader. Read it here”
 
Working across differences is another challenging area for many teams today. The differences which exist on a team are often the greatest strength. However, how do we become more effective at working across differences? Consider what I wrote in this post – Teams365 #1110 – Working Across Differences.
 
“Today's teamwork skill in focus is the ability to work across differences. In today's world of ongoing collaboration and teamwork, this skill set is essential.

​Some tips for working across differences include:
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​* Knowing each member's unique strengths and what they bring to the table. StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a wonderful tool to help people understand more about their unique strengths. Click here to read what I have written in the past about the benefits of leading from strengths, and supporting the team in understanding their strengths.

* Creating an environment where differences are celebrated and encouraged

​* Understanding the different styles which exist on a team. I usually use the Everything DiSC with the clients I work with. This helps to provide insights around people's natural working style, to support individuals in learning more about their "go to" approaches, especially when under stress. Understanding this also helps to adapt their style for working with others.

​What other ways do you want to support individuals on the team in working across differences?”

As you step into the weekend, what’s one concrete thing you can do to support your team in enhancing their skills in either listening or working across differences this month?

Best,
​Jennifer

What team practices are supporting relationships?
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From the realm of high performance we know that teams which excel have strong relationships. Part of this is making sure we have strong team practices – that could include Monday morning meetings, a mini-team event each month, a Thursday night social or a quarterly team development activity.

Consider your team right now and think about what is needed on the part of the team. What will help the team connect, have fun and get to know each other? Having fun as a team is important as it can help people relax and bring themselves more naturally into their work. If they are not able to bring their natural self to the workplace, disconnect may happen between how they work at home and how they work at work.

Here are seven different ways teams may be connecting with each other:

1. Daily huddles or quick status meetings (10-15 minutes) to keep projects on task.
2. Monday morning meetings – a meeting at the start of the week can support focus and alignment for the team, assisting with priorities and information sharing. Monday meetings may also flag issues that need to be addressed but haven’t been noted before.
3. Monthly project assessments – some teams may do a short monthly team meeting, highlighting key projects which need attention and/or doing a review. Some of the more common project questions are included under the next category of team debrief.
4. Team debriefs post major project (or mid-term). These may get the team to identify lessons learned, what’s working, what’s not and suggestions for the future.
5. A weekly or monthly social event around town. PingPong and darts are favorite options. Escape rooms and/or axe throwing are for teams who are more edgy (note: these options may not be applicable or appropriate for every team and their culture!).
6. Quarterly Booster Shots – Dedicating half a day or a full day to team development and/or learning. It could be undertaking an assessment together such as the Everything DiSC, or StrengthsFinder.
7. Key to making these valuable team practices, teams will want to consider the purpose and efficiency of each approach. Just because you do it, doesn’t mean it’s going well.
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What is the team finding valuable? What needs a change?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Today’s post brings us back to another teamwork skill, that of conflict management. With teams excelling because of their differences, conflict is inevitable. In fact, it’s likely that conflict will be part of a creative, and innovative team environment.

In working through conflict, it is important to think about the following:
How do you approach conflict? Are you a conflict averter? Are you an embracer of conflict? Are you a conflict creator?

How is conflict addressed in your organization? Within your team? Is this the best way to approach conflict?

As you think about the approaches you use around conflict how does it relate to the importance of the relationships which exist? The results you are looking after? If you were to adjust your approach for the benefit of the results and relationships you are looking for, what changes would you make?

On this note, we usually want to adjust our approach to conflict based on how important the end result and relationships are. If the result is important, we may choose to push for that, at the expense of the relationship or making someone angry. If the relationship is important and the result is not, we may choose to compromise. If both the relationship and result is important we may opt to collaborate.

What’s the cost of not addressing conflict?

If you were to make one adjustment around conflict, what would that be?

For more on the topic of teamwork and conflict, check out these past Teams365 posts.
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Enjoy your Wednesday,
Jennifer

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” – Theodore Roosevelt
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The skills of collaboration, partnering and relationship management are all critical for success in today’ workplace. Whether we work in-person or virtually, being able to build solid relationships with other members of our team, others inside the organization, and potentially external partners and customers/clients is critical for success.

It’s important to be able to build relationships:

• Upwards with our boss and other leaders in the organization.
• Across with peers in the organization – in other teams and departments
• Downwards with anyone we manage or lead.

Whether we have a formal title of leadership or not, partnering, collaboration and relationship management are all critical skill sets.

One of the biggest adjustments remote team leaders and members face is how to build relationships, and work through others in the virtual space.

Consider you work and what it may look like as a professional in today’s context. Who do you relate with on a regular basis? What value are you providing in the interactions you have? What type of support do they need from you.
​
We often bandy the term “collaboration” around in today’s workplace thinking that all tasks and projects need collaboration. As I have written several times collaboration may be overused at times, employed when individual effort may be best, and under-utilized when a collaborative approach would be best.
Questions to consider when you collaborate or partner with others:

• What are the outcomes we are looking for? How will we know we’ve been successful?
• Do we need to collaborate, cooperate, collaborate or co-create?

Each one of these requires different risk, input and levels of relationship. To what level do you need to be involved?

• What’s important to acknowledge about the impact of collaboration?
• When we do collaborate how can I be relied upon? What do others need from me? What do I need from them?
• What check ins will we have along the way to identify what’s working, what adjustments are needed, and what learning we are having?

Best wishes
Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation’s tip #66 brings us to tip #3 in the series of Virtual Team Success. This week’s tip gets you thinking about how you want to keep in touch. In today’s virtual space there are several vehicles teams can leverage for keeping in touch, as well as facilitating meetings and planning.
Let’s take a look at three of them:

Zoom – Great for streaming and meetings on the go, zoom provides multiple benefits – from the  ability to screen share to the ability to activate breakouts in meeting space. With the teams that I work with, many professionals like the flexibility of being able to call in via phone, connect via their desk top or lap top, as well as use the mobile app to connect via phone.

Skype – Skype for business is being leveraged by many organizations today. With the benefits of streaming and visuals, it provides a great option for meetings and presentations.

The final platform I wanted to mention today was that of Slack. Slack is a common go-to platform for real-time communication. 

When working with smaller teams around planning and projects you may also want to check out platforms including Trello and Asana.

What are some of your favorite virtual platforms? What do you use for meetings? Presentations? Project Management? Communication?

​Let us know by sharing in the comments.

Thanks!
Jennifer

This weekend, we are going to take a look back at some of the Teams365 Teamwork Videos already created, just in case you missed them. Take a look at these past videos:
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Teams365 #885: Accountability and the Team: 1 minute 41 seconds – View it here.
Teams365 #553: Project Check Points - Check it out here.
Teams365 #391: Delegation - Watch it here.
Teams365 #1611: Teamwork and Complexity/ Focus and Renewal - Check it out here.
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A reminder for you to feel free to link to any of these videos or show them as part of your upcoming team sessions.

If there are videos you would like to see created from past Teams365 posts, please let me know.
 
Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is a fun one. This week consider using “If I were to describe myself as a superpower, it would be….”
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Everyone is unique, and being aware of what you are “GREAT” at, and what gives you a competitive edge is critical. With a quickly evolving business context, being able to articulate what values, skills and strengths you bring to the table, helps you, and helps others that you team with.
Here are a few prompting questions to help you think about your superpowers:

• What are you great at?
• What are your strengths?
• As you look back to your accomplishments this year, what skills have you honed or developed?
• How do others you work with describe your top 3-5 skills and strengths?
• What is the “kryptonite” to your superpower (in other words, what has the potential to decimate it?)?

This is one of those weekly journaling prompts that may inspire you to draw or look for some inspiration visually or graphically.
Let us know by using the comments below what you see as your superpower.

Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

Every Friday I take a look back at some of the varied posts related to our current monthly focus. This month, we are exploring teamwork skills.

As a starting point this week, I’m reaching back to 2015 for this post which included 6 questions to consider with your team: Read it here.

1. When are we at our best as a team?

2. What strengths can we leverage in our work and projects?

3. How do we have each others' backs?

4. How will we hold each other accountable for our results?

5. If we were to tweak/change one thing about how we work as a team that would be.....

6. I'm excited about _______ in the next few months.

Promoting regular, and quick discussion, across the team around questions such as these help with creating a common understanding and vision, as well as creating more alignment across teams. Alignment doesn’t mean that everyone is doing the same thing. Rather, it means that team members are able to understand how their work connects with others, and how they can lead from a common ground.
 
Books, and audio books, are always a great resource to learn more on the topic of teamwork, so I wanted to pull together several of the reading lists I’ve provided over the years.
 
Here are five books I shared around teamwork in December 2015 in Teams365 #715:

​You might be interested in checking out:

​Team Genius - Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone

​Primal Teams - Jackie Baretta

​The Silo Effect - Gillian Tett

​Collaboration Begins with You - Be a Silo Buster - Ken Blanchard, Jane Ripley and Eunice Parisi-Carew. Check it out here.

Collaborative Intelligence - Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur. Check it out here.

As well as these a few days later in Teams365 #718:

Strengths Based Leadership = Tom Rath and Barry Conchie

Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams - Kimball Fisher and Maureen Fisher

Talk Like TED - Carmine Gallo

Visual Teams - David Sibbert
 
A couple of other books from 2017 and 2018 I have been enjoying myself and recommending to teams and others:

Amy Edmondson and Jean-Francois Harvey - Extreme Teams

Shane Snow - Dream Teams

Best,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326