This week’s team building tip gets the team to discuss the question “If we could do one thing differently this year, it would be….”

Spending time surfacing dialogue around alternative perspectives can be important for teams who feel that dialogue is not available.

Enjoy the discussion!
​Jennifer

Happy spring! Has the new season sprung where you are?

In my work as a coach I see a lot of seasonality – beginnings, ends and excitement for change. As we step into the new season today, I wanted to share some of the spring questions I had posted in Teams365 #811.

I hope that you will take a few minutes to reflect on these questions today:

What are your goals this season?
What new habits and practices do you want to put into place?
What relationships do you want to put attention around?
What else is significant for you this spring (or fall)?

Looking backwards:
What successes did you have over the last quarter?
What helped you?
What got in the way?

What changes do you want to make this spring?
What and who will help you be successful?
 
What are the other questions which are important to consider right now?
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Enjoy your reflection,
Jennifer

This week’s team building tip gets you to explore the question “One change which is needed….”

Not every team may be comfortable asking this question as it might surface things that are “out of focus”.

By not asking questions like this we may erode trust and loyalty in the team. How is that you ask?

The skill of “constructive interaction” or debating alternative view points, has been found to be a critical skill for teams today.
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Author of Teaming – Amy Edmonston – calls it “speaking up”. The ability to question and instill provocative conversation is key for strong relationships and also problem solving for teams (and individuals) in today’s business context.

In building a culture where questioning is fostered, it may necessitate a change in the way a team operates, and the level of comfort the team leader has. It may also involve the creation of shared agreements of how debate and discourse will operate, how it may or will feed into any changes and/or what next steps are from any discussion (i.e. will it feed into decision making, or will it influence decisions?
What’s needed on your team in order to have constructive dialogue?
 
This is #220 in the series which started back in 2014. You are invited to check out the new digital licensing option to bring 52 of the first series of tips into your current team meetings. You can purchase a set of 52 of the first of the 2015 series of cards in digital format over at our Potentials Realized Store. Once purchased, you’ll receive a link to access each of the weekly question in JPG format.  You can incorporate these into your slide deck (as is) for your weekly team meeting or send it out as a “conversation sparker” for the team throughout the week.

Over the years I have had teams use the questions in many different ways. Check out the series of 52 questions here. You can purchase a digital license for $35 US -that’s just a little more than 50c a question.

The backstory to this product takes me back to my former role as a virtual team leader. While it would be great to have the time and creativity to do this on my own, I was always looking for great questions to prompt conversation. Unfortunately, I did not find many. When I started my own performance improvement business in 2004, many of my clients started commenting that they really liked having a focusing question of the week. Flash forward to 2014, when I started to “systematize” these through the weekly Teams365 Team Building Tip. Check out series one (which incorporates 52 tips from the 2014/2015 season). We’ll be adding additional ones throughout the year!

Best,
​Jennifer

Tip #13 – Get the important stuff out of the way

“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
— Jim Watkins
 
It is likely that even with the best planning, finding time to execute and get things done can be a challenge. Today’s business context of ongoing change and disruption, means that things can change on a regular basis, requiring ongoing learning and iteration.

Against this backdrop, it can also be important to focus in on items that are moving you, and the business, forward.
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With this in mind, what are the windows you have available (or can create) to get the important things out of the way? This might mean starting your day early, or working late into the night, to focus on projects that require quiet work spaces.

Activity

• Review your monthly or quarterly goals.
• Review your Top 3 or 5 Goals.
• What activities are not getting completed in a regular way?
• What needs to be focused on more?
• When will you schedule this in? For example, is this the first thing you want to do every day? Is it worth arriving at work 30 minutes earlier to make sure it gets completed? Could certain activities be delegated to someone else?
• Break larger tasks down to smaller chunks if you have not done so already. Consider what smaller milestones exist and put these in your schedule.
• What are the regular action steps you will undertake to make it happen? Work backwards noting additional mini-milestones.

Conversation Sparkers

• What are the most important tasks that are going to move your work or business forward?
• When are you scheduling in these?
• What habits are going to help you get the most important things done?

Best,
​Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 77 is “Vary Approaches”. The key to more engaging virtual conversations on webinars, in conference calls and also in virtual team meetings is to vary approaches.

Most technologies today allow for a variety of ways to keep the conversation going. You might choose to:

• Use breakouts – and have people pair off or meet in smaller groups.
• Use annotation and mark up their thoughts on the screen, circle their responses.
• Incorporate a poll. You might integrate an external poll such as Kahoot, or use an internal polling function on platforms like zoom. Polls can be used to incorporate people’s feedback and shape the call, or to get insights and feedback on different ideas.
• Use more visuals. Visuals of all kinds can also create a bit more focus and engagement. Whether it’s a provocative image, a mapping of a process flow, a model which, or a photograph which creates a metaphor for a complex issue.

If you have a 30-minute meeting incorporating one or two different approaches can make it more memorable, which in today’s world is important, given that many professionals spend the day moving from meeting to meeting, with each meeting becoming a blur. In terms of next steps “Being Memorable” is key to landing near the top of the to do list!

Enjoy the start to your week,
Jennifer

It’s Thursday and time for a Team Building Tip. It’s number 218 in the series. Today’s question is “Our pacesetter is…”

In today’s world of complexity and ongoing change, one area we still have control over is our pace. A great question to consider is “Who is our pacesetter?” OR “Our pacesetter is….”.

As you consider the landscape of your work, who is setting the bar?

• What are the practices or examples you can learn from, or aspire to…?
• Who on your team is going to set the pace and get things moving?
• Who are the people on the team who can keep moving you forward?
• There may be people on the team who are inclined to keep going?

 
Best wishes,
Jennifer

​This week’s Team Building Tip gets you as a team in dialogue around the question – "What’s another way of looking at that?”
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As teams and professionals it’s easy to get into our own rut of planning and action. Expanding our vantage point and incorporating different perspectives allows us a new vantage point. We may see things that are different, or were not visible before.

As I wrote last week around Focus, doing work in today’s context of ongoing change, requires us to challenge assumptions, and explore different perspectives. As a team how often are you taking time to ask yourself about the assumptions and embedded ways of working. Are they still current and relevant? Could they use an update?
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Enjoy your conversation this week!
Jennifer

​This month we have been exploring teamwork skills, taking a look at a range of them. One skillset which is critical for remote teams is that of change management. In supporting team members through ongoing change, it can be very stressful. It may be useful as a team, and as individuals, to explore questions such as:

• What is your natural tendency to approach change?
• How quickly do you approach change?
• What do you find problematic, or challenging, as it relates to change?

We often think it’s enough to think about and speak about the changes required. In fact, what is important is also to consider what changes are required as you move forward and sustain the changes over time. This might involve new rewards, new habits and  new accountability structures. What are the things that will support the changes you are going through as a team? What are the requirements you have to evolve?

For more on the topic of change management check out these past Teams365 posts. 

Best wishes,
Jennifer

It’s the start of a new month, and  time for a new focus here at the Teams365 blog. This month we are going to focus on teamwork skills. Whether you work as an intact team, a project team or a remote team, teamwork skills are cross-cutting and help professionals at all stages of their careers do better work.
The context of teamwork has changed. In the past, teams were together for longer windows, with much more stability. Today most teams experience ongoing change and team composition. Researcher Amy Edmonston terms this “Teaming” and writes, “actively building and developing teams even as a project is in process, while realizing that a team's composition may change at any given moment.” (Teaming, Edmonston 2013)
She flags four behaviors as essential in the teaming context:

• Speaking Up
• Collaboration
• Experimentation
• Reflection

What are you doing to foster these areas?
The teamwork skills we are going to explore this month are:

• Trust
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Working Across Differences
• Relationship Management
• Conflict Management
• Emotional Intelligence
• Change Management
• Influence

For each of the areas we’ll explore what the skill is about, why it’s important. What some of the differences are in the different types of teams today. I’ll also point you back to some of the many posts I’ve already written on these topics.
Looking forward to starting this journey with you this month.

Best,
Jennifer

It’s Sunday and time to shift our reading attention to video. This week I am pleased to take us back to a few of the past videos I have created around getting back to work which brings to life blog post #613: Creating Healthy Routines.

Here's another short video to watch with a pen or table in hand- Teams365 #1363:Fall planning and reflection. View it here.

Last year's #Flashback Friday which showcased several back to work routines to keep an eye on. Read Teams365 #1357 here.

What's important for you to notice as  you move forward right now?

Enjoy!
​Jennifer