Today’s Effective Virtual Conversations prompt is “Who is driving the bus?”. Some of the most common questions I receive from virtual leaders are “Am I coaching? Am I training? Am I facilitating?”.
​
While the focus on this question for the people we are hosting the call for is usually “it doesn't matter as long as I am learning”, it can be important for the person who is leading the call to be aware of what they are doing - training, coaching or facilitating. A key question the “facilitator” can be asking to dig a little deeper is  - “Who is driving the bus?” Who is the one that is shaping the direction, and content of the call?"
 
While this may be overly simplistic, a great starting point for understanding the “director” of the call is to consider who is “driving” and shaping the conversation.
 
In coaching, a fundamental premise is that the person being coached should create with the coach (and others) the direction of the call, and their content knowledge should form the foundation of the conversation. The coach is not there to share a lot of content, but rather use any content to “Spark” the conversation. Coaches focus deeply on Goal Setting, and supporting the deepened awareness around “things below the waterline”, things like values, beliefs, assumptions, perspectives. Coaching is rarely a one-off conversation, and usually has multiple touch points.
 
In training, or a webinar in the virtual space, we lean into the content we bring. We are measured on this, and while we want to poll our group members for what they want to learn, the content may also be shaped by the organization. Training is typically content-rich, and in that respect the trainer may be driving the bus a majority of the time, handing off the “wheel” as new skills are acquired, so that bus members get practice.
​
Facilitation comes from the Latin word “facilis”. It means “to become easy”. Part of the facilitator’s role virtually is to help people clarify the focus of the conversation, and how they want to move from a to b. A facilitation may be more apt to be a one-off conversation, and usually uses process to help engage the conversation, especially with bigger groups.
 
Who is driving the bus in your virtual conversations? Are there any changes you want to make to this?
 
For more on these distinctions between coaching, training and facilitating, check out any of my first three books – Effective Group Coaching (2010), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) or From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). 
 
Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

It is Sunday and time for another weekly video montage from the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series. Started in September, on the first day of fall, this is a daily Instagram series I host over at my feed – CoachingBizBuilder. 

Given that not everyone is on Instagram each week, we’re pulling together the daily photos and sharing them with you through video format in these weekly montages.This week we are at Week 10 of the series.

As you explore these questions, take note of the questions which are important to you, and your work, right now.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

​This weekend we’re going to go through the video montage of the 7 questions that made up week 7 of the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series. Take a few minutes to note the questions I explored over at the CoachingBizBuilder Instagram page and consider jotting down your responses to each question. Just like posts on Saturday, these questions are meant to get you thinking about, and into action, around your work or business.

If you enjoyed these questions, you may want to pick up the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Two hundred eighty five pages in length, the first 125 pages are a workbook for virtual and remote professionals. Exploring topics including virtual and remote business foundations, your own internal ecosystem, and marketing/positioning, plus success tips, virtual and remote professionals of all kinds – entrepreneurs, leaders and team members - will find it of interest and value. Pick up a copy for yourself, or your team, and bring it in as a resource for your team meetings and team development this year.
Pick up your copy here.

Note the last 160 pages are a series of undated planning pages. With valuable annual, quarterly and monthly resources, the planning pages provide an opportunity for desk-based analog planning.
 
What’s your favorite question this week?

What's going to move your work and focus forward?

Enjoy!

Jennifer

This year marked the fifth year of daily blog posts for me here at the Teams365 blog which is geared for professionals interested in leadership and teamwork issues. Writing regularly has become a large part of my professional routine.

There’s no doubt that you may not have caught all 365 of the daily posts this year. Here’s a high level overview of the monthly focus areas:
January - Kick off for 2018 – Read them here
February – Relationships, Trust and Connection – Read them here
March – Teams and Team Resources – Read them here
April – Styles in a Team, Productivity Tools – Read them here
May – Complexity, Productivity and Planning Tools – Read them there
June – Feedback and Performance Conversations – Read them here
July 2018 - Team Development in focus – Check out the July posts here
August 2018 – Gearing up for back to work - Read them here
September 2018 - Virtual Work, Things to do with your teams – Check out the posts 
October 2018 – Teamwork Skills in focus-  Read through October posts here
November 2018 – Turning our attention to year end with posts including 5 things to get in your calendar for 2019, right now!, Planning for Year End Activities for your Team, Bringing Projects to a close  – Read through November posts here
December 2018 – the start of the 19 Productivity Tips for 2019. Read through December posts here

These joined our regular series:
Monday – Effective Virtual Conversations Posts
Thursday – Team Building Tip Posts 
Weekend Journaling Prompts
And Friday Flashbacks

As I reflect back on the year that was, I am very thankful for the many milestones which included:

• The launch of two workbook and planners (Coaching Business Builder, and the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner) 
• The launch of both the Teams365 Leadership Lab and the Coaching Biz Growth Lab - two annual programs that joined the Learning Lab and Design Studio as year-long group coaching  and group learning programming options for professionals and their own virtual development.
• Training more than 300 coaches in the areas of Group and Team Coaching via the Group Coaching Essentials and Advanced Practicum programs. 
  
• Leading three sets of Virtual Learning Training for professionals to become more proficient and confident leading webinars, virtual coaching and virtual training and team development sessions via the five-week Virtual Facilitation Essentials (approved for 8.5 hours of CCEs).
  
• Supporting a wide variety of teams and leaders this year from health care, education, to financial services, to global leadership, in the areas of team effectiveness, virtual leadership
  
• Continued growth of readership here at the Teams365 blog. Page views most weeks surpassed 10,000 views a week.
  

I look forward to continuing the conversation with you in 2019!

Happy new year!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​

​#5 – Know Where your Time Goes

Productivity Tip #4 was Ruthless Time Management, and an invitation to do some data generation around where you are really spending your time. If you have not yet completed this activity, do it now. You’ll need it for this week’s tip, which is to do some assessment on where your time is going.

In today’s busy world, it is very easy to get side-tracked with the “shiny red objects”. These often look very alluring – perhaps promising a quick return or getting things done more quickly. Many times however they become a “rabbit hole” taking you off-course and away from the most important things.

In most of the planning frameworks I have created for the PlanDoTrack and Coaching Business Builder Planners, I usually include a small box to be filled in with your Top 5 Goals for the month (or quarter). This is a prompt to consider what is most important for you at any given moment.

Where we spend our time should be aligned with our priorities, as well as our values and what’s important for us.

This week, take stock of how your time is being spent in service to your:
Immediate priorities – what is your top 5 for the month/quarter?
Values – What are the elements that are essential to you and your work? Is it excellence, quality, customer service? Note how much time you are spending in values-based activities.
Vision – What % of activities are being spent towards your big picture goals? Towards what is really important for you?

In the Teams365 series of Time Management workshops I share a Time Tracker resource. I’ll be offering this in 2019 as both an on-demand and live program for professionals of all levels. If you are interested in staying connected around all things planning and time management, do sign up for the PlanDoTrack newsletter list.

As you review your data, what are the adjustments you want to make in service to your priorities, values and vision?

Touchpoint with PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner.
​
If you have not yet completed your Quarter 1 Goals, refer to the Quarterly  Planning Tools. There you will be encouraged to note your high-level goals and your Top 5. Next, lay them out across the first 3 months of the year. After doing this, you may then want to flip into the monthly pages, and start noting the key activities in the monthly calendars. Start breaking down each activity with smaller steps, adding them to the Monthly To-Dos or the Month in  Focus sheet.

Enjoy,
​Jennifer

This week’s Team Building Tip brings us to #209 of the series. Aligned with our shift to a focus on year-end, this week’s question to surface with the team is the question:
What needs to get completed by year end?
As you think about year end, here are 14 common year-end activities you will want to budget time and space for:

1. Reporting
2. Financials
3. Projects
4. Planning for new projects
5. Meeting with stakeholders (internal and external)
6. Communication planning for next year
7. Team development
8. Performance Reviews
9. Coaching Conversations
10. Learning for 2018
11. Learning for 2019 (individual and team level)
12. Peer Meetings
13. Meeting with our bosses
14. Meeting with other key internal partners

What else would you add to the list?
​
Enjoy!
Jennifer

As we step into November the wave of year-end activities, celebrations and push may be rearing it’s head. Today’s post is a reminder of five key things to get in your team calendar for 2019 right now. As we’ve explored here at the Teams365 blog over the last 5 years, certain skills are critical for success – teamwork skills, coaching, difficult conversations, team development and reflection time.
Five different things you may want to get into your calendars right now for the next year are:
 
Team meetings – Whether the entire team, or some of the team, attends, spending time on a regular basis to plan, and update, is key for alignment, communication and noticing what’s working and what’s not. Even if the team is remote, team meetings do need to happen on a regular basis.
For further ideas on team meetings, check out the post on 8 Questions to be asking before any team meeting.
 
Team development – Regular team development meetings are critical – not just for
 
Feedback conversations – Once a year performance reviews are being replaced in many organizations with ongoing feedback conversations. With this shift, it’s common for organizations to be experiencing:

1. A sense on the part of the leader that coaching and feedback conversations are happening more frequently than they really are. Block in time to your schedule for these key 1-1s, being clear on whether you are coaching or providing feedback.

2. Feedback and coaching are often getting blended together under the same umbrella. These are actually two separate activities and the danger of them being lumped together is that the staff member may not know what type of conversation they are part of.  Regardless off whether performance is good or not, it’s key to indicate when a performance conversation is a performance conversation. If changes are needed, this should be clear and non-negotiable.

On the other hand, coaching is voluntary initiative. The person being coached is the one “at choice” in terms of what they want to do. Coaching is about encouraging change. If a leader wants to prescribe change for the employee, coaching is not the right modality. That’s telling!

​Like other activities, it is important to get key 1-1 time and conversations into your calendar. What have you noticed about what’s worked in terms of time, availability and openness to these types of activities? Block out some time right now.

3. Mentoring – Mentoring is beneficial to us at all stages of our development. Having a variety of formal and informal mentoring relationships is key to ongoing career progression. Whether we are mentoring or being mentored, it’s common for both parties to benefit from a balanced mentoring relationship. Have you scheduled mentoring into your calendar for 2019?

4. Team development – Beyond team meetings, we all benefit from formal and informal team development opportunities. Some research, including the 2016 Culture Wizard Survey, found that only 22% of virtual and remote teams benefited from team development. What are the activities you have scheduled for 2019?  

5. Skill Development and ongoing learning – Whether we are a leader, or a team member, ongoing learning and skill development opportunities are key to keeping us equipped for the ongoing landscape of work. As I explored in Effective Virtual Conversations, the Virtual Learning Ecosystem today is vast. From attending MOOCS (Massive Online Open Courses) at Universities for Credit, to micro-learning modules, from webinars, to virtual team development, skills development and ongoing learning can take many forms.  
​
As a team have you discussed what skill development and ongoing learning each team member wants to undertake in the next year?
What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done. Be sure to block dedicated time in your calendar for these five activities during 2019.
​
Best wishes,
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.
​
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:
​
​* 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

It’s likely that this month your team is coming back together after months where not everyone may not have been around. September is an important time to get back to routines and habits, as well as creating new ones that may work better. Consider what you are doing (as a team, and as a professional) around these key areas:
Meetings – with meetings taking upwards of 40% of professionals times, what are the ESSENTIAL meetings to schedule this month? What can be deferred? Which ones do you need to negotiate your presence at? Where do you need to be, where you are not already? What’s going to make your meetings more effective?
Coaching Conversations – “Coaching is a conversation with intent” is what I wrote back in 2013 in my book “From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching”. What are the focused conversations you want to have an on a REGULAR basis this fall? What needs, and warrants, attention? What type of conversations are going to support different team members?
Email and Communication – What’s working with communication right now? What’s not? What can be streamlined (think email)? What are people’s preferences?
FOCUS – What are the interruptions that are pulling you off course? As you think about the last few months, what’s helped with your focus? What’s hindered? In today’s workspace focus is at a premium. What are the pockets where you can create more focus to get the important things done?
Renewal – The field of high performance sport shows that renewal is just as important as running. What are you doing to build in times for FOCUS and Renewal?
 
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 Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326