Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

TEAMS365 #2578 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #171 – Latency and Recency Effect

10/12/2020

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip is one I cover in Chapter 6 of the book – the Latency and Recency Effect. This neuroscience principle asserts that we remember the start and end of things. The things that fall in the middle are forgotten (unless reinforced).

So, what are the implications of this for virtual calls? Consider what are the elements you want to reinforce or specify at the start and end of calls, given that these are the things which will be best remembered by those participating.
To make a start of a virtual call memorable:

Let people know:
- What the purpose is.
- What level of engagement is expected. It’s different to attend a call when you are spoken to, versus a call where you are actively shaping the agenda and focus, feeding into discussions and dialogue.
Provide an opportunity for people to “Get Grounded” and connected to the topic of the meeting. We move from one video call to another these days and it’s important to provide an opportunity for people to be able to focus on where you are going. What’s the question which will get people connected into the topic of the conversation?

Capture people’s attention. What is going to e unique or memorable?

In terms of the end of the call, provide an opportunity to focus in on:

What were key messages or topics covered?
What are the next steps?
Who is responsible for what and what are the different accountabilities?

Enjoy your conversations!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

TEAMS365 #2577 – Sunday Weekly Review

10/11/2020

This week’s blog posts focused on several areas including:

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

TEAMS365 #2571 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 170 – Mirror Neurons

10/5/2020

Welcome back to another Monday Effective Virtual Conversation. This week’s tip is all about Mirror Neurons, neurons which have been found to “mirror” those we are in conversation with. This is also related to the concept of synchrony, which has found to create stronger bonds and cooperative behavior. Take a look at this article from Scientific American on the concept of Synchrony here.

Or for more about mirror neurons, check out Psychology Today's blog here.

As one researcher indicated, quoted by Joshua Freeman, “Mirror neurons seem to be a bridge between our thinking, feeling and actions – and between people.”

In times of social distancing, cultivating connection is critical for conversation.

As a facilitator or leader, what is it that your behaviors and conversations are activating? If we do start to “mimic” those we are in conversation with, is this an important lever we can be leaning into to support change?

This week, consider what’s going to support you as a team? What’s the environment you want to create? What are the behaviors you want mirrored? What are you surrounding yourself with?

Enjoy the conversation,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!

TEAMS365 #2470 - Week in Review

10/4/2020

It’s Sunday and time to take a look back at the week in review. This week we stepped into Q4 and spent some time providing you with a pause to look at where things are at with your work and focus.

Take a look at:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!

TEAMS365 #2457 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 168: Follow Up

9/21/2020

It’s Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’s tip is about follow-up. While virtual learning is often seen as a one-off event, reinforcing the learning with follow-up can support integration of knowledge to become learning.

Follow-up in the virtual space can take many forms including:

Focus
Framing
Exponential growth

Are you taking the time to follow up? How has this impacted your learning?

All the best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!

TEAMS365 #2456 – Sunday in Review

9/20/2020

This week’s blog posts have explored:

Have a great weekend!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

TEAMS365 #2450 - Effective Virtual Conversations 167: Stories

9/14/2020

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip is STORIES. Stories create an important part of any virtual conversation. It’s often through our stories that we bring examples and learning to life.

As a writer myself, I come from a long line of storytellers. My grandmother’s obituary referred to her as an oral historian, and earlier this year my cousins and I were taken back in time when we heard her voice sharing history as part of a library event. She lived a full life and passed away in 1998, at the age of 98. We always remarked how cool it would be to be a century baby.

While I’ve published 5 non-fiction business books, it’s only been in recent years that I’ve dabbled in non-fiction writing. In fact, the Digital Dozen™ of the Remote Pathways series is part of a whole new series of adventures I explore in the virtual, remote and digital space. Stay tuned for more updates on these bodies of work….I hope to have one or more new books under this banner out in 2021. For now, you can listen into the Remote Pathways podcast here.

As I thought about what would be useful to share in terms of stories as it relates to the virtual realm, I thought it would be useful to go back to the basics. What are the core elements of stories?

Your dictionary.com indicates that stories are comprised of these essential elements:

Plot
Character
Setting
Theme
Point of View
Tone

Check out their article here.

While you might not be writing an entire book, it can be useful to think about these elements in terms of:

Plot – What are the main points and milestones you want to cover and reinforce?
Character – Who are the players? Are there some concepts you can bring to life with real-time stories?
Setting – What is the environment? What is the context? What’s important to note or focus on?
Theme – What is the overarching theme of the presentation or conversation? There may be several happening at any time and pointing to these can help to “tie things together”.
Point of View – What are the different perspectives at play?
Tone – What is the tone? This is often communicated through the colors we use, the font and images. Recently in the Stand Out Virtually Challenge I hosted, a lot of coaches, leaders and presenters were intrigued by learning more about the use of color and thought about how more intentional they could be with images.

What is important for you to note in your upcoming presentations? You might consider working through each of these questions as you pull together your next virtual conversation. It’s even more important given that each one of our locations, and related context, is different.

Let us know what you are focusing on and what you are doing to connect in with these essential elements - plot, character, setting, theme, point of view, and tone.

This is a topic we’ll be exploring later this week at the Stand Out Virtually one day Masterclass. Join us to deepen your skills and widen your toolbox around virtual conversations. Grab one of the remaining spots – we’ll be kicking off at 9:30 am ET on Thursday September 17th, wrapping up at 3:30 pm ET. My goal is for you to leave with a presentation or a module drafted out.

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!

TEAMS365 #2449 – Week in Review

9/13/2020

This week we’ve focused on the Week in Review:

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!

TEAMS365 #2443 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 166: Mix It Up

9/7/2020

Engagement is key for virtual conversations. Unfortunately, a lot of poor presentation skills have translated over to the remote space. Even if you are not a great presenter, you can create a memorable call, by mixing it up. What does that mean? It means:

Varying the pace every 7-10 minutes with a pace change or adjustment
Using a variety of approaches – presentation, dialogue in a bigger group, discussion in smaller groups
Using a variety of media – video, text, photos
Remembering that we don’t learn when we are “talked at” by a presenter. We learn when we can put things into practice, and also discuss the topic with others

Many of the platforms which are available (Teams, Zoom etc) have a variety of tools available which aren’t always used. Consider what you can do to activate:

BREAKOUTS
ANNOTATION
POLLS

We’ll be exploring this and a variety of other topics at my upcoming one-day Stand Out Virtually Masterclass on September 17th. Learn more about the day and reserve your spot to join us!

Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326

Join us September 17th virtually for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! Studio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out! ENVISION. DESIGN. CONNECT.

TEAMS365 #2436 - Effective Virtual Conversations #165: Facilis!

8/31/2020

Welcome back to another Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’s EVC tip is a reminder of the roots of facilitation. The word is actually derived from the Latin word - Facilis which means to make easy.

The role of the facilitator, particularly the virtual facilitator is to make things easy. That means making a focus on PROCESS easy. What’s the purpose? What can people expect? What are you doing?

Making connection EASY. As I shared earlier this month in the STAND OUT Virtually Challenge – that means connecting with the CONTEXT, with OTHERS, with YOU. What are you doing to make this easy?

Making outcomes EASY. Part of the mastery of a facilitator is having a variety of tools available to get to the outcomes required. This is where it’s important to have a wide toolkit. I’ve enjoyed helping many professionals build out their virtual toolkits this year in the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program.

Finally, it’s also about making ENGAGEMENT EASY. What are you doing to keep things moving? It’s important to be able to focus in on engagement - which is linked to connection as well as process.

What does FACILIS mean for you in your work?

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Coaching Skills Training | Leadership Development | Teamwork
Growing Team Leaders, One Conversation at a Time™ in the Remote Space
Contact us to discuss leadership, coaching or performance needs for your and your team
Phone: (416)996-8326