​This month’s theme is about teamwork in complexity. One of the more complex areas can be the virtual and remote space. Let’s look at mistakes made by new and experienced virtual and remote team leaders.
​
I also thought it would be interesting to reach back to a skill-based post as well. Here’s what I wrote about virtual and remote leadership skills:

Today we reach the W in the A-Z of Virtual and Remote Team Leadership. As virtual and remote team leaders, having a wealth of skills and experiences to draw on can be invaluable.  Given the need to lead across distance and ever-changing contexts it can be useful to have a broad base of skills to draw up on. Many of us are Jacks or Jills of all trades. The ability to lead confidently in uncertainty and across issues we are often unfamiliar with is key. Our ability to empower our team members to take the lead and advise on issues is also critical.

​Questions to Consider:

• ​When you think of your skill base as a team leader, what broad skills do you bring really help you lead effectively?
• What new skills would you like to add to the table?
• ​What experiences add to your mix?
• ​What new leadership experiences would help you round out your style?

https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-850-virtual-and-remote-team-leadership-w-is-for

I also wanted to remind you of some of the more common mistakes new and experienced virtual and remote team leaders make:

Today’s post explores common mistakes virtual and remote team leaders can make. In this post we are going to look at five different ones.

1. Not enough 1-1's – As I have said many times, being out of sight is not the same as being out of mind. Not spending enough time in one-on-ones can be detrimental to the levels of trust team members feel, the connection they feel with others, which will have an impact on levels of engagement. What is an appropriate frequency of meeting time with team members? What does it look like – phone calls, video streaming, onsite visits, or bringing staff into the office regularly?
2. Not learning on your feet – Part of being an effective virtual and remote team leader is your ability to be shifting, learning and adapting. Given that there is much less levels of control and greater span, the ability to learn on your feet and expecting this rather than feeling you will have all the answers, can make a big difference with team members.
3. Not being clear with goals – Goals can be a little different with virtual and remote teams. Whether people are matrixed and reporting into different areas, or whether goals can become competitive, providing opportunities to be clear with goals is important.
4. Not helping people connect with the bigger picture – Because virtual and remote team members are working with different levels of autonomy and independently, helping team members connect with the bigger picture is essential. This could include helping them understand more about corporate and departmental goals, giving them more access to strategic or corporate plans, and making goals and achievements more visible. Making goals more visible might include making the reporting structures more shared and visually appealing, or mapping out team goals on a weekly basis or other.
5. Not providing team members with the necessary responsibility and authority – A final mistake virtual and remote team leaders can make is not providing the necessary responsibility and authority to their team members so they can make the decisions they need to autonomously.

https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1177-common-mistakes-made-by-virtual-and-remote-team-leaders

What can you do to avoid these common mistakes?

Pick up a copy of the entire A-Z series at the Potentials Realized Store here. It’s a downloadable ebook format for $19 US.

All the best,
Jennifer

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you thinking “outside of the box”. Challenges and opportunities exist all the time. What are the solutions which could be activated around your most pressing business challenge?

One of the frameworks I like to share with teams I work with is the Six Thinking Hats from DeBono. Read more about this topic here.

With the Six Thinking Hats we are encouraged to look at issues from a variety of perspectives –

• what’s possible,
• what new ideas can we generate,
• what are the benefits of the approaches,
• what caution do we need to heed,
• what are the facts and
• what might get in the way.

If you are not familiar with De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats model, take a look at his work and writing.

Wishing you all the best,
​Jennifer

​In this week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #94, consider using a map to create more engagement in your virtual sessions. Maps create a visual anchor for group members.

Maps can take a variety of forms, from:

• Geographic maps (i.e. map of your region, country, the world)
• A roadmap of where you are going
• A process map – what the steps are

Incorporating a map into your next call, may help people:

• Get a sense of location and context
• Identify where they are in relation to each other
• Visualize what a process can look like
• Remember what a sequence is

It is likely that I will incorporate a number of maps in a virtual call including:

1. A geographic map (Where are you calling in from today?)
2. A process map – Identify the area which is the one you find most challenging
3. A roadmap of our call sequence (shown at the start and possibly the end)

​What type of maps could you incorporate in your next call?

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

This week’s Team Building question gets you to consider the question:

“What addition would benefit the team?”

What are the things you could add that would help the team be more successful, do things quicker, or innovate more?

Consider these items in terms of additions:

1. New Team Member
2. New Role
3. A New Process – As an example, you might consider changing things up with your meetings. As I’ve written in past posts, team members may be spending 40% of their time or more in meetings- definitely an area for exploration!  A new process could include hosting team meetings on a platform like WebEx or Zoom where the call could be recorded (and potentially transcribed) so that responsibilities and accountabilities are noted and followed up on.
4. Additional Resourcing – This might be physical or technical resourcing, a new piece of software or app.
5. New Learning – Given the rapid pace of learning change needed in today’s workplace, what is the new learning that someone could benefit from?

​
What else might benefit the team?

Best,
Jennifer

Another part of successful teamwork in uncertainty is giving people the space to experiment and try things out. This goes hand-in-hand with cultivating curiosity.

Experimentation is not just a strategy for small business and start ups, in fact, encouraging intrapreneurism has been a part of larger organizations for many decades now, including organizations like 3M.

Experimentation and trying things out can be a key business strategy when things are changing. Part of the success of this business strategy is that we also track.

When fostering an environment of experimentation, consider these questions:

• Before you start an experiment, where are you? 📍
• What do the metrics say? 📊
• What do you want to measure?📏
• How long and at what frequency will the experiment last?⏳
• What is your hypothesis? I.e. What do you think will happen?📈 

Recently I posted the daily business prompt as part of the #90Days Plan Do Track series over on Instagram at CoachingBizBuilder. 

Ways we can encourage more experimentation:

• Provide people with stretch zones
• Work with real business challenges. Encourage a peer exploration of different options and perspectives around key business issues. It might be that you are looking for different ways to get services or products out to market or how to magnify sales.
• Explore opportunities for cross-departmental sharing with a view to learning from other’s best practices and ways of working. This cross-pollination of ideas may lead to new ways of working in your department.

What else might you do to encourage more experimentation? 

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

Last week I shared a post on cultivating curiosity. As a former team leader myself, working in highly volatile and changeable environments, cultivating curiosity was an important area to support my own team in. Given that many were responding to post-disaster contexts and needing to look at how to do their work in a highly changing environment, it was not business as usual. What many leaders don’t realize today is that “business as usual” may not longer be present in many industries.

As a leadership practitioner, author, coach and trainer, I’m regularly in conversation with leaders and teams around how important the skill of curiosity is. Yet, there are still many naysayers – from leaders and team members.

So, what does the research say?
​
I took a look at some of the more recent research in the area of curiosity and came across a great set of articles from Harvard Business Review - September 2018. In that edition, they cited the research and article written by Francesca Gino who has studied the area of curiosity. Read her article and study here.

Out of those surveyed, 70% of employees indicted that they faced barriers to employing more curiosity.

She cites in her article “The Business Case for Curiosity” five ways to encourage more curiosity:

1. Hire for it.
2. Model it yourself – inquisitiveness.
3. Emphasize learning goals. Many leaders today focus solely on performance goals. While not abandoning performance goals, what can you do cultivate and allow for more of a focus on learning goals?
4. “Let employees explore and broaden interests”. As someone who was schooled as multi-disciplinarian, I have seen throughout my career how a broad knowledge base becomes an asset, rather than a liability in times of change and complexity.
5. She also encourages days where people explore the questions: Why? What if?  How might we do that?

Individually, each one of these suggestions could have a ripple effect on the way people work, without detracting from core functions.

What are the benefits to starting to integrate some of these approaches in your team meetings and ways of working?

Best,
​Jennifer

As someone who has led a variety of virtual calls for the better part of the last 15 years, I often get questions around quick techniques we can use to “jazz things up” with hearing from different people on the call.

While some people will attend a virtual session thinking they can multi-task, if you really want to create a powerful learning context create agreements around engagement and how you are going to call on group members during your time together.

Last week I shared the tip of calling on people from A-Z. This week consider using an East to West (or West to East strategy). This provides a little more interest and mental power in keeping the call moving.

To support this process, during one of your call kick offs as an energizer you may want to get people to share their location (or where they are calling in from – city, state or country) by dotting themselves on a map.

These approaches are yet another quick way we can “Avoid the Death by Conference Call”, creating more engagement for our group members.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

As we continue our exploration about teamwork in uncertainty, today’s post covers the ability to cultivate curiosity. Curiosity is a key skill helping us become comfortable with learning and not knowing. When we are stuck in an expert mindset, we may feel we “know everything”. There is a danger in this, specially when contexts change. Cultivating more curiosity for learning, exploration, trial and error, gives team members permission to try things out which may not work.

How do we cultivate curiosity?

Encourage people to ask questions like:

• What else? This question helps us see alternative paths and solutions.
• Why not? This question gives permission for us to explore another angle around things.

Encourage trial and error.

Get team members to explore what failure means and does not mean.

Provide opportunities for growing skills in new areas through job shadowing, mentoring and/or special projects.

Next week I’m going to turn my attention to what the research says about curiosity and teamwork, and why it is important to cultivate more curiosity in our staff right now.

All the best,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.

When I started the journey with blog post #1 of the Teams365 blog back on January 1st 2014, I didn’t really know where it would take me. Two more books later, and more than 1700 blog posts, I think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of conversations with teams and leaders these posts have also infused.

Just recently, perhaps due to blog size, or other, the search function on the site has changed. It means that you can’t go back and search posts earlier than this year. While you can still find them through tags and dates, it may mean that it’s harder to find older content. That makes these Friday posts even more important where I reach back, and share, an older blog post.
 
Today I am reaching back to one from September 2014, entitled “What’s the WIIFM” . It was Teams365 blog post 265 and here’s what I wrote:

#Teams365 #265: What's the WIIFM?
9/22/2014
0 Comments
 
The WIIFM, or the What's In It For Me, is an essential leadership concept to keep in  mind.

WIIFM has connections with employee engagement, developing and delivering stellar presentations, recognition and motivation.

Let's first look at motivation. Psychology posits that we get motivated through our internal drive, or externally. As leaders, helping our team members connect around What's in it for me when faced with a new project or task, helps increase the internal motivation. It also may provide us with some cues as to what we can do to provide external support for those individuals, given what they find motivating.

In developing presentations or public speaking, helping your audience connect with their WIIFM (What's in it for me) creates a richer learning experience. We should always be trying to design presentations (content, approaches, flow) from their perspective as well.

Employee engagement and recognition continue to be hot button topics. WIIFM is central to engagement and puts our team members in the heart of being part of the driving force of what creates an engaged workforce. Create a habit of asking people to consider their WIIFM and contribution with new initiatives, and as change processes happen.

Finally, in recognition (something we don't often get enough of), lead from individuals WIIFM. 

Where else could you get people you work with to consider the WIIFM?


Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation tip #52 gets you to think about developing short videos for whatever type of virtual conversations you are creating. Whether it is a webinar or a team meeting, short videos can serve to jazz things up. Consider:

​Who is the audience? What would they like to see or experience? What’s the most important topic for them right now?
Length – shorter videos are usually better – 2 minutes or less
Will the video include photos? Music? Text?
Always be aware of copyright and intellectual property issues
 
I recently spoke with a group of professional coaches and indicated that using videos as one of the pace changes every five to ten minutes can keep calls moving along.  They can also help with focus, and spark some new energy (particularly if it’s an after lunch session).
 
Videos can also be seen as more novel or memorable, and may be an important vehicle for making things stick.
There’s a compelling case for video creation:
 
Two different video creation tools I have used in my work are:
Lumen5 and Adobe Spark
 
Both are easy to use and quickly repurpose content you might have. If you have been following along with the Teams365 blog for a while you may have seen some of the short 2-3 minute Sunday videos I have created, bringing to life many of the blog posts I have written here. While it’s not quite just a cut and paste of the content and the video is done, it is quite a quick process.
 
This week, take stock of the content you have that could be converted into a video. Perhaps it’s a:

• Blog post
• An article you have written which can be broken down into shorter posts
• A series of tips you have created around a topic
• A response to some of the common questions you receive in your work

 
Make a list of five to ten videos you could create. If you are drawing a blank, set a timer for 3 minutes and make a list of everything that comes to mind!
 
Enjoy!
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