Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

Teams365 #2811 - Flashback – C is For Communication

9/10/2021

Let’s take a look back at Teams365 #808 from 2015, which is just as relevant today as it was back then. Here is what I wrote,

C is for communication - communication plays an even more critical role in virtual and remote team leadership. When teams are not able to see each other every day and cannot drop in to see each other it is critical to be even more focused with communication. Creating the time and space for specific communication touch points with each team members is the key.

Fostering team communication is key as well. Whether it is a group video call using a technology like zoom where people stream and can see each other, or whether it is a traditional phone call fostering the spirit of camaraderie while boosting communication is key.

Several remote team communication considerations are:
What are our formal communication touch points?
What venues do we have to get to know each other to share information? Share successes?
What preferences does each team member have?
What can we do to facilitate sharing among the team members

Pointers to remember with non-face to face communication
*Email is not always the most effective media. We lose any sense of tone – if trust is low this may further inflame situation is especially if the topic can be misread.

Consider what media is best for delivery.
Consider the optimal amount and channel for each person
Make communication regular, and be specific with what needs action, as well as any reply or response period
Build in face-to-face or screen eyeball to eyeball opportunities.

What is important to note about communication for you?

Enjoy your conversation,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk at https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_britton_virtual_remote_and_hybrid_checklist_aug_2021

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

Teams365 #2804 - Flashback – Review of the 3 Week Series Highlight

9/3/2021

As we move into the fall, one area which is likely to benefit from more focus is exploring the topic of feedback and building that in regularly. Here’s what I wrote about feedback way back in Teams365#862: www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-862-foundations-of-feedback-part-3-preparing-for-feedback

Several things you will want to do or put attention around before you sit down to have a feedback conversation are:

1. Know what the person's role, project and main goals have been so that you can provide feedback that is relevant, timely and strategic. Providing feedback in areas that are not linked to a person's role and/or activities is not that useful.

2. Get people thinking about what their own performance has been like - What strengths have they leveraged? What opportunities do they see for growth/development/stretch? "Priming" people for the conversation makes this a two way conversation, where you can supplement self-reflection with personal observations.

3. Ask team members what areas they are going to value feedback in.

4. Have specific examples in the areas you are providing feedback in, making sure that these are things you have observed and/or are validated. When providing feedback we want to make sure it is specific, and grounded in observable behaviors, not stories.

5. Making sure that time has been allocated not only for the conversation but for preparing for it. This is not an activity you want to rush, so be sure to allocate sufficient time and space to have the conversation. Making sure you won't get interrupted within the conversation is also an important consideration. This is not one meeting you want to have to shift or change.

Activity:
Consider what steps you want to take to prepare for upcoming feedback conversations. What is important for each team member as well?

Enjoy your reflection,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk at https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_britton_virtual_remote_and_hybrid_checklist_aug_2021

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

Teams365 #2790 - Flashback Friday – Review of the 3-week Series Highlight

8/20/2021

A few weeks ago as part of the Reconnecting Workspaces training we discussed the Chapter 3 highlight of Reconnecting Workspaces. I hope you have enjoyed reading the posts as much as I have enjoyed sharing them. Be sure to check out the many posts in the last few weeks including:

Core Ingredients for Virtual Teams- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/reconnecting-workspaces-core-ingredients-for-virtual-teams

Principle of Keep it Simple- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2752-principle-keep-it-simple

Myth of I can do it alone- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2753-myth-i-can-do-it-all-alone

Connection Tools for Teams- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2754-team-tools-reconnecting-workspaces

Barriers to Virtual Collaboration – https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2755-flashback-barriers-to-collaboration-in-the-virtual-space

Connection Means https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2756-weekly-journaling-prompt-160-connection-means

Productivity Tip – Metrics that Matter- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2759-productivity-tip-for-hybrid-work-metrics-that-matter

Are you facing the Great Resignation? - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2760-are-you-heading-for-the-great-resignation

Remote Pathways Podcast Episode 40 – https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2761-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-episode-40-remote-pathways-podcast

Flashback to Productivity Tip #10 – Bullet Points- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2762-productivity-tip-10-support-action-with-3-bullet-points

Weekly Journaling Prompt – What’s next?- https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2763-weekly-journaling-prompt-161-whats-next-for-meBrain Tip – Social Contagion and Oxytocin

Six Teamwork Questions – Six Factors Factors https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2768-6-questions-team-effectiveness

Enjoy the reading!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

Teams365 #2776 - Flashback Friday: Building a Vibrant Remote Team Culture

8/6/2021

Team culture is an essential part of remote work. In today’s blog post we are going to reach back to a June 2020 post I wrote on Building a Vibrant Remote Team Culture. Here’s what I wrote:

https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-2368-building-a-vibrant-remote-team-culture

Team culture is all about HOW WE DO things here. Remote Team culture and fostering a sense of connection and identity is critical in a space where we may be members of multiple matrix teams. Our team culture consists of many different components – consider how you are building these out:

Our beliefs – What are the things we hold true? What do we believe in?
Our sayings – Consider the impact of a mantra of “better done than perfect” versus “review until all the t’s are crossed, and i’s dotted”.
What we value – How do our values show up in WHAT we do? What do our values look like in action? For example, is it speed or perfection?
Sense of identity – Who we are. What are the adjectives which describe us as a team?
Our practices and commitments – What will we ensure we always do, no matter what? Examples might include ALWAYS having a Friday afternoon status update no matter what OR ensuring that someone is available to serve customers (virtually or physically) within working hours (even if we have a meeting).

What areas of your culture could benefit from being intentional around?

Accountability is a key part of the coaching conversation. In this week’s post, I’m taking a look back at a past post.

Enjoy your conversation!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

Teams365 #2769 - Friday Flashback – Review of the 3 Week Series Highlight

7/30/2021

In this week’s Friday Flashback, I am reaching back to a 2015 post at the Teams365 blog Teams365 #377: Five Ways to Harness the Best of Your Team - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-366-five-ways-to-harness-the-best-of-your-team

For the last year (2014-2015) here at the Teams365 blog I took a look at what makes teams exceptional. We explored in depth the six factors of high performing teams which include:

1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
2. Shared behavioral norms (How you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team)
3. Shared commitment (What are team members committed to?)
4. Shared performance goals (How are people measured? How do your goals align? Overlap?)
5. Shared team practices (Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event).
6. Clear Roles (How our roles overlap, align and connect).

What can you do this year to harness the best of your team? What practices, such as Monday morning huddles, or more time out of the office working on projects, will bring the team together and boost not only results but the relationships that exist?

Five practical things you can do to harness the best in your team is:

Clarify expectations - Make sure everyone is on the same page and that the six factors when rated area at an8 or 9 out of 10 with everyone. Read two past posts on clarifying expectations (Teams365 #134 and #239 - Trust Builder #6)
Get to know your team members, and have them get to know each other. Business is done through relationships. What are people’s strengths? Preferences? Real talents? What special projects could they lead this year? Assessments such as the Everything DISC opens up dialogue and creates common language for exploring differences.
Dedicate time to team focus - Great teams don’t just happen. They evolve through focus, practice and working together. We need to dedicate time to making a team work well together, not just expect it to happen by itself.
Dedicate time to regular 1-1s. These should not just happen around performance review time, but every week, if not every day! Read this blog post for some questions to incorporate into those conversations. Read what I've written on 1-1s in the past.
Create shared success measures and revisit these regularly. Together create a vision of success and revisit these regularly. Schedule them in and be ruthless in scheduling that meeting.

Enjoy the conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

Teams365 #2727 - Flashback – Review of the 3 week series highlight

6/18/2021

Over the last three weeks we’ve taken a deeper dive into Reconnecting Workspaces, my latest book. Pick up a copy at

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0993791557

Warm regards,
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 #2720 - Flashback Friday

6/11/2021

This week’s Flashback Friday takes us back to Teams365 #1562 - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1562-key-leadership-questions-to-be-asking-this-spring-one-on-ones-planning-and-project-debriefs

Today’s post dives into a series of questions you’ll want to ask yourself, and your team, in three key spring areas. Whether you are a team leader, member or even business owner, this may be one of those posts that you want to highlight, and return back to

One on Ones
One on ones with your team are critical on a regular basis. Unfortunately they are also the things that usually get left at the bottom of the to-do-list. While each team leader will have their own frequency of holding these with team members, you do want to make them regularly consistent. Some of the questions you may want to incorporate into your upcoming one-on-ones are:

What are your key priorities this quarter?
What support do you need in order to be successful? (From me, from others on the team)?
How frequently would you like us to connect?
What’s going to help you stretch as a professional? What’s going to be the challenge for you this ?
What are the partnerships or relationships which are going to help you be successful?
What check ins will be useful (time, frequency, type) to see how things are going?

Project Debriefs:
Projects large and small deserve a bit of post-mortem or debrief. Here are a selection of questions you may want to incorporate into your next project debrief.

What worked well with that project?
What were the three critical success factors (i.e. things that mad the project a success)
What key lessons were learned?
Which projects do they need to be carried forward into? Who else could benefit from hearing about these lessons learned?
What needs to be avoided at all costs in future projects?
What systems helped with teamwork, roles, tasks and resources?

Planning:
If you haven't had the chance to undertake some planning, grab a pen and work through these questions. They are also ones you may want to share with your team:

What are the top 3 -5 priorities this month?
Who (or what relationships) is/are needed in order to make this a success?
What’s the one habit that will help these projects?
What might get in the way?
Where are you getting the bulk of your results right now? How can you do more of this? What do you need to say no to?
What can get delegated or deferred?
What tasks are not adding value and need to be dumped?

Enjoy the questions. Share your favorite here in the comments!

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 #2699 - Flashback Friday – Revisiting Navigating Conflict in Teams - #1196

5/21/2021

This week I am reaching back to review Navigating Conflict in Teams. Conflict continues to be one of the most challenging topics teams face, especially given that things get magnified in the virtual space. Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1196: https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1196-navigating-conflict-in-teams

Conflict in teams is an everyday occurrence and it can be like an Achilles heel – the thing that brings a team down.

Conflict in teams can emerge for many reasons including:

Competing demands
Unclear roles
Lack of clarity around where we are going – our vision, our goals

Regardless of the source of conflict, becoming more proficient and confident in navigating conflict is very important.
In navigating conflict, you will want to consider these questions:

What is more important here - the end result or the relationship? This will influence everything from our stance and approach to conflict. For example, if the end result is really, really important in the short term I may adopt a stance of competition where I do everything I can to “win” at the other’s expense. If the relationship is more important because I need to work with this person, or team, on a regular basis, then I may choose to collaborate. In collaborating, I may let the other party win or spend more time

What do I know about how I approach conflict? We each have our own unique approach to conflict which also shapes how we view conflict. Many team members may have been socialized that conflict is not a bad thing. In fact, part of the team development process is the storming stage where a team needs to figure out who they are, what is important, and how they want to operate. That stage is naturally conflict-ridden.
It can be important during the storming stage for team members to be aware of their natural approach. Are they more conflict-avoidant – i.e. preferring to sweep it under the rug, or are they more head-on with conflict – i.e. raising issues and placing them on the table to immediate exploration?

What is the common ground we share? A third essential area to consider when thinking about conflict in teams is What is the common ground we share. Helping people find that expanse where they do align is critical for conflict resolution. It may only be a small sliver, but helping people see the area in which they align is core.

Supporting teams through conflict. There are some specific things we can do when supporting teams through the choppy waters of conflict. Consider these next time you are working with a team:

Normalize it. A natural part of the formation of groups and teams is conflict and the recognition of differences. Helping teams understand that they are not alone can be useful in taking off some of the pressure of thinking that “they are all alone”.

Give time for the team to work through it. It takes time and space to have these conversations. Prioritize this as something which does need time.

Consider the resources which will support you as a team around this. Having a common framework and skills you can all use in navigating conflict supports the process of resolution. If people don’t know how to have a conversation around conflict it can be challenging. Consider investing resources in some skill development for the team, and/or bringing someone in who can help you with this.

Focus on supporting enhanced self-awareness in the team – In today’s teaming environment we all benefit from enhanced self-awareness. Awareness around how we naturally approach work, our styles, as well as our approach to conflict. Many times teams may be experiencing conflict due to differences in work styles. If you have some team members who are driving for results and working to get things done quickly, whereas others want to make sure things are done correctly, conflict is likely. Helping team members understand their natural style can be of great benefit and may reframe differences to simply differences, rather than something which is wrong or a problem.

Consider the end result. Sometimes it is very easy to get mired in our own perspectives, and what needs to happen. Helping team members reconnect with the end result is critical for success. Connecting with the bigger picture, also helps team members find those slivers, or 2%’s, where they do align.

What is important for your team to notice about conflict? What's the issue they need to work through?

Enjoy your reflections!
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 #2692 - Flashback Friday – Questions for Ongoing Performance Conversations

5/14/2021

We all can use some support with having better conversations. What are the conversations you want to have? Back in Teams365 #1618, I explored the topic of different questions which can help frame out performance conversations. Let’s take a look at what I wrote in that post: www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1618-questions-for-ongoing-performance-conversations

Performance conversations should be a two-way conversation between an employee and their leader. Often it becomes a one-way passage of information from the leader who for a variety of reasons – nerves, inexperience or urgency – with the leader reading off a bullet list of what the team member has done, and not done.

In moving to a culture of on-going feedback it can be important to create an environment where performance conversations are part of a dialogue, rather than an anxiety promoting one-off activity.

Part of this shift involves engaging the team members in their own assessment of how their performance is going. This can entail

Having them review their goals on a regular basis

Having them identify the key activities on a regular basis, connecting them with the goals

Having them self-assess what’s working, and what’s not.

With this pre-planning in mind, art of making this shift is having a variety of questions to stimulate the conversation. Here are a range you might want to use:

Looking at your goals this period (quarter/year/month) what progress have you made OR what achievements have you had?

What’s been working well?
What hasn’t been working well with each of these goals?
What do you need to be more successful (this may lead to a discussion around resourcing – other people and support, or physical resources needed, or other resourcing)
What’s the one change you want to make around your goals and actions in the next quarter, to accelerate your results (or ramp up your impact)?
What will help you be more successful with your work?
What key learning have you had around your work/career since we last met?
What else is important to note?

Using some (and probably not all) of these questions, can hep to stimulate a two-way conversation. Don’t forget that the conversation is also an opportunity for you as a leader to get feedback on how things are going, so be sure to ask them what change could be made as well.

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