I’m really pleased to announce my latest publication, geared specifically for virtual and remote team members. On December 14th the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Remote and Virtual Professionals will be available for sale on Amazon.

Part workbook, part planner, it’s geared for virtual and remote team members, leaders and virtual businesses. Based on the success of the release of the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner in July, I’ve adjusted the workbook for the virtual and remote team space.

It’s an analog, desk sized calendar, to reflect the importance of having one “Go to” resource to place your “To Dos”, project ideas, content plans and monthly reflections.

Divided into four sections, the workbook covers:

• Virtual and Remote Business Foundations – for teams and also businesses. This includes a series of skill checks and some of the latest stats on virtual and remote work.
  
• The Primer – Success tips and focus areas which you can integrate into your business, or further refine for a great prime.
  
• Marketing Essentials – Whether we are sharing what our virtual team is doing, positioning our services, or going out to promote on social media, the marketing essentials.
  
• The Ecosystem – At the heart of a successful virtual team, business or leader is ourselves. The Ecosystem section focuses on who YOU are as a leader – your strengths, values and opportunities. This section has evolved out of the Inner Business leader Virtual Retreats I have hosted for years.
  

 
The planner section covers Annual, Quarterly and Monthly planning resources, along with a robust content planning section. Including more than 28 resources you’ll find :

• Monthly Trackers – to track different elements for your business
• Annual project planners
• Quarterly Reviews
• Monthly In Focus
• Monthly

The planner pages are undated so you will benefit from starting the resource at any time.

In addition to the workbook and planner, I also host regular virtual events around planning. Each month end I host a virtual reflection hour, and
The workbook is more than 285 pages and costs $29.95. You can pick up a copy on Amazon. 

If this is a topic you are interested in (and most people are at this time of year), do consider joining me for the 14 days of PlanDoTrack series, which includes a mix of live virtual calls (open to everyone), blog posts and some other special events. Check out the daily schedule here and download a copy.
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Best wishes,
Jennifer

​As we round out 2018 and get set up for 2019, I’m dedicating Tuesday and Wednesday posts to a series I’m entitling 19 Productivity Hacks for 2019.

As some of you may know, support around performance improvement – on the individual, team and organizational level – has been a significant part of my work and our focus here at Potentials Realized since 2004. This takes us into a range of conversations from a focus on team effectiveness to discussion around work-life issues to support to project management.

In these 19 posts over the Tuesdays and Wednesdays in December 2018 and January 2019 I will be lasering into 19 discrete focus areas which can be looked at step-by-step or independently. Depending on how you work and what your style is, you may want to look at each one of these daily or on a weekly basis.

1. Have a clear vision.
The starting point for our 19 productivity hacks for 2019 starts with the big picture. What’s your vision? As Seneca wrote during the times of Ancient Greece,
“To the person who does not know where (S)he wants to go there is no favorable wind”

In other words, without a clear vision it’s hard to get where you want to go.
Creating a vision at this time of year is not just a nice-to-do activity, it is an essential productivity measure as it gets us clear on where we want to go.

Visioning work doesn’t have to take a long time, in fact, you might only dedicate 10 -15 minutes to the activity. Since 2014 I’ve offered up a short 10 minute vision audio for leaders, entrepreneurs and other professionals to listen to. Grab a pen and you can listen in here.

If you prefer to free-style it, set your timer to write and complete the statement
It’s December 31 2019 and……

Provide details about what you are doing this year, what you are focusing on, what’s working and what’s not.

You might also want to use these questions as a prompt.  Consider these questions

It is December 31, 2019 and you are reflecting back on the year that was.
Note:

• What your successes have been?
• Where your focus has been?
• What products or services have you been focusing on offering?
• Who have you have been working with?
• What’s been happening?
• What have you taken a stand for?
• What have you become known for?
• What have been the major milestones?
• What goals have you achieved?
• What’s your vision for the new year? If you haven’t had time to think about it, now’s the time?

I hope that you will find a few minutes in the coming days to reflect on what your vision is for 2019, WRITING it down and possibly posting elements of it around you. Some of my clients have been creating visual reminders on their phone, through vision boards and other elements.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Coming December 14, 2019 – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner 
Join us for a year-end virtual planning retreat!
Pre-order a copy of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Virtual and Remote Professionals on Amazon (Available December 14). Check it out here.

​Welcome to the December and January series of 19 productivity tips for 2019. It’s that time of year when we pause and take stock of what’s working and what’s not. One of the number one issues I have heard throughout this year is “how do I become more effective in leveraging my time?”. This can mean different things for different people throughout the year – from being more clear on goals, to managing distractions, to focusing more on those activities which give leverage.

As some of you may know, back in August, I launched an analog (hard copy) workbook and planner for coaches, called the Coaching Business Builder. Many people I spoke with said – I’m not a coach, but work virtually, so can you create one for me?

So… In a couple of weeks I will be launching a new planner and workbook called PlanDoTrack™. Geared for virtual and remote professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders, everyone will find it of interest. Just like the name says – it’s about Planning. Doing. Tracking.
It is about getting focused on what you want to do.
Planning – being clear on what our priorities are;
Doing  - Getting into focused action and;
Tracking the results – What’s working and what’s not.

In leading up to the launch, I am pleased to share a 19 days series I’ve entitled 19 Productivity Hacks for 2019. Over the next few weeks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays we will be focusing on these 19 productivity tips.
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If you are interested in learning more about the new workbook and planner, the new PlanDoTrack website will be available soon, or you can sign up for the monthly PlanDoTrack newsletter here. 

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
Join Jennifer for a year-end virtual planning retreat in the PlanDoTrack Series!
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
YouTube – Teams365 Leadership Channel
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326
Pre-order a copy of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Virtual and Remote Professionals on Amazon (Available December 14). Check it out here.

​This week’s Weekly Journaling prompt gets you to think about the question “What will wild success look like?”
As you think about the next month, or the next year, what do you want to create? What will wild success look like?
If you had no barriers, what could you achieve?
Writing in an aspirational way about what we envision can be a powerful process. Don’t self-censure. Allow yourself the ability to dream big, and then let it go.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago in a speaking engagement, part of vision work is about letting things go. It’s about dreaming big, letting it go and trusting that what needs to happen will.
What WILL (not can) wild success look like for you?

Enjoy!
Jennifer

​Given our quickly shifting focus to the holidays and year end, I thought it would be appropriate to shift our attention back to a Linked In article I wrote and post I shared this time last year – Teams365 #1389.

This "It’s that time of year for parties, year-end team retreats and other events. Are you maximizing the amount of time and impact of these team events?

Having supported year-end programming for teams and organizations for many years I thought it would be useful to share four focus areas you may want to consider as you start preparing, planning and perhaps facilitating your year-end processes.

Number One — What’s the purpose? If you had to distill down the top two or three takeaways from the retreat process or that off site, what is it? The purpose of our year-end function can impact the structure and activities undertaken in the program.

Is the purpose of your year-end event:

• to build connection?
• to share important information?
• do some goal planning?
• to build understanding across the silos, that may exist within your organization?

I’d encourage you to think about the top two or three purposes of the upcoming program and link to consideration #2.

Number Two — What is the connection to the business? Think about what is the connection to the business. It’s still very common in today’s world for people to just go through the motions of a traditional annual year end party and /or event. 
Are you really maximizing that investment of bringing people together?
Could you build into that luncheon a half-day session before or after, to do some work with your staff teams to support their development, to help them look at their skills and strengths and styles and also to share with them, you know, and help them connect to the link with your business.
What opportunities do you have already formalized for bringing people together at year-end? What changes or additions do you want to make?

Number Three — Do you want to do it all alone? Many organizations today have a committee and amongst that committee membership, there may be some members who would be very comfortable in facilitating your year-end team or organizational process.
So, think about who might be best equipped to do the work? Is it you, members of that committee or maybe you are interested in bringing in an external facilitator?
One of the things we do, is either we come in and facilitate or develop activities which you can facilitate yourself.
Think about how you might be able to leverage the resources you have and or bring in some special guest speakers or external resources to contribute to the environment that you want to create.

Number Four — How are you going to take this forward? One of the biggest challenges that we see in learning and development today is this continued lack of transferability to the work place.
This was what drew me to focus more on the area of Coaching which places an ongoing emphasis on accountability and transferability to the workplace.
One the things I like to encourage organizations that I partner with to always thinking about is – How will you sustain the conversation? How will you take this forward into your work?
Hopefully any year-end retreat process or year-end meeting will have an action step and a very formalized action planning stage. Remember to build in time in the new year to revisit your commitments and accountabilities.

Here’s a quick recap:
Number One - Think about the purpose. What are the top three or four reasons or things that you want people to take away?
Number Two - What’s the link of the year-end program to the business? Is it just to have fun or something else?
Number Three - As your approaching your year-end processes, is this something you want to do or do you want to bring in a facilitator? A third option perhaps is to have something designed for you, so you can facilitate it yourself.
And finally, Number Four. What are the takeaways? How will people sustain the conversation? When will you check in on your actions and commitments?
I hope that you’re finding these ideas valuable, practical, and of course, implementable."
What are you looking forward to creating for your team in terms of year end planning and reflection?

Take a look at some of the other year end posts here. 

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
Join Jennifer for a year-end virtual planning retreat in the PlanDoTrack Series!
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
YouTube – Teams365 Leadership Channel
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

​It may seem early to some, but before we know it, the end of the year will be here! If you are a business owner or team leader, already you may have your year-end celebrations well in place. If you don’t, it’s not too late! Here’s a post I wrote back in 2015 on 10 different things you might want to build in time for at year end. Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #703.

Today's post gets you to think further about year end activities and possible retreat ideas for your team. While not everyone will be able to take a day away from the office, even spreading some of these activities over a couple of weeks, or the next month or two, gets you thinking about and in dialogue about important issues.

Here are ten things to be sparking focus and conversation around with your team:

1. Creating a Year in Summary - Using photos or words  how would you describe the highlights of the last year
2. Strengths based work using either StrengthsFinder or VIA Strengths
3. Goal setting for the new year - overall goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals. Looking at how individual, team and organizational goals overlap
4. Creating an action plan for the new year
5. Creating a Vision for the new year
6. Vision Modelling - using tin foil, plastercine or paper mache, coming up with a model for your vision that you as a team can look at regularly
7. Coming up with a theme for the year
8. Taking time to acknowledge each other
9. Celebrating your successes from the year -  a lunch out (or in) or a night out bowling or playing ping pong (yes teams can have fun together!)
10. Setting an intention for the year

What other activities might you undertake to wrap up the year together?

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

​As I’ve been leading different types of conversations in the last few weeks through small group coaching, leadership training and keynotes, I have noticed that the conversation and focus is changing for many team members and leaders right now. In addition to thinking about what needs to get done, I’m also hearing a lot of leaders (and their teams) starting to look at opportunities for the new year.
 
Given that every week I am talking across a range of leadership and teamwork topics, I hear a wide variety of different areas, and key themes.
If I had to identify five that I have been hearing a lot of opportunities  around for the new year it would be:
​
Getting better at hosting meetings. Think about how much time you have spent in meetings this week? This month? How many were face to face? How many were virtual? How effective were they? What would have made them more effective? Spending time getting better at meetings?
Building in more time for strategic thinking and action. With technology has helped us get better at so many things, and does make it easier, distraction and focus are key elements for business success in an ever-changing environment.
Scheduling in time for what’s important – Making sure we have the important items in our calendar and can get them done when we have energy. Daniel Pink’s book WHEN takes us into the realm of WHEN it is important to get things done. Circadian rhythms have been researched for many decades now, and many of us may be aware of what time of day is really best to get certain tasks done in. With the shift to mobile and remote work, many of us now have more flexibility in terms of how we operate and when we schedule our tasks.
Getting better at knowing our strengths and styles – Some of my favorite days are spent with teams who are learning more about their strengths and styles, interfacing this with helping them understand more about team effectiveness. I am pleased to continue to be able to offer support for teams, groups and individuals around strengths and styles. Whether we are exploring the DiSC together or StrengthsFinder, these are powerful frameworks which help to support individuals “lean into” what they naturally do well during times of change and uncertainty.  Change and uncertainty is the new norm for so many workplaces today.
 
Where do you want to put attention around for 2019? I hope that you will grab 15 minutes right now to make some notes for yourself and/or to schedule it in for focus. As Drucker wrote “What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done”.
 
With best wishes,
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 several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

This week’s Sunday post takes us back to a 2014 post around focus when I shared a quote from Daniel Goleman’s book on Focus.

In it, he writes the following:
"For leaders to get results, they need all three kinds of focus. Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values and better decisions. Other focus smooths out our connections to the people in our lives. an outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger support within which they operate will be blindsided".  (Goleman: Focus, pp 48)
 
In today’s VUCA world, taking time to focus is critical. Planning is still key, even if it becomes more of a contingency planning process. As someone who led in very uncertain contexts in my former life with my work in the humanitarian sector, when things are complex, planning becomes even more important. Unlike a traditional a to b to c to d model, contingency planning takes us through that and also gets us thinking into a cubed (A3).

Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt brings us to #23 in the series. It’s the prompt, “What are three things you are grateful for?”.
This question comes from the positive psychology movement that found that people who asked themselves this question were happier.
Action for Happiness goes into a great description of some of the research and other supports, such as apps, that can support you with this gratitude practice. Check out their post here.
It’s a great time of the year to start developing the practice of thinking about, and also speaking to, what we are grateful for, letting those around us know what we are thankful for.
This week, build in some time to reflect regularly about the three things you are grateful for each day. You don’t have to do it every day, just a few times a week.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

As we step into the end of the year, scheduling key activities for your team is important before the year comes to a close. Some of the key activities you may want to include for your team are:
A review session of accomplishments, lessons learned, based on what worked well, and didn’t work well.
Planning sessions for 2019, with an annual and quarterly focus. Is every team member clear on what key priorities are? What key activities need to be accomplished? By when? What’s expected of them? How their work links with others on the team?
Celebration sessions to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished during the year.
One-on-one time with each team member supporting them in some review of the year and visioning and planning for the year ahead.

Be sure to check out these other Teams365 posts regarding year end activities:
Year-end reflection and planning questions.

You may also want to check out the 10 Year End Activities Video I created last year. View it HERE.

As well as the 4 Best Practices for Year End Retreats.
​
Best, 
Jennifer