Happy Sunday! This week we’ve explored a number of key topics of interest to those who are both working remote and also in-person. If you haven’t read this week’s daily posts, be sure to check out:

• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt # 64 : Read it here
  
• Friday’s Flashback Friday post around habits: read it here
  
• Thursday’s Team Building Tip #253 - Read it here
  
• Wednesday’s post on the remote work myth that “out of sight equals out of mind”. Read it here
  
• Tuesday’s post of Remote Work Pitfalls. Read it here.
  
• Monday’s post around the art of Questioning in Effective Virtual Conversations. Read it here.
  

​Given that it’s mid-month, it’s a great opportunity to take a look at your goals for the month and see how you are coming with them. What are you tracking? What are you noticing? What do you want to focus more on?

A reminder to also check out last Monday's Effective Virtual Conversations call on more effective meetings. Check out this 20 minute video for some quick tips you can implement right away in your next team meeting.
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Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Jennifer

PS - In today's #90DaysPlanDoTrack Instagram Post I included several prompts for you to consider as you do your mid-month planning - be sure to complete your week in Review and the Monthly Daily Trackers in your PlanDoTrack or Coaching Business Builder workbooks.

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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. 

This week’s writing prompt gets you to reflect on, and write about, what you want to say a resounding “HECK, YES!” to?
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Perhaps you are thinking about an upcoming decision you need to make. If you are looking to weigh the pros, and cons, how about overlaying the question – What can you say a "HECK YES!" to?

Enjoy your reflection!
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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

This week’s Flashback Friday gets you to think about your habits. I thought I’d reach back to an earlier post from the 2018 Kickoff where I included several questions to consider. Given our recent focus on back to work, I thought It would be useful to revisit these again.

Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1466:

Today we turn our attention to creating habits and practices that will support you in what you want to achieve this year. Habits and practices are things we do automatically, sometimes unconsciously, because they have come so ingrained. There are many schools of thought that create a link between habits and success. That habits lead to success.

Take a look back at your first four days of prompts for the 2018 Kickstart, and with this in mind:
1. What will help you be successful this year?
2. What are the consistent behaviors and actions you want to or need to undertake to move you towards your goals?
3. What could amplify or magnify those goals?
4. What's missing that could make a difference?
5. What small shifts would make a new ripple?
6. What does consistency mean for you around habits?
7. What could get in the way?
8. What is going to remind you about your commitment to your goals?
9. What do you notice about how your mindset is influencing your habits?
10. What is becoming automatic for you OR what needs to become automatic for you in your successful pursuit towards your goal?

I hope that you are continuing to enjoy the 2018 Kickstart prompts.

You can read the original post here.
 
Enjoy the focus!
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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

This week’s Thursday Team Building Tip gets you as a team to consider the question “What needs more discernment?”. One of the challenges in today’s workspace is running fast but being able to focus in on what’s important.

What are the things that need to be looked at more closely? What needs more discernment?

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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

As we’ve stepped back to work, this week’s focus here at the blog has started to zoom into the remote workspace. Sundays here include a weekly round-up so you can catch up on posts you might not have read during the week. Here’s what I covered this week:

• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt 66 – Why Not?
• Friday’s Flashback to 7 skills for Virtual Facilitators
• Thursday’s Team Building Tip – What needs to go under the microscope?
• Wednesday’s post on the tagline of my PlanDoTrack publication – Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum
• Tuesday’s focus on Getting Organized for Fall: 4 Areas for Making Remote Work, Work
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip getting you to explore how your work has changed in the last year

I hope that it’s been a great week for you and that you are already getting back into the routine you want for this last 4 months of the year. If not, what changes do you want to make? What time could you carve out today to get more organized?
 
Enjoy!
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 Season 2 of 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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

It’s Saturday which means that it’s time for another weekly journaling prompt. This week’s prompt gets you to consider and reflect on the question “Why Not”?
Perhaps you are thinking about whether you invest time and resources into something. If you are only asking WHY, consider asking WHY NOT?

As you step into your fall routine, what would be the benefit of creating a quick 10-15-minute window to reflect on and capture some ideas in a journal. Even if this is the first week you do it, journaling can provide a number of benefits including:

• A space to stop and pause and note what’s happening in your life or work.
• An opportunity to explore issues of importance from different perspectives.
• The chance to see how items are connected.
• The pause to develop new insights.

I’ve bundled a set of the Weekly Journaling Prompts together in convenient quarterly downloadable notebooks. Take a look at them in our Potentials Realized store:

• You’ll find Volume 1 (Weeks 1 – 12) here
• You’ll find Volume 2 (Weeks 13 – 24) here

Wishing you 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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

Each Thursday I share a question for prompt for you and your team to consider and explore together. They are questions you might bring into your team meetings to create a quick new focus OR they might get circulated in a weekly email. Feel free to share, while attributing this blog as the source.

This week’s question - #252 in the series – gets you to consider the question “What needs to go under the microscope?”.

When we put things under the microscope a number of things happen:

• We can adjust resolution
• We can zoom into new parts
• We can get curious about detail

My undergraduate degree is in science and I spent a lot of time peering through microscopes in my first few years at McGill. The process always fascinated me and has left its mark around the different perspectives and insights microscopes provide.

What issues do you want to put under a metaphorical microscope?

What could benefit from a zoom in or looking at more detail?

Enjoy the conversation and the exploration!
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 (season 2 of the 90 days series has just started)
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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

Last summer I launched the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner, followed later in the year with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. These two undated planners have now been used by some professionals for the last year, creating focus, and reflection space to take a look at what’s working and what needs evolution in their businesses, remote work and teams they lead.
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The foundation of the two workbook planners is that, Small Steps and Daily Action create their own Momentum.

Momentum and consistent action are critical in a work context where things are changing rapidly. It’s much harder to get something started, that to move along with something that is already moving.

Getting into the rhythm of daily action around goals that are important helps to establish routines and makes it a part of how you do things. As we have seen through research, it may take upwards of 66 days to create a routine around something. While those actions (like walking every day after dinner or rising early to work on a creative project) can feel natural after some time, the start of habit formation requires more focus and effort.

As you consider your goals this fall ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the key goals you want to achieve by year-end?
2. What are the daily steps you could take to move you towards each one of the goals?
3. By taking consistent small steps, what is possible?
4. What does consistent steps mean?
5. Where have you undertaken consistent steps on a regular basis before? What was the outcome?
6. What are the things you want to stop doing?

​Enjoy your daily focus and action!
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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

Today is “back to work” day for many professionals. With Labor Day just behind us, it’s time to get back to the regular routine. For some of you, you may be doing more remote work. As someone who has run a virtual business for more than 15 years and supported virtual and remote teams for a decade-plus before than, remote work has been the backdrop of my career. It’s getting more attention these days as organizations are looking to reduce their footprint, and as employees are requesting more freedom.

So, how do we make remote work, work? There are of course some significant differences – including future immediate disruptions, less time spent with colleagues and the autonomy of working on projects.

This month here at the Teams365 blog, we’ll continue exploring different areas and parts of the remote work space. If this is a topic you are interested in, be sure to check out these other remote posts.

In today’s post I wanted to share four things to keep an eye on when you are working remote:

#1 – Create a dedicated work space. Having a dedicated work space, which doesn’t take over the entire house is critical. It’s often a fine balance between having space to focus, and a place to put away (or close the door). Be sure to make it effective, quiet and well lit. Dollar stores can be a great place to pick up the office supplies you need in order to get started, and bins and plastic boxes can keep things corralled. Is there a closet you can dedicate some space in for filing materials needed? What about noise and privacy? Security for your files? Does anything need to be updated in your homeowner’s insurance policy to reflect your new work space?

#2 – Make a point to establish routine that will get you moving and in connection with others. Isolation is one of the more common challenges for remote workers. This is where establishing a routine to “get you out of the office” on a regular basis can be of benefit. Maybe you want to take part in a lunchtime exercise class (I swim 3-4 times a week) or maybe you want to tap into breakfast meetings held in your community. Consider the things that will get you connecting with others – in the in person and virtual space.

#3 – Consider your rhythms. We each have a different rhythm for work. Recent studies are showing that remote workers can be more productive than their counterparts in offices. Some of this may be due to the flexibility of working WHEN you want. I also often recommend to organizations to consider a set of “core hours” where everyone (or a majority) of people are available. This allows for meetings to be called where most people can attend, and it also provides for additional windows for work to get done. Maybe core hours are 10 – 1 pm PT/1 – 4 pm ET every day or 10- 1 pm ET/7 – 10 am PT or some other time frame.

As a professional, when are you at your prime? What will help you get your best work done?

#4 – Create boundaries. As I wrote in last week’s post, boundaries are critical for remote work success. It’s easy to find yourself pulled in many directions, especially if you are part of multiple matrix teams. What are the boundaries what are important for you? (Consider time worked, time available outside or normal hours, etc.) Consider what you need to do to communicate these clearly to others you interface with.

Enjoy!
​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 a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. 

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to consider the question, “If I won the lottery tomorrow I would…”

As we go to wrap up the month of August, it’s likely that you may have had some time away this summer. Perhaps it provided a bit of space from the daily grind, enabling you to think about “What could you do differently” or “If you were able to… you would….”.

Several years ago, I was lucky to take a course called Coaching for Compassion from Richard Boyatzis. His research has found that asking people to explore the question of what they would do if they won the lottery, can have an impact on “opening up” parts of the brain which they have called the PEA – Positive Emotional Attractor Network.

I am excited to see that he has released a new book entitled “Helping People Change” which explores this topic. Be sure to check it out.
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And for now….enjoy your weekly journaling prompt.

After you complete this week’s prompt, what do you notice about what you have written?

Enjoy your reflections!
​Jennifer