Happy spring! Has the new season sprung where you are?

In my work as a coach I see a lot of seasonality – beginnings, ends and excitement for change. As we step into the new season today, I wanted to share some of the spring questions I had posted in Teams365 #811.

I hope that you will take a few minutes to reflect on these questions today:

What are your goals this season?
What new habits and practices do you want to put into place?
What relationships do you want to put attention around?
What else is significant for you this spring (or fall)?

Looking backwards:
What successes did you have over the last quarter?
What helped you?
What got in the way?

What changes do you want to make this spring?
What and who will help you be successful?
 
What are the other questions which are important to consider right now?
​
Enjoy your reflection,
Jennifer

Welcome back to another Monday Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’s post gets you to consider “Out of sight does not equal out of mind”. One of the common fallacies of virtual teamwork and leadership is that we think that it’s not important to connect with others who are far away. In fact, “out of sight should mean more in mind”.
​
Consider the impact of not:

• Holding meetings where people can see each other
• Holding meetings consistently because some people are not there
• Recording meetings and/decisions made
• A lot of misunderstanding occurs when we don’t become proactive in connecting with all team members, as visually as possible.

You will want to consider all the ways you can make things visible and visual for the team. This could include:

• Ensuring meetings are streamed and people can see each other
• Capturing agreements and decisions in chat so you can then circulate the chat log as meeting notes  for everyone (who is there and not there)
• Rotating meeting times and organizers, so even if the leader is on the road, or engaged the team has a strong enough process to be able to follow through and meet around.

Virtual teams can leverage the best of technology so that they can see each other, record, and share information.

What are the ways you can keep the team and it’s focus top of mind this month?
​
What will make things visible and visual?

Have a great day,
Jennifer

This week for the FlashbackFriday post, I am reaching back to a post from last January – Teams365 1465 where I shared tip 4 of the Kickstart for 2018.

In that post I shared more about priorities, a key topic to help us keep on point for the year.

Here’s what I wrote:

"As a leader in my late 20s, responsible for global programming and leading an organization of more than 100 in South America, I learned very quickly that regardless of how many goals were on the place, priorities were critical. I was struck by the concept of Steven Covey’s Big Rocks – or how we need to attend to, and add our big rocks – or priorities first, therefore allowing us to fit in all the smaller things around them.

With this end in mind, I’d like for you to consider the goals you have set out for yourself for 2018.

​As we step into 2018, the first Teams365 series of the year is the Kickstart Your 2018 - 8 in 18. 8 days of reflective prompts to get you thinking about, and writing about what you want to create this year. Check out the other posts in this series here, and I hope you'll follow along by grabbing a pen and a journal (you can start at any time!):

Day 4 questions in the series get you to think about the most important priorities. Consider these questions today:
1. Looking at my list of goals (for the year, month, day), what is most important?
2. What time have I scheduled to get these done?
3. When will I be most effective on working on my priorities? 
4. What could get in the way of me attending to these priorities?
5. What do I need to say YES to, in order to knock these priorities out of the park?
6. What do I need to say NO to, in order to focus more on my top priorities?
7. Who can support me in being successful with these priorities?
8. What other resources do I need for my priorities?
9. What do I need to delegate, or defer, to get the priorities attended to?
10. What’s the hard end date to get these done? As we know, many tasks expand to the amount of time we give them. This is commonly known as Parkinson’s Rule."
 _________________________________________________________________


 
What are your top 5 priorities this month? This quarter? Where are these visible to you?
 
Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

​It’s Sunday and I wanted to share with you links to some of our more than 30 videos I’ve created in the last year, bringing to life some of the more than 1600 blog posts here at the Teams365 blog. I hope that you’ll take a few minutes today to check out these blog posts:

Teams365 #1440 – 12 Mentoring Questions – Watch it here - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1440-12-mentoring-questions-teams365-video
 
Teams365 #1512 – Ways to Build Trust in Virtual Teams. Watch it here - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1512-ways-to-build-trust-in-virtual-teams
 
Teams365 #1608: 4 Tips for Fluid Speaking. Watch it here - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1608-video-tips-for-fluid-speaking
 
Teams365 #1307: Four Keys to Feedback – Watch it here -
https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1307-video-4-keys-to-feedback 
 
Teams365 #1489- Four Ways to Plan and Set Goals. Watch it here - https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1489-teams365-video-another-way-to-plan-and-set-goals
 
What has been your favorite Teams365 blog in the last year?
 
What posts would you like to have brought to life through a weekly video?
 
Let us know your thoughts and comment below!
 
With thanks,
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

Today’s Flashback Friday post takes us to a post to Teams365 #765 -  “Goal Success for 2016”. In it I make reference to, and link to a 2015 article I wrote called “Five Goal Setting Elements” (view that here)  I thought it would be very fitting for our final Flashback Friday post for this month where we have focused on goals.

In the next few days I’ll start wrapping up our focus on goals and start looking to our themes for February – relationships, collaboration and trust.

It's likely that a majority of you, and your team members, have set some goals for yourself this year, and some may be wondering, how will I be successful?

he Five Goal Setting Elements article covers these five points:. You can read the article here. T
1. Choose what
goal setting framework will work for you  - whether it's SMART goals, check lists etc, choose an approach that works for you.
2. Consider the timelines around the goals. Which ones are a priority when?\
3. Goal Visibility - as I wrote earlier, keep your goals visible - whether they are on your phone, your desk or your fridge.
4. Accountability and support - who will help you be successful?
5. Celebration and Recognition - what will you do to recognize your movement towards the goals? What milestones have you set for yourself? How will you celebrate along the way?

Several other factors are often mentioned  in terms of goal achievement include :
* making sure your list of goals is not too long
* sharing it with others

and for team leaders, whether it's your goal or team members goals:
* Giving an opportunity for each team member to share what their key goals are for the year and what's important about that.
* helping team members know how their goals interface with, and impact other goals such as KPIs, team goals or corporate goals.

As we go to wrap up our focus on goals in a few days, what is important for you to consider putting into practice or making a regular habit.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

A key skill for teams today is ensuring goal alignment. It's likely that a significant part of your focus this month has been on goals for 2017 and making sure everyone understands the bigger picture goals.

Once goals are clarified at the larger organizational or team level an important next step is to have team members understand how their contributions support the big picture goals. It is also important for team members to understand how their work aligns and sometimes conflicts with others.

Having dialogue as a team around priorities and key timelines can be important to note where alignment is working and where it may cause conflict. This can be done in advance (perhaps on a quarterly or monthly basis) to avoid the crunch-points that are inevitable in a team.

Here are a couple of resource links for those interested in learning more about goal alignment.

1. An article on Goal Alignment and Organizational Business Goals from SAP Success Factors. View it here.


2. Halogen's article on "Get managers to align and manage employee's goals. Read it here.

3. Gaurav Gupta's Article " Is your team aligned" in Industry Week. Read it here.

This week consider how you will facilitate dialogue with the team around alignment and your goals.

Have a great weekend,
Jennifer

This year marks the end of the third year of daily posts here at the Teams365 blog. It's been quite the journey and experiment of moving to a daily blog format for more than a thousand days! What began as a way to expand readership and visibility of our website with a handful of readers, has grown into thousands of readers throughout the week, the seeds of a couple of new books and more importantly impact and learning for leaders around the world.

Plans are underway for our 2017 blog posts, with a continued daily focus, and some new weekly columns. Our Team Building Tips Thursday will now be joined on Friday by a Flashback Friday section where I'll take a look at past posts from the blog. Let me know by email what you have enjoyed and what other focus areas you would like explored during 2017.

​Here are some of our top posts and post areas for 2016. Let's take a look:

Teams365 #1075 - Linked IN article - 10 Year End Activities to Undertake With Your Team  - Click to read here

​Our Teams365 Team Development Activities Series which will continue into 2017. If you haven't checked out these short posts which usually include a 3-5 minute video, take a look.

​Our Virtual and Remote Team Leader a-z  Posts which were a focus for us this spring - Check the 26 posts out here  

​This led to the development of a new e-book which builds on these posts and goes into 26 essential characteristics of Highly Effective Vritual and Remote TEam Leaders. Pick up a copy at our store for $19 US.

This year I introduced a new cartoon series of Jo, the new team leader. This series focused on some of Jo's key activities such as hosting virtual meetings, and undertaking one-on-ones with staff. View the cartoons here.

​Our global leadership series - Check out these posts here.

​The Foundations of Feedback series in May and June. Check out these posts here.

​The Foundations of Teamwork series - Check out these posts here. This grew into our new Foundations of Tetamwork on-demand course available at the Teams365 Learning Portal.

New Team Leaders series back in August. Check it out here

​You may also be interested in the July and August First 90 Day Video tips I did this past summer as well. Check them out here.

​and finally....and area that will be a huge focus for me in 2017 - the Virtual Facilitation Tips series. Check them out here.


​What did you find to be most useful to you in your work this year? Let us know by commenting!

Have a great holiday week,
Jennifer
​
Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
​Looking for more cool things to do with your team? Check out our Potentials Realized store for books, emanuals, and the Conversation Sparker Cards.
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

Today we've made it to G in the Team Develompent Activities a - z. G is for Goals a critical part of the team devevopment process. In this short 5 minute video I take you through some of the questions I hope you are asking yourselves as part of your year -end planning. I go through the SMART-E framework for goal setting and also get you thinking about what is important for goals for you and your teams right now.

For more posts on goals, please visit :
Four Ways to Focus on Your Back to Work and School Goals - Teams365 #981

Have a clear and shared plan - Teams365 #945

Check out the other ideas I have shared already in our a-z series of different team development activities. 

​Best wishes
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
​Looking for more cool things to do with your team? Check out our Potentials Realized store for books, e-manuals, and the Conversation Sparker Cards.
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

It's Monday Motivation for many bloggers today, and given that I'm out today working with a team, here's a quick quote for you to enjoy in my absence!

What's a key priority for you this week? Think about how you can keep your goals visible and in front of you to remember what's important this week.

Click here to review the posts I did last month as part of the Foundations of Goal Setting series.

Have a great start to it,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326