Welcome back to another weekly Thursday question to bring into your team. This week’s question is “What could be collapsed?”
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When you think about this question it might take you to thinking about:

• What processes could be collapsed so they are more streamlined?
• What components could be simplified?
• What communication could be made easier?
• What elements could be broken down?
• When you think of collapsed, what is important to note?

Best,
​Jennifer

Welcome back to another Monday Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’s tip takes us back to a reminder of six elements I write about in part 3 of EVC which help remote teams thrive. I call these the Six Factors of High Performing Teams in my work. It’s a framework I have used for several years, especially when teams are looking to pinpoint some of the ‘levers’ they can use to make their teamwork better.

Together these six areas create a dynamic set of levers which can be focused on and adjusted. In my experience of working with teams, especially remote teams, it’s likely that some areas are doing well, and one or more need attention.

I’ve shared quite a bit about the Six Factors during  the seven years of the post several times, including this post back in 2014 – # 8 in this daily blog series.

As you read through these, consider what are the elements or levers your team could benefit from some attention around:

1. Shared purpose or mission - Your WHY? Why do you exist? How might this have changed? What are you doing to reconnect everyone into this on a regular basis?

2. Shared performance goals - What are the goals you are working on for Q2? How do they connect in with others?

3. Shared behavioral norms - What are the ways you do things? What makes your team unique in terms of how you do things? What’s acceptable and what’s not? Our norms define our culture and help to differentiate us.

4. Shared team practices - What are the things you are doing to keep things moving as a team? How have your meetings evolved? What are you doing to focus on both relationship development and results?

5. Shared commitment - What are you committed to, NO MATTER WHAT? How do you have each other’s backs?

6. Clear roles - What are the different roles required on the team to do your best work? Who is best suited to play what role?

How do you rate as a team on each of these six factors? You may want to rate them on a scale of 1-10 with one being low and 10 being high. Which areas do you need to work on or create together?

What are the levers which need attention? Where would you like to focus as a team, going forward?

Best,
Jennifer

We’re heading Back to the Basics as today is Tuesday. This week’s teamwork skill in focus is listening. How are your listening skills on your team? Are you doing a good job of listening to each other?

Listening in both the in-person realm and the virtual space can feel like a bit of a lost art form sometimes. Here are a few things to consider as you think about listening:

• What are you doing to signal that you are listening?
• What are you listening for? Are you listening to really hear what the other person is saying or are you listening to figure out how to phrase your reply?
• What are you noticing about the energy of the conversation? Are you listening for how fast they are talking? The words they are using? What’s really important to them?
• What is not being said in the context of this conversation?
• What are the elements which are not being talked about?
• What do you notice about the tone and energy of the conversation?

As a team, it may be interesting to share what you each notice about listening. My guess is that everyone will be listening in different ways.

What’s important to note as a team around this?

And so, this wraps up our June posts. This month I brought in the new Tuesday series around going Back to the Basics. This joins the Thursday Team Building Questions and Friday’s Flashback Friday series. This month continued a focus on teamwork, a core focus of my business. I hope you got tips for both your remote and in-person teams, especially for those that are returning back to face-to-face work.

Best, 
​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

Check out our Digital Resources to support you in your work and conversations 
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The concept of deliberative practice has gained popularity in recent years, featured in books such as Michael Bungay Stanier’s the Coaching Habit, or in James Clear’s article about Deliberative Practice here.

The notion of deliberative practice is grounded in sport. Just like becoming a pro tennis star or soccer team, it’s critical to get practice and feedback on your actions. With each feedback round we are able to adjust and tweak our skills.
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As teams, it takes time and practice to excel. What do you need to do to practice? What are the things which are going to help you hone the skills you need?

What feedback loops exist? What are you able to do to cultivate both positive and constructive feedback?

Enjoy your conversations,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

How much time are you spending in meetings these days? One of the greater pain points right now is virtual meetings. It’s a topic I covered in the April 2020 Effective Virtual Conversations newsletter. I thought it might be useful to share the 6 things you can put into practice right now to make your virtual meetings more effective:
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Article:  Better Meetings - 6 Things You Can Do Right Now
Unfortunately, bad meetings and bad meeting etiquette have followed most of us to the virtual space. Consider these five areas to make the most of your meeting.

Consider these areas:
 
#1 - What do people ABSOLUTELY have to do before they join the meeting? Be very clear with any pre-work, input or reading/viewing that needs to happen, including a TIME FRAME. 
 
#2 - Who REALLY needs to be there? Many of us get pulled into meetings like a VORTEX. Who absolutely needs to be at the meeting to have input, make decisions etc?
 
#3 - Is a meeting REALLY what's needed? We often defer to large meetings as the best way. Could this be covered in a different way - i.e. a short video you put out if it's information, or something people can schedule and read.
 
#4 - Is it the best time of day? Consider your team and what they are juggling at the moment. The more traditional times of day (i.e. breakfast, lunch) may not necessarily be the best times for people to be meeting at the moment. 
 
#5 - Be clear with next steps and accountabilities.  Another big pitfall is not clearly confirming what agreements and accountabilities are. Have you confirmed and summarized what next steps are? Are you building in time at the start of the next meeting to check in or ensure that you have a running dashboard or reporting structure? This may be a role you want to assign in the meeting - not a note taker but a person who is noting accountabilities, action steps and who is doing it.
 
#6 - Leave time for the group to be able to note what steps they need to take and what's next for them. We've all been there - we move from one meeting to the next so, unless we leave a pause to note down next steps, accountabilities, we may forget when we next surface for a break.
 
#7 - Consider making a habit of wrapping up the meeting at the 50 minute mark or 25 minute mark so people can make it on time for their next meeting, with a little time to spare to shift gears and have a bio break.
 
For more on this topic, check out a recent article on Keeping Your Virtual Meetings on TRACK.
 
If you want to read the whole April 2020 newsletter, check it out here.

Want to receive it? Sign up here.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

As remote work moves into month four for many teams, this is now the new way of doing things. Many companies, Twitter, Shopify, Facebook and others have indicated that remote work is going to be the forever way of doing things.
We’re also stepping into a new month, and at this point in time it can be useful to be strategic around boosting your team capability. As you step into this new month think about how many meetings you want to have and what type. While meeting fatigue is a real thing, it’s important to keep conversations going. What are the conversations you want to have?

Consider these five types of team meetings:

• Status Meetings: Regular status updates are key to keeping a team aligned. In former days, reports would be circulated through the team. Today, online dashboards like Asana and Monday.com provide an opportunity for team members to keep things visible, projects moving and be continuously updated by those who may be working in different locations.
• Planning Meetings: Planning is key for success in the remote space. What type of planning are you engaging with? Consider both immediate, medium and long term planning? Given our virtual nature, what’s going to keep this visible? What’s going to be help people focus?
• Team Development Meetings: Understanding team capability and who is who on each team is critical for success. Team development meetings might be focused on rolling out:
  • A remote team day focused on incorporating one of the many assessments we offer including StrengthsFinder 2.0, or Agile EQ. Remote Team Days also help teams clarify working processes and accountabilities, as well as helps team understand and assess along the core elements of remote teamwork. Contact us to discuss your needs for a remote team session. Our sessions are offered as 2 hour, half day and full day sessions – and yes, we can do a full day online! We specialize in Everything DiSC, Agile EQ, StrengthsFinder, Strengths-based leadership.
• Creation Meetings: Creation meetings focus in on creating something real time. Sprints and hacks live in this space. Whether you are building tools and processes over a condensed time like one week, or have a special project dedicated each month, creation meetings help to focus on innovation and design.
• Social Meetings: The quarantine became the part of many person’s lexicon in recent months, and while many teams used to head out for an after work social time, what could social look like for you? Might a trip to a virtual escape room promote some team development time? Note, my son recently hosted his 15th birthday online at a virtual escape room – they had a blast.

What are the types of meetings which you want to incorporate this month?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

Performance conversations are challenging for many at the best of times. What about now that you are likely having to have these conversations virtually? What are the things you want to do to keep the performance conversations going virtually?

Performance issues become even more complex when you are not able to see people in their own element. In fact, our feedback is likely to be framed by what we can see on the screen (which might be one-tenth or one-hundredth of the time in a week) as well as what we see with output.

With that in mind, here are several things to keep in mind around performance support and feedback in the remote space:

• Watch assumptions – be super explicit around what you mean with this.
• Clarify what the end results need to look like.
• Have more frequent check-ins or walk-throughs. It’s important that is not seen as hovering, but it creating a more frequent monitoring process.
• Be sure to return back to measures of success, and things like the IS/IS NOT framework.

As it relates to feedback:

• Make sure that feedback is specific, and demonstrable – again, check assumptions.
• You may want to lead with “Walk me through “ to identify where processes or practices get derailed.
• Be open to feedback in new ways.
• Remember that feedback is a two-way street. It’s often best to get it to give it. Feedback is reciprocal.
• Be sure that you are also having people share what areas they are going to value feedback in first.

What else is important to note about feedback and performance conversations for your team right now?

Enjoy your virtual conversations!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

In the Remote Working Whitepaper, I released earlier this year, I summarized seven of the areas I consistently see as things that help, or enable, exceptional performance in the remote space. As a former remote leader myself for many years, I knew that these things were always areas to check in around first, to see if perhaps, one or more needed attention, clarity or modification.

Whether your team is now working remote all the time, or for just this period of time, it can be useful to focus in on these 7 areas which I like to term Remote Enablers – The 7 Cs. Here’s an excerpt from the Whitepaper which you can pick up a copy HERE.
 
What’s different in the remote space?

Copyright 2020 – Jennifer Britton, Potentials Realized. All Rights Reserved

Remote teams operate across distance, time and culture. This usually requires enhanced skills in communication, boundaries, clarifying assumptions and being able to navigate the diverse preferences, cultures and ways of working of a global team. What is not clear or visible can become a challenge or pitfall for a remote team.

What ingredients enable exceptional remote work? I like to call these the 7 Cs which anchor exceptional remote work – Communication, Clarity, Connection, Culture, Consistency, Community, and Collaboration.

Communication is likely to take place along different channels, and at different times of day. The communication realm of the remote space may include phone, text, instant messaging, email, video streaming calls, and messaging across multiple apps like Slack and Trello.

The challenge with communication is that is often has no context - we don’t see “what’s beyond the screen”. Many times, we don’t have the visual cues that tend to make up the majority of regular communication messages.

On top of this, communication can vary across both geographic culture (some cultures are more direct than others), and industry culture.

Finally, we have our own individual preferences to communication. As a Gen Xer, I may prefer to have communication bundled and emailed to me, rather than up in the Cloud. Taking time to understand each team member’s focus and preferences is critical to remote work. Conflict may emerge for a variety of factors including different styles, lack of clarity, misunderstanding or interpreting instructions differently.

Connection with others helps remote work and includes connection to others inside and outside the team and understanding their work. Remote team members are likely to be part of matrix relationships, where they report to, and are part of, multiple teams. Matrix relationships offer another layer of complexity and opportunity in this work. Connection also means understanding how our work fits into the bigger picture, as well as fits into the bigger context of others work. Given the isolated nature of remote work, proactively focusing on connection is important. Take a look at the Remote Working Myths for more on this.

What can you do to create more connection across the team? Beyond the team?

Clarity is one of the most important enablers. This involves clarity of focus, clarity of priorities, clarity of expectations, clarity of roles and clarity of responsibilities. In the remote space, we need to make things EXPLICIT, and be regularly exploring our ASSUMPTIONS.

What clarity is needed for team members to do their best work?

Team culture becomes even more pronounced or diluted in the remote space, so a focus on this can be really important, especially when people are part of multiple teams. Culture is “how we do things here”.

Culture encompasses both visible (behaviors, language, artifact) and invisible manifestations (norms, values, basic assumptions or beliefs).” – Rosinski, 2003, p 20.

In shaping a culture there are the things we can see and help to define us (our taglines or the way we start meetings) and there are things that we don’t see. Team culture can remain very diffuse and not clear in the remote space. Taking efforts to clarify and intentionally shape what team culture is, and how we do things, becomes paramount for remote team performance.

Consistency is also key when we are dispersed or operating in different locations. It’s consistency of messaging, practices, and the way we do things. For example, every Monday we meet at 7:30 am ET, regardless of how many people can attend live.

Community – Remote Workers are hungry for connection and community. What are you doing to build a sense of connection and identity across your team or organization?  Community can range from boosting communication across internal social platforms to interactive virtual lunch and learns.

Collaboration – Collaboration is an essential skill set when we work remote. As you’ll see in the remote work myth of “no person is an island”, we still need to place an emphasis on relationships. Who do you need to collaborate with in order to get things done? What can you do to collaborate better? Where are those collaboration windows and requirements?

Connection – Beyond community, how are we connected? What are the process pieces which help us do our best work? What type of communication exists? What helps bring people together on a regular basis both formally, and informally? Across a team and between teams?

End of Excerpt – Remote Working Whitepaper: When You Need to Get Up to Remote Working Speed Quickly. Copyright 2020, Jennifer Britton, Potentials Realized
 
Pick up a copy of the Remote Working Whitepaper for yourself here.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder

Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

In this month’s Effective Virtual Conversations newsletter, I shared an excerpt from an e-book I created a year or two ago on virtual and remote teams. I wanted to share this excerpt with you here as well, knowing that many professionals today have needed to shift their conversations to the remote space.

In the remote world of work, many things get magnified as our touchpoints before less frequent. We are framed by the screen.

What do you notice about your team and their focus?

When making the transition over to the remote space, it’s important to go back to the basics around team work and our team culture – Who are we? How do we do things? What’s important to us?

Providing the team with time to connect and share what they are working on is also an important part of the team process.

Don’t forget to go back to the foundations of effective teamwork, commonly known as the Six Factors. Here’s how I’ve described them before in Teams365 1920:

“One of the frameworks I continue to share with teams is what I call the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. These are six things that teams need in order to excel. The ingredients come from the research of professionals including: Katzenbach and Smith (The Wisdom of Teams), Hackman and Wageman (A Theory of Team Coaching) and others.

As you step into the new month, as a team you’ll take the pulse of where you are on a scale of 1- 10 in each of these six areas:

1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
What is your purpose? Your mission? Why do you exist? Does everyone hold the same understanding? What does this mean practically for your work? What priorities does your purpose or mission naturally create?

2. Shared behavioral norms
How do you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team? What behaviors and habits exist? Which ones are supportive of exceptional performance? Which ones aren't?

3. Shared commitment
What are team members committed to? What will you get done, no matter what? Is there anything that needs to be dropped off the list?

4. Shared performance goals
What are key goals for the team this year? What are key individual goals? How do your goals align? Overlap? What does success look like for each member? For the entire team? Does everyone have an understanding of the key goals of others on the team and how they feed into them?

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. What practices support your relationships?

6. Clear Roles
How do our roles overlap, align and connect? What changes, if any, are needed this year around your roles giving your priorities?”
A quick activity to undertake together is to have some discussion around how you are doing in each of these areas this week, especially if you are now operating in the remote space."

Check out the many posts I’ve written on remote teamwork including Teams365 #2130 – Remote Team Toolbox.

Best, 
​Jennifer

Earlier this month at the Remote Pathways podcast which I host, we released Episode 8 which focuses on Strengths and Remote Work. We were joined by Coach Jennifer Grote as a special guest. You can listen into it here.

Strengths often play a key role in helping professional excel, particularly in the remote space when we are operating in isolation.

When’s the last time you explored your strengths?

Research around strengths has found that individuals and teams that are able to lead more by strengths, are:

• 6x more engaged
• 3x more likely to report having excellent quality of life
• 8.9% greater profitability
• Teams which focus on strengths have 12.5% greater productivity

(Gallup Strengths Center)

Today’s invitation is for you to explore how strengths shape your work.
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Questions to consider:

• What are your strengths?
• What do you do to magnify them?
• What happens when they are not magnified?

Enjoy exploring your strengths!
​Jennifer