This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you thinking about the question “My biggest opportunity is….”.

I hope that this week’s question will provide you with a pause the reflect on what is happening around you. When we get in the flow of work, we may not take notice of what opportunities do abound.

What is your biggest opportunity right now?

Enjoy your reflections!
Jennifer

This week’s Thursday Team Building Tip gets you as a team to consider the question: "_____ is strengthening our results."

As you consider your results so far this year, what has helped you. Consider:

• Resourcing – Human Resources/People, Materials, Budget
• Processes
• Practices - coming together for meetings which have been made more efficient with the 8 Meeting Questions 
• Alignment

What else?

Given these items, what can you be doing to leverage them more?

Enjoy your conversation,
Jennifer

It’s Friday and time for another FlashbackFriday. I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at April 5th, 2016 to see what I was writing about then.  In March and April of 2016, I was undertaking a series I called the A-Z of Virtual and Remote Team Leadership. On April 5th of 2016, we had arrived at M – which I earmarked as M for MAVERICK. What connotation does Maverick have in your organization today? Is it a good, or a bad thing? Regardless, here’s what I wrote, pointing to the Oxford Dictionary’s definition. How can a dash of “maverick” support innovation in your context right now?

Here’s the post – Teams365 #826:

Today we are at the M in the Virtual and Remote Leadership Series.  One of the most important characteristics I think virtual and remote team leaders can have is that of a maverick. The Oxford Dictionary defines maverick as:
​
Maverick: An unorthodox or independent-minded person - Oxford Dictionary
As virtual team leaders our ability to be unorthodox with our thinking, solutions and approaches can be very important, especially if our organization is just starting to embrace virtual teams.

It is likely that developing out of the box solutions will be common place, as is supporting our team members to do similar types of thinking on their own.

As virtual and remote team leaders we are often having to innovate in new areas, and come up with practices and processes that have not existed before. Being a maverick means innovating, AND it also means being respectful in our disruption.

I always think of my last virtual team leadership role where I instituted an annual face-to-face two-day retreat for team members. When I started my role, I asked the office about how often the team got together. The team was based across ten countries, and prior to my start had never met physically in almost 30 years. The lost cost of sharing of experience across these countries, and innovation was apparent. Hobbling together funding from different sources the first year of my leadership, and a lot of flexibility and good will on the part of the team,  I was able to bring people together for three days. The output was immediately recognizable by not only my team but our superiors, and became an easy selling point for the following years' budgets.

Questions to consider:

• What does maverick mean to you? Your organization? Your context?
• What's important about being a maverick?
• What maverick role models do you have?
• What actions would be in service to the team? The organization?

Enjoy your week,
Jennifer

It’s Thursday and time for a Team Building Tip. It’s number 218 in the series. Today’s question is “Our pacesetter is…”

In today’s world of complexity and ongoing change, one area we still have control over is our pace. A great question to consider is “Who is our pacesetter?” OR “Our pacesetter is….”.

As you consider the landscape of your work, who is setting the bar?

• What are the practices or examples you can learn from, or aspire to…?
• Who on your team is going to set the pace and get things moving?
• Who are the people on the team who can keep moving you forward?
• There may be people on the team who are inclined to keep going?

 
Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip, #61 in the series, brings us to the topic of virtual team leadership. In my book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I explore the many skills required by virtual team leaders and virtual team members alike. These include:
Working Across Differences
Intercultural know-how
Innovation
And Resilience and Agility
As we consider each of these skill areas, team members of all kinds require these skills in order to be effective. What are you doing to build the skills in the areas.
For more posts on these topics, check out my past posts on the topic.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Our Saturday quote comes from Walter Lippman - "When all think alike, then no one is thinking".

​Diversity of thought is important in a team. Group think can lead us to poorer decisions and blindspots in a team context.

​What do you notice about the diversity of thought that exists within your team? How does it help to support you in getting the results you want?

​If everyone is thinking the same way, what changes do you want to make?

​Best wishes,
​Jennifer

This week we've covered a number of additional Team Development Activities and focus areas including:

Teams365 1081: Team Development L is for Lifecycle - View it here

Teams365 1079: Team Development K is for knots - Click here to read.

Teams365 #1078: Team Development J is for Jeopardy - Click here to read

Teams365 #1077 - Team Development I is for Innovation - Click here to read


What have you tried out with your team? What impact did it have?

Have a great weekend,
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)

We are at I today in the a-z of team development activities. There are a number of different focus areas we may explore when we are at the I including incentives, innovation, as well as what's above and below the waterline of an iceberg.
Innovationi is a topic area which requires focus for so many teams today. At the core of innovation is creativity and thinking outside of the box. Experimentation and the abiltiy to "Fail forward" is also key.
There are a number pf activities you can undertake to get the "juices flowing: incluing using different word pullzes (see the slide today) or giving the team some materials and a time frame to se what they can create.
What are the activities  you want to use to foster more innovative thinking
What is important about innnovation in hyour work?
Here is a great article from Inc which covers 8 Ways to Foster Innovation.  You can read it here.



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)

rWhatA few weeks ago a foot infection had me unable to make a trip to a conference in Arizona. With a couple of extra days on my hands I found myself heading to the library for some quiet time for research and also clearing out some of the TO-Dos which had piled up over the summer.

I found myself browsing throughout the business section and walked away with five really fun reads for fall. I wanted to share these with you as I have enjoyed reading each of them:

1. The Sweet Spot - Christine Carter. An ideal book for those of us who are continually juggling hats and tasks between our professional and personal realms. Carter introduces the science behind becoming more efficient and focused on what's important.

2. The Ideal Team Player - Patrick Lencioni - Another must-read business fable by Lencioni. A great read not only for team leaders, but team members. AS you may have noted from reading our posts here at the Teams365 blog - team members play a key role in today's leadership context.

3. Unplug and Play - 50 Original Group Games by Brad Berger. As someone who is regularly facilitating group and team initiatives, it's great to pick up a book that gives you a spark for some new ideas. This is a quick read with some really good ideas/games which could be used as energizers or warm ups in retreats or even team meetings.

4. Scaling up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less -Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao - Another good read focusing on innovation and how teams can get better.

5. One I picked up at the bookstore the same weekend - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five days by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. A fascinating read and process from Google Venture Lab's experience of working with teams, projects and start-ups. For those who facilitate, lead projects, this is a must-read into an iterative process you can apply to your own business challenges!

What books do you have on your bookshelf right now? What books are you enjoying reading?

Have a great week,
Jennifer

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

Today's 6 Leadership Questions a day look at innovation, a theme we have been exploring this week here at the blog.

Here are six questions to discuss as a team:
1. What does innovation mean to us?
2. Where are we already being innovative?
3. What best practices around innovation are emerging in our organization? In our industry?
4. What do we need in order to be more innovative?
5. What benefits would it have for us? Our work? Our organization?
6. What is possible?

Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Leadership, Teamwork and Coaching
(416)996-8326