As we step into the new year, what’s your intention? What do you want to achieve in this last year of the decade?
365 days from now what are you looking forward to:

• Doing every day (or at least several times a week)?
• Investing in?
• Financing?
• Spending time with?

If you haven’t done so already, I hope you’ll take a few minutes today to capture your goals and intentions for the year.
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Goal setting is just one part of the equation of success. Ongoing action and accountability are two other important elements for success.
What are you doing to build in time in your schedule for an ongoing focus on planning, and action?

As I write in PlanDoTrack, a reminder of what Peter Drucker wrote - “what doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done”.
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What time have you built into your schedule for ongoing focus on larger projects and tasks?

If you haven’t got it in your schedule already, block it out right now! Productivity experts often point to 90 minute to 3 hour blocks being good amounts of time to get things done. Can you schedule in 2 x 90 minute blocks right now into your schedule on a weekly basis?

As we move into 2019, I am pleased to step into the sixth year of daily posts for the Teams365 blog. Topics we’ll be exploring this year are:

• January - Last year, we started the 19 for 2019 – a series included on Tuesday and Wednesday for December and January which will provide you with tips and ideas for boosting your personal and professional productivity.
• February – Relationships and Collaboration
• March - Building Your Team

Beyond these we will also look at topics including Virtual Team work, Mentoring, Feedback, Virtual Facilitation, Creating powerful learning environments, planning and project management.

If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to pick up a copy of the new PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Virtual and Remote Professionals. It’s an analog desk-sized planner you can start using at any time – packed with annual, quarterly, and monthly tools, PLUS resources to support you with your content creation and also creative planning! Pick up a copy here.

For now, we’re circling back to the 19 for 2019. Let’s get started with January’s posts – 19 for 2019.  We’ll be heading back to Tip 7 tomorrow.

Check out the past Teams365 19 for 2019 Productivity Tips here. 

I’ll be back with our next one #7 in the series tomorrow!

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

​Today is Boxing Day here in Canada, and in the years before Black Friday also became common place in our shopping malls, Boxing Day was the day of the year to scoop up great savings. I was told as a child the reason for why it is called Boxing Day is because of the focus on filling the boxes with goodies for the end of the year. Regardless, for most of us, our attention is now turning to the end of the year and reflections on the year that was.
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In today’s post I wanted to provide you with several questions to support you with your year end planning. Today, we are going to start with taking a look back at the year that was, and in another few days we’ll look at planning for the year head. To get some inspiration (and leverage) I reached back and took a look at what I wrote a couple of years ago, on Boxing Day 2016. Read it here.  

Here are ten questions to support you in reflecting back on the last year:
1. What's been your biggest success this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?
3 What habits have most supported you this year?
4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?
8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
10. How and when will you celebrate the successes of 2018? With whom?
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Do make a point to take some time today to reflect AND WRITE these ideas down. If you have not created a journal for yourself for the new year, perhaps today is he day to grab a new book, or start a new file. As I wrote several weeks ago, there are many benefits of journaling, check them out here. 

Best,
​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 
Now available– PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon

This week’s Team Building Tip is “Our biggest learning has been…”

As you step into one of the last weeks of the month, what has been your biggest learning as a team…?
How has this helped you?
What can  you do to leverage this learning?
What can you do to cascade it across more projects and tasks?

If you are hosting a final team meeting for the year, it can be interesting to spend time looking at this question both collectively – across the entire team, as well as individually – for each person.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

​This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is “If I could choose one resource to add for our current challenge, what would it be”? Consider the elements which would help you, individually or as a team, move forward.

If you haven’t joined us for other Weekly Journaling prompts, be sure to check out the Journaling Prompts from the last six months here. 

Why Journal?
“Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.” – Robin S. Sharma[1]
Here are 10 reasons why journaling can be a valuable process:

1. A place to capture your ideas
2. Clarifying your thinking through writing
3. Reflective pause
4. Prioritization
5. Connecting one dot to another
6. Slowing down the pace
7. Reframing issues
8. Thinking things through via a variety of different perspectives
9. Summary of what’s going on
10. A clearing space to get ideas out of your head into a place you can review at a later date

Think about what benefits journaling would have for you.
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Enjoy your writing!
Jennifer

[1] https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/benefits-of-journaling/, accessed 11.15.18

​This week’s Team Building tip is “What’s your best work?”. As you think about everything you have accomplished in the last few months (or the last year or two), what is your best work?

• What are the things that you are really proud of?
• In your work, what can you to do cultivate, or ask for, more work opportunities like this?
• How did this task use your skills?
• What did it do to accelerate your learning and growth?
• What made it so fulfilling?
• Are there elements of that project which can be isolated and magnified in future projects?
• Helping people and teams connect with their best work, boosts engagement and commitment to task. This helps foster a culture of growth and higher levels of trust.
• What can you do to facilitate experiences so that people can bring their best self to work?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​It’s that time where we start rolling into year end conversations, holding one on ones (coaching conversations) individually and with the team.
As we move into the end of the year, it is invaluable to schedule some one on one time with each team member. Today’s post includes a selection of 18 questions you might include in those conversations (pick and choose as appropriate). Great year end conversations help to create a pause to reflect achievements, synthesize learning and look ahead to the future.
You may want to incorporate these questions into your conversation:

1. What are the key achievements you have been most proud of this year?
2. What projects worked well?
3. Which projects didn’t go so well?
4. What was your learning there?
5. What connections/relationships have been most valuable this year?
6. Which relationships need attention next year?
7. What’s been your biggest learning this year? What experiences provided that?
8. What has worked well with the team this year? What hasn’t?
9. What feedback do you have for me as the leader? (What’s worked and what hasn’t)
10. What’s one suggestion for how we could do things differently as a team next year?

Looking ahead to next year:

1. What are you excited about?
2. What habits do you want to cultivate or lean into?
3. What do you want to do to keep growing your skills?
4. By December 31, 2019 what do you hope you will have achieved? OR by January 1, 2020, what do you hope you will have achieved? (Notice the impact of the difference one day makes!  Yes, we are wrapping up a decade next year)
5. What are your top 3 priorities next year?
6. What feedback and support are you looking for?
7. What would be useful in terms of our 1-1 time?
8. What else is going to help you do your best work?

What else do you like to ask at this time of the year? Please let us know by sharing in the comments below.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt shifts your attention to the workplace and business context. Even if we are solopreneurs, where we work alone, we do need to rely on others to help us in getting things done. Maybe we go to an accountant or reach out to an assistant to help you in peak periods.
This week’s journaling prompt is  “Other teams we can learn from are….”
Many of today’s business requirements take us into new terrain regularly. What models do you have which you can learn from? Which teams may have already chartered the course?
This week I hope you will spend a few minutes looking at others you can learn from as you seek to maximize your current opportunities, or leap above your current challenges.

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 Team Building Tip brings us to #209 of the series. Aligned with our shift to a focus on year-end, this week’s question to surface with the team is the question:
What needs to get completed by year end?
As you think about year end, here are 14 common year-end activities you will want to budget time and space for:

1. Reporting
2. Financials
3. Projects
4. Planning for new projects
5. Meeting with stakeholders (internal and external)
6. Communication planning for next year
7. Team development
8. Performance Reviews
9. Coaching Conversations
10. Learning for 2018
11. Learning for 2019 (individual and team level)
12. Peer Meetings
13. Meeting with our bosses
14. Meeting with other key internal partners

What else would you add to the list?
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Enjoy!
Jennifer

As we step into November the wave of year-end activities, celebrations and push may be rearing it’s head. Today’s post is a reminder of five key things to get in your team calendar for 2019 right now. As we’ve explored here at the Teams365 blog over the last 5 years, certain skills are critical for success – teamwork skills, coaching, difficult conversations, team development and reflection time.
Five different things you may want to get into your calendars right now for the next year are:
 
Team meetings – Whether the entire team, or some of the team, attends, spending time on a regular basis to plan, and update, is key for alignment, communication and noticing what’s working and what’s not. Even if the team is remote, team meetings do need to happen on a regular basis.
For further ideas on team meetings, check out the post on 8 Questions to be asking before any team meeting.
 
Team development – Regular team development meetings are critical – not just for
 
Feedback conversations – Once a year performance reviews are being replaced in many organizations with ongoing feedback conversations. With this shift, it’s common for organizations to be experiencing:

1. A sense on the part of the leader that coaching and feedback conversations are happening more frequently than they really are. Block in time to your schedule for these key 1-1s, being clear on whether you are coaching or providing feedback.

2. Feedback and coaching are often getting blended together under the same umbrella. These are actually two separate activities and the danger of them being lumped together is that the staff member may not know what type of conversation they are part of.  Regardless off whether performance is good or not, it’s key to indicate when a performance conversation is a performance conversation. If changes are needed, this should be clear and non-negotiable.

On the other hand, coaching is voluntary initiative. The person being coached is the one “at choice” in terms of what they want to do. Coaching is about encouraging change. If a leader wants to prescribe change for the employee, coaching is not the right modality. That’s telling!

​Like other activities, it is important to get key 1-1 time and conversations into your calendar. What have you noticed about what’s worked in terms of time, availability and openness to these types of activities? Block out some time right now.

3. Mentoring – Mentoring is beneficial to us at all stages of our development. Having a variety of formal and informal mentoring relationships is key to ongoing career progression. Whether we are mentoring or being mentored, it’s common for both parties to benefit from a balanced mentoring relationship. Have you scheduled mentoring into your calendar for 2019?

4. Team development – Beyond team meetings, we all benefit from formal and informal team development opportunities. Some research, including the 2016 Culture Wizard Survey, found that only 22% of virtual and remote teams benefited from team development. What are the activities you have scheduled for 2019?  

5. Skill Development and ongoing learning – Whether we are a leader, or a team member, ongoing learning and skill development opportunities are key to keeping us equipped for the ongoing landscape of work. As I explored in Effective Virtual Conversations, the Virtual Learning Ecosystem today is vast. From attending MOOCS (Massive Online Open Courses) at Universities for Credit, to micro-learning modules, from webinars, to virtual team development, skills development and ongoing learning can take many forms.  
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As a team have you discussed what skill development and ongoing learning each team member wants to undertake in the next year?
What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done. Be sure to block dedicated time in your calendar for these five activities during 2019.
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Best wishes,
Jennifer