​As I’ve been leading different types of conversations in the last few weeks through small group coaching, leadership training and keynotes, I have noticed that the conversation and focus is changing for many team members and leaders right now. In addition to thinking about what needs to get done, I’m also hearing a lot of leaders (and their teams) starting to look at opportunities for the new year.
 
Given that every week I am talking across a range of leadership and teamwork topics, I hear a wide variety of different areas, and key themes.
If I had to identify five that I have been hearing a lot of opportunities  around for the new year it would be:
​
Getting better at hosting meetings. Think about how much time you have spent in meetings this week? This month? How many were face to face? How many were virtual? How effective were they? What would have made them more effective? Spending time getting better at meetings?
Building in more time for strategic thinking and action. With technology has helped us get better at so many things, and does make it easier, distraction and focus are key elements for business success in an ever-changing environment.
Scheduling in time for what’s important – Making sure we have the important items in our calendar and can get them done when we have energy. Daniel Pink’s book WHEN takes us into the realm of WHEN it is important to get things done. Circadian rhythms have been researched for many decades now, and many of us may be aware of what time of day is really best to get certain tasks done in. With the shift to mobile and remote work, many of us now have more flexibility in terms of how we operate and when we schedule our tasks.
Getting better at knowing our strengths and styles – Some of my favorite days are spent with teams who are learning more about their strengths and styles, interfacing this with helping them understand more about team effectiveness. I am pleased to continue to be able to offer support for teams, groups and individuals around strengths and styles. Whether we are exploring the DiSC together or StrengthsFinder, these are powerful frameworks which help to support individuals “lean into” what they naturally do well during times of change and uncertainty.  Change and uncertainty is the new norm for so many workplaces today.
 
Where do you want to put attention around for 2019? I hope that you will grab 15 minutes right now to make some notes for yourself and/or to schedule it in for focus. As Drucker wrote “What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done”.
 
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?
​
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.  
​
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.
​
Best wishes,
Jennifer

What team practices are supporting relationships?
​
From the realm of high performance we know that teams which excel have strong relationships. Part of this is making sure we have strong team practices – that could include Monday morning meetings, a mini-team event each month, a Thursday night social or a quarterly team development activity.

Consider your team right now and think about what is needed on the part of the team. What will help the team connect, have fun and get to know each other? Having fun as a team is important as it can help people relax and bring themselves more naturally into their work. If they are not able to bring their natural self to the workplace, disconnect may happen between how they work at home and how they work at work.

Here are seven different ways teams may be connecting with each other:

1. Daily huddles or quick status meetings (10-15 minutes) to keep projects on task.
2. Monday morning meetings – a meeting at the start of the week can support focus and alignment for the team, assisting with priorities and information sharing. Monday meetings may also flag issues that need to be addressed but haven’t been noted before.
3. Monthly project assessments – some teams may do a short monthly team meeting, highlighting key projects which need attention and/or doing a review. Some of the more common project questions are included under the next category of team debrief.
4. Team debriefs post major project (or mid-term). These may get the team to identify lessons learned, what’s working, what’s not and suggestions for the future.
5. A weekly or monthly social event around town. PingPong and darts are favorite options. Escape rooms and/or axe throwing are for teams who are more edgy (note: these options may not be applicable or appropriate for every team and their culture!).
6. Quarterly Booster Shots – Dedicating half a day or a full day to team development and/or learning. It could be undertaking an assessment together such as the Everything DiSC, or StrengthsFinder.
7. Key to making these valuable team practices, teams will want to consider the purpose and efficiency of each approach. Just because you do it, doesn’t mean it’s going well.
​
What is the team finding valuable? What needs a change?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation’s tip #66 brings us to tip #3 in the series of Virtual Team Success. This week’s tip gets you thinking about how you want to keep in touch. In today’s virtual space there are several vehicles teams can leverage for keeping in touch, as well as facilitating meetings and planning.
Let’s take a look at three of them:

Zoom – Great for streaming and meetings on the go, zoom provides multiple benefits – from the  ability to screen share to the ability to activate breakouts in meeting space. With the teams that I work with, many professionals like the flexibility of being able to call in via phone, connect via their desk top or lap top, as well as use the mobile app to connect via phone.

Skype – Skype for business is being leveraged by many organizations today. With the benefits of streaming and visuals, it provides a great option for meetings and presentations.

The final platform I wanted to mention today was that of Slack. Slack is a common go-to platform for real-time communication. 

When working with smaller teams around planning and projects you may also want to check out platforms including Trello and Asana.

What are some of your favorite virtual platforms? What do you use for meetings? Presentations? Project Management? Communication?

​Let us know by sharing in the comments.

Thanks!
Jennifer

In today’s business context, the ability to build strong relationships with our team, and our other stakeholders is critical.

A starting point to create connection and build community is to find common connection points. Whether finding common ground by discussing the shared results you have OR starting with finding a personal connection, building community is critical for information sharing, knowledge expansion and innovation. Most professionals don’t operate in silos, yet, when they are working remote or virtually, it’s common to feel “alone”, or operating in a vacuum. The ability to connect with others and build strong virtual relationships and networks is a core skill area for virtual professionals.

How do we go about creating connection and building community virtually?

Six areas to consider:
1. Find points of common connection – what is the common ground and purpose you have in your relationship?
2. What is critical for success for your work together? Discuss what is important from each perspective in terms of success. Note what is similar and different.
3. Understand how people prefer to communicate – Big picture? Details? Frequent updates or summary journals? Direct? Indirect?
4. On a macro-level, who is important for you to build relationships with? How do you do this? Is it by joining LinkedIn Groups? Connecting on other social networks? As you look to these larger communities, what are the core themes/areas people are exploring. What are the trends? What are the virtual meeting places?
5. Be clear on what you are after and what you are asking to connect around. Like any networking and community building it can be important to be clear and focused on WHY you are doing it. What is your end goal? Intention?
6. Create parameters around HOW you are going to do it is also important – Before it becomes an all-consuming activity, are you going to spend 10-15 minutes a day connecting on social media? Are you going to dedicate one-hour a month to reaching out and participating in a virtual community event? What’s going to avoid scope creep around time spent.

Best, 
Jennifer

Teams like to have fun! When the word team building comes to mind, Fun is often the first thing that does emerge. What are you doing to have fun on your team? Spending time together to get to know each other in a social context can be invaluable in creating stronger bonds. AND, it should be supported by a focus on what needs to get done as well.
Here are a couple of ideas on different team building processes:
 
 
Getting creative thinking happening:
Tool #8 - Word Grams – Creative Thinking
Word Grams were a popular approach in 1990s training, and a great energizer for training of all kinds. Research some word grams online and use them to warm up the space for creative thinking in your next team meeting. Here are some examples:
 
 
Creative Thinking is important today given the complexities that exist, the need to think “outside of the box” and the need for innovation.
 
Tool #9 – Working Around Decisions
Team members and leaders face decisions every day.
A 2015 article indicates that we make 35,000 decisions a day, including 227 on food alone. Read it here.
Helping team members make better decisions is critical for team alignment and success.
Across the span of a day, we may be making decisions around resourcing, priorities, relationships, and what gets our attention.
What are the tools and processes you want to build skills in with your team? Consider the Decision Matrix. Steven Covey’s Urgent/Important matrix is probably one of the most familiar, and popular ones that exist. There are many others so do some research around tools you can bring in to  help team members make better decisions.
Check out this article from Concordia University on the 7 Steps of the Decision Making Process, which also includes a focus on some of the challenges we can have with decision making. Read it here.
 
What is important for your team to take action on right now? Let us know using the comments below.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

​It’s back to work for many teams and some team leaders may be curious about what to do to move their team forward. In the next few series of posts, I’ll be covering 10 different ideas you might want to incorporate with your team.
As I have written in past posts, teams which excel usually have made sure they are aligned around the following six elements:

• Shared vision
• Shared Goals
• Clear Roles
• Clear performance measures
• Shared Team Practices
• Shared commitment

 
While at an initial glance, many of the activities I’ll be sharing this month appear to fit under the shared team practices umbrella, many also move the needle on the other six elements. Given that teams which excel are good at both results as well as relationships, consider how you can provide a focus on both in your work.

Covering the 10 ideas is going to take a few posts, so let’s get started!

Idea #1 for Back to Work focus with Team – Schedule time in everyone’s calendars for regular, and effective team meetings. As I write in Effective Virtual Conversations, asking 8 questions before every team meeting can help to make them more effective:

1. What’s the purpose?
2. What takeaways do we want?
3. Who needs to be on the call (in the room)?
4. What preparation is needed for us to be most effective?
5. What pace do we want to keep it engaging?
6. What will help keep the focus?
7. What is absolutely essential for us to cover
8. What follow-up might be required?

(Effective Virtual Conversations, Copyright Britton, 2017)
 
Idea #2 – Map out the major team goals and activities in the next 1-2 quarters (or longer). Provide everyone with a  visual mapping of:

• Key activities
• Key priorities
• How activities connect with one another
• Who is responsible for what

While there are many ways to do this, the more visual the better! Taking time to share this across the team also supports the team in keeping focused and aligned.
 
Idea #3 – Revisit, or visit, your vision as a team. Fill in the blanks,
It’s December 31, 2019 and we are looking back to take stock of the past 16 months. ____
Consider filling in the blanks around questions like:
Our major accomplishments have been _____________.
We are most proud of_______________.

Enjoy the conversation!
Have a great Wednesday,
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

It’s likely that this month your team is coming back together after months where not everyone may not have been around. September is an important time to get back to routines and habits, as well as creating new ones that may work better. Consider what you are doing (as a team, and as a professional) around these key areas:
Meetings – with meetings taking upwards of 40% of professionals times, what are the ESSENTIAL meetings to schedule this month? What can be deferred? Which ones do you need to negotiate your presence at? Where do you need to be, where you are not already? What’s going to make your meetings more effective?
Coaching Conversations – “Coaching is a conversation with intent” is what I wrote back in 2013 in my book “From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching”. What are the focused conversations you want to have an on a REGULAR basis this fall? What needs, and warrants, attention? What type of conversations are going to support different team members?
Email and Communication – What’s working with communication right now? What’s not? What can be streamlined (think email)? What are people’s preferences?
FOCUS – What are the interruptions that are pulling you off course? As you think about the last few months, what’s helped with your focus? What’s hindered? In today’s workspace focus is at a premium. What are the pockets where you can create more focus to get the important things done?
Renewal – The field of high performance sport shows that renewal is just as important as running. What are you doing to build in times for FOCUS and Renewal?
 
Best
Jennifer

​It’s time to mark another watershed in the Teams365 blog history – 1700 posts. When I started this project of blogging daily on January 1, 2014 I didn't know what was in store!  From goal setting, to difficult conversations, coaching to performance management, virtual team building tips, to work-life issues, I've covered a wide range of topics relevant to today's teams.

I've been encouraged by the many emails I have received and discussion with team leaders who are not only reading these posts, but also sharing them with their team members. That's what I had envisioned.

As a writer, the regular habit of planning, writing and researching these posts have made the writing of my latest two books - Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), and the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018) flow more easily. Stay tuned for a couple of new 2019 resources for team leaders and team members, which will also grow out of what I've created here at the TEams365 blog.

Over the last 100 posts I’ve explored our most recent gearing-up for fall, along with the focus on team development approaches. These posts have joined some of the more regular weekly columns:
Monday’s Effective Virtual  Conversations Tips
Thursday’s Team Building Questions
Friday’s FlashbackFriday posts which take a look back at past Teams365 pots
Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompts – questions to get you thinking and writing each week
Sunday’s Videos which bring to life many of the hundreds of posts here at the Teams365 blog.
Looking ahead, I’ll be continuing daily posts throughout 2018, with upcoming focus areas on:

• Personal Productivity for the Remote Professional
• Remote Work tips and Hacks
• Planning for 2019
• More on team development

I hope that you will continue to join us for these posts!
 
And now, onto Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip #59:
In Effective Virtual Conversations I wrote “The first few minutes sets the tone. What do you want to create?”.
In conversations of all kinds – team meetings, performance conversations, one-on-ones, difficult conversations, the first few minutes are critical. Are you considering:

• The environment you are hosting your conversation in?
• What end result you would like to achieve?
• What’s important for the other person?
• What’s important for you to create?
• What’s going to help the conversation be successful?
• What expectations do you have?
• What expectations do they have?

Which posts have you enjoyed the most here at the Teams365 blog - let us know by commenting below! Please also take a moment today to share this blog resource with someone you know who would benefit.
 
Thanks,
Jennifer