It’s mid-way through August which is always an interesting month. For some, it’s the last gasp of summer and families are hitting the road, and offices are half open. In some other areas, it’s back to work.

I thought it would be fitting to dedicate today’s blog post to a mid-month systems check. These are all things you might consider doing, and also sharing, with your team.

This includes:

• One-on-ones and coaching conversations – when was the last time you checked in with each team member?
• Team meetings – when was the last time you held a team meeting? What’s scheduled? What’s working with team meetings? What changes are needed?
• Financials - Are all expenses and invoices complete? If budget season is around the corner, what do you want to note, or pull together?
• Reporting - What is the status of reporting? What’s due? What’s over-due? What do you need to review?
• Projects - Where are projects in terms of completion? Resourcing? Impact? Results? Stakeholder engagement?
• Communication -  What items need to be communicated?
• Peer relationships – when was the last time you spent time with your peers? What do you want to schedule?
• Relationships with your boss – when did you last spend time meeting, and updating, your boss? Are you in alignment around projects and priorities for the rest of the year? What do they need from you? What do you need from them? What does the team need?
• Administrative – What administrative systems are working? What’s not? What needs attention?
• Personal Productivity and time management – What do you need to DO? DEFER? DELEGATE? DUMP?
  

What other systems, or areas, could use attention?

Enjoy this mid-month stock-taking!
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation tip #52 gets you to think about developing short videos for whatever type of virtual conversations you are creating. Whether it is a webinar or a team meeting, short videos can serve to jazz things up. Consider:

​Who is the audience? What would they like to see or experience? What’s the most important topic for them right now?
Length – shorter videos are usually better – 2 minutes or less
Will the video include photos? Music? Text?
Always be aware of copyright and intellectual property issues
 
I recently spoke with a group of professional coaches and indicated that using videos as one of the pace changes every five to ten minutes can keep calls moving along.  They can also help with focus, and spark some new energy (particularly if it’s an after lunch session).
 
Videos can also be seen as more novel or memorable, and may be an important vehicle for making things stick.
There’s a compelling case for video creation:
 
Two different video creation tools I have used in my work are:
Lumen5 and Adobe Spark
 
Both are easy to use and quickly repurpose content you might have. If you have been following along with the Teams365 blog for a while you may have seen some of the short 2-3 minute Sunday videos I have created, bringing to life many of the blog posts I have written here. While it’s not quite just a cut and paste of the content and the video is done, it is quite a quick process.
 
This week, take stock of the content you have that could be converted into a video. Perhaps it’s a:

• Blog post
• An article you have written which can be broken down into shorter posts
• A series of tips you have created around a topic
• A response to some of the common questions you receive in your work

 
Make a list of five to ten videos you could create. If you are drawing a blank, set a timer for 3 minutes and make a list of everything that comes to mind!
 
Enjoy!
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

​How are you incorporating video to you work? Dialogue? Learning? Virtual Conversations?
 
A few weeks ago I attended a school field trip with my son’s Grade 7 class. We were visiting a historical site and it was the end of the day. To wrap things up the guide asked if we wanted to watch a video or recap the ideas verbally. It was a resounding 100% “Video!”. On the hour long bus ride back to the school you could hear the continued conversation about the video and its’ contents.
 
Video is still at a stage where it’s the memorable and novel approach to recapping or sharing information. How are you using video in your work?
 
Over the last two years I have been experimenting through more use of video, not only here at the blog, but also in presentations and my webinars.   You’ll notice that for most Sunday posts over the last year I’ve included a short 2 minute video, bringing to life a blog post. If you’ve taken the time to read the original then view the video, which do you prefer? Take a look at some of the Sunday videos here. 
 
Most of these short 1.5-2.5 minute videos were made via Lumen5. It’s a platform I find intuitively easy to use, and is great if you have content you want to convert to video.
 
I’ve also experimented with other video platforms – Facebook Live as well as Adobe Spark. In Adobe Spark you can take still photos and add words, plus do a voice over. It’s another great option. Facebook Live, of course, is a different option, and can be a valuable vehicle to connect with your audience in real-time.
 
How might you be able to use more video in your work? What addition would it provide?
 
Enjoy the start to your month!
 
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching(Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326​

Today's Team Building Tip brings us to Team Building Question #172: Meetings - Where can these be made more effective. With research indicating that leaders spend 35-40% of their time in meetings, and anecdotally some team members saying it's way more time than that, is meetings one area you want to put further attention around to make them more effective, and potentially shorter?

While meetings are an important vehicle for communication they are not the only way to make decisions, share information and create alignment.

In my most recent book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I share the following 8 questions to support you in streamlining your virtual meetings more effectively. These are (and I hope you'll use them and share their impact with us!):

1. What’s the purpose?
2. What takeaways do we want?
3. Who needs to be on the call?
4. What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5. What pace  do we want in order to keep it engaging?
   
6. What will help keep the focus?
7. What is absolutely essential (versus what will be nice to cover or where can people go for more information around topics)?
8. What follow-up might be required?
   

(Source: Britton, Effective Virtual Conversations, 2017, All Rights Reserved)

Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer

Today's Leadership Practice gets you thinking about meetings. It's estimated that some employees spend upwards of 40% of their time in meetings every week. how productive are your meetings? 
​
​In my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I share the following 8 Essential Questions to Ask Before Every Meeting. Here they ware:

1.       What’s the purpose?
2.       What takeaways do we want?
3.       Who needs to be on the call?
4.       What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5.       What pace to do we want in order to keep it engaging?
6.       What will help keep the focus?
7.       What is absolutely essential (versus what will be nice to cover or where can people go for more information around topics)?
8.       What follow-up might be required?
(Source: Britton, Effective Virtual Conversations, pp 304, 2017)

​What are the most important questions to be considering at your next meeting.

​One other activity which can make meetings more effective is to assign roles to help keep meetings on track. Consider getting someone to be a time keeper to keep the meeting moving, as well as a note taker. The note taker can be instrumental in making sure that decisions have been made and captured  around next steps, deadlines and who is going to follow up.

​For more on meetings, check out these past Teams365 posts.

​Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

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So many conference calls are plagued with a one way monologue, with facilitators and leaders feeling as if they need to speak at, rather than engage with, their group members. Today’s post gives you three quick approaches you may want to try in your next virtual call to jazz things  up a bit. In order to not be too disruptive, make sure you let people know that they can expect something different!

#1 – Engagement Opportunity – Breakouts. While breakouts are often seen as a risky move in the virtual realm, they are one way to get everyone involved. Not everyone is comfortable contributing in larger groups, unless called upon. Breakouts provide the advantage of creating a major pace change in getting everyone’s voice in smaller groups. Breakouts tend to work best with smaller numbers – twos, threes or fours. Breakouts over five people often create that “large group feel” again. Provide breakout groups with a question and instructions on what to do, and how much time they have to discuss. Make sure you get people to think about how they will report back.

#2  Engagement Opportunity – Doing something real-time. As I have written in the past, one of my favorite activities is real-time, hands-on action during virtual calls. While it may not be the forum for team meetings, doing something real-time like a dedicated 30 minute joint team focus on moving the one thing you need to get off our list, can be a real-boost. We all have items that never get attention, and the benefit of a virtual hack or longer virtual retreat is that you have the real-time group/team support, and a dedicated time to just focus on one thing. Virtual hacks which I run are usually 30-45 minutes, and virtual retreats are anywhere from 4-8 hours.
 
#3 Engagement – Rotate roles. Who says the team leader always needs to lead the meeting. Many teams are blessed with great talent and this third idea gets you to think about flattening the role structure for your meetings. Who else can lead the meeting? Time keep? Report. What benefits do you notice when you rotate the roles?
 
What other ideas do you have for mixing things up virtually?

Having a variety of questions in our back pocket is key for business success. As I explored last week, questions create a solid base for any virtual conversation. Today’s post includes 10 plus questions you might consider asking at different stages of the virtual conversation.

Questions to open up the conversation:
What’s most important for us to focus on today?
What end results do we want for this meeting?
What are you bringing to the call?
What’s the most important thing for you to get out of the call?
How engaged do you plan to be? (Note you may not ask for a reposnse on this but only pose it to get people thinking about their focus)

Wrap up
What are you committed to doing after this call?
What are you going to take action on?
What’s the one most important thing to recall from our conversation today?
What new ideas around process are you going to take?
What resources are needed to put your action steps into action.
What are you committed to doing in the next 24 hours, no matter what?

What are some of your favorite questions for virtual meetings? What helps to keep the focus and open up the space for conversation.

Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer

How many remote meetings or conference calls have you attended already this year? Last month? Last week? My guess is probably many, many hours that may not have been all that stimulating or effective.

​In my upcoming book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I explore the burgeoning field of virtual conversations - from conference calls, to webinars, from team development sessions, to virtual team meetings. Increasingly many of us are meeting virtually. How do we make these conversations more impactful and engaging?

​One such way is to incorporate more around visuals. Optimally, if we can move from a voice only platform to video streaming such as Skype, Zoom or Slack, the immediate visual of others helps us to connect.

​Here's an interesting infograph from  Hubspot's Amanda Sibley on 19 Reasons  You Should Include Visuals in your Marketing. Some of these factoids are just as important for creating engagement in meetings! Take a look at the post here.

​If phone only is the only way to go, what are the visuals you can send out prior to the call to support focus and also connection. Whether it's a one pager with the agenda and a place to keep notes, or a PDF you send as a worksheet, visuals provide anchor points.

​Some considerations in building a visual repertoire include:
​Build your own copyright accessible set of images. Consider how you can use your own phone and photos to create interesting photos for slides etc.
​Encourage other team members to get involved in this. Do you have any designers on the team?
​Invest in some paid stock photos from IStockPhoto, AdobeStock or other sites.
​Take a course on graphic facilitation - an approach which literally brings to life the conversation real-time 

​What could you do to make your meetings more visually stimulating?

Have a great Monday,
Jennifer

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Over the last few months one of our main series has been the Team Development Activities A - z series where I covered twenty six short activities you can bring into your own team development work. Whether you have 15 min at a team meeting or are looking for something to do virtually, these 26 activities are quick and can spark a good conversation. Last week I included links to the first 13 posts A - L. Today I'm including links to the last 13 - M through Z. Enjoy!



​Teams365 #1084: M is for Metaphor - check out this post here
Teams365 #1085 - N is for What's in Your Nature - Strengths and Styles - a favorite part of my work is in this area with teams and leaders. Check out this video post here.
​Teams65 #1086 - O is for Options and Opportunities. Check out this post here.
​Teams365 #1099: P is for Problem Solving, Priorities, Positivity and Productivity. Check out this post here
Teams365 #1101 - Q is for Questions. Check out the post here.
​Teams365 #1102 - R is for Results and Relationships. Check out the post here.
​Teams365 #1106 - Si for Strengths. Check out this post here.
​Teams365 #1107 T is for Trust. Check out this post here.
​Teams365 #1108 U is for Unique. Check out this post here.
​Teams365 #1113: V is for Vision. Check out an activity to work around vision here.
​Teams365 #1114: W is for Wheel. Check out an activity here.
​Teams365 #1119: X is for X-Cel. Check out this post here
​Teams365 #1120: Y is for Yesable. Check out his post here.
​Teams365 #1121: Z is for Zooming in. Check out this post here.

​I hope that you enjoyed this series and will be using some of these activities in your own upcoming team conversations. Please take a moment and let me know what series you'd like us to focus on next.

​Have a great start to your week,
​Jennifer

With more than 35-50% of people's time being spent in meetings each week the question of "What could we do to make team meetings more effective?" is a strategic one.
As a team this week consider:
What are the top three reasons we should be holding meetings?
When is the best time to hold them?
what's working with our meetings currently? What's not?
What's the one thing we could let go of doing in our meetings without having to much of an impact?
what is the one thing we wish we did more of?
What is the best way to communicate information in different topic areas?
As we look to the new year, what are the things we want to start doing as a team instead of meetings?

Have a great Thursday,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326
Join us this coming weekend in Toronto for the November 12 -13 Group and Team Coaching Intensive - 2 days of team and group coaching skill traing (approved for 19 hrs of CCEs with the ICF)