This week’s Thursday Team Building Tip got you to explore the question “What’s getting in the way”. Today’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is all about the question “Another way to look at this is….”.

Reframing and shifting perspectives are key to success in turbulent and ever-changing environments.

Consider your biggest challenge right now – What’s another way to look at it?
To get inspiration around different ways to work with perspectives, consider adopting a methodology like DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats. You can read more about this process here.

What’s possible by shifting your perspective?

Enjoy your reflections!
Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to think about the question “Key learning for me this year has been…."

As we step into what is often referred to as the second new year (Labor Day), it can be a great time to take stock of the year. While 2020 is likely not to have been anything like we anticipated, what have you learned this year? What has helped you? What are the elements which are key?

Enjoy your weekend reflections.

If you are interested in learning more about journaling and why it can be a valuable strategy, check out this recent article “ How Journaling Can Help You in Hard Times” from Kira M Newman, posted at  the Greater Good Science Center. You can read it here.

Wishing you the best,
​Jennifer

Welcome back to another Saturday Weekly Journaling Prompt. This week’s WJP is number 114 in the series. It asks the question:
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What are you truly excited about right now?

When we are able to tap into the river of excitement that can course through our body, and soul, it’s likely that we are tapping into that magical place called FLOW. At moments of flow, time takes on new meaning. Things may feel magical. And it’s usually a signal that we are doing the things we are MEANT to.

What are you noticing about FLOW moments?

What are you noticing about what you are truly excited about?

What do you need to say YES to in order to cultivate more of that?

What do you need to say NO to in order to create more space for the flow?

As we wrap up today’s post, here’s a quote about FLOW from the author himself:
“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Reading this book as a young university student in the early 1990s has been transformational in the work I do and in the way I structure my time. What’s going to support you with flow?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Welcome back to another Thursday Team Building Tip. This week’s tip is “What is the cost of NOT….”

As you think about your vision for the year, what’s important to DO? Focus on? BE?

Consider what you are NOT doing. NOT focusing on. NOT being.

Sometimes it’s as important to look at things through the lens of contrast, and saying NO, not just saying yes.

As you step into your September routine as a team, what might you do to take more of a litmus test around what you ARE focusing on right now?
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Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Welcome back to another Sunday post. This week was one of the highlight weeks of my summer and I want to thank all of you who joined me for the Stand Out Virtually! Challenge. This week I held 5 daily calls around topics related to Standing Out in the virtual space.

We covered:

• Core Foundations         
• Visuals
• Connection
• It’s all about the (PACE) Change
• And it’s all about the conversation

What are you taking away from the experience?

I hope that you will join us in the VRVH Facebook group (Virtual and Remote Visionaries Hub). You can find it here.

What’s important for you to note about your virtual conversations?

What’s important for you to take action on?

Thanks for joining us this week, and if you are interested in continuing the conversation, do join us in one of the Lab programs I host on Fridays.

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

I hope that your weekend is going great!  A reminder that I’ll be kicking off a free five day challenge on Monday. We’ll be meeting in my zoom room from Monday through Friday of this week between 9 – 930 am ET for the Stand Out Virtually Challenge.
 
What’s a challenge? Five days of connecting in with a community for learning and sharing around virtual learning, and then taking daily steps around your visuals to take them up to the next level.
 
During this fun and free 5-day challenge, you will….

• Discover core ingredients to include in every virtual call
• Create your own WOW virtual elements
• Start integrating elements into your own programming, one step at a time.

We’ll be looking at topics including visuals in virtual calls, skills and ingredients needed, and creating memorability.
 
It’s going to be a lot of fun!
 
To participate, sign up at https://www.standoutvirtually.com.
 
Each day I’ll send out a call with the recording link via the Stand Out Virtually Email List (that’s the link you’ll sign up for at Standoutvitually.com). We’ll also be connecting over at my new Facebook Group – Virtual and Remote Visionaries Hub – to share insights, resources and each night’s assignment. There will also be several giveaways during the week (think digital resources to support you in your virtual calls) plus a grand prize drawn on the 24th for those who complete every day’s challenge.
 
For those that cannot attend the live calls, they will be posted at the Facebook group for a 24 hour period, and I’m likely to provide a recording option as well.
 
I do hope you will join us – sign up at https://www.standoutvirtually.com.
 
Now…given it’s Sunday, let’s take a look back at this week’s posts:​

• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt
• Friday’s Flashback Friday - 10 Key Roles Team Leaders Play in Organizational Success…and think about it now virtually
• Thursday’s question about what’s NOT being talked about on your team
• Wednesday’s Stand Out Virtually Challenge Announcement
• Tuesday’s focus on Teams: Are you missing any of these core virtual meeting ingredients?
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip – about silence. How much do crave a pause in your virtual calls?

 
Enjoy your weekend and I hope to see you on Monday for the Stand Out Virtually Challenge! Just catching this now and it’s already after Monday of the week of August 17th – no worries. You can join us until Friday August 21st Head on over to StandOutVirtually.com to sign up!
 
With best wishes,
Jennifer

Did you have your annual theme earmarked as Pivot back in January? If you had, you would have foreseen what we were to experience. For several months, the number one word I heard was PIVOT. How do we PIVOT the way we work? How do we PIVOT the way our team operates? How do we PIVOT how our busines operates?

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you thinking about this week’s prompt – I’ve had to pivot by…
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Enjoy the reflections!
Jennifer

Next week I’ll be hosting a five-day challenge entitled “Stand out virtually!”. Whether you are an entrepreneur, team leader or remote worker, it has never been more important to stand out virtually. How many calls have you been on which are:

• Unfocused
• Have no call to action
• Don’t leave time to address to discuss what needs to be discussed
• Are a “talking head” experience, rather than an interactive, engaging dialogue.

From Monday August 17th to Friday August 21st from 11 -12 noon ET each day I’ll be hosting the Stand Out Virtually! 5 Day Challenge.  Over the course of the five days, I’ll be holding a live call each day on Zoom and Facebook.

You are invited to join me live and/or in the Virtual and Remote Virtual Visionaries Facebook Group. 

Go and sign up right now for the Challenge – you can do so here.

If you and your business aren’t standing out in the sea of virtual programs right now, it’s likely you aren’t able to have the impact you are looking for. From a business perspective you might even be leaving money on the table. If you are a leader, it’s likely that your team is not performing as well as they can.

There’s an incredible opportunity for you to make some quick changes to how you are leading your virtual conversation and additions to what you are doing right now. Whether you are meeting on Zoom, Teams, Skype for Business, Go To or other platforms, we’ll be looking at five core areas for virtual programming.

Let me ask you:

• Would you like to jazz up your virtual calls?
• Would you like to be seen as the “Go To” person in your area around virtual, but don’t know how?
• Would you like to make your calls more interactive, so everyone’s voice is in the room?
• Would you like to make your calls more impactful, so people leave with clarity around their next steps and get it done?

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Take a minute to sign up now and be sure to block off your calendar for next week’s sessions.

I look forward to hosting you!
 
Take a minute and be sure to join us over at the Virtual and Remote Visionaries Hub as well on Facebook. You can join us here.

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do”. -- Leonardo da Vinci

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to think about the question “It’s easy for me to….”. What is easy for you to do?

Or perhaps it is a different question. Consider these “It’s easy for me to…”..BE….THINK…Consider…DREAM…SPEAK….GROW

Enjoy your reflection this week – have a great Saturday!
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With best wishes,
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​

A few months ago, I did a series of posts on “What’s Different When Working Remotely”. There was a series of several of them, which I thought would be interesting to revisit as remote working has been happening for many for many months and may be extended into the future for many more months. My invitation is for you to do a pulse check in your next meeting around these items:

1. Autonomy
2. Skills
3. Connections with others
4. Matrix relationships
5. Focus
6. Motivation
7. Inner drive
8. Relationship building
9. Visibility
10. Boundaries

 
Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #2242 - 

Yesterday’s Teams365 post explored four key differences when working remote – Autonomy, Skills, Connections with others and the Matrix.

In today’s post, I wanted to share four additional differences when working remote – focus, motivation, and inner drive, to relationship building and visibility.

In general, many things get magnified in the remote space – from clarity, or lack of clarity, around communication, processes, roles, goals; to what we actually see on the screen. This means that we may need to be more intentional in sharing information, checking assumptions and confirming that our messages were understood in the way they were communicated.

Motivation - When working remotely, a lot of us need to rely on our own inner motivation and self-direction to get things done. For those who like to work autonomously, it’s great! Being clear on what we need to excel as a team member, leader or business owner is key.

As I wrote yesterday, “No person is an island” and we do want to make sure we are clear on our strengths, and style preferences. It’s also key to note that when we over leverage our strengths, that they can become a blind spot. In the remote space this may mean that they get over magnified. So, if I have a love of learning I may keep learning, rather than getting work done. What are the strengths you are able to leverage? What’s important about your work? What drives you? What do you need to be aware of in case it gets over magnified?

For more on Motivation and Remote Work, check out some of the episodes of the Remote Pathways Podcast. 

You’ll also want to check out Week 6 of the 52 Weeks of Remote Work.

What is important for you about motivation in the remote space?

Context - One of the major challenges in the remote space is that we see each other usually only through the small window of the screen. As I write in Effective Virtual Conversations, a great activity to undertake is “what’s outside your screen”? What can we do to share more about the context of our work? That might include:

• Sharing a little more about your desk
• Sharing what’s outside your window
• Talking about what is a priority in your work
• Sharing more about the way work is done, or preferences are in your location (especially if you are a virtual team)

What context pieces are important to share?

Visibility and proactivity - Visibility and proactivity is key in the remote space. Some remote workers feel that their careers get stuck because they aren’t visible like those in an office space. I would invite a perspective that visibility is less about where you are, but how you approach work. What are you doing to be visible, to bring people together, to connect with peers and other stakeholders, to be proactive in connecting on a regular basis with your boss and team?

Regular co-working sessions may provide an opportunity for learning more and connecting with your peers, as well as hearing what you are working on. These sessions may run for an hour, half day or more. 

What is important for you to explore around visibility? What do you need to be more proactive about?

Focus - For many remote workers, productivity can actually increase when moving to work in the remote space. A study by Stanford Business School, headed by Professor Nicholas Bloom found a 13% increase in productivity by those who WFH (Work From Home). You will find a copy of the original publication here at Prof. Bloom’s site.
 
For another interesting article on the same topic check out Scott Mautz’s Inc article.

Even though there are differences with remote work, it’s still important to focus in on the basics of high performance. Be sure to check out the posts I have written on the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. How are we being clear about the ROLES, GOALS, PRACTICES of our work, in addition to connecting in with our vision and mandate, and being clear bout what success will look like?

Tomorrow, we’ll explore another remote working ingredient for success – managing boundaries! (LINK to 2243)
Where are you as a team as it relates to clarity around these ten areas? BE sure to do a pulse check and focus in those areas that need attention.
 
July in Review
Thanks for Joining us this month! This month’s posts have continued to take us through the landscape of remote work , and have included these posts:

Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tips – Messy Middle, Remote Skill: Working Across Differences; Appreciations; Six Factors

My Tuesday Back to Basics Posts around Feedback, Listening and also the Energy of Virtual Calls

Wednesday’s focusing on Stand Out Remotely; Digitize and Virtualize; (LINNK) and Remote Team Builders (LINK)

Thursday’s Team Building Tips – with questions to spark you around getting grounded as well as what you need to say no to, and what needs to be collapsed.
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Historically July has been a month of taking some time to pause and renew. What are you focusing on right now? What’s the support you need to keep doing your best work, and having your best conversations?

Best,
Jennifer