As we step into 2020, I wanted to give you an opportunity to focus in on your goals for the year. Many like to list out their goals in a variety of ways.

From creating a goal or vision board which sits in your office to creating a One Page Plan (hear me talk about this more in the recent Remote Pathways podcast and download a copy of your own), keeping your goals visible can be an important part of success.

At the same time goals can become de-motivational, especially if we create too many or if we create goals that are not achievable.

In my writing I like to talk about goals that are not only SMART, but SMART-E.
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As a reminder these are:
S - Specific - What specifically do you want to achieve? What will it look like?
M - Measurable - How can you track progress?
A - Achievable - With some stretch are these achievable?
R - Realistic - Again, with stretch are these in range?
T - Timebound - What's the timeframe on this - next week, end of June, early 2021?
E - And most of all, are these goals Exciting? If they are not exciting, chances are they might got get done, or may get done only to get them checked off.
 
What are your top 3-5 SMART-E Goals for 2020?  Take a few minutes to work on them and be sure to check out the recent Remote Pathways Podcast Episode 3 to check out the One Page Plan Worksheet. You can find it here.

Enjoy your reflection and be sure to share with us your goals over at the Conversation Sparker Zone! If you haven’t joined us there before, you can join the main Conversation Sparker Zone community here. 

And the Remote Pathways Sparker Zone here. (note this group is more focused on remote work)

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Welcome to 2020 – Setting Annual and Decade Long Vision, Intentions and Goals and a new calendar to follow!

Welcome to 2020! Today is an opportunity to turn over not only a new page of a new year, but a new chapter of a new decade.

For some, it’s incredible to have a blank canvas. For others, it may create some doubt and hesitancy. A lot of my work and writing is grounded in the notion of daily steps create their own momentum. As Lao Tsu once wrote – “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.

Today is a new day, new year and new decade. What’s the journey you want to take?

If this is the first time you’ve stumbled upon the Teams365 blog, welcome! If you’ve been with me since I started this experiment in daily blogging back on January 1st, 2014, welcome back for another year. I’m excited to see what themes and topics we explore this year.

Over the last six years of blogging daily, I’ve amassed quite a bit of content. Rather than having it get buried, this year there’s a new monthly calendar you can follow. I’ve curated some of my favorite posts from here at the Teams365 blog and you can follow them along! Click here to download the January 2020 Teams365 calendar.

Today’s post provides you with an opportunity to create not only an annual vision and set of intentions, and goals for what you want to create this year, but also for the upcoming year.

I hope that you may grab a new notebook or journal and join me for these prompts today. You may even want to grab a timer and set it for 2 minutes.

#1 – As you look out across 2020 – what is it that you want to create, or embrace this year?
#2 – What is your theme for 2020?
#3 – What’s important to build time and space to focus on this year?
#4 – What are the top 3-5 goals for the year?
#5 – By December 31 2020, I want to…..
#6 – By December 31, 2029, I hope that…..
#7 – The one habit I want to focus on this year is….
#8 – Across this new decade I want to bring in….
#9 – As I get started every day, I want to remind myself….
#10 – My hope for myself (and my loved ones or team) is…
#11 – What do you want to do on a consistent basis?
#12 – What do you want to make sure you fit into the margins of your life this year? This decade?

Enjoy the reflection!

For more on setting a vision for yourself please check out this video I recorded a few weeks ago. If you have a vision already created, what are you going to do to review it on a regular basis, and use it as a touchstone?

All the best, 
​Jennifer

As I go to write this post it’s a bit bittersweet. I’m sure many of you are feeling the same. The 2010s were a great time – personally and professionally.

I’m excited to step into a new decade and leave a few things behind, as well as carry forward many of the lessons learned of the last decade. While my memories of moving from 2009 to 2010 aren’t as clear, I vividly remember the eve of Y2K. Twenty years ago, as a much younger professional I was based in South America. My original four months in a country had turned into almost seven years at that point. I remember wondering what the new decade would bring. As it turned out amazing things – 3 years as a Manager with the UN, and then transitioning into establishing Potentials Realized in 2004.

What are you hopeful for?

As we step into 2020 as a business, we’ll be continuing our focus on providing teams and leaders with exceptional learning experiences grounded in coaching, mentoring and conversations. Our focus on remote work will also continue to expand with:

• The Annual Remote Pathways Lab meeting on Fridays during the 2nd and 4th week of the month.
• Team Days being custom designed for remote teams – focusing on strengths-based work, team effectiveness, clarifying result and boosting connections.
• In-person team days focusing on strengths-based work and team effectiveness.
• Our Teams365 series of programming – delivered as virtual modules.
• On-demand learning – short, video-based primer courses – Feedback and Team Effectiveness available.
• Support to coaches throught the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator which starts on January 1st 2020. Coaches - hope you'll join us!

Thank you for visiting and spending time here at the blog. Stay tuned for some exciting changes for 2020 writing.

Wishing you an amazing start to the new decade!
​Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

Coaches - Don't forget we start the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator January 1st - I hope you'll join us for this blended -live and on-demand - program.

As we go to wrap up the year, I wanted to take this opportunity to stay thanks for reading. When I began this experiment in hosting a daily blog ack on January 1st, 2014 I thought that it would run for perhaps one or two years. Here we are, six years later.
​
There have been several themes that have remained the same throughout my six years of writing here – the focus on teams, leadership and also the remote space. Those working in the remote space have mushroomed in recent years, and I hope that those of you who work remote continue to find this a useful resource.

The Teams365 series of programming has expanded widely in the last six years as well – from what used to be in-person training deliveries, today, most of the Teams365 work is delivered virtually to groups ad teams across industries. There are also on-demand programs (including a focus on feedback, and teamwork essentials) which you can take at your own pace.

The Teams365 brand has been joined by the Remote Pathways Podcast a short while ago. Highlighting the adventures of the Digital Dozen I’ll be exploring twelve different pathways to remote work today. I’m super excited to be co-hosting it with colleague Michelle Mullins, who also provides coaching and training support for remote professionals.

One of the Remote Pathways offerings you may want to explore in the new year includes our Team Days, geared for remote teams. Held virtually, these are a half-day to one-day programs delivered on Zoom for teams. Most teams call in from their usual location – and are amazed at how connected they become over the course of the day, and how clear they get in terms of the results they are all working towards. I hope that in 2020 we can provide your organization with Team Day support for your remote teams. Please contact me to set up a time to connect.
 
This year brought another 365 days of posts. Here’s where we went this year in year 6 of the blog:

• January - Productivity
• February - Collaboration and Relationships
• March - Virtual Team Culture
• April - Teamwork and Team Essentials
• May - Teamwork in Uncertainty
• June - Team Tune Up, Systems Check, Feedback and Performance, Navigating Disruption
• July - Digital Detox, Work-Life, Focus, Simplification, Habits and Creativity
• August - Teamwork foundations, Remote Work
• September - Remote Work Myths and Working Tips
• October - Remote Team Success, and Team Tips
• November - Focus, Planning, The Last Mile
• December - Working Across Uncertainty

 
Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

Coaches - Join me January 1st as we kick off the 60 Day Acclerator of the Coaching Business Builder. 60 days of focused action on your coaching business.

This week’s Flashback Friday takes a look at one of the 2017 year-end posts focusing on revisiting #1093: Ten Questions to support you in creating your plan for the new year.

As we go to step into the new year and a new decade, you’ll want to build in some time to review your successes from this last year AND look ahead to 2020.

Here are 10 questions from Teams365 #1093 to help you do some visioning for the new year and decade.

As we look towards the end of the year and the start of the new year, consider these questions:

1. What are your top 5 goals for the new year – individually? Collectively?  Organizationally?
2. What successes from the last year or two can you build on?
3. What is going to help you create momentum in the new year?
4. What activities were core to the success of your team this past year?
5. What do you want the theme of the year to be?
6. What systems will be important for you to put in place or refine?
7. What will help accelerate results?
8. What will be key relationships to foster or focus on in the new year and decade?
9. What pauses do you want to build in for reflection and capturing lessons learned? Schedule these in your calendar now!  
10. When you look back on December 31, 2020 what do you hope the year will have brought to you?

 
What time do you want to build into your schedule next year for regular reflection? Do it now, perhaps by setting a clock or timer!

These questions are evergreen and are still as relevant as they were a few years ago!

Enjoy your reflection!
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

This weekend’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to think about the question – “I’d put the following in my time capsule”. Just the other day my son was talking about how it’s only 4 more years until he can open the time capsule he created back in grade 2…. he’s excited to see what he put in there and can’t remember all the items.

What are artifacts of your year this year? What would you want to bottle up and save away? What DO you want to capture so that you can remember?

This weekend’s WJP is a great one as we go to wind down the year. If you haven’t taken a few minutes to review your year, be sure to now – you can follow along a 30-minute reflection 2020 planning session I hosted last month. View it here.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

​While this may be the last day of work for several of you reading today’s post, we still have another 11 days to go in the year. I thought it would be appropriate to link back to a great post from 2016 which included 10 questions for you to take stock of the last year. I hope that you enjoy the reflection and if you are signing off work for a few weeks – Enjoy!

Here’s what I wrote:

Today's post gets you to start turning your attention to some stock taking of this past year. We've got a little less than a week left in the year, and between the parties and presents and eating and resting, it can be a great time to take stock of the year. Here at the Teams365 blog this year we've focused on a range of topic areas including Virtual Facilitation, Global Leadership, New Leadership tips, Exercises to Undertake With Your Team. I also did a couple of series including the Foundations of Feedback, the Foundations of Teamwork, and the Goals. I’m sure you've picked up our bias here at Potentials Realized that success in today's business context is so dependent on Results, Relationships as well as Learning.

I hope that you will grab 15 minutes today or this week to reflect on these 10 questions to help you take stock of the past year. I'll be following up in a few days with ten more questions to support you in creating your vision for the new year.

Here are ten questions to support you in taking a look back at 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. What and how will you celebrate the successes of 2016? With whom?

Enjoy your reflection!

Have a great day,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

Coaches - I hope that you'll join us for the 60Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator which starts January 1st - it's a blended live and on-dmeand program. First live call Jan 6th.

As we arc towards the end of the year, it’s time to focus in on our 2020 vision. I’ve been enjoying hosting a number of events in the last few weeks around visioning for the new year, and new decade.

If you weren’t able to join us last week for the 2020 Vision session, please check out the recording here. You can download an associated worksheet here as well. The session will take about 30 minutes to go through.

Having a vision is important for a number of reasons. Our vision is important as it can help us to:

• Move through the ups and downs of everyday business. It can provide an anchor when things are turbulent.
• Stay focused and make decisions. It may make it easier to say yes to things that align with where we want to go and say no to things that are out of range.
• Pull us forward and motivate us when things are not working well.

Today’s post also serves as an opportunity to pause and take stock of where things are at. What are the things that need attention and need to get done before the end of the year? Is there anything you haven’t yet accomplished that you do want to put attention on?

As part of today’s post, be sure to grab a pen and participate in the 2020 Vision session I facilitated last week. You will find it here on YOUTUBE. Enjoy!

Best wishes, 
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, get your planning on with the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner or Coaching Business Builder
Looking to enhance your virtual conversations? Webinars? Pick up a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations at Amazon.

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt brings us to #73 in the series. This week’s prompt gets you to write about, and reflect on, “I love __ about my work”. This is a great question to bring in at this time of year, as you are reflecting on what’s work, and perhaps what changes you want to take in the new year.

Each one of the journaling prompts provides you with a valuable question. If you are looking for a great year end series of prompts, consider picking up a copy of one of the quarterly downloadable Journaling Prompts downloads. You can find Volume 1 here. They just cost $7 US and provide you with space, and prompts to reflect, based on this series. Enjoy!

What time are you going to carve out this weekend to reflect?

All the best,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2019) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development.
Pick up a copy of Volume 1 of the Weekly Journaling Prompts in a digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.
For those looking for tips, tools and ideas about remote work and support for your remote teams, be sure to check out these tags and resources. ​

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