Earlier this week I did a post on the importance of collaboration. That got me to thinking, what other posts I have shared around collaboration. It took me back to some posts I had written back in 2017 when I had focused on Collaboration for the month of February. Here are some of the posts you may want to check out.
 
That month some of the most popular posts were:

• Teams365 #1152: Five Ingredients for Successful Collaboration - Listen into this audio post here.
• Teams365 #1149: Leveraging Peer Conversations for Better Collaboration - Click here to read the post
• Teams365 #1135: Six Barriers to Collaboration. Click here to read the post.
• Teams365 #1137: Flashback Friday - Skills for Collaboration. Click here to visit this post.

 
What post is your favourite?
 
Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 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, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

One of the current challenges and stretch points for many teams right now is how do we collaborate better? With not all workplaces returning to normal and remaining in a virtual workspace, collaboration has become an increasingly important skill set.
 
Who do you need to collaborate with?
 
Some of the core components which are needed to make collaboration successful are:​

• Trust
• Connection
• Communication
• Candor
• Finding common ground and leverage points

Let’s look at each one off these in turn.
 
For several years now I have delivered a 90 minute keynote on Collaboration: The Sum Is Greater Than Its Parts to many organizations, associations and groups in person and virtually. I often poll the audience and ask them “What are the skills you need in order make your collaborations really work?" #1 on the list is often TRUST, quickly followed by the rest. In the past six months I had noticed that CANDOR was starting to make it’s way up the list pretty close to trust.
 
Candor is an important topic to explore and if you have read the writing of Kim Scott in Radical Candor, you would know that it involves being both KIND and FIRM or as she says Caring Personally, and Challenging Directly.

What are you doing as a team to have the important conversations of the moment? Are these moments of candor happening, or are they being “swept under the rug”? Tomorrow’s post is going to link into this with a focus on conflict.
 
Connection and finding common ground is critical for success in the virtual and remote space. While our differences may appear to be vast, we need to make a concerted effort in discovering and leveraging our common elements. This takes time and needs to be intentional. Regular touchpoints are important as well – characterized by quality and frequency not length of time.
 
Going hand in hand with connection is communication. What are you doing to use the different communication channels available? What do you know about different team member’s preferences? What are you doing to communicate changes, adjustments, successes and challenges regularly?
 
Collaboration is an art form as well as a structured process. In most of my books it shows up as a significant theme.
 
If you have a copy of PlanDoTrack check out pages 54-56 as well as sections on strengths.
 
If you have a copy of Effective Virtual Conversations check out Chapter 12 – Partnering and Collaboration.
 
If you have a copy of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching check out Chapter 11.
 
You’ll note in EVC a focus on structured questions to consider as you move through the different stages of the partnering phase.
 
Enjoy the conversations and hope you’ll check back tomorrow with the focus on conflict in the remote space.

All the best,
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 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, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

Whether we are part of a team, collaborating with others or even building a community, there is an art form to bringing people together in the remote space. Today’s topic both curates some of my favorite past posts I’ve done on remote team builders, as well as focuses on some of the areas groups may be hungry for…

#1 - A little bit of grounding: This is where a quick meditation might come in handy.

#2 - A bit of context: Share one thing that’s on your desk right now!

#3 - A little bit of laughter: I recently heard Les Brown share in a presentation that a minute of laughter boosts your immune system for 24 hours. What can you to do create a bit of humor?

#4 - A little stress relief! Check out these 20 stress reduction activities from Sophaya.

#5 - Thinking about things in a different perspective: Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats tool is always a great go-to to explore issues from multiple perspectives.

#6 - Leveraging strengths: Check out this earlier blog post on Leveraging Strengths for remote teams.

#7 - Creating connection: One of my favorite exercises to do at the start of the call (even before stay-at-home became a reality for many of us) was a quick exercise of What’s Outside Your Window?  Check it out in action in the April 15th Community Call I co-hosted for the Remote Pathways podcast.

Here’s a great list on the A – Z of building a remote team from Trello’s blog – you can find it here. 

You may also want to go back to the A-Z series I did back in 2017 as well.

Download a copy 20 Different Remote Team activities you can take your team through at the Potentials Realized store for $27.50 US - (immediate download).
 
Enjoy!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 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, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

One of the legacies of March and April 2020 may be learning how to effectively collaborate in the remote space. This is important whether we are collaborating with our peers, our leader, another team or even stakeholders. Today’s blog post explores four tenets of collaborating in the remote space:

# 1 - Create a clear end result and vision of success for this project. What are you wanting to create together? Why are you doing this? (Note: lack of clarity on this can create a lot of divergence as you go.) How will you know that you will have been successful with this?

#2 - Be proactive and don’t assume. In the remote space, at the best of times, we see each person’s world in a small box. This may not be representative of everything that is on the go.

#3 - Plan it. Take time as a partnership to ask yourselves, what’ important about this? What are you wanting to achieve?

What are your strengths? What are the gaps between the strengths of your partnership?

Find common ground as well as differences. What are the areas we foresee might be challenges? What can we do to mitigate against those?

#4 - Be proactive with communication and ensure you do this on a regular basis. Shift your mindset to one of “of course” to “What should I communicate?” Given that it’s likely we are under-communicating rather than over-communicating.

What’s going to help your collaboration work better?

For more on this topic check out other posts I have done on collaboration.

Wishing you the best, 
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 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, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program

Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.

Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​
PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here. ​

Metaphorically, what do you want to pass on? What pearls of wisdom do you want to share with someone else? What do you want to give to someone so they can benefit from it? Mentoring is an important modality at any time, especially at this time, when people can benefit from the lessons learned from those who come before us.

Our most recent Remote Pathways podcast #10 focused in on Virtual Mentoring. You’ll find the episode here.

One of my business partners, Susan Combs, of the Mentor Roadmap shared the experience of developing internal mentoring programs and supporting mentor pairs in many industries and with many organizations including Fortune 500s.

Mentoring can take many forms, and virtual mentoring is alive and well. Check out Teams365 #2107 – Effective Virtual Conversation Tip 114. Read it here.

This week in your journaling, you are invited to think about what you want to pass on? What is important to capture? What is important to communicate? What is important to mentor someone else around?

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Everything DiSC
Phone (416)996-8326

Get your Q2 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, or join me for the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program
Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.
Check out upcoming virtual programs on our calendar
​

It’s Friday which means that it’s time for a Flashback Friday. Here’s a look back at a post from February 2018 – 4 Essentials Ingredients for Collaboration.

With relationships and collaboration being an essential skill set for leaders and team members of all types, I thought it fitting to make our Valentine’s Day post this year all about collaboration. Whether you are collaborating across your own team, or with others, collaboration allows us to tap into resources we do not have available, harnessing the talents of our network. Collaboration may be discrete for a fixed project, or longer for ongoing initiatives.

In today’s post I wanted to cover four essential ingredients for collaboration:
​1. Be clear on why you are collaborating
2. Consciously design your partnership: What do you bring to the table? What is important for you both?
3. Regularly check in and adjust
4. Consider what end result you are looking for
 
Let us look at each one of these in turn:

1. Be clear on why you are collaborating
​Collaborating for collaboration's sake does not equal success! Why is this collaboration occurring? What is possible due to the fusion of your skills and abilities? What outcomes are you looking for?

​Partnerships and collaboration are not always a straight road. It's important to be clear on:

• why you are collaborating
• ​what you hope to gain from the partnership
• ​what you want to gain
• and what your expectations are

​Spend some time as a partnership exploring this and coming back to it throughout your work together.

2. Consciously design your partnership.
​Take time to intentionally, or consciously, design your partnership. Building in time for focusing on the relationship can be as important as creating or doing the work together. In a recent newsletter article  I shared several of the partnership planning questions I have written about over the years.

​In my writing I talk about at least four stages where you will want to focus conversation - pre-program/partnership, at the start, during the work and at the end of major projects. Refer to chapters 12 of Effective Virtual Conversations or Chapter 11 of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

3. Regularly check in and adjust.
Regular check ins will look different for each project. Ask yourselves regular questions such as:

• What’s working well?
• What progress have we made with this project?
• What are we learning and need to make sure we do? We stop doing?
• What changes are important going forward?

​4. Consider what end result you have in mind.
As Steven Covey wrote years ago "Start with the end in mind". Our end result shapes our action. As you engage in every conversation think about the end result you are aiming for. How does this influence your partnership? What roles you play? What attention you have? 

​These four factors - clarity, conscious design, check in, and end in mind - support partnering and collaboration to be a flexible, fluid process. What is important for you to consider in your own work?

Best wishes,
Jennifer

With this month’s focus on partnering and working more collaboratively, a key ingredient of remote work, I thought it might be interesting to reach back to one of the Team Leader Breakfast Café Recordings I did a few years ago in 2017. While this isn’t the entire call, here are the five areas I highlighted as Five Key Ingredients for Successful Collaboration. You can listen into the original audio over at Teams365 #1152. Here’s what I shared in that audio:

What we know about great collaboration and great partnering is that a number of essential elements are in place. Typically partnering works best when we have a set of complimentary skills.

When partners are too similar, or teams are too similar we can create a lot of blind spots. We may have great bench strength in certain areas like the ability to execute results or to build relationships. And we may be missing certain skills that are essential, like strategic thinking.

That's great to drive for results, but if we're not clear on why we're driving for those results or if they're the best ones, then we may find ourselves in some challenges.

Another key principle in making collaboration work is making sure that we're leveraging people's strengths. As I have written many times here at the Teams365 blog, the research done by the Gallup organization points to that when teams that have the opportunity to use their strengths on a regular basis they are more productive and members generally have higher quality of life.
If you haven't had a chance to do any strength-based work with your teams, please reach out and contact me to discuss a Team Strengths Day. I use a number of strengths-based assessments in my work as a coach, as a trainer that can be brought into one-on-one conversations or work with your entire team.

The more we know ourselves, know what we're good at, and also know where we might find struggle, helps us be more effective. We can communicate that to others.

Teamwork is just like an orchestra. It’s not about being the best at everything, or even trying to. Teamwork is about making sure that we have the right people on the right instrument in the right seat, leveraging their strengths as best as possible.

As research has shown, it's much easier for us to do well in our strengths and to try to mitigate against our weaknesses.

Back to collaboration –two other factors really make it work well.

The third one is PLAN. Partnerships, great teams, great collaboration don’t just materialize. It happens with some planning.  In my several of my books including Effective Virtual Conversations, I share more about the Arc of co-facilitation and some of the questions you can ask when you plan.

And number four, I wanted to mention which intentionality. So, as you go about your teamwork and or developing new partnerships, maybe you've been tasked with leading a new project. Maybe you've been tasked with pulling a group of experts together. Think about questions like how do we blend our skills or what do we each bring to the table?

Also, you want to make sure that you're feeling connected because we know that connection creates safety. Psychologically, if we think we are too different, it's very hard for teams in groups to move forward. So, a question around that might be getting people not to think about what they bring that’s unique, but also what is it that they bring that is similar.

In making teamwork and collaboration work take some time to get to know each other. Ask yourself questions around strengths and what's important, what will success look like for each of you as well as what will success look like for you collectively?

The fifth area I wanted to mention in terms of just getting or making collaboration, partnering really work is to make sure that you have deep levels of trust.

Trust is really the foundation of so many things. If we don't have trust, it's very hard to move into the deeper dialogue to feel that you are being supported, to know that someone has your back. Then in building trust, we want to undertake consistent actions that represent our intentions. We want to make sure that it's in proper alignment with where we're going, and we also want to make sure that we have things like transparency in place as well as feedback loops.

So just to quickly run through these five areas, again, things to think about as you're entering your partnerships, future projects, future collaborations.

1. Number one, how do we bring complimentary skills to the table?
2. Number two, what are our strengths and how do we leverage those?
3. Number three, have we built in enough time for planning related to that?
4. Number four, how intentional are we being?
5. And finally, what are our levels of trust?

I hope that you'll check out some of our Teams365 blog posts related to this topic. Some of the most popular posts of months have included the six  barriers to collaboration . Also check out making mentoring work virtually. Whether you are partnering with others face to face or in the virtual realm, in the same company or across the globe, these principles hold true.
​
Interested in learning more or want individual or team coaching support around this? Looking to have a virtual team day facilitated to do some work around strengths? Please reach out to me by email at info@potentialsrealized.com and let’s set up a conversation.
 
Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer

Welcome back to this week’s Sunday reflection. As we’ve been exploring the topic of collaboration and relationships, you hopefully have also gotten clearer on what you bring to the partnership as well.

Each Sunday I link back to the weekly posts to help you catch up with all there has been.

This week’s blog posts have included:

• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt – What do you take a stand for?
• Friday’s Flashback Friday taking us back to Teams365 #1750  
• Thursday’s Team Building Tip getting you to think about HABITS
• Wednesday’s post getting you to think about Questions and Listening in your remote conversations
• Tuesday’s post Ingredients for Making Remote Work, Work
• Monday’s post on Sharing the Reins and how to do this

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

​What’s important for you to keep an eye on this week?

Best,
​Jennifer

Today I wanted to take you back to #Teams365 #1750 – Teamwork Skill – Partnering, Collaboration and Relationship Building. Check out the original post here.

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” – Theodore Roosevelt

​The skills of collaboration, partnering and relationship management are all critical for success in today’s workplace. Whether we work in-person or virtually, being able to build solid relationships with other members of our team, others inside the organization, and potentially external partners and customers/clients is critical for success.

It’s important to be able to build relationships:

• Upwards with our boss and other leaders in the organization.
• Across with peers in the organization – in other teams and departments.
• Downwards with anyone we manage or lead.

Whether we have a formal title of leadership or not, partnering, collaboration and relationship management are all critical skill sets.

One of the biggest adjustments remote team leaders and members face is how to build relationships, and work through others in the virtual space.
 
Consider your work and what it may look like as a professional in today’s context. Who do you relate with on a regular basis? What value are you providing in the interactions you have? What type of support do they need from you?

We often use the term “collaboration” around in today’s workplace thinking that all tasks and projects need collaboration. As I have written several times, collaboration may be overused at times, employed when individual effort may be best, and under-utilized when a collaborative approach would be best.

Questions to consider when you collaborate or partner with others:

• What are the outcomes we are looking for? How will we know we’ve been successful?
• Do we need to collaborate, cooperate, collaborate or co-create?
• Each one of these requires different risk, input and levels of relationship. To what level do you need to be involved?
• What’s important to acknowledge about the impact of collaboration?
• When we do collaborate how can I be relied upon? What do others need from me? What do I need from them?
• What check-ins will we have along the way to identify what’s working, what adjustments are needed, and what learning we are having?

I hope that you have found it valuable to return back to this former blog post.
Don’t forget to download a copy of the February Calendar. Many of these posts are ones you will want to explore. 

Warm wishes,
​Jennifer

Very shortly I will be leading a new podcast entitled the Remote Pathways Podcast™ with my co-host Michelle Mullins. As many of you know from my writing here, I’m passionate about remote work in all it’s shapes and forms.

Earlier this year, in July, I completed a new writing project I have entitled “Remote Pathways” I’ve alluded to it in several posts already. It is somewhat modelled after a “choose your own adventure”, exploring the different remote and virtual professional pathways we can find ourselves working within.

From leaders who manage teams which work remote most of the month, to project teams which span the globe, from remotepreneurs leading virtual businesses, remote work is on the rise.

We’ll be following many of these trends and taking a deeper dive into the adventures of the Digital Dozen™, twelve different types of remote professionals. I hope that you’ll join us and will follow along at the new website – link to RemotePathways.com.

With so many professionals jumping into the remote workspace, I am hoping that the years of writing on remote work, and virtual teams here at the Teams365 blog will be of service.

With that in mind, I wanted to highlight an earlier blog post  - Teams365 #1729: Plan a Virtual Co-working Session

​As we move into fall, it can be very useful for teams to continue to put attention around getting things done WHILE connecting. A favorite activity I continue to facilitate is GET IT DONE afternoons, which really become Virtual Co-Working Sessions. They are a derivative of the virtual retreats I have been offering for teams, business owners and leaders since 2007. 
​
Virtual co-working sessions may range from one-hour sprints, to four-hour blocks, to full day sessions.

Three considerations to making a virtual co-working session work include the following:
​
1. A platform where you can all meet, see each other and converse for periods of time.

• Streaming is often best; however, others may appreciate the ability to take their work on the road and call in at time.

2. Focus – collectively and individually. Consider these questions:

• What’s bringing you together today?
• What’s the focus – is it to do something collectively or individually?
• What outcomes do you want?
• How do you want to break it down – meeting every hour for check-ins? Meeting more frequently?

3. Scheduled Checkpoints 

• A way to share and keep the momentum going throughout the day. I have found that virtual group and team sessions have been the seeds for some amazing new ideas and cross-pollination. Be sure to build in blocks where people are not only checking in around what they are doing, but also consider the value of building in some time for sharing of learning or insights.

Looking for inspiration on what you might do in a virtual co-working session? Consider these ideas – they are all real programs I have facilitated over the years:

• One-hour virtual sprints for planning on the team or individual level
• 30-minute brainstorming/innovation sessions geared to create new product and or service ideas
• Four-hour GET IT DONE sessions where groups of solopreneurs connect virtually to take focused action once a month on things on their list. Check-ins are once an hour.
• Four to eight-hour Virtual Retreats, where each hour has a dedicated focus and theme to explore and/take action on. For example, an hour dedicated to creating a business plan, an hour to marketing approaches, an hour for project work).

Looking for a facilitator to host your next virtual co-working session? Contact me to learn more about this service I offer. 

What could a co-working event look like for you?

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success focusing on the Remote Space
Author of 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.
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. ​
Launching today  - the Remote Pathways™ Podcast