Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

#teams365 #3090 Start of Summer (or Winter) Planning

6/21/2022

It’s the summer solstice for us here in Canada and I always like to earmark this day as an opportunity to do take a pause and do some planning, as well as aspiration setting. Take a look at what I shared a few years ago on this same day:
Today marks the official start of summer. With a new season kicking into gear, it's a great time to take a pause to think about your programming for the next quarter, as well as consider some special project work.

Here are some questions you may want to think about as you step into summer:

1. The greatest opportunity facing me right now is....
2. The greatest opportunity facing the team right now is...
3. By the end of summer I/we will have accomplished....
4. The one habit I want to cultivate is...
5. The one task/thing I need to say no to it...
6. Consistent action around _______ (fill in the blank) will lead to ______ this summer.
7. Lessons learned i can apply going forward are.....

What projects are you going to take on board this summer? Some possible project ideas for team leaders could include:

Holding more regular one-on-ones with team members
Working on that special project that you have flagged, but haven't taken action on
Reviewing roles with the team to see what is working, and what needs a tweak
Considering what reporting mechanisms are going to support better goal setting - for example - a one page plan
Creating a guide/playbook in your area of expertise (ie. on-boarding, project management, meeting management)

Take a few minutes to make a list of the different special projects you might consider focusing on this summer.

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized |Reconnecting Workspaces | Group Coaching Essentials
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Follow us on Instagram @ReconnectingWorkspaces
Phone: (416)996-8326

Check out my TEDx talk

Looking to bring your workplaces back together, whether you are remote, hybrid, or face-to-face? Pick up a copy of my new book, Reconnecting Workspaces, at Amazon.

TEAMS354 #2546 – Weekly Journaling Prompt #133

12/19/2020

This year’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to consider the question ‘This time next year, I hope….”

2020 has been a year of unexpected changes, the need to adapt and pivot, and certainly a lot of learning. Whether we were touched personally with health issues, job loss, a chance in livelihood, everyone on the planet has gone through a shared experience.

While things remain uncertain, the ability to cultivate hope, and a view to the future is important.

Today’s weekly journaling prompt gets you to think about the prompt “This time next year I hope …”

I hope that this invites you to pause, breathe and create…

Enjoy,
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

TEAMS365 #2542 – Power Up – Stand Out Virtually – In Review

12/15/2020

Last week I hosted the Power Up Stand Out Virtually Five-Day Challenge. As with any of the challenges I’ve run this year, it as full of learning, connection and ideas. I love the inspiration of bringing different people together for a series of calls.

During the five days we explored:

The Power of Vision and Purpose
The Power of Engagement
The Power of Planning and Systems
Powering Up our Marketing and Branding
The Power of Teams and Community

Each one of these is an important lever as we move into a new year. What are you doing to build in time in your work for each one?

We’ll be touching on many of these topics later this week on Friday December 18th between 10-2 pm ET at the Virtual Open House I am hosting to showcase some of the work those in my community are engaging with. I hope that you will join us for the entire 4 hours or part of it.

If you missed last week’s Power Up Stand Out Virtually Five-Day Challenge, you can now participate in on-demand, moving through each of the five days at your own pace. It’s available to you at $47 US and includes the five days of videos, worksheets and even a few planning tools for you to take forward from PlanDoTrack. You can get it here

It’s likely that the entire skillset of virtual will continue to be a key focus for 2021, whether the world of work will include more virtual or hybrid work. I look forward to continuing to serve you in the new year!

Best,
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

TEAMS365 #2537 – Team Building Tip #273

12/10/2020

This week’s Team Building Tip gets us to explore habits. What are the habits you have been developing this year? What is helping you excel or thrive? Survive?

Habits are things that we do on a regular basis so that they become automatic.

For those in a remote working environment, you may want to experiment with these habits:

Working with periods of no notifications, or on airplane mode.
Setting a timer to get into the rhythm of working on a “heavy” or creative project - Sometimes it can take 10-15 minutes of getting going with a project.
Getting up to walk around every 50 minutes – Too much time sitting has an impact on everyone. What can you do to create more movement in your day? Take a look back to my July 2020 post on the importance of walking in nature.
Wrapping up meetings at 10 to the hour, to give people an opportunity to get moving with their work.
What else are habits which are going to help you as a team, or as a remote professional?

Enjoy the conversation!
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

TEAMS365 #2535 – 5 Things to Always Keep in Mind with Virtual Calls

12/8/2020

Virtual calls will continue to be the norm into the next year. With this in mind, here’s a quick refresh of five things to keep in mind as you are leading or participating with virtual calls:

#1 – Clarity around purpose and outcomes. As Stephen Covey wrote, “Always start with the end in mind”. What is the outcome you are aiming for? What will it look like when success is achieved?

#2 – Leverage the different learning styles which exist. There are many different types of elements of interaction you can participate with – from more auditory listening to more hands-on kinesthetic approaches where we can incorporate annotation.

#3 – Leave time during the call for silence and reflection. Most people are moving so fast right now that there is minimal time to focus on what’s important. What are you doing to create a pause point for people to be able to catch their breath and take notes?

#4 – Make it visual. The power of visuals is often overlooked. What is the journey you want to take people on? What do you want to focus on as you move forward? What are the visual metaphors you want to capture? What else is important to note?

#5 – Leave time at the end for people to name and note their next steps. Before we know it, we are off to another call. What are you doing to ensure that people have the chance to identify and write out their next steps, even scheduling it in.? As Peter Drucker noted, “What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done.”

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

TEAMS365 #2529 - 8 Activities To Be Sure to Slate in This Month

12/2/2020

This month’s focus at the blog is going to be all about winding down the year. While it’s not a usual year by any means there are a number of key activities you might want to undertake this month. Consider if you have scheduled the following:

Team one-on-one meetings – check out the recent post on 10 areas to explore in your year end 1-1s
Time to wrap up the most important projects for 1-1
Reflection time to consider learning
Planning time for 2021 (even though your planning window may not be the same as always, it is important to connect around these). Consider business and personal goals.
Budget time
Outreach to customers (virtually)
Outreach to stakeholders and other partners (virtually)
Time to downshift and recharge. I think we’d all agree that this year has been anything but usual. What do you want to do to create a pause and renewal time for yourself?

Is there anything else you want to make sure you leave time for this year, other than time with your loved ones?

Best,
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

TEAMS365 #2517 #FlashBack Friday – 10 Things Before the End of The Year

11/20/2020

It’s hard to believe (sometimes…) that we’re nearing the end of the year.
Today's post gets you to think further about year end activities and possible retreat ideas for your team. While not everyone will be able to take a day away from the office, even spreading some of these activities over a couple of weeks, or the next month or two, gets you thinking about, and in dialogue, about important issues.

Here are ten things to be sparking focus and conversation around with your team:

1. Creating a Year in Summary - Using photos or words, how would you describe the highlights of the last year?
2. Strengths based work using either StrengthsFinder or VIA Strengths
3. Goal setting for the new year - overall goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals. Looking at how individual, team and organizational goals overlap
4. Creating an action plan for the new year
5. Creating a Vision for the new year
6. Vision Modelling - using materials at hand coming up with a model for your vision that you as a team can look at regularly
7. Coming up with a theme for the new year
8. Taking time to acknowledge each other
9. Celebrating your successes from the year - a virtual team building event – escape room or BINGO Round
10. Setting an Intention for the year

What other activities might you undertake to wrap up the year together?

Have a great weekend,
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

TEAMS365 #2494 From The Vault – October 29th, 2019

10/28/2020

Last time this year I shared the following post on skills needed for remote work. As you read through this given your experience in 2020, what are your thoughts and experiences:

This month we’ve continued to focus on helping you build your remote team skills. Many professionals new to remote work are curious about what they want to add to their toolbox. This may include things such as:

#1 Systems to Keep You Focused – Systems may range from financial systems (budget, expenses), communication systems – voice, text, email, instant messaging, knowledgement management systems. (Where do you get information?, How do you share information?, How do you file and access information for others across the team?)

#2 Team Development Tools – Having a variety of team development tools to help the team connect, get to know each other and focus in on the work and results you want. More on this topic in tomorrow’s Teams365 blog post.

#3 Relationship Management Tools – What is going to help you build relationships with both internal and external stakeholders? If you are part of a remote team, it’s likely that you are also navigating matrix relationships, and are part of a team.

#4 Planning Tools – As a team, what are your key goals? What are you needing to focus on?

#5 Planning Tools as an Individual – As professionals, it’s likely that we will all have different preferences for planning. Some remote workers want to keep in all in the Cloud, others want an analog paper-based planning tool. In addition to the daily plans, are you taking time to focus on the quarterly and annual plans in your business? This is what I designed the PlanDoTrack Planner for. It’s an analog (i.e. paper-based) workbook and planner to help you (and other team members) get clear on what’s important to you along planning, personal productivity and skills levels.

#6 Getting Organized – Having a well set up office which functions is a big part of the equation. Check out this past post about what elements you will want to have in place.

#7 Performance Tools – Business is about getting results, and it’s important that the team is clear on what needs to get done and what success will look like. What is the current state of performance on a team and individual level? What conversations need to take place?

#8 Coaching Tools – Going hand in hand with performance tools are coaching tools to have great conversations. There are a range of different conversations which need to take place on the team level. From performance conversations (What’s working well and what’s not?)

#9 Project Management Tools – It’s likely that in your work as a remote professional you are regularly navigating projects. What is important to note about your project management skills and tools? Considering the projects you are navigating, how are they going along SCOPE, TIME and BUDGET? What needs attention? Who can help you with this?

#10 A Focus on Team Culture and Identity – While it might seem out of the norm to include this, team culture and identity is critical in today’s workspace. Our culture is WHO WE ARE, HOW WE DO THINGS and WHAT WE VALUE. When was the last time you spent time having a discussion around your team identity and how you do things? If you have team agreements around how you do things, when did you last explore these? If you don’t have them, is it time to create them?

Let us know where you have focused some of your effort this year.

Enjoy your mid-week!
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

TEAMS365 #2489 – #FlashbackFriday – 4 Quick Ways to Minimize Distractions With Remote Work

10/23/2020

This week we return to a topic which is still a big one for more workers – productivity in the remote space. Whether we are working “Remote by chance or remote by choice” (as I like to say), minimizing distractions is key to remote work.

Today I’m reaching back to a post I wrote back in 2016, just as relevant today as it was four years ago. Here are four quick tips I suggested for minimizing distractions with remote work:

1. Clear space for where you are going to work - Whether our workspace is a small table which folds back into the wall when we are done, or we have dedicated office space, clearing the clutter can be an important step in creating space to focus and be productive.

Consider where you work - what needs to be cleared? Spend 15 min this week clearing yourself more space.

2. Make sure you have what you need in order to do your work. Small issues can become big issues when working remote. An old laptop which crashes regularly, taking with it your hard work, becomes a liability. Slow internet speeds can also take a toll. While these issues might be minor pain when working remote once a month, if you need to work remote several days a week, the cost adds up. Consider what you might be tolerating in terms of equipment/resources that just aren't cutting it. What's the cost of replacing them? What's the cost if you don't?

3. Consider when you are at your peak for different types of work. Some of us like the early morning to get out thoughts down on paper, while others like to tackle calls first thing in the morning. Consider your style and preferences in terms of when you would like to get different tasks accomplished, and SCHEDULE IT IN.

4. Sometimes we get distracted because we don't allow ourselves time for a break, or we don't allow ourselves to get into the flow of one activity at a time. While there are many tips to time management that we've covered (check out all our time management tips here), months ago I wrote about the Pomodoro approach where you set a timer for a set amount of time (i.e. 25 minutes) and work until the alarm goes off). Other time management gurus recommend a 10-minute break every 50 minutes. What is going to keep you focused and at your prime in terms of productivity?

Let us know which tips you try out and what you find useful!

Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

A reminder that early next week the Fall 2020 Stand Out Virtually Incubator program will be kicking off, running to December 4th. Looking to amplify your virtual events, and build a stronger business case around them, in organizations or externally? Join us for live group calls, micro-learning modules and some weekly 1-1 coaching! Grab your spot here.

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

TEAMS365 #2473 –The Different Bells and Whistles of Engagement for Zoom Calls

10/7/2020

It is not uncommon to hear at the end of my training sessions – “WOW, the time really flew!” “That was amazing.”

These comments are a contrast to the negative press we hear about zoom fatigue and yet another “talking head” experience. Just last week a group member indicated that my virtual session with their organization was the first one that they had not fallen asleep in since March.

So, what can we do to keep virtual calls as they are intended – a deeper way to connect people to the content and each other?

Watch your pace change! Keeping things moving. A pace change every 7-10 minutes provides enough time for content and information, and then shift it up. A shift might involve:

Asking a question and having people respond
Doing a poll to take the pulse of the group
Moving people to breakout rooms for discussion
Using annotation to have people engage on the screen
Incorporating an energizer
Getting people to turn to chat and share their ideas

Provide time for people to do things real-time. Is there a process you can take people through, working on step by step? Is there something people can draw out and work on?

Being clear with the end result. What is important? What are the questions that will help you get there?

Plan it. We can’t “wing things” in the virtual space like we could in-person. Take time to plan and prepare for the conversation.

Want more tips? Listen into the 60-day series of Effective Virtual Conversations Daily Author Readings I hosted this spring over at the Effective Virtual Conversations website.

Enjoy your conversations!
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

Join us September 17th for the one-day Stand Out Virtually! STtdio Day Masterclass - Learn more about creating exceptional virtual presentations, meetings and programs, and leave the day with your next one sketched out!