2020 has been a year of many things unexpected. It’s been an opportunity to change and grow and involved tons of learning for everyone who had to pivot or double down on their work. As we go to wrap up the year, I want to wish you and your loved ones all the best for a new year!

Here are several questions I hope you will find useful as you go to undertake your year end stock taking:

1. What's been your biggest success for you this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing?
3.  What were your greatest results?
4. What habits have you cultivated?
5. What routines ground you?
6. What changes do you want to make as you step into the new year?
7. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
8. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
9. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
10. Looking ahead, what are your key goals?  What will wild success look like?
11. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
12. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
13. What and how will you celebrate the successes of this year?
 
See you in 2021!
​Jennifer

Here we are at December. It’s hard to believe that we are here already. Given that it’s a new month, let’s take a moment to build in a reflective pause to capture the learning.  I hope that you’ll earmark 15 minutes to work through today’s questions:
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Reflecting on the month of November:

• What were my major achievements this past month?
• What do I want to celebrate?
• As I consider my goals (and resolutions) I made at the start of the year, how am I doing with these on a scale of 1-10? Which ones are becoming new habits or something I can check off?
• Which goals need to be let go of or changed?
• What habits have supported me this past month?
• As a leader, what have I noticed about my team this past month?
• As a leader, what notes should I make about performance issues? (if I haven't done it already!)
• The thing that has helped me be most productive this month has been ______
• The thing that has helped me be most successful this month has been ______
• The thing that has helped me be happiest this month has been ________
• The thing that has helped me be most healthy has been _______
• What have I noticed about my work/productivity/results and/or relationships during the winter months (if you are in the northern hemisphere) or summer (if you are in the southern hemisphere)?
• How I’m doing with my theme of the year (how I am living it, embodying it)?

Looking ahead to December:

• The one thing I am committed to completing this month is…
• The project I want to get started…
• The project I most want to wrap up is...
• My priorities are:
• Our team priorities are:
• My goals are:
• My teams goals are:
• I want to...
• I'll be really happy at the end of December or/the year when….

All the best,
Jennifer

This week as part of the Flashback Friday series I am reaching back to the November 27th, 2018 post. I think you’ll find this valuable as we step into the new year.

It’s that time where we start rolling into year end conversations, holding one on ones (coaching conversations) individually and with the team.

As we move into the end of the year, it is invaluable to schedule some one on one time with each team member. Today’s post includes a selection of 18 questions you might include in those conversations (pick and choose as appropriate). Great year end conversations help to create a pause to reflect achievements, synthesize learning and look ahead to the future.
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You may want to incorporate these questions into your conversation:

1. What are the key achievements you have been most proud of this year?
2. What projects worked well?
3. Which projects didn’t go so well?
4. What was your learning there?
5. What connections/relationships have been most valuable this year?
6. Which relationships need attention next year?
7. What’s been your biggest learning this year? What experiences provided that?
8. What has worked well with the team this year? What hasn’t?
9. What feedback do you have for me as the leader? (What’s worked and what hasn’t)
10. What’s one suggestion for how we could do things differently as a team next year?

Looking ahead to next year:

1. What are you excited about?
2. What habits do you want to cultivate or lean into?
3. What do you want to do to keep growing your skills?
4. By December 31, 2019 what do you hope you will have achieved? OR by January 1, 2020, what do you hope you will have achieved? (Notice the impact of the difference one day makes!  Yes, we are wrapping up a decade next year)
5. What are your top 3 priorities next year?
6. What feedback and support are you looking for?
7. What would be useful in terms of our 1-1 time?
8. What else is going to help you do your best work?

What else do you like to ask at this time of the year? Please let us know by sharing in the comments below.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt gets you to consider the question: “Elements which are important”. As we start winding down the year, I hope that this question is a useful one for you to consider.

Think about the elements in your:

• Work
• Relationships
• Family
• Life
• Home
• Community

What are the elements which are important for you? What are you going to make sure you always have space for?

Enjoy the reflection!
Jennifer

This past week I hosted a 5-day challenge called “Stand Out Virtually – Corporate Edition”. We explored what’s needed to create interactive, and memorable, corporate engagements, whether you are working in organizations that are for-profit, not-for-profit, public sector, start-ups or associations. Those who attended were coaches and other learning professionals, leaders, and entrepreneurs, who lead programming for organizations and have had to pivot or expand their virtual offerings.

Three key themes we talked about this week around creating memorable and impactful virtual calls are what I term in my book – Effective Virtual Conversations – “Death By Conference Call” or today’s term of “zoom fatigue” were:

#1 - Invite people to interact and get active – Conversations are not meant to be a passive endeavor. They need to be active. Talking at people one way is not having a conversation. Be sure to use the “engagement levers” available to you – from chat, to annotation, polling or breakouts. Different size virtual rooms, and different platforms will provide different options available.
Task: Review one of your current presentations this week. What is one way you can create more active focus on the part of participants? Note incorporating this every 7-10 minutes is often a good rule of thumb.
 
#2 - Improve your questions – Leadership in the remote and virtual space is via influence. This is another reason why conversational skills become so important virtually. Consider what questions will elicit the response and action you are looking for.

Questions are usually asked one at a time, only 4 to 6 words in length, and the most open-ended questions usually (but not always) start with WHAT. Why questions may put people on the defensive if trust levels are not high. How questions will move people into a process orientation.

Asking two questions at a time is often referred to as stacking and may lead to people not knowing which question they should refer to.

Task: Spend some time thinking about and reviewing the questions you want to ask in an upcoming presentation. Are they clear? What do they invite people to do – connect the dots, look to the bigger picture, etc?
 
#3 - Consider the visuals – One of the main channels we have in communication is visual. What are the visual elements you are using in your presentation or conversation? Is there an opportunity to create a metaphor to make a more complex topic simpler? Or a graphic or illustration which could synthesize new ideas.

Task: Consider your visual elements this week – photos, colors, metaphors and images.  What is important to note about your visuals?

Just a reminder, that this week we are starting the Stand Out Virtually Fall 2020 Incubator.

If today’s blog post is a topic of interest to you and you want to learn more about creating WOW conversations for the corporate arena, I’ll be hosting a seven week virtual learning series this fall on Mondays from 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET called the Fall 2020 Stand Out Virtually Incubator. Each week we’ll host a live learning call, you’ll participate in viewing some micro-learning and you’ll also be paired with a peer accountability partner to support you in building out and positioning your work. Whether you are external or internal to an organization, this program will build your tools, clarity and confidence around standing out virtually. Click here to learn more and register. 

The program runs from Monday October 19th to Friday December 4th.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt invites you to dive into the waters around your current opportunities and challenges and consider the question – To Go Deeper Means….
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What are the layers below the surface? What are the things that are under the waterline?

In my writing, PlanDoTrack, I include exercises for virtual and remote professionals to go below the waterline of the visible results we see. Living below the surface of our actions reside elements including:

• Values
• Beliefs
• Assumptions
• Perspectives
• Habits
• Mindset

What do you notice about each of these? How are these influencing you, directly and indirectly?

Enjoy your writing this weekend!
Jennifer

As we step into October, what are the things you want to get done this month? Innovation continues to be a theme for many businesses, as does simply getting things done, and not only surviving, but thriving. As of today, here are 91 more days left in the year. What do you want to make sure you complete? Focus on? Put aside?

This month we are continuing our focus on thriving in the digital space as a professional or team.

If you didn’t do yesterday’s Q3 Review and Q4 planning, take a moment to review that.

Today we’re going to do our monthly planning review and goal setting for the month ahead. So, chunk it down a bit and let’s look at it:

Here are some questions to consider:

1. As you reflect on September, what were your successes and accomplishments?
2. What are you most proud of?
3. What habits helped you? What routines?
4. What were key learnings during the month?
5. What key relationships have helped you so far this year? Which ones need more attention?
6. What helped you? What hindered you?
7. What do you need to say YES to this month? What do you need to stop doing, or say NO to this month?
8. What does your team need to be acknowledged for?

As you look to October, consider these questions:

1. What are your key priorities for October? Quarter 4?
2. What are the key goals?
3. What are the major priorities?
4. What will you need to place attention on?
5. What changes do you want to make?
6. What resources do you want to tap into?
7. What relationships are important?
8. What habits are essential?

Enjoy your review!
Jennifer

It’s the last day of Q3 and we’re just about to step into Q4. Who is ready to step forward? Before we go there, I’d like to invite you to take 10 minutes or more today to do a brief reflection on your experience. If you prefer to do the reflection by video, take a look at this Quarterly Review Video I recorded 18 months ago as we moved from Q1 to Q2 2019. The questions are evergreen and don’t expire.
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Grab pen and paper and take a look at this…

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Virtual Collaboration is a core topic for all types of remote professionals. Whether we have to build something within our team, or expand our network, it’s key to build capacity to collaborate across distance and time. I address this topic in Chapter 12 of Effective Virtual Conversations. In a very practical way, you will want to consider the following areas for exploration:

#1 – Why are we collaborating? Many writers assert that it’s important not to collaborate just to collaborate. In fact, it’s key that we are clear on why we are collaborating. Is it because our skills are better when we fuse them together? It is because we bring a different insight into a core topic? Be clear on why you are collaborating.

#2 – What’s your core stance and common ground around the topic? What is the common stance you hold around the topic? Perhaps you are both passionate about educating around a topic. Perhaps you want to create a new approach to looking at an issue. Being clear on where you both align, and where you are different, is important.

#3 – What’s different between your work? Consider where your work is not only the same, but complimentary. Partnerships can get weakened if both partners are too similar. Consider exploring not only what’s the same, but also what’s different.

#4 – Consider what your end result is. Results in the remote space need to be specific? Clear? Focused? What are your end results? What are you looking to achieve?

#5 – Provide feedback. Feedback is critical to any partnership and collaborative experience. Be clear on what’s working. What’s not. What changes are needed and how things can proceed.

How often are you meeting? What type of feedback are you both providing and receiving?

Collaboration will continue to be a “pain point” for many professionals. What’s going to help your partnerships flourish in the remote space?
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Enjoy the conversation!
Jennifer

Welcome to the week in review. This week we covered the following posts:

• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt
• Friday’s Flashback Friday
• Thursday’s Team Building Question inviting you to do a systems check
• Wednesday’s focus on 6 Areas To Consider With Your Virtual Meetings and 8 Questions To Always Ask. Read it here.
• Tuesday’s Monthly Kick Off and Review
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip

Enjoy!
Jennifer