This week’s quote is all about focused doing. It comes from Thomas Edison who wrote:
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”

What are you noticing right now about your workflow? As we continue to explore the topic of remote work this month, time management, boundaries and focus are key themes in the background.

Given the pace of business today, it’s likely that you don’t read this blog every day, so each Sunday I curate the weekly posts I’ve shared. Enjoy!
 
This week we explored a number of key areas including:

• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip of Virtual Icebreakers. Getting a virtual team meeting or event kicked off in a way that is memorable doesn’t need to take a lot of time or preparation. Consider these ideas for your next meeting.
• Tuesday’s remote work focus which included tips of five areas of working remote.
• Wednesday’s remote work myth that “It has to take longer”.
• Thursday’s Team Building Question as a team of “What are you not talking about?”.
• Friday’s Flashback Friday looking at some of the remote landscape statistics from 2015. What has changed in your industry or region?
• Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt 72 focusing on celebrating this year, and past years, successes.

Enjoy your Sunday!
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. ​

​Welcome to the 13th weekly video montage for the #90DaysPlanDoTrack. Since September I have posted a different quote or image at the CoachingBizBuilder Instagram feed. We’ve put them together to give you a different way to look at things. 

Last year around this time I started pulling together the materials that would ultimately become the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner for Remote and Virtual Professionals. 

Given years of leading corporate sessions and virtual retreats on productivity issues, it was quite easy to weave together materials clients and teams had said were very useful. Since 2017 I had also been sharing different planning tools via the Teams365 Productivity Newsletter, now renamed PlanDoTrack Newsletter (join us here for this monthly e-news blast). Expanding on these initial tools, the PlanDoTrack workbook and planner includes 28 different planning tools - from Monthly Trackers, to content tools, to quarterly planning tools. It's an analog, hard-copy, planner given that for remote and virtual professionals it can be useful to have one place where things are housed physically.  I hope that you'll check out the planner and consider picking up a copy for you and/or your team.
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Enjoy!
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), PlanDoTrack (2018) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where you can explore virtual and team issues, coaching, productivity and business development).
Check out the new 19 Tips for Productivity On-Demand Course. If this is your year to get things moving, check it out now. Join Jenn for bi-weekly live group calls until July. $129 US. Learn more and enroll here.
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This week's #FlashbackFriday takes us back to Teams365 Blog Post #1432. Read it here or below:

"This week's weekend quote comes from Winston Churchill who wrote "Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it". Is there a  project you have been wanting to complete for a while but haven't found the time? Would an extra hour a day move that project forward?

This past month I participated in NANOWRIMO for the third year. It's National Writing Month and by getting up early (a little more than an hour earlier than my usual) I was able to get on paper a new book for virtual team leaders and team members. While many hours of editing lay ahead, to know that it's there to be molded is a great feeling, and one that will let me rest this holiday season. I've come to appreciate the "focused push" I create for myself in a limited time window, so that important projects get attention, and don't swamp every day. Last year's NANOWRIMO project was my latest book, Effective Virtual Conversations. So stay tuned in later 2018 for the new, new book!"

Flashforward to end of 2018...what's interesting is that I've just wrapped up NANOWRIMO for the 4th year in a row. While the manuscript from last year is still in draft form, it spurred on two other publications this year -
The Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner AND
The PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner

I have been enjoying taking professionals of all kinds through 4 hour virtual retreats, supporting them in creating a pause of plan, tackle important projects and consider how they want to track it going forward. Join us for an upcoming PlanDoTrack Retreat and learn more about them here.

What project would you like to move forward? When might be a good time to do a focused push on this?"

Best,
​Jennifer

Today's quote comes from Dr. Wayne Dyer who wrote "Conflict cannot survive without your participation". Conflict is not inherently a bad thing on teams. In fact, it is quite natural, particularly when a team is diverse. What often happens however is that team members are not able to work proactively and productively through the differences, getting mired in the differences and not having strategies to move through the conflict.

I've written many post on conflict here at the Teams365 blog - many of which you can check out here.

Questions to consider:
What are the conflicts which exist in your team right now?
How is conflict helping or hindering you?
What approaches do you have as a team to work through conflict?

Enjoy your weekend,
Jennifer

Today's Quote comes from English Poet- Rober Southey, who wrote "I pack my enjoyments in as little compass as I can, and carry them as conveniently as I can for myself...."

​How lightly do you travel? For many years working in the realm of eco-tourism, travelling lightly and with no impact was a way of life. Today I still think through the impact I want to leave "metaphorically" and literally, in the work I do.

​What's important for you right now about impact in your work?

Have a great weekend,
​Jennifer

This week's quote explores the topic of luck. How do you view luck? As Seneca wrote, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"?

​Part of the theme this month has been looking at productivity and follow through as well as preparation. What are you doing this quarter to be working ahead of the curve? Of putting systems in place so that you are ready to run when the opportunity emerges? What are you doing to scan for opportunities? Are you too busy DOING that you haven't had a chance to look at being strategic and proactive with opportunities?

​I hope that this weekend you may be able to grab a few minutes to look at what luck, opportunity and preparation means for you in your work.

​With best wishes,
​Jennifer

This week's Saturday quote comes from Steve Jobs who wrote "You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you h ave to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future".

​I came across this quote a while ago and was thinking about it first in the lens of how we are leaders and team members need to trust - trust our abilities, our intuition, and plans, in today's world of complexity and change.

​As I went to prepare this week's blog posts I realized that this would be a great quote for today, especially as it marks our 14th Business Anniversary. I think back to Day 1 of business here at Potentials Realized on April 7th 2004. A lot of ideas and thoughts of where this business would take me but not quite sure how it would all connect together. Today I can look back and see how so many projects and initiatives have built onto one another, as I've moved from sector to sector and client to client.

​As I look back at the last 14 years of work and business I'm pleased to celebrate some of the accomplishments:

• ​Working directly with thousands of coaches and leaders in the areas of leadership development, coaching and mentoring skills;
• ​Supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs in growing their businesses;
• Support to hundreds of learning professionals and organizations in virtualizing their work and training;
• ​The publication of the world's first book on Group Coching back in 2009/2010 Effective Group Coaching, followed by From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching in 2013, then Effective Virtual Conversations in 2017
• ​Award winning mentor skills training in the financial services sector - 2008/9
• ​Award winning mentor coaching skills and mentoring training in the healthcare sector  recognized with the 2017 Award of Excellence - Curriculum Design and 2016 Prism Award for Excellence in Coaching

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​As much as the context changes, our experiential, and practical approach to coaching, and training, remains relevant, and impactful in today's business context. Our shift to increasingly virtual work, and supporting others in making this shift so that conversations and teamwork are still impactful, engaging and real, will continue to be a main thrust in our focus going forward, as will be the focus on coaching and mentoring skills, leadership, teamwork and business development support. As we step into our 15th year of business I'm excited for the current projects on  our plate as well as conversations still to be had with new clients.

​I often say that I couldn't do what I do today without the experience in the earlier part of my career in the global humanitarian sector. Those years truly created the foundation of skills, and experience, for me to be able to establish and lead an organization like Potentials Realized today.

​I wanted to take this time to thank you - whether you have been a client, or partner organization, or a reader along the way. Much of my work, and by extension, the work of Potentials Realized, is done in partnership, and our success is also thanks to you.

​I hope that you will join me in raising a toast this weekend for what's been accomplished, but also what lies ahead - many more years of contributing to the conversations and results of coaches, leaders organizations, businesses and teams.

​Best wishes,
Jennifer

It is Saturday and time for another quote. Today I have chosen the theme of simplicity and am sharing a quote and question from myself:

​This past week I savored a few days of holidays and time with family away from our every day routine. While our vacation was not a restful one (we walked more than 12 miles each day), there was real value in disconnecting from technology and "being on", while simplifying. From paring down what we had with us, to simplifying our decisions, the restorative power of simplicity was profound!

​What can you and your team do this week to "pare things down", create more of a break, or be present with each other? 

​How can simplification create more focus and results?

Enjoy your weekend,
​Jennifer

This week's Saturday quote comes from Steven R. Covey who writes:

​"Without trust we don't truly collaborate: we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people, into a team".

​What is the state of trust right now on the team? How are you collaborating effectively? 

​Take a look at some of the posts here at the Teams365 blog relating to trust as well as collaboration.

​With best wishes,
Jennifer