This week’s focus has continued to be on remote work and helping you and your teamwork in the virtual space.

If you haven’t had the chance, check out this week’s posts:

• 2287 - Saturday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt on What Do You Want to Learn About?
• 2286 - Friday’s post on 3 Ways to Keep your Remote Team on The Same Page
• 2285 - Thursday's Team Building Tip 281 – Values to Action
• 2284 - Wednesday’s post on Celebrating 16 Years
• 2283 - Tuesday’s Quarterly Reflection
• 2282 – Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversation Tip around Iterate!

Have a great weekend,
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
​

As many teams around the world wrap up a third week of remote work, I thought it would be useful to go back to past 2019 blog post I had done on Keeping Your Remote Team All on The Same Page – 3 Things to Consider Teams365 #2136 

One of the greatest challenges in team work today is leading a remote or virtual team. Helping people feel connected when they may be working at opposite times of the day, and parts of the world, for the same project can seem daunting.

In my work as a team coach, consultant, and author, I love the work that I get to do with remote teams. It may be because I led remote teams most of my thirty-year career, or it may be that the notion of diversity energizes me. If you have met me more than fifteen years ago, you would have found me connecting with my team which was spread across ten countries, with more than fifteen nationalities represented.

What can we do to help our remote teams stay on the same page? Here are three things to think about:
​
#1 – Strengthen your team identity and culture. Our team identity and culture clarify WHO we are, and HOW we do things. The stronger our team culture is, the clearer we are about what is unique to us as a team, as well as what is acceptable and unacceptable. In a remote team, or virtual team, being focused on these areas can be important. They create clarity. They help us know what’s expected when we are part of one team. When you are part of a matrix structure (very common in the remote space) it’s critical that we are clear on how doing things on one project may vary from doing things on another project with another team.

Having a strong team culture can also repel or attract. It can help people feel “bigger than themselves” and feel a sense of connection or belonging. At the same time, it may signal to non-team members that this team is different.
What is your team identity?

#2 – Consistency. Consistency is important in today’s VUCA world. As I am going to share in a post tomorrow around VUCA and teams, being consistent with process and practices can also create stability in what can often be perceived as a turbulent business context.

If you have said that you are going to meet bi-weekly, make sure meetings happen. If you are expecting reports weekly, be sure to follow up.

What does consistency mean for your team? What can it look like?

#3 – Create regular connection points. What are the touch points team members have, both formally (through team meetings) and informally (through mentoring, peer partners and other ideas)? Consider as a team what “regular” means, and what the right frequency is. Again, connection points create a sense of belonging and team. If we say we are a team, but don’t ever connect, how do we know what people are doing?

Connection points can be digital (like Slack), virtual (like Zoom team meetings) and in-person (quarterly or annual get togethers for the team).

​What is the best frequency for your team?

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
​

This Friday I am reaching back to a 2018 post – Teams365 #1743 which includes different ways to be building out connection as a virtual team. For some teams today, the stakes are high in terms of keeping things going.

Here are some ideas to keep your team moving:

#TEAMS365 #1743 Creating Connection and Building Community - Virtually

In today’s business context, the ability to build strong relationships with our team, and our other stakeholders is critical.

A starting point to create connection and build community is to find common connection points. Whether finding common ground by discussing the shared results you have OR starting with finding a personal connection, building community is critical for information sharing, knowledge expansion and innovation. Most professionals don’t operate in silos, yet, when they are working remote or virtually, it’s common to feel “alone”, or operating in a vacuum. The ability to connect with others and build strong virtual relationships and networks is a core skill area for virtual professionals.

How do we go about creating connection and building community virtually?

Six areas to consider:

1. Find points of common connection – what is the common ground and purpose you have in your relationship?

2. What is critical for success for your work together? Discuss what is important from each perspective in terms of success. Note what is similar and different.

3. Understand how people prefer to communicate – Big picture? Details? Frequent updates or summary journals? Direct? Indirect?

4. On a macro-level, who is important for you to build relationships with? How do you do this? Is it by joining LinkedIn Groups? Connecting on other social networks? As you look to these larger communities, what are the core themes/areas people are exploring? What are the trends? What are the virtual meeting places?

5. Be clear on what you are after and what you are asking to connect around. Like any networking and community building it can be important to be clear and focused on WHY you are doing it. What is your end goal? Intention?
​
6. Create parameters around HOW you are going to do it is also important – Before it becomes an all-consuming activity, are you going to spend 10-15 minutes a day connecting on social media? Are you going to dedicate one-hour a month to reaching out and participating in a virtual community event? What’s going to avoid scope creep around time spent?

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 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.
Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

In this month’s Effective Virtual Conversations newsletter, I shared an excerpt from an e-book I created a year or two ago on virtual and remote teams. I wanted to share this excerpt with you here as well, knowing that many professionals today have needed to shift their conversations to the remote space.

In the remote world of work, many things get magnified as our touchpoints before less frequent. We are framed by the screen.

What do you notice about your team and their focus?

When making the transition over to the remote space, it’s important to go back to the basics around team work and our team culture – Who are we? How do we do things? What’s important to us?

Providing the team with time to connect and share what they are working on is also an important part of the team process.

Don’t forget to go back to the foundations of effective teamwork, commonly known as the Six Factors. Here’s how I’ve described them before in Teams365 1920:

“One of the frameworks I continue to share with teams is what I call the Six Factors of High Performing Teams. These are six things that teams need in order to excel. The ingredients come from the research of professionals including: Katzenbach and Smith (The Wisdom of Teams), Hackman and Wageman (A Theory of Team Coaching) and others.

As you step into the new month, as a team you’ll take the pulse of where you are on a scale of 1- 10 in each of these six areas:

1. Shared purpose or mission (Your WHY)
What is your purpose? Your mission? Why do you exist? Does everyone hold the same understanding? What does this mean practically for your work? What priorities does your purpose or mission naturally create?

2. Shared behavioral norms
How do you do things? What is acceptable and unacceptable on the team? What behaviors and habits exist? Which ones are supportive of exceptional performance? Which ones aren't?

3. Shared commitment
What are team members committed to? What will you get done, no matter what? Is there anything that needs to be dropped off the list?

4. Shared performance goals
What are key goals for the team this year? What are key individual goals? How do your goals align? Overlap? What does success look like for each member? For the entire team? Does everyone have an understanding of the key goals of others on the team and how they feed into them?

5. Shared team practices
Teams that work together effectively share common practices such as a Monday morning huddle, a Thursday night out or some other regular event. What practices support your relationships?

6. Clear Roles
How do our roles overlap, align and connect? What changes, if any, are needed this year around your roles giving your priorities?”
A quick activity to undertake together is to have some discussion around how you are doing in each of these areas this week, especially if you are now operating in the remote space."

Check out the many posts I’ve written on remote teamwork including Teams365 #2130 – Remote Team Toolbox.

Best, 
​Jennifer

Given that a number of professionals are needing to move to the remote space I thought that it would be appropriate to return back to past post on planning for a virtual co-working session. Remote work can feel isolating, so what if you met up for a block of remote work together?

Here’s what I shared last year in a post around Planning a Virtual Co-working session:

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 here.

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?

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 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.
Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!
​

Earlier this month at the Remote Pathways podcast which I host, we released Episode 8 which focuses on Strengths and Remote Work. We were joined by Coach Jennifer Grote as a special guest. You can listen into it here.

Strengths often play a key role in helping professional excel, particularly in the remote space when we are operating in isolation.

When’s the last time you explored your strengths?

Research around strengths has found that individuals and teams that are able to lead more by strengths, are:

• 6x more engaged
• 3x more likely to report having excellent quality of life
• 8.9% greater profitability
• Teams which focus on strengths have 12.5% greater productivity

(Gallup Strengths Center)

Today’s invitation is for you to explore how strengths shape your work.
​
Questions to consider:

• What are your strengths?
• What do you do to magnify them?
• What happens when they are not magnified?

Enjoy exploring your strengths!
​Jennifer

In my book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I share seven skills needed to make collaboration work well. These are particularly important in the remote and virtual space where collaborations need to be more intentional and are often characterized by touch points which are much more infrequent.
​
The seven areas we want to be building skills and capacity around are:

• Trust
• Candor
• Connection
• Flexibility/Adaptability
• Self-Awareness
• Working Across Differences
• Relationship Development

(Page 385 – Effective Virtual Conversations, Britton, 2017)

What do all of these skills look like in your virtual work?

If you were to give each one of them a rating, what would they look like?

Having introduced these categories to hundreds in speaking engagements over the last few years, I often will poll the audiences I speak with about which ones are most important. By far, the one which most frequently gets raised is TRUST.

What does building trust look like in your virtual relationships?

It may include:

• Being present – and not looking like you are multi-tasking
• Being reliable – following through with promises made to send something out
• Participating in chat and/or annotation and/or verbally
• Showing up on camera (even if that’s uncomfortable)
• Asking questions out of curiosity

Consider recent calls you were on. What does building trust look like in your context?

For more on other topics check out:

• Differences When Working Remote
• Listen into Five Ways to Strengthen Team Relationships here

Remember that things are magnified in the remote space.
If you are collaborating remotely, consider how some of the 7 Enablers of Great Remote Work fit in, including:

•     Communication
•     Clarity 
•     Consistency

What’s going to support better conversations and results in the remote space?

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 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.
Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

This year we get an extra day. Every four years a leap year occurs. February 29th was actually the birthday of one of my grandmothers. She was born in 1904. As a little girl, I thought it would be so neat to be born on leap year. What do you want to dedicate the extra time to today?

Given it’s a special day, I thought it would be interesting to look back at some of my favorite series over the last four years since we last had a leap year day.

If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at these past posts, do take a look at the following:

• 20 Activities for Virtual and Remote Teams, such as #11 on Conflict Management – read it here.
• Remote Work Myths – Read one of the more recent ones here – Remote Does Not Equal Disconnected
• Weekly Journaling Prompts each Saturday – View the 80 plus in the series here.
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations tips - check them out here.

These tips map to my 2017 book – Effective Virtual Conversations. If you are needing to shift your workspace to the remote or virtual domain, this might be a great book to pick up. It covers some of the foundations of holding more effective virtual meetings, learning and team sessions.
 
Given that’s it’s the last day of February I thought it would be interesting to highlight some of our focus areas this month. What was to focus more on Collaboration and Relationships at the top of the month, became much more focused on one of our specialty areas – remote working – given the significant impact health events have had this month.

You’ll want to check out some of the posts including:
Teams365 2227 – Ingredients for Making Remote Relationships Work
Teams365 Tip 274 - Calibrate
Teams365 2241 –Differences when working remote: part 1
Teams365 2242 – More Differences when working remote
Teams365 2235 – Remote Work Myth – Remote Does Not Equal Disconnected
Teams365 2243: February 20 – Remote Work Enabler #2 – Boundaries
Teams365 2240 - Effective Virtual Conversations Tip – Matrix Tip – What’s the priority?

​Enjoy your exploration and have a great Leap Year Day!
Jennifer

As a professional coach, I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours in coaching conversations since I opened the doors of Potentials Realized in April 2004. I’ve also led thousands of hours of coaching skills training with professional coaches, as well as leaders. Over all that time, two of the skills which I think are invaluable regardless off whether you are wearing the hat of coach is LISTENING and QUESTIONING. In yesterday’s post, I flagged these as two critical skills for making remote relationships work. Today’s blog post is dedicated to focus in on these two skills.

Let’s look at each one in turn:

Listening – Listening is a skill set that is under-developed for many professionals today.

A challenge in the remote space is we may (or may not) have visual cues of listening. Some researchers assert that upwards of 55% of our message comes from the visual cues of body language (i.e. how someone is standing, if they are smiling, or what their eyes are saying). In the remote space, we may not see the other person, and even if we are streaming, we may only see one part of their body in a more artificial or plastique way). 

Often, we are thinking about what the point we want to get across, rather than truly listening for what the other person is saying.

In the remote space, what are you listening for? What are you noticing about the word choice? What are you noticing about the energy of the conversation? The pace of the conversation? What are the word choices you are hearing?

What we pick up when we listen is also likely to influence our word choice and how we adjust our speaking with others. There is a scientific term called mimicry. In intimate relationships like a mother and a child, safety and connection is created by a mirroring of pace, sound, even gestures. What are you doing to create that safety and connection? Be sure to check out my January post on these topics if you haven’t looked at them yet.

Questions – Questions are key to powerful communication in the remote space. What do you notice about how you ask questions? Are they clear?

Some general guidelines:

Ask one question at a time – If we ask several questions at one time, it may confuse the person we are speaking with.  As I like to say as a mentor coach – watch for stacking – or when you ask two questions at once.

Watch where your questions go – Are they open? Short? If we start questions with a WHAT they are usually the most open ended. Questions that start with WHY may activate some defensiveness. Notice what happens next time you ask a why question in the remote space where you can see each other. Unless there are high levels of trust, you may find the person raises their shoulders and their tone of voice changes.

Provide a pause before jumping in with your question – Let the other person finish, and hopefully breathe, before you ask your question.

This week zoom into what you notice about your listening and questioning in upcoming conversations. What do you notice?
​
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 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.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Our focus this month here at the Teams365 blog is all about relationships. Whether you work in an office or work full time from home, my guess is that somehow you have a touchpoint with one or more team members, or customers, who are remote. One recent study around job postings found that the growth since 2018 had been 151%.
​
This means that we all can benefit from learning how to make remote relationships work better. Many things are magnified in the remote space – distance, lack of clarity, focus.

Today’s post explores several areas which can be excellent areas of focus for professionals today. Let’s look at them in turn.

Proactivity – Just like today’s post graphic shows “Remote does not mean disconnected”.  We want to avoid the “out of sight equals out of mind” mindset. Being proactive when working remote or working with those who work remote is key. This means being proactive with communication, meetings, feedback, outreach, and relationship building.

What are the conversations you want to have this week?

Asking Questions – Assumptions can abound in the remote space. If we don’t see, or know other people’s context, we can fall into the trap of thinking we know or understand their world. Asking questions becomes a critical skill as we shift to building relationships in the remote space. We’ll be exploring this topic more tomorrow.

Be Present – When you are in conversation, are you present? Are you multi-tasking? Research shows we can’t do to heavily cognitive tasks at once, so if you are on a conference call, or having a conversation, just do one thing.

Listening – Listening skills are critical. In the remote space when we can’t see each other. We lose the visual cues in many remote conversations, especially if we are not streaming. With this in mind, the tone and choice of words take on even greater significance. What are you listening for? What’s not being said? Even if we can see each other, what is happening outside of people’s screen?

Be Curious – Ongoing learning is part of the reality of remote workspaces. Not knowing everything (or even 10% sometimes) is also part of the reality of remote work. What are you curious about? What do you want to know more about? What do you still have to learn? Adopting a learner’s mindset or shifting into a growth mindset is key.

Be Intentional – Intentionality is also key. Part of designing good conversations may be to hold an intention or create a shared intention together.  Here’s a great article by Marla Tabaka on making the practice of setting intentions, as well as goals and vision.

Work Together – What are your intersection points the two of you have together? Opportunities for collaboration? Spend some time getting to know each other (more on this topic next week), as well as spend some time designing your conversational touchpoints.

A reminder that if you work remote, join us at the Remote Pathways podcast. Co-host Michelle Mullins and I explore the various pathways of the remote space in bi-weekly episodes. Be sure to also check out the 52 weeks blog series I’m hosting this year at Remote Pathways.
 
Enjoy your Tuesday,
Jennifer

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

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.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!