Teams365 Blog - Potentials Realized

#TEAMS365 #2089 – TEAM BUILDING TIP 254

9/19/2019

This week’s Thursday Team Building Tip gets you to consider the question “What needs to be collapsed?”. Just like this photo there are sometimes things that need to be demolished or face implosion before they are ready.

An alternative view on this is what needs to be condensed or abbreviated?

Think about current projects and initiatives as you consider these two questions.

A reminder of this month's Effective Virtual Conversations call which focused on creating more impactful meetings. Time spent does not always equal impact. Check out this month's 20 minute call for more tips on meeting management.

Enjoy your conversation,
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.

#TEAMS365 #2081 – Remote Work Myth: Out of Sight Does Not Mean Out of Mind

9/11/2019

Today’s blog post continues this month’s focus on remote work myths and pitfalls. Today’s myth is a common pitfall – “out of sight equals out of mind”. In fact, both research and practice have shown the need for more consistent and frequent communication to keep things moving on remote teams.

This can be accomplished via a number of avenues including:

Creating opportunities for peers to connect on a regular basis. This might include more formal activities, or it might include more informal events like virtual potlucks or co-working sessions. In a remote team, focus should be made on providing regular peer connections.
Consistent meeting times for the team. It can be a very slippery slope when remote teams try to find a time when everyone is available. This may never happen! Get into the practice of establishing a set time so everyone can start adjusting their schedule to meet this. For those that are not there, have peer partners provide an update and/or check in.
Put attention on team development for the team. It’s often assumed that remote teams don’t need a focus, however, if we treat everyone as separate bubbles, it’s really hard for people to feel part of a bigger entity. Research in the last few years has found that only about 1 in 4 remote teams do put a focus on team development. Going back to the basics around team effectiveness, teamwork skills and building a team identity can go a long way. AND it can be done virtually as well!
Build a strong team identity. Team culture is key in remote team success. It helps with connection and alignment. Check out past posts I’ve written on team culture and team identity in the last few months.

Ensuring regular one-on-ones with staff. Be sure to check out past Teams365 blog posts for more on hosting 1-1 calls, and questions you might ask.

What’s going to support your team from not feeling “out of sight and mind”.

Enjoy your conversations,
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.

#TEAMS365 #2032 - Fostering Creativity In Your Team

7/24/2019

Following up to yesterday’s post on Creativity, today’s post gets you to consider creativity in your team context. Just as we saw in yesterday’s post, there are many things that boost creativity.

In addition to the articles I pointed to yesterday, let’s take a look at these seven elements mentioned in The Power of Idea’s article.

This article points to creativity being fostered by solitude and being supported by an environment of trying things out.

What are you doing to foster down time for team members and/or experimentation time. Companies like Google, have been pointed to for many years as being generous with the time allocated for employees to take on personal projects, as well as experimental ideas.

Questions you will want to explore as a team around this topic include:

What does creativity mean to us as individuals on the team? As a team as a whole?
What’s important about creativity in our work?
What value does creativity provide, or what does it add to our mission and vision?
If it is important, what can we do to build more creative time into our approaches?

This week as I have been writing these two posts I have found that I mentally have collapsed creativity with innovation. In fact, the posts were spurred by reading a book I had purchased thinking it was about coaching for creativity, when in fact it was about coaching for innovation.

One thing to note is that creativity and innovation are two different things. I was curious what sort of research has been done on the link between creativity and innovation and so I went to look for some research. Here’s a study/meta-analysis done exploring the link between creativity and innovation. Sarooghi, Hessamoddin et al. “Examining the relationship between creativity and innovation: A meta-analysis of organizational, cultural, and environmental factors ☆.” (2015).

Take look at it here.

Wishing you the best,
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.

#TEAMS365 #2027 – FlashbackFriday: Leadership Practice - Feedback

7/19/2019

This week’s Flashback Friday takes us back to the 2017 series entitled “Leadership Practices”. Given that this time of year often involves planning, I wanted to take us back to our focus on feedback.

Here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1296:

Leadership Practice – Feedback

One of the areas many team leaders struggle with is providing feedback. Sometimes feedback has not been well modeled to us, or we may not operate in a feedback culture. Creating the context of regular feedback - both positive and constructive – can be an important shift in changing the way people work and interact. When feedback is sparse we may inadvertently create a culture where team members move below the radar line, and people are afraid to take risks. When we create a culture where feedback is offered on a regular basis – both positively and constructively – we are often able to take more risks and try things out in an iterative fashion.

Several keys for providing feedback include:

Make feedback regular. In moving to a feedback culture we want to make sure that we are providing feedback to our team members in both positive and constructive ways. Poor performance, or performance that is not meeting the mark should not be a surprise at formal performance evaluation moments.

Leaders alone may not be the only ones providing feedback. Building the capacity within our team to provide peer feedback can support a shift to an overall feedback culture. In building the capacity within team members to provide feedback we want to make sure that we train people in providing feedback. It can be useful to start with comments like “ I see one of your strengths as…..” or “I appreciate it when you….”. Constructive feedback from the perspective of “one thing you might want to try is…..” or “one are you may want to focus on is….”.

Be sure that in providing feedback you are speaking to observable behaviors not personality issues. A major trap in feedback is that we attribute poor performance not to things we see, but to heresay or assumptions. It is important to provide feedback on things we have seen ourselves.

Practice giving feedback in authentic ways. When feedback cultures are not established it can feel awkward to provide feedback and it may not be modeled in different voices. Providing team members with the opportunity to provide feedback using a framework mentioned in the last point, may start to build the muscle and confidence around feedback, along with a common framework with different voices.

As you think about feedback for the year, what do you notice?

Enjoy,
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.

#TEAMS365 #2026 – Team Building Tip 245

7/18/2019

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you thinking about the questions “What questions do you need to ask?”. This is a valuable way to expand our thinking and get out of the rut of how we might be looking at things.

As you go about thinking of your most important questions, ask yourself the 5 W's + H.

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?

To expand your thinking this week, consider asking yourself questions along the lines of…

Who is important?
What is the one thing that might work best for you?
What are the elements that could distract/detract?
When do you want to focus more?
Where do you need to look?
What do you need to embrace?
Where do you need to let go?

Best wishes,
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.

#TEAMS365 #2013 - FlashBack Friday: Developing Your Team Through Mentoring, Coaching and Leadership

7/5/2019

One of the areas I spend a bulk of my time in is the area of mentoring. I thought it would be useful to return back to a post I shared back in July 2014 on the differences between mentoring and coaching. Both are key conversations to incorporate in organizations today. What are you doing to foster development in your teams?

Here’s Teams365 # 212:

In terms of the development of members of your team, mentors, coaches and leaders all play important roles in building capacity of the team, individually and collectively. You can view past posts about mentoring here and coaching here.

Mentoring is often an underutilized method of support in organizations today. Mentors provide the value of being able to provide tremendous insight into the culture of an organization, how to "practically" get things done, and also into networks and technical issues important for different roles. Along with my colleague, Susan Combs, we continue to hear from organizations that are interested in adding mentoring, but they don't know where to start to support their mentors and proteges/mentees. This summer we launched the Mentor RoadMap(TM) series of workbooks for mentors and proteges. Organizations who have gone through the initial beta tests have found the resources to be invaluable! Interested in learning more? Contact us to set up a conversation about how mentoring could benefit your organization.

Coaching also can play a key role in the development of the team - as individuals and also as the team itself. Research by the International Coach Federation has found that coaching has a number of productivity benefits, as well as other related areas. The 2009 Global Coaching Client survey found that:

Increased productivity measures include:

Improved work performance (70%)
Improved business management (61%)
Improved time management (57%)
Improved team effectiveness (51%)

Improved positivity measures include:

Increased self confidence (80%)
Increased relationships (73%)
Improved communication skills (72%)
Improved work life balance (67%)

We've focused on coaching skills for leaders here at the blog this month, and sometimes it can be useful to bring in an internal or external coach to work with your team. Contact us to learn more about what this could look like with your team.

At the same time, teams excel because of great leaders. This is the emphasis here at the Teams365 blog. Helping you as leaders, and aspiring leaders, become better at what you do - through new skills, refined approaches, new insights and self-awareness. In a few weeks we will be launching one of our first Teams365 Team Leader Foundation programs on Time Management. The first of more than a dozen training modules for team leaders. New modules will be offered monthly and I hope that you will join us in the coming months with a focus on your own development. Learning is online so you don't have to travel!

Best wishes,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1982 – Team Tune Up

6/4/2019

Given that we are stepping into mid-month, let’s take a look at where your team is at. Is it time for a team tune-up?

As we move into mid-year, some of the things we might want to keep in mind are:

What rhythm have we gotten into in terms of work and results?
What rhythm have we gotten into in terms of meetings?

AT your next team meeting, consider building in some time for a team check in or tune-up. Questions for each person to reflect on and possibly share:

What do I need from others in order to be successful?
Things others on the team should know about my work right now are…
My priorities for the next six months are…
My greatest success has been…
Our greatest success this year has been…
One thing that is really important for us to address is…
One thing I need from my leader is…
The feedback I want to offer to my leader is…
The feedback I want to offer to my teammates is..
The one connection I wish I had…
If I had a magic wand I would….

Depending on how frequently you meet, it might be possible to have you share 1-2 of these questions as an entire team for the next few meetings.

Wishing you the best,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1976 – Teamwork in Uncertainty – Synergy

5/29/2019

In keeping aligned with this month’s focus on Teamwork in Uncertainty, today’s blog post gets you thinking about how you can leverage synergy across your team.

When situations are complex and uncertain, it may be difficult to bring all the skills required for success. Therefore, being able to focus in on leveraging the skills that are available to you as a group or team can help maximize your skill base as well as what is available to you.

As I wrote in yesterdays’ post, knowing our strengths is important on the individual and team levels.

In synergy, we are looking at how 1+1 equals more than 2.

If you have completed some strengths-based work, some additional questions to explore as a team are:

What the core strengths we bring as a collective?
What can we harness as a team?
Where might we be over-developed?
What is missing?
Where are the gaps?
When we think about current projects what strengths would benefit them?
Who is best suited to support which project?
What else is important to note?

In situations of uncertainty, it can be important to consider risk, and also contingencies. Given that contexts may be changing rapidly leading from strengths allows us to do things quicker and with less energy expended, freeing up focus and energy for other items.

What’s is important to note around synergy?

Best wishes,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1975 – Teamwork in Uncertainty – Strengths and Go-To’s

5/28/2019

In our last Teamwork in Uncertainty post of the month we’re going to explore a favorite topic here at the Teams365 blog – Strengths. As I have shared in many other posts, strengths have a variety of benefits, from strengthening productivity to creating more engagement in the workplace.

In times of uncertainty the only thing we may be able to rely on are our strengths – our own and others. When we are tasked with new activities and tasks it can be useful to explore who on the team might have brought a similar experience. What are the strengths that can support you as a team?

As I share in PlanDoTrack, there are several key questions you will want to explore on the individual level. Check out the sections on strengths in Sections 1 and 4 of PlanDoTrack.

Some of the more common frameworks include:

Utilizing Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Purchase a copy of the book for each team member and have them bring their reports to an upcoming team meeting.
Incorporating the VIA Character Survey – This comes from the Positive Psychology realm and provides another doorway into exploring strengths. The nice thing about this assessment is that it is free.

As with any assessment, it’s important to reinforce a few things:

This may provide a snapshot in time and can be dependent on a variety of factors.
Take what is valuable from the information. Assessments are intended to provide insights, not a box.
Exploring strengths and styles helps us understand ourselves better. Under times of stress and pressure, some of these styles and strengths become magnified. When magnified, some of our strengths become a liability. For example., if one of my strengths is getting results, this is good. However, in times of pressure I may become dogmatic in getting results, pushing harder than needed and burning myself, and others, out. Success in today’s workplace requires a focus on both RESULTS and RELATIONSHIPS.
Look at both the individual view of things and the collective view. The power of bringing most assessments (not all, but many) into the team context is to provide a snapshot across the team, helping them see the collective. It also provides an opportunity for everyone to have a collective framework for exploration and dialogue.

Questions to consider:

What are the discussions you want to have around strengths?
What’s important about exploring this topic individually and collectively?
What do you notice about the collective strengths of the team?
Where are there gaps? What might you do about this?
What will be valuable for you as a team to explore around strengths?

Are you looking to do more work with your team around strengths? Contact me to discuss our team day sessions for teams around strengths.

Enjoy your conversations,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1974 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 95: Integrate Annotation

5/27/2019

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip gets you thinking about creating more interactivity in your next virtual program. This week’s EVC tip gets you thinking about using the tools of annotation.

Most virtual platforms will have the option of enabling annotation, where people can write on the screen.

Annotation might involve getting people to:

Circle things they are in agreement around
Check things off on a list
Write things on a blank white screen/PowerPoint
Create a logo which represents what people are bringing to the call

Annotation is a great supplement to using chat, and it will also provide more hands-on interaction. When requested to write something on the screen or circle something we are less likely to multi-task or be doing something completely different.

This week consider how you could incorporate more annotation and interaction into your virtual conversations.

Best wishes,
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.