Teams365 Blog - Potentials Realized

#TEAMS365 #1970 – Team Building Tip 237

5/23/2019

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you thinking “outside of the box”. Challenges and opportunities exist all the time. What are the solutions which could be activated around your most pressing business challenge?

One of the frameworks I like to share with teams I work with is the Six Thinking Hats from DeBono. Read more about this topic here.

With the Six Thinking Hats we are encouraged to look at issues from a variety of perspectives –

what’s possible,
what new ideas can we generate,
what are the benefits of the approaches,
what caution do we need to heed,
what are the facts and
what might get in the way.

If you are not familiar with De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats model, take a look at his work and writing.

Wishing you all 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 #1969 – Teamwork in Uncertainty – Comfort With The Unknown

5/22/2019

Today’s blog post gets us thinking about values. Values serve as anchors or a compass, leading the way or anchoring us when we need to make decisions, prioritize and focus.

In an uncertain context, being clear about our behaviors as a team is critical. As we go to explore our values, we may first want to consider what our values are individually. To do this, we might explore the following questions:

What is important to me?
What are the things I will take a stand for?
What’s absolutely essential to have in my work/life?
What makes me angry/happy/at ease?

All of these questions will usually point to a value which is important.

Underneath the words of a value are the behaviors. What do the values look like in action? If I were to take my phone into the workplace and record behaviors, what would I see?

As a team, and especially a remote team, having a focus on values can help during periods of uncertainty. Even though the context may change, hopefully our values are not changing in the arena.

As a team, this week consider what your top 3 operating values are this year. What are you committed to, no matter what? Behaviorally, what do these values look like in action?

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 an 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 #1968 – Teamwork in Uncertainty – Pivot

5/21/2019

As a writer, one of my favorite past times is heading to the library for some focused writing. I often try to fit it in on Tuesdays. When I am there, I usually check out the business book selection. Two titles, both named Pivot, recently caught my attention. Jenny Blake’s Pivot explores the shifts and turns we can make in our career. The 2nd Pivot book is by Adam Markel. Pivot: The Art and Science of Reinventing Your Career and Life.

Both are great reads for those looking at ongoing performance and change. Whether we work for others or ourselves, we can all benefit from the tools and tips in both books.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines pivot as:

a fixed point supporting something that turns or balances;
the central or most important person or thing in a situation.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pivot

As you consider your biggest opportunity or challenge right now, consider:

What is creating balance in the situation right now?
What is the fulcrum around what things are turning?
What is the important person/issue in this situation?
What is the most central item?
With this information in mind, what’ s possible? What are the options for next steps?

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 an 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 #1967 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 94: Virtual Facilitation Tip

5/20/2019

In this week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #94, consider using a map to create more engagement in your virtual sessions. Maps create a visual anchor for group members.

Maps can take a variety of forms, from:

Geographic maps (i.e. map of your region, country, the world)
A roadmap of where you are going
A process map – what the steps are

Incorporating a map into your next call, may help people:

Get a sense of location and context
Identify where they are in relation to each other
Visualize what a process can look like
Remember what a sequence is

It is likely that I will incorporate a number of maps in a virtual call including:

A geographic map (Where are you calling in from today?)
A process map – Identify the area which is the one you find most challenging
A roadmap of our call sequence (shown at the start and possibly the end)

What type of maps could you incorporate in your next call?

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 an 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 #1964 - #FLASHBACKFRIDAY – Teamwork in Complexity

5/17/2019

This month’s posts are geared to Teamwork in Uncertainty. This is a close cousin to last May’s posts on Teamwork in Complexity. I thought it would be useful to take us back to that post on Teamwork Skills in Complexity – Experimentation from May 2018. Here’s what I wrote:

This month we are exploring the skills required in teamwork, including listening and curiosity. Today I wanted to take a dive into a third skill area, that being the area of experimentation.

Experimentation is key for business leaders and teams today. Many times, the context is changing so quickly that we don’t have time to complete an entire roll-out before having to make a final decision. That can lead to a mindset of experimentation, where it is encouraged to try things out, see what works and what doesn’t.

In supporting experimentation in our team we want to:

Encourage and reward trial and error
Create safety around not getting “things right”
Provide team members with time and resources to experiment, beyond their every day team responsibilities
Facilitate an evaluation of projects or “Experiments” that are completed or are even at the midpoint

Questions we may ask at project reviews include:

What’s working?
What’s not?
What are the things that need to be abandoned or tweaked?
What additional resources do we need?
What unknown obstacles have become visible?
What is the big learning we are taking?
What is the one thing/ or the many things we are going to do differently going forward?
Who else can we learn from (including our own past projects?

Read the original post here.

What else is important for you to note around experimentation?

If you haven’t read the blog posts I did earlier this week on Teamwork in Uncertainty around experimentation and cultivating more curiosity, be sure to check them out.

Wishing you all 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 an 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 #1963 – Team Building Tip 236

5/16/2019

This week’s Team Building question gets you to consider the question:

“What addition would benefit the team?”

What are the things you could add that would help the team be more successful, do things quicker, or innovate more?

Consider these items in terms of additions:

New Team Member
New Role
A New Process – As an example, you might consider changing things up with your meetings. As I’ve written in past posts, team members may be spending 40% of their time or more in meetings- definitely an area for exploration! A new process could include hosting team meetings on a platform like WebEx or Zoom where the call could be recorded (and potentially transcribed) so that responsibilities and accountabilities are noted and followed up on.
Additional Resourcing – This might be physical or technical resourcing, a new piece of software or app.
New Learning – Given the rapid pace of learning change needed in today’s workplace, what is the new learning that someone could benefit from?

What else might benefit the team?

Best,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1961 – Teamwork in Uncertainty: Encouraging Curiosity – What The Research Says

5/14/2019

Last week I shared a post on cultivating curiosity. As a former team leader myself, working in highly volatile and changeable environments, cultivating curiosity was an important area to support my own team in. Given that many were responding to post-disaster contexts and needing to look at how to do their work in a highly changing environment, it was not business as usual. What many leaders don’t realize today is that “business as usual” may not longer be present in many industries.

As a leadership practitioner, author, coach and trainer, I’m regularly in conversation with leaders and teams around how important the skill of curiosity is. Yet, there are still many naysayers – from leaders and team members.

So, what does the research say?

I took a look at some of the more recent research in the area of curiosity and came across a great set of articles from Harvard Business Review - September 2018. In that edition, they cited the research and article written by Francesca Gino who has studied the area of curiosity. Read her article and study here.

Out of those surveyed, 70% of employees indicted that they faced barriers to employing more curiosity.

She cites in her article “The Business Case for Curiosity” five ways to encourage more curiosity:

Hire for it.
Model it yourself – inquisitiveness.
Emphasize learning goals. Many leaders today focus solely on performance goals. While not abandoning performance goals, what can you do cultivate and allow for more of a focus on learning goals?
“Let employees explore and broaden interests”. As someone who was schooled as multi-disciplinarian, I have seen throughout my career how a broad knowledge base becomes an asset, rather than a liability in times of change and complexity.
She also encourages days where people explore the questions: Why? What if? How might we do that?

Individually, each one of these suggestions could have a ripple effect on the way people work, without detracting from core functions.

What are the benefits to starting to integrate some of these approaches in your team meetings and ways of working?

Best,
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.

#TEAMS365 #1957 – #FLASHBACKFRIDAY: A - Z of Team Development Activities

5/10/2019

With our focus this month on teamwork in uncertainty, my guess is that many of you are thinking about the questions “Practically, what are some things that I can do to support my team through uncertainty?” OR “What can we do to address these topics?”

This week’s FlashbackFriday post takes us back to Teams365 #1657 when I hosted a series around the A- Z of Team Development Activities. As leaders (and team members) it is important to have a variety of ideas and tools available to facilitate the conversations needed for teams to excel.
You can read the original post here.

Here’s what I wrote:

“This month’s focus is on team development. The summer months may be one of the only times when people have an opportunity to focus in on what’s needed for their team. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a quick A through Z of possibilities for team development activities, whether you are supporting a virtual team, intact team or project team. Over the last five years I’ve written about a lot of these different areas and I’ll include links to the original posts for you to check out:

A – Assumptions, Acknowledgements, Action and Accountability

Take a step back to one of the first A through Z series I did back in 2014 on Leadership. Read the Leadership A – Z around A for Action and Accountability here.

B – Barriers, Beliefs, Behaviors, Boundaries, Brevity, Bottom lining, Beauty, Better, and Best

Check out Teams365 #427 where I explore 6 Leadership Questions for B here.

Check out Teams365 #309 for additional focus areas around B – Check it out here.

C – Culture, Communication, Conversation, Change, Collaboration

Check out these six leadership questions around C here.

Virtual and Remote Leadership – C is for Communication. Read it here.

Check out the Leadership Myth – Change is Easy here.

D – Delegation, Decisions, Direct, Difficult Conversations

Check out Teams365 #315 on D is for Delegation. Read it here.

Check out Teams365 #431 - Six Leadership Questions a day - read it here.

And finally: Virtual and Remote Team Leadership - read it here.

As you consider the A-D of your team right now, what are focus areas the team could work around? Highlight 4-5 key areas you’d like to have conversation or a focus around in the coming weeks.”

Consider what type of conversations you want to have.

With 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 an 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 #1956 – Team Building Tip 235

5/9/2019

This week’s Team Building question gets you to consider the question “What relationship items need attention?”.

Even in a virtual space, relationships are key to business success.

As a team, it is important to spend some time focusing on:

Getting to know our team
Understanding who they are, what they value and what their priorities are
Understanding how we can support them better

I hope that you will bring this question into your next team meeting so that you can hear from the team about what is needed.

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 an 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 #1955 – Teamwork in Uncertainty: Cultivating Curiosity

5/8/2019

As we continue our exploration about teamwork in uncertainty, today’s post covers the ability to cultivate curiosity. Curiosity is a key skill helping us become comfortable with learning and not knowing. When we are stuck in an expert mindset, we may feel we “know everything”. There is a danger in this, specially when contexts change. Cultivating more curiosity for learning, exploration, trial and error, gives team members permission to try things out which may not work.

How do we cultivate curiosity?

Encourage people to ask questions like:

What else? This question helps us see alternative paths and solutions.
Why not? This question gives permission for us to explore another angle around things.

Encourage trial and error.

Get team members to explore what failure means and does not mean.

Provide opportunities for growing skills in new areas through job shadowing, mentoring and/or special projects.

Next week I’m going to turn my attention to what the research says about curiosity and teamwork, and why it is important to cultivate more curiosity in our staff right now.

All 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 an digital format. Print it out and take it with you for some inspiration and writing on the go! Available at the Potentials Realized Store.