Today's blog post focuses on 7 tools for leaders we have covered during 2017. As busy professionals, both team leaders and team members can benefit from having a robust toolkit of tools to pull from. Here are seven that we've focused on throughout the year:

1. Questions - Questions form the backbone to any great conversation. One of the Teams365 videos which has been viewed the most this year is the 20 Coaching Questions video I created from Teams365 #1277. You can view the video here. Subscribe to our Teams365 Leadership YouTube Channel to keep up-to-date with the weekly Teams365 videos I release each Sunday.

​2. Techniques for leading more effective virtual conversations - 1-1s, virtual meetings, and webinars. With the launch of my newest book this past summer, Effective Virtual Conversations, I started dedicating Monday's Teams365 blog posts to the topic of leading more effective virtual conversations. If you have not checked out the 26-ish weekly posts on these, please do so here.
​Whether it's using more breakouts or asking better questions, virtual meetings and webinars can break the mold of what I call "Death by Conference Call" - the multi-tasking, zoning out mindset. Be sure to also check out the related Community Calls I have hosted this fall as well.

​3.   Tools for Collaboration - Working across teams, and organizations, and industries is becoming much more the norm for most leaders and team members today. In February I focused on the topic of Collboration. Take a look at the top posts from February around the topic of collaboration.
 
4.  Strategic planning - Whether strategic in your organization means 36 months or 10 years, planning sessions for teams continued to be very popular in 2017. You will want to check out several of the posts I have included around this topic here at the blog.

​5.  Strengths-based teamwork - Almost every month this year I found myself facilitating strengths-based teamwork sessions with teams, both in persona nd virtually. Whether we explored StrengthsFinder 2.0 or used VIA Strengths, I found these conversations to be extremely vibrant and transformational for teams. Circling back with most of them months later, strengths-based approaches really stuck out for them, and were approaches they could integrate into their every day work. Contact me to discuss how we can bring a strengths-based teamwork session to your team this next year.
  

6.  Feedback and Difficult Conversations - Another area I found most of my team support boiled down to this year was around the areas of feedback and getting more comfortable with difficult, or courageous, conversations. Check out the Teams365 posts on the topic of feedback here. 


7.  
 going hand in hand with feedback was the topic of having more difficult, or courageous, conversations during 2017. Check out the Teams365 posts here on this topic.

​What other tools did you draw upon regularly as a team leder or team member this year?

​Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

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AS a former team leader myself I know how time crunched it can be to find quick things to do with our team. That has spurred me on since 2004 to develop a number of resources for team leaders to bring into their own work with teams.  Today so many of our team members are visually inclined and new conversations can get sparked using visuals.

Earlier this week the Teams365 Team Sparker deck was launched, consisting of 52 questions, the deck can be a great "Sparker" at team meetings or in individual coaching conversations.

For years I have been bringing photos into the facilitation and coaching work I do with teams and groups. Yesterday I launched a new e-manual "40 Ways to Use Visual Cards in your work with groups and teams" which includes detailed instructions and more sparking questions to facilitate insights etc. Whether you are looking for something different to do at your next strategic planning session, looking for a new way to kick off your retreat, or close a team meeting, these forty activities are a little different.  Click here to learn more or view my weekly Group Coaching Design Studio blab where I shared six ways to work with visual cards in the weekly 30 minute live stream show. I use the Conversation Sparker cards as illustration in the conversation.

For others interested in using photos for team development you may want to check out The Coaching Game - Points of View which offer another interesting series of photos.

A fourth resource I wanted to share which leverages photos is the original deck i am aware of - Visual Explorer from the Center for Creative Leadership. I've had the privilege to use the cards I purchased from them with thousands of professionals globally over the last seven or more years.

A fifth and final resource for you to explore is the JICT Images deck,
another excellent resource.

I hope that next time you have a meeting, retreat or team event, you will consider how images can spark some new insights, action and awareness.

Here are the links for more info or or pick up a copy of the  Conversation Sparker Cards(TM), the Teams365 Team Sparker Deck of the 40 Ways to Use Visuals with Groups and Teams. If you have any questions, please let me know. Enjoy!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Supporting Team Leaders to do their best work, one conversation at a time
Coaching Skills Training | Teamwork | Leadership
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

As a former team leader myself, I was often tasked with leading the strategic planning for our team and/or department. We didn't always have money to bring in an external facilitator.

Over the next couple of days I want to share with you two strategic planning tools I found invaluable with my work. Today, we will look at the first took - the SWOT.

The first time I saw the SWOT was 1992 and it was part of a board and organizational retreat for an organization I worked for. We were tasked with developing the strategic plan for the next 5 years of the business and the SWOT was introduced as an important part of the process of getting clear on both the internal context of the organization, as well as the external context.

The SWOT is a foundational strategic planning tool and can be used at an offsite, or even in the context of a team meeting. At the top we have two quadrants - S for Strengths (those internal skills, strengths and talents which exist in the team or organization), and W  for Weaknesses (those internal weak areas which might get the team, or organization, into trouble).

If you are considering using this as a tool, have the group (or a subset of the group) brainstorm and list out the internal Strengths and Weaknesses of the team.

The bottom part of the matrix gets you to list, and explore, the EXTERNAL environment- those being the Opportunities (O) - external factors which are working in favor  and T - Threats - internal factors which might derail the business or team.

Again, have the team identify things in the external environment which may be opportunities (new collaborations, new client bases, technology) or Threats (New taxes etc),

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats
Everything DiSC® Authorized Partner
Contact us and let us know how we can support you in helping your team reach its' full potential: (416)996-TEAM (8326)