Just like in the in-person realm, meetings can quickly become a huge time element. Just like most things in the virtual space – communication, teamwork – both the good and the bad get augmented.

In hosting virtual meetings, keeping them on track is critical for success. In order to do this, consider going back to the basics:

1. What’s the purpose of the meeting? Is it to inform? Create something together? Check in and share information? Be clear on what the purpose is. Use this to create an agenda.
2. What preparation is needed? Be explicit about what people need to do BEFORE the call. Is there something they need to read? Review? Prepare and send?
3. How long is the meeting for? Start and end on time. Thinking that everyone needs to be there before you start is likely a waste of precious time.
4. What’s on the agenda? See #1 – Be sure to stick with the agenda and learn from past experience in terms of how much time is needed.
5. What are next steps? Be explicit about what’s been agreed to and who is responsible. You may have one person tasked with noting these next steps as you go so they can summarize at the end of the meeting. Provide people 30-60 seconds (or more) during the call to write it down and schedule it in.
6. What follow up is required? Once again, be clear about next step – WHO, WHEN, HOW….
7. What learning can you apply to your next meeting? With business pressures today, no one has time for ineffective meetings. Note things that are working, note things that aren’t and stop doing them! As more people become familiar and confident with these tech tools, it will be easier to iterate and share best practices.

I explore more meeting tips in Chapter 9 of Effective Virtual Conversations. What are your next steps around meetings this week?

Be sure to download a bookmark for you and your team to share from Effective Virtual Conversations.com. 

Enjoy your conversations!
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 a virtual business providing coaching and learning services to teams, organizations and individuals around the world, I’ve was an early adopter of Zoom almost five years ago. What I’ve learned from leading tens of thousands of hours of conversations on Zoom is that people want to have a conversation, not be talked at. This means that we need to learn how to use our virtual platforms more interactively.

Having worked in learning and leadership for many decades now, and having led teams globally, being ahead of the curve to figure out innovative ways we could “keep the conversation” rolling across teams, programs and countries has always had a very business focused end for me.

Today’s blog post goes behind the curtain to share three ways you might consider leveraging Zoom (or any other platforms you are using) to keep the conversation going. I write more about these in chapters 1, 2, 6 and 7 of Effective Virtual Conversations.

1. Consider using annotation. In annotation, there is a whole suite of tools for people to “pick up and use” – to mark on the screen, to share their insights via text, drawing and stamping. For larger groups this can be an important way to get the conversations flowing.

What might you do to leverage annotation?

2. Use breakouts. Just as the name suggestions – breakouts help us move from a larger group to sets of smaller groups. Anecdotally, the larger a group becomes the more apt people are to become a “social loafer” and let others do the work. As group size grows, it’s also more likely that people will feel less comfortable with connecting and sharing their insights. Just as you might ask people to turn to their neighbor and have a conversation, virtual breakouts allow you to do this as well.

Breakouts are powerful at any time, particularly when group members want to know more about each other.

What might you do to leverage the power of breakouts?

3. Incorporate polls. Polls are built into most virtual platforms or you can leverage lots of other polling software like Mentimeter or Kahoot. Also great for larger groups, polls help you take a temperature of the room, seeing what is important for the group that you are working with. Polls are much easier to track on a meta-level for super-large groups. You’ll find that in larger groups chat flows too fast to really follow at a granular detail.

Polls often, but not always, need to be created prior to the event although some will let you create in the moment. This is also where a producer or co-facilitator can be useful to have on board and work with.

What might you do to incorporate a poll into your upcoming session?

Curious about what these interactive tools look like in action? Check out the Virtual Lunch and Learn Calls I hosted in March to provide some immediate complimentary support to the wider community.

Curious about how to do this? Join me for an upcoming one-day Virtual Facilitation Essentials program. It’s a primer in the skills required to lead exceptional virtual calls. Learn more about this program and find out when our next program is here. 

Wishing you all 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 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 week we covered a variety of posts related to working remote. If you missed, them, be sure to check out:

• Yesterday’s Weekly Journaling Prompt around Support
• Friday’s Five Ingredients for Successful Collaboration
• Thursday’s Remote Work Enabler around Boundaries
• Wednesday’s post around What’s different with work in the remote space? – Part 2
• Tuesday’s post around What’s different with work in the remote space? – Part 1
• Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip around Prioritizing in the Matrix Environment (when you are part of a couple of teams)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
​Jennifer

​For the last few months, I’ve been enjoying the creative process of bringing my focus on remote work out into the wider world via the Remote Pathways Podcast. If you haven’t stopped by for a listen, please do! You can listen in here.

​In the Remote Pathways Podcast we explore the people, places and practices of remote work today. The podcast spans the ecosystem of remote work, which I bring to life via the Digital Dozen™, twelve different types of remote workers. From those who are attached to, and lead, larger corporate teams in the business sector, to solopreneurs, those who Work From Anywhere, mobile Sales Professionals, as well as project managers who lead global teams. Remote work has never been so diverse.

Regardless of the differences to the type of work we do, most of us experience similar challenges. I say this with confidence, as over the last three decades I have worn many of the different hats in inhabiting a variety of roles in working the remote, mobile and virtual space.

Today’s blog post explores eight differences when working in the remote space. Consider how these impact you:

Autonomy - The paradigm of leadership when managing a remote team needs to change from an older model of control and micro-management, to one which empowers and coaches. With team members potentially multiple time zones away, and sometimes a lengthy plane ride, as leaders we need to shift our role to one of liaison, trouble-shooter and empowerer. Our team members are the ones “on the ground” with the expertise we will never have in our parachute meetings with them. What are you doing to shift the way you lead and empower your team?

Skills - Related to the shift in formal leadership, remote teams benefit when an emphasis is placed on building and equipping all team members with skills in leadership, teamwork etc. everyone on a remote team will benefit from skills in communication, decision making,  prioritization, not just the formal leader. What are you doing to equip all your team members with skills?

Connections with others - I recently hosted a community call I entitled “No person is an island”. In Effective Virtual Conversations, I started writing about the importance of remote workers being intentional in exploring what their connections are with others. In a team-based context, the work I am doing, or not, may have a significant impact on a team member half a world away.
With this in mind, it’s important that team members do get a regular opportunity to spend time with each other – formally in meetings and possibly informally in virtual co-working sessions. Building in processes in meetings and systems to help team members see the connection between their work, boosts productivity and engagement.

What are you doing to create formal and informal virtual work events to connect and collaborate?

The Matrix -  In a remote work situation it’s likely that team members may be part of multiple teams. This has implications around being very clear around roles, goals and priorities, as well as making sure that team culture is strong. If I am a member of the Toronto team, and also a special projects team, am I clear about the differences in team culture, and priorities? Spending time as a remote team clarifying how you want to work together is an essential part of high performance. I share more about this in part 3 of Effective Virtual Conversations.

There are many other differences which exist from motivation, and inner drive, to relationship building and visibility. I’ll be sure to address some of these other important distinctions in tomorrow’s post.

Looking for support to shift you in working remote? Let's set up a time to connect and discuss  your coaching, or team development needs around remote working.  Email or phone.

Best,
​Jennifer

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!

The remote workspace is growing significantly. One recent article indicated that the number of job postings alone indicating remote work has grown 151% since 2018. With this in mind, the ability to work effectively in the remote space is essential.

Part of the shift to effective virtual or remote leadership involves today’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip of SHARE THE REINS.

In the remote space, engagement is key. If people don’t feel connected, they are unlikely to bring their best self to work.

Why It’s Important
Back to where we started with this blog post – sharing the reins is critical for remote work success. We need to involve everyone in the conversation. It’s not just a leader’s perspective on a remote team that is essential. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle! The insights I can bring from being “on the ground” in Toronto may be just as important, or more important than what my leader can see. As we’ve explored in other posts, the ability for a leader to step back and coach becomes a critical skill for remote leaders today.

What sharing the reins looks like:

• Having team members rotate roles including leading meetings.
• It may also involve fostering a peer focused culture where the role of the leader primarily focuses on liaison and trouble shooting.

What changes can you make in this area to support your team?

Wishing you all 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.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

This week’s Team Building Tip gets you to think about different pitfalls which might exist in your work. Proactivity and thinking through what you might do to prevent them, or recover, if you don’t prevent them, can save a lot of time and energy.

Here’s a list of some of the common pitfalls I saw this year in the work that I did with leaders and teams:

• Team Pitfalls - Disengagement, people disconnecting because they always feel that they are the ones who have to flex (i.e. being the only team member who has to call in early or late all the time), not sharing information, not collaborating because people don’t know who is who.
• Communication Pitfalls - Messages not being understood as intended, overuse of different technologies, assuming everyone had read the email.
• Leadership Pitfalls - Not being clear in terms of process, message, outcome, not co-creating expectations with the team, not investing in one-on-one time, not being consistent with messages and meetings, not providing direction/information on the big picture and strategic direction, not being clear on how people connect and not providing time for the team to meet.
• Technology Pitfalls - Not keeping things simple in the virtual space, getting thrown off by tech challenges, not running through the technology before the conversation, not taking time to prepare, trying to fit too much in and not keeping it simple.
• Meeting Pitfalls – Not having an agenda, not getting input around the agenda, not rotating facilitation of it, not following up on accountabilities, not being consistent with meeting, not being clear on purpose of meetings.

What other pitfalls have you experienced this year?

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, 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.

With an increasing number of professionals leveraging the power of virtual conversations and meetings, I thought it would be a good idea to include a post this month focusing on five ways you’ll want to jazz up your virtual conversations. Still too often virtual calls are plagued by poor connection, multi-tasking, being “talked at” rather than being engaged in discussion. It’s what I call the Death by Conference call mindset in my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at 5 ways to break the habits of bad conversations:

1. Get everyone on the same platform – We’ve all been there. Too often. In a call where some people are in a room together (physically) with a few outliers who are in the virtual space. The boomerang connection does not mix. Can we either:
   1. Bring everyone onto the same platform by moving the conversation completely into the remote space where everyone has their own window.
   2. Use a technology which will give a clear, 360 view of the room. I just heard about OWL Labs technology and WOW – what a game changer! (And no, this is not a paid endorsement for them.)
2. Get people co-designing and co-creating together – using annotation. Given the fact that we are often “Alone with our thoughts” many days, and don’t have the collaborative stimulation of a lunchroom or water cooler, would it be possible to dedicate some time for the group/team to create some learning together. Perhaps it’s doing some visual brainstorming work, or having people identify what they want to explore together. Use annotation throughout your calls and get people to see how co-creating visually may be of benefit beyond your calls. 
3. Use breakouts – Most remote workers are hungry for connection, and to be heard, given the isolated nature of work. What can you do to connect group members with each other for deeper levels of dialogue? Incorporating the use of breakouts, where people can be paired with one or two others for a few minutes to discuss a question or topic of interest, can leave a memorable impression. Check out this 2017 call I did on Breakouts. 
4. Make sure it’s the right type of meeting for the conversation. Also be discerning with whether a large group meeting is the right type of conversation. Does everyone need to be there? Could you connect people in different ways?
5. Signal it will be different – and make sure it will! Most important, be sure to grab people’s attention at the start of the call. What can you do to signal from the start that it’s NOT going to be Death By Conference call? You may be amazed at how quickly you develop a reputation for a MEH call, or an engaging call.

What type of environment do you want to create? What is important for you to note?

Best, 
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, 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.

As we move towards the end of the year, it’s an opportune time to focus in on the systems in your work. Systems help us automate routine tasks and also create consistency. Systems help us with information sharing and leveraging tasks and processes. This is key when people and projects may move not only in an office but move to different locations.

As we move to year end, it can be an important time to dedicate some focus on anchoring in the systems we have been using, developing others and/or making sure systems and focused.

This year I’ve mentioned systems several times. They are an important part of keeping a remote or global business running consistently, ensuring that our customer or clients experience is the same from location to location.

In larger organizations, systems are likely to be well established, but in start ups or smaller organizations it’s likely that they are not as well developed.

You might consider the systems you have as it relates to sharing of information around projects, special initiatives and tasks. One of the challenges as teams move into the remote space is that information flow may not be as smooth. If you have people needing to access information and work on shared documents or with shared information what needs attention. This may involve nomenclature around how documents are saved and where things get digitally filed. IT may also involve a mindset shift around how items get documented and shared.

• Communication (Internal/External, team communication)
• Performance
• Goals
• Projects
• Marketing/Business Cases/Case Studies

What else?

If you have not taken a look at this month’s Effective Virtual Conversations call which I held on November 4th around Remote and Virtual Team Tools, do take a look. In the 25-minute call I share five key areas you will want to explore and possibly incorporate with your team – from communication tools, to team development tools, to project management tools.

What is the one tool you know you can’t live without? For me, I would say it is Zoom. Whether I am leading a group session or hosting an individual coaching session, Zoom allows me to seamlessly move throughout calls all day long, seeing my clients without having to travel  (sometimes thousands of miles to see them!). While travel is a passion for some, having spent the better part of my first decade plus of my working career travelling for a living, I so appreciate getting to reconnect with places without having to physically go there.

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer 

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing 
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, 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.

This week’s blog post focuses in on the important topic of retention, or memorability of calls.

It’s likely that the call you are hosting today is one of many virtual sessions people are dropping into. What are you going to do to make it memorable?

As I shared in Teams365 15  Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #37 – As Suzuki Writes:  “We make things memorable when things are novel, surprizing, emotional and attention grabbing”. What are the things you can be doing to create this?

A couple of things that we can do to make it memorable include:
Jazzing it up – including a video you have created or something a creator has shared on YouTube. (Always be sure to confirm usage rights, and when in doubt, reach out!).

Provide an opportunity for people to talk about their experiences in smaller groups. Check out if breakouts are an option in your platform. If so, could you build in a 5-10 minute section where people share how the topic connects to them and what they can do.

Prime people for the fact that the call is going to be different than usual. Let people know what you can expect. Start your call off differently – perhaps with something more personally involved than others. Note that as people are coming onto a call it may take them a few minutes to get grounded. We may be unfocused based on what we are experiencing.

IN addition to talking about the topic, are there some graphics which can be incorporated into the session? What additional follow up can people engage with? Note that you may want to consider both pre and post work.

As I shared earlier this year in my March 2019 Effective Virtual Conversations calls, Ebbinghaus did initial research on what we retain and what we remember. He created what is now known as the forgetting curve. In essence, as time progresses, as days progressed, we remember even less.

And so how can we boost that? There are several things that he found really made a difference. The meaningfulness of the information, the way it's represented, as well as some physiological factors, stress, sleep, et cetera.
Using some of the techniques I’ve outlined in the first part of the blog post may also help to boost retention. What do you want to incorporate to support enhanced retention?


Best wishes, 
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders | Remote Pathways Podcast
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Writing
Phone (416)996-8326
 
As we step into the end of the year, 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.