Audio is making a big comeback in a lot of ways, given the popularity and presence of Google Home Minis, Alexa’s and other audio assistants in our kitchens, homes and cars.

Since the Team365 blog began back in 2014, I’ve dedicated Sunday as a day where I’ve been sharing either audios (what you’d find up to about 2016) or videos (most of the new Sunday posts from 2016 onwards).

Given that there’s some great content that’s still relevant (yes, even though the context is changing so much, things do remain the same!) which I thought would be useful to spotlight a couple of times a month in a From the Vault Series where I’ll reach back into our repository and share past posts.

Here are three audios from 2015 that I think you’ll like, aligned with this month’s topic of teamwork:

Ten Questions To Be Asking As  A Team Leader (Teams365 #376 – 22 minutes) 

Three Problem Solving Tools (Teams365 #488 – 9.5 minutes) 

Hosting Effective Virtual Meetings (Teams365 #390 – 10.5 minutes) 

What new audios would you like to see? I’ll be starting to schedule some of our November and December posts in the next few weeks so do let me know what content you’d like to see here at the Teams365 blog for the end of 2018 and start of 2019.

Looking forward to our 3:30 pm call!

Best,
Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation’s tip #66 brings us to tip #3 in the series of Virtual Team Success. This week’s tip gets you thinking about how you want to keep in touch. In today’s virtual space there are several vehicles teams can leverage for keeping in touch, as well as facilitating meetings and planning.
Let’s take a look at three of them:

Zoom – Great for streaming and meetings on the go, zoom provides multiple benefits – from the  ability to screen share to the ability to activate breakouts in meeting space. With the teams that I work with, many professionals like the flexibility of being able to call in via phone, connect via their desk top or lap top, as well as use the mobile app to connect via phone.

Skype – Skype for business is being leveraged by many organizations today. With the benefits of streaming and visuals, it provides a great option for meetings and presentations.

The final platform I wanted to mention today was that of Slack. Slack is a common go-to platform for real-time communication. 

When working with smaller teams around planning and projects you may also want to check out platforms including Trello and Asana.

What are some of your favorite virtual platforms? What do you use for meetings? Presentations? Project Management? Communication?

​Let us know by sharing in the comments.

Thanks!
Jennifer

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

Virtual meetings can be a drag! As I write in Effective Virtual Conversations, they don’t have to involve “Death by Conference Call”.

Four to five times a year I offer the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program, geared to provide leaders, trainers, facilitators and other professionals with tools to jazz up their virtual conversations – meetings, webinars and other virtual conversations.

It’s really important in virtual sessions to make things as visual, and visible, as possible. That’s why slides and photographs can be a great thing. While design and photography was probably not on your list of development activities as a leader, think about how photos and visuals shape:

• The stories of the team
• The memories of what you have achieved
• The emotions created
• Team identity
• What photos, images and visuals are you using in your team communication? Is there an opportunity to do more, or incorporate more in these areas?

 
I wanted to share a quick framework you might consider using and adapting for your next team meeting.
One of the things which is important for leaders of all kinds, virtual leaders especially, is to check for understanding in terms of what people are “taking away” from a call. Team meetings are usually our only live touchpoint as virtual and remote teams. Leveraging these opportunities for feedback and learning are key.
As part of my work as a presenter, I often incorporate a slide that looks like this, at the end of the presentation:
 
The icons represent our focus and takeaways.
I always like to build in time to hear from each person around:

1. What are you next steps? (The feet icon)
2. What has your learning been? (The scissors)
   
3. What do you want to keep your eyes on (The magnifying glass)
4. What will you take forward (the briefcase)

 
It’s highly unlikely that we get to hear from everyone, however, I can share this on the screen and have everyone use “annotation” and include their name to indicate what their responses are. We can then take a screen grab and circulate it as key learning from the meeting.

Once people get into the practice of this, it only takes a few minutes, yet it serves as a very powerful reminder of what we covered, and also accountability tool that peers and leaders can follow up on.

How might you use something like this in your work and/or virtual conversations?
​
Enjoy,
Jennifer

​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.

1. Focus – collectively and individually. Consider these questions
2. What’s bringing you together today?
3. What’s the focus – is it to do something collectively or individually?
4. What outcomes do you want?
5. How do you want to break it down – meeting every hour for check ins? Meeting more frequently?
6. 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. 

Best wishes,
Jennifer

It’s Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations tip - #57 in the series! This week we are at number four of the five virtual facilitation faux-pas – not rotating meeting times. When teams are stretched across time zones ensuring that you rotate meeting times can be an important step in building trust and connection. If one team member is always the one who has to call in late at night or early in the morning, it can have an impact on trust and connection.

Within reason, what can you do to ensure meeting times have a variable impact on the team, and that it’s not always the “one team member” who is adversely impacted?

​Be sure to check out other effective virtual conversations tips here, published every Monday.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

​How are you incorporating video to you work? Dialogue? Learning? Virtual Conversations?
 
A few weeks ago I attended a school field trip with my son’s Grade 7 class. We were visiting a historical site and it was the end of the day. To wrap things up the guide asked if we wanted to watch a video or recap the ideas verbally. It was a resounding 100% “Video!”. On the hour long bus ride back to the school you could hear the continued conversation about the video and its’ contents.
 
Video is still at a stage where it’s the memorable and novel approach to recapping or sharing information. How are you using video in your work?
 
Over the last two years I have been experimenting through more use of video, not only here at the blog, but also in presentations and my webinars.   You’ll notice that for most Sunday posts over the last year I’ve included a short 2 minute video, bringing to life a blog post. If you’ve taken the time to read the original then view the video, which do you prefer? Take a look at some of the Sunday videos here. 
 
Most of these short 1.5-2.5 minute videos were made via Lumen5. It’s a platform I find intuitively easy to use, and is great if you have content you want to convert to video.
 
I’ve also experimented with other video platforms – Facebook Live as well as Adobe Spark. In Adobe Spark you can take still photos and add words, plus do a voice over. It’s another great option. Facebook Live, of course, is a different option, and can be a valuable vehicle to connect with your audience in real-time.
 
How might you be able to use more video in your work? What addition would it provide?
 
Enjoy the start to your month!
 
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching(Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326​

It's Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations Tip. We are at pitfall #7- No one, or less people than registered, shows up. Whether you are expecting five people or fifty for your virtual session it is important to consider what you will do if no one, or less people than expected, arrive on time.

​Here's what I wrote in Effective Virtual Conversations:

"No one, or fewer than registered, shows – Rescheduling can become a slippery slope.  Whether you have four people on the call or 40 people on the call, consider how your virtual program (or components of it) can be packaged for future benefit. How will you record the call? What changes might need to be made to the process and approach? It is likely that people will be running late.
Solution: A best practice is always to start and end on time, given that people are likely to be calling in at different times of their days. As a facilitation team consider how you are handling missed attendees and last minute cancellations."

​What do you want to communicate to your group about process issues and starting and ending on time? How do you want to be known as a virtual leader? Our reputation can precede us, as it does in the in-person space. If you are known as someone adding value, and being firm on time, it's likely that that will precede you. A reminder the day of the call is also valuable.

​What do you want to do to remind people, and also keep your own energy up?

Enjoy the start to your week,
​Jennifer

It's the start of a new week and it's time for Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #8. 

​In Effective Virtual Conversations I write:
​"We don't often pause or take time to go deeper into dialogue. When we fail to do this we lose the opportunity for individuals to explore the rich terrain of assumptions, beliefs and other areas" - pp 71, Effective Virtual Conversations

​In many virtual events today - webinars, conference calls - silence and pause points are at a premium, and that's usually what people need. When we are working with virtual, or global teams, taking time to check our assumptions is critical. For example, we may all have a different set of assumptions on what success should look like, or assumptions around quality. Going hand-in-hand with this is the value in exploring, or being aware of, the different beliefs at play. 

​What is the value of taking more of a pause in your virtual programming?
​What will allow you go deeper into dialogue as a team or group?

​Different ways you might consider creating a pause point for deeper reflection could be:
​- pose a question to the group/team and have dialogue around it during your meeting;
​- at the end of your weekly meeting pose a question for team members to reflect on. You can check in around this the next week at the start of your meeting;
​- providing each person on the team with a journal to reflect in
​- posting a daily/weekly reflection question on your Intranet, shared site or Slack

​in order to move into these deeper layers it is important that there is trust on the team. Building trust and connection should be a primary focus for team leaders today. Take a look at what I have written about trust in past Teams365 posts.
​What can you do to create more of a pause and opportunity to go into deeper conversation space? 

​With best wishes,
Jennifer

​

Today's Leadership Practice gets you thinking about meetings. It's estimated that some employees spend upwards of 40% of their time in meetings every week. how productive are your meetings? 
​
​In my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, I share the following 8 Essential Questions to Ask Before Every Meeting. Here they ware:

1.       What’s the purpose?
2.       What takeaways do we want?
3.       Who needs to be on the call?
4.       What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5.       What pace to do we want in order to keep it engaging?
6.       What will help keep the focus?
7.       What is absolutely essential (versus what will be nice to cover or where can people go for more information around topics)?
8.       What follow-up might be required?
(Source: Britton, Effective Virtual Conversations, pp 304, 2017)

​What are the most important questions to be considering at your next meeting.

​One other activity which can make meetings more effective is to assign roles to help keep meetings on track. Consider getting someone to be a time keeper to keep the meeting moving, as well as a note taker. The note taker can be instrumental in making sure that decisions have been made and captured  around next steps, deadlines and who is going to follow up.

​For more on meetings, check out these past Teams365 posts.

​Have a great Wednesday,
Jennifer

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