Teams365 Blog - Potentials Realized

#TEAMS365 #1878 – Boosting Your Virtual Team – Strengthening Relationships = 5 Ideas

2/20/2019

This month’s focus is on building relationships. One type of team which often does not get attention is virtual teams. Today’s post goes into 5 ideas you might incorporate around boosting your virtual team. This could include some of the following activities:

Creating a set of peer partners who you are paired with for the course of a year. Peer partners may be invited to connect on a regular basis – i.e. quarterly to share information and resources and generally share best practices.
Hosting co-working sessions.
Providing the opportunity for part of a quarterly or regular team meeting to focus in on having each person share what they are working on and/or what their portfolio is all about.
Hosting a weekly or bi-weekly team huddle to update each other on what you are focusing on. Huddles are generally short and quick in nature (15-30 minutes). Done regularly they benefit from bringing the team together on a regular basis to share their focus, build connection and notice interplay.
Another option is to have people share a photo or resource with each other every month via the team’s communication channel – this could include a series of threads in Slack or part of your Leaning Management System or a Community Portal like Mighty Networks.

What are the activities and events which will benefit your team right now?

You might also be interested in checking out the January 2019 Effective Virtual Conversations call I hosted where I cover 5 Virtual Team Builders.

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Follow us on Twitter @Teams365
Phone: (416)996-8326

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#TEAMS365 #1876 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #82

2/18/2019

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip is very similar to last week’s statement of “Consider the right modality for the right conversation”, but slightly different.

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip gets you to “Consider the right platform, for the right modality”. In today’s virtual space, there can be multiple channels we hold conversations on. From conference call lines, to Skype, to zoom, to WebEx. Some channels allow us to stream and see each other, while others only allow us to share our screen.

Consider these questions as you go to select the appropriate channel for your next conversation:

How important is it that we see each other?
How important is it for me to be able to share a PowerPoint deck or some slides?
How important is it for us to be able to chat with each other? And also save the chat log?
How important is it for us to be able to use annotation, where group members can make notation on the screen?
How important is it for us to be able to record the conversation and share it at a later date with those who could not attend?
How important is it for us NOT to be able to see each other?
How important is it for us to have the ability to break out into smaller conversation pods or breakouts (just like we would in the in-person environment for small group discussion).
What are connectivity and bandwidth issues like for the participants

The bulk of the coaching conversations and learning events I have hosted over the last fifteen years has been virtual. Every day I get to work with clients all over the world, not just in my city. With that in mind, each platform has its own pros and cons. Do some research into the different options.

Some of the ones I continue to use regularly are:

FreeConferenceCalling.com – for when clients want phone only service but one that also allows us to do breakouts
Zoom – My every day go-to where I host 95% of the programs I offer. The pro account offers breakouts, polls, recording, annotation and pretty much everything I could ever need to create engaging virtual sessions!
WebEx – usually the preferred platform of my corporate clients. Given that it often signals a more corporate conversation, people may not be as open to dialogue and interaction.

What are your favorite go-tos? I hope you’ll take a few minutes to share your experience in the comments below.

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Join us for a conversation - connect at the Conversation Sparker Zone
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Now available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner - Order a copy today on Amazon

#TEAMS365 #1862 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #80: one Platform

2/4/2019

It’s Monday and time for another Effective Virtual Conversations Tip. This week’s tip explores the tip of bringing everyone onto one virtual platform if possible.

With firewalls and varying connection from different locations, it can be common for virtual teams to have different team members connecting from different locations on different platforms. One person may only be able to call in while others may only be able to stream in.

While some of the barriers to connection may be out of our control, we want to try to bring everyone onto one virtual platform if possible.

There may be resistance on the part of team members to upgrade or try things different out, if there is too much of a learning curve, so you will want to make it worth everyone’s while.

At the same time, it is probable that you will have people connecting from different platforms due to their connection options, make sure you consider the needs of those that may be able to see, and those that may only be able to hear. Design for this. Also, be sure to consider if you can do some smaller group work, using breakouts bringing people of the same platform together. Check out this call for more!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (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

#TEAMS365 #1855 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 79

1/28/2019

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation Tip is number 79 in the series.

The tip is a reminder of the importance of pacing and interactivity in virtual conversations. Whether it’s keeping the pace moving and making changes every 2 - 5 minutes as in a webinar, or whether it’s mixing things up and making it more interactive in your next team meeting, by structuring in at least 2 or 3 engagement opportunities for everyone, a rule of thumb which may be useful to aim towards is an engagement touchpoint every 5-7 minutes, especially when groups are not as connected or content is heavy.
Engagement touchpoints in these calls might look like:

Asking a question and having people comment via chat
Getting people to annotate on the screen where they are calling in from, or which of the shown items is their favorite
Using polling to capture insights and ideas from the group

If you are working with a virtual or remote team, you might use a variety of engagement strategies to create alignment and/or connection, or more awareness of who the team is. This might include:

Breakouts so different team members with similar or divergent areas share with each other for 5-10 minutes
Using the whiteboard to do real-time planning – for example, if you have a new project which has come on board, can you map it out together using annotation?
Use screenshots to capture key agreements and next steps – rather than going away to type up notes, can you be more strategic about capturing agreements and notes as part of your agreements. Circulate the screenshot (which is often saved as part of the recording) to everyone as the visual reminder.

What can you do to create more engagement in the virtual conversations you are facilitating?

Best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (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

#TEAMS365 #1838 – FlashbackFriday: Virtual Facilitation – Creating More Engagement

1/11/2019

My 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, takes a deeper dive into creating more engaging virtual conversations. With many meetings shifting into the virtual space, being able to host effective virtual meetings and conference calls is critical. The added complexities of not always seeing each other, or being able to follow up directly, means that meetings are not always effective. Check out this past Wednesday’s prompt on 8 Essential Meeting Questions (Productivity Tip 9 of 19 for 2019), as well as stay tuned to the upcoming post on Monday’s Effective Virtual Conversation Tip.

I’m reaching back today in this FlashbackFriday post to Teams365 #1015 where I shared these additional tips for creating more engaging conversations:

“Key to creating engaging and interactive virtual events is in pace and interactivity. To avoid the death by conference call mode, consider how you are able to adjust pacing for maximum interactivity.
Different ways to change pace include –

Asking a question
Getting people to annotate using pens, markers
Asking people to comment in the chat box
Creating breakout groups. Just like in person events, many services allow you to use breakout groups. Whether you pair people automatically or manually these can provide for a deeper level of conversation. Consider what opportunities you can leverage with breakouts and also how much time is needed for people to have a good discussion. It can take people several minutes to set themselves up as they arrive in their virtual domain.
Creating a pause where you get people to take notes or complete an activity in silence real time
Introducing a different media – i.e. showing a video you have created, or introducing a cartoon

What approaches do you want to use to introduce different pace changes?”

Enjoy your weekend!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized
Leadership | Teamwork | Business Success
Author of multiple books including Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Coaching Business Builder (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

#TEAMS365 #1755 - From the Vault – Three past Sunday audios to check out

10/21/2018

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

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations | Coaching Team Leaders
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

#TEAMS365 #1749 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip #66

10/15/2018

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

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations | Coaching Team Leaders
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

#TEAMS365 #1743 Creating Connection and Building Community - Virtually

10/9/2018

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

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations | Coaching Team Leaders
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

#TEAMS365 #1730 – Virtual Meeting Wrap Up Tool and Process

9/26/2018

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:

What are you next steps? (The feet icon)
What has your learning been? (The scissors)
What do you want to keep your eyes on (The magnifying glass)
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

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations | Coaching Team Leaders
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

#TEAMS365 #1729: Plan a Virtual Co-Working Session

9/25/2018

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:

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.

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

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations | Coaching Team Leaders
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of several books including the 2018 Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner & Effective Virtual Conversations (2017)
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326