This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip focuses on the question “On what platform will connection between calls work best?”. In coaching we have a saying that the “’impact of coaching happens in between the calls”. It is often the actions, insights and connections made in between your virtual sessions where people put ideas into practice, connect the dots, pass ideas forward, that learning and momentum happen.

The platform which connects group members in between the calls can be instrumental in enhancing this. There are many options which are possible including:

• Private Community Groups such as Mighty Networks
• Secret Facebook Groups (non-searchable)
• Chat groups on your own Learning Management System – we use Teachable as our e-learning portal
• Text

​What is going to keep the conversation going for the groups you are working with?

As you go to select your platform, consider these items:

• The purpose – is it to share successes, resources, links, files, other
• Accessibility and mobility
• Confidentiality

Best,
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tips #87 asks you to consider the question “What connection between calls work best?”.
​
In the virtual space there may be things that you want to focus on before the conversation and after. If you are working with groups are longer term, consider what connection between calls will work best for them. This could include:

• Emails between calls
• A daily focus question for people to explore
• A message board where people can post – this could be hosted in a Facebook community, or another private network like Mighty Networks
• Peer assignments where peers meet for short 15-minute calls to discuss a question, or talk about action towards their goals
• A one-on-one call with you to go deeper into the areas that are most important

What are the things that will help you as a group keep the focus on what’s important for the group – whether this is learning more, having ongoing dialogue, or taking ongoing action? Be sure to schedule time for these activities as they are often the first things that come off the list.
​
Enjoy!
Jennifer

​As we continue our journey through this month’s exploration on virtual teams, I couldn’t not talk about team culture which forms the bedrock of any team, especially one that is virtual. Our team culture points to:

who are we, how do we do things and what is important to us.

Being clear about what our team culture is as a virtual team is critical, given that many, or all of our members may be members of multiple teams. Let’s look at how we can explore these three elements as a virtual team:

1. Who are we – What do we do? Why do we exist? Virtual teams excel when they have a clear identity about who they are. This helps to differentiate how they do things on one team versus another. Virtual team members may be members of multiple teams. Spending time as a team to connect, and "get to know each other" - who we are, what are roles are, what we do -is critical for virtual team success.
   
2. How do we do things - What are our agreements around communication? Task completion? Follow-through? Flagging issues? Communicating with each other?

All of these elements can vary dramatically from one team to another.
Taking time to discuss how we do things is an important part of identifying and focusing in on who we are as a team.

3. What is important to us? All members of the team should be well versed with what’s important at multiple levels.  This can entail:

• What’s important to us this week?
• This month?
• This quarter?

Ensuring that everyone is clear on what’s important helps with decision making. It also helps with negotiating where focus goes, especially if you are members of multiple matrix team.
 
Having discussion is one way of working with team culture. There are also some other creative ways which we’ll explore in tomorrow’s post. I hope you'll join me tomorrow

Stay tuned!
Jennifer

It’s March 15th which historically has been known as the Ides of March. My father always has said we can usually expect one more snowfall in Toronto on, or around this date. I’m always happy when it gets to be this time of year as I start seeing that spring is (usually) just around the corner.
 
For today’s FlashbackFriday I wanted to reach back to a former blog post (in fact one from the precursor blog to Teams365 – the BizToolkit blog), on a topic which I think has major significance today – Meetings!
 
Meetings can be the “bane” of most employees existence, and aren’t always held effectively. It’s not uncommon for leaders I work with, scheduled into 30 or more hours of meeting a week, leaving them little time for work they need to accomplish, strategic thinking and other discussions.
 
Here’s what I posted in March of 2014 as Teams365 #86: 

Five Ways to Keep Your Meetings on Track 
Copyright Jennifer Britton, All Rights Reserved, 2013 : Originally published on the BizToolkit blog, 2013

Meetings are a huge time-consumer in today's workforce. What is the state of your meetings? How efficient are they? Today's blog post includes five ways to keep your meetings on track, so you can avoid what Patrick Lencioni describes as "Death by Meeting" syndrome.

Some key tips to keep in mind are:
1. Assign a meeting facilitator. Facilitation comes from the Latin word "facilis" or to make easy. The facilitators role is to keep an eye on the process. As the facilitator, the focus is on:

• starting and ending the meeting on time, 
• keeping the flow moving, 
• summarizing and capturing key discussion points,
• identifying issues which may need to be shifted to other events (use of a parking lot)
• summarizing key action steps

It can be very useful to have a rotational facilitator role if meetings are held regularly with the same group. This supports capacity and skill development, and also recognizes that the facilitator's power is related to that role, not the role people usually inhabit. Who will be the "facilitator" for your next meeting? How will this be rotated?

2.  Have an agenda, and assign timelines to it. Does each meeting have an agenda, which has been circulated before the meeting to ensure that nothing else needs to be added? Putting time-frames on each item, and sticking to them, helps to manage time, as well as identify issues which may need to be carried into other venues. What does the agenda for your next meeting look like? How much time will it take? 

3. Ensure who you need is at the table. A common challenge in effective meetings is not having who you need at the table. This may be someone who has specific information, background on  a topic, or authority to sign off/give approval. Who needs to be at your meeting, based on the agenda?

4. Confirm Action Steps and Responsibilities - A common pitfall is that action steps, and who is responsible for moving things forward, is lost in the dialogue. Key action steps, and those who will take responsibility for making sure they are done, should be summarized at the end of each meeting. What are the major next steps? Who will be responsible for them?

5. Circle Back to Make sure Actions are being Actioned. What is the status of the action steps? How are they being moved forward immediately, and in the longer term. Who needs to know? Who is accountable? Action Plans are only as good as they are tracked and followed. What will support the implementation of decisions, and the reporting out of these actions? 

As you consider your upcoming meetings, in which context might you be able to incorporate some of these ideas?
 
As much as the meeting content may have changed in the last six years, I think a lot of these pointers remain the same. What’s the one tweak you could make to your meetings which would help them become more productive and efficient?
 
Enjoy your conversations,
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.
​

​Welcome to the 85th Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’ tip is “Be clear on expectations”. This is particularly important when you are working in the virtual space, given the diversity of location, experience and past experiences which can exist within any virtual teams or groups you are working with.

This week let’s discuss the many ways we start to create expectations around virtual experience.
​
If it’s a virtual team you are working with, you will want to have shared or co-created experiences as it relates to your virtual meetings as well as your virtual processes.
​
Virtual team and group meetings will want to have shared expectations or agreement for meetings. For example, as a virtual team or group you might agree to:

• Start and end on time
• Be present and be focused during meetings
• Follow-through

With virtual events our expectations start before the process begins. This may be from the moment people read something on your website, or the first email they receive from you. If there is anything you want the group to do before a program or process, let them know.

Make a list of any items you want people to complete or take action on prior to a conversation.

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
Join the conversation at the Conversation Sparker Zone - our online community where we explore topics related to productivity, teamwork, coaching, business development and leadership. ​

​Welcome back to Team Building Tip #226. Each Thursday I bring you a different question which I hope you will consider as part of your next team meeting or use as a discussion sparker in your 1-1 meetings.

This week’s question is “Let’s carry forward….”.

We are now two months into the year and there probably have been some key learnings undertaken from things that have worked well, and things that perhaps have not worked well. How are you noting these as a 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.
​

​Last month I hosted a call on five virtual team builders as part of my monthly Effective Virtual Conversations community call. As part of this month’s focus on virtual team development, I am going to share segments of that call so you too can benefit. Before jumping into actual tools and activities (which are coming your way!), let’s start with a quick highlight of three practical things to make your virtual calls of all types more effective.

First, I think we all want to avoid what I term “death by conference call”.
If you spend any time working virtually, you know this. Rushing back to back with conference calls or streaming meetings where people are speaking “at you”.  This leads to the speaker sounding like a voice on TV (Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah). No surprise, you've got a thousand to do's and you turn to checking your email or reading through “that other document”.

We want to avoid that at all costs. If we have to meet, let’s make it effective and engaging! This can be dependent on the platform and groups that you're working with. There is still a lot of variety happening in the virtual learning environment. We may be doing Zoom calls, we may be doing WebEx calls. We may still be on the phone.

Second, in the virtual space, we need to consider the pace which typically is quicker than face-to-face contexts. We want to use more interaction and be intentional in bringing people's voices on to the line.
​
For example, I had a new group launch this morning. It's a group of 10. We use chat, we use breakouts. We used annotation several times through the 75 minutes of the call. We used chat to create our ground rules and ways of working, and breakouts to deepen connection across the group.
​
In a virtual space we want to be intentional in creating multiple ways to engage. We want to create multiple opportunities to boost connection and trust. If people don't feel safe or connected with others in the group, they're not going to engage.
​
One quick factor we can use is to leverage streaming so people see each other – so using video on Zoom, or Skype, or WebEx.

Third - another factor in making it work is really helping people have visual anchors. This might include a photograph shown at the start of the call, which creates focus OR having people write something on a screen as they start into a call. Making it interactive AND keep it simple is key in virtual work.

In the next couple of Tuesday and Wednesday posts here at the Teams365 blog I will share with you five main activities you can consider using when you work with virtual teams.

If you have a copy of my book, Effective Virtual Conversations, many of these posts touch on chapters related to part three of effective virtual conversations (pages 300 to about 444).

Enjoy!
 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.
​

Welcome back to another Monday Effective Virtual Conversations tip. This week’s post gets you to consider “Out of sight does not equal out of mind”. One of the common fallacies of virtual teamwork and leadership is that we think that it’s not important to connect with others who are far away. In fact, “out of sight should mean more in mind”.
​
Consider the impact of not:

• Holding meetings where people can see each other
• Holding meetings consistently because some people are not there
• Recording meetings and/decisions made
• A lot of misunderstanding occurs when we don’t become proactive in connecting with all team members, as visually as possible.

You will want to consider all the ways you can make things visible and visual for the team. This could include:

• Ensuring meetings are streamed and people can see each other
• Capturing agreements and decisions in chat so you can then circulate the chat log as meeting notes  for everyone (who is there and not there)
• Rotating meeting times and organizers, so even if the leader is on the road, or engaged the team has a strong enough process to be able to follow through and meet around.

Virtual teams can leverage the best of technology so that they can see each other, record, and share information.

What are the ways you can keep the team and it’s focus top of mind this month?
​
What will make things visible and visual?

Have a great day,
Jennifer

​Today’s post focuses on tips for boosting collaboration in the virtual space:

1. Be proactive in terms of what relationships are important to build. Are you taking time for regular outreach with a purpose?
2. Be systematic in discussing key elements of collaboration – what is the end result you are aiming towards, what will success look like? Who is in charge of doing what? When will you meet to review how things are going and make adjustments?
3. Agree on regular feedback loops. Feedback can be a challenge when you don’t know each other too well. What are the touchpoints you are dedicating to feedback? Creating formalized quarterly or mid-point check-ins can be valuable to earmark. Take a look at some of the mid-point or evaluation questions I have pointed to in the past.
   
4. Be clear on what you are each bringing to the relationship. What are the things that are going to help your next collaboration thrive?

Best of luck!
Jennifer

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:

1. 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.
2. Hosting co-working sessions.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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