Teams365 Blog - POTENTIALS REALIZED

TEAMS365 #2352 – Effective Virtual Conversations Tip 149: Make It Visible

6/8/2020

Today’s Effective Virtual Conversations Tip gets you thinking about MAKING THINGS VISIBLE. While many professionals have spent the last three months in the virtual and remote workspace, it’s likely that you might have felt bombarded by video streaming. The lexicon and language of video conferencing has shifted dramatically – from things like “zoom-bombings” (people dropping into your zoom calls), to “zoom fatigue” (the feelings of exhaustion from yet another video conferencing).

One of the downsides to digital life and work is the fact that other things aren’t as visible. Unlike being able to flip open a notebook, or look at a posting on the wall, it’s much harder to be able to “see things”.

Virtual calls also benefit from a rich array of visible cues. From incorporating graphics to video, what is going to jazz up your next presentation?

Even using the DESIGN feature in PowerPoint may shift a content rich presentation to one that has icons embedded with it.

Always be sure to respect intellectual property and copyright. Consider investing in commercial stock photography at places like istockphoto or AdobeStock or turn to the generosity of sites like Unsplash or Pixabay. Always read the fine print in terms of how you can, and cannot, use materials.

What are the things you want to draw attention to? What can you do to convert these into photographs or icons?

Is there content that could be converted across to a video? Consider using AdodeSpark to turn your jpgs to a short video with music and/or voice over or turn to Lumen5 to convert text to a short video using their AI based program.

Enjoy your focus!

Best wishes,
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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2322 – Weekly Journaling Prompt 98: What’s Your Mantra?

5/9/2020

This week’s Weekly Journaling Prompt is MY MANTRA is….

What are the words you live, and work by?

Starting early in my career, when I was based in South America and the Caribbean, I found myself embracing the notion of a Mantra as both a leader and an individual.

While my leadership mantra was often “embrace the chaos” (in other words, don’t try to fight the effects of crisis, fluctuation and crisis, but roll with it and use the energy more proactively to see patterns, and options). I also held another mantra of “I’m only one person, I can only do so much”. This was an important acknowledgement and reminder or myself that as a leader I NEEDED to lean into my team, and the people around me to effect change and make a difference. I still return to these on a regular basis (and probably could benefit from revisiting more regularly), especially as a business owner.

My personal mantra during those years was often “Carpe Diem” or “Seize the Day”. This was really important as my life abroad was very dynamic, and I never really knew where they next day would take me. My work took me regularly to the highs and lows of life and living.

Both of these mantras were something I reminded myself of often and were visible in different ways – from a Carpe Diem token on my table to a photo one of my mentors had given me signifying what reminded me of “embrace the chaos”.

In this week’s journaling, you are invited to consider what your mantra or mantras are.

What are they?

How do they shape what you do? Where you put attention? What you choose to invest your time, focus and energy around?

How can these be enshrined or made more visible?

Enjoy your journaling!
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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2320 – Team Building Tip 243

5/7/2020

Focus has been a major theme for many professionals in recent weeks. This week’s Team Building tip gets you to consider the question “What’s possible if you had more focus?”.

As a team, have some discussion around where your focus is – this month, this week, each day of the week. Is everyone aligned? Is everyone on the same page?

If team members are members of multiple teams, it’s important to have this conversation regularly.

Questions to consider:

What’s important for us to focus on right now – today? This week? This month?
What are we not focusing on, and need to?
What do we need to STOP focusing on?
Where do we need to enhance our focus?
What distractions are getting in the way of focus?
What’s possible if we/I had more focus?

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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2319 – Remote Team Builder: Vision Mapping

5/6/2020

While some people are starting to go back to work face to face, many of us are still working in the remote space for a while longer. Today’s post shares with you one quick remote team builder. We know that teams excel when they have a clear focus on what results are needed, as well as who they are (their relationships).

One of the elements which is critical for success is that of having a clear vision that everyone can connect to, and keep in mind. Your vision as a team may be like a horizon – pulling you forward and getting more in focus the closer you get to it. For some teams it may be important to focus on creating a vision to the end of the year, for others, to the end of 2021.

So, what can we do to create this?

At your next team meeting, dedicate 15-20 minutes to working around vision. This may be the start of a multi-session conversation.

Make a whiteboard available and be sure to set annotation as “on” with your platform.

You might start by asking people to consider the current corporate goals and direction to do a series of sharing and writing around different questions such as:

Looking ahead to end of 2020 (or 2021), what are we known for? (think accomplishments)
Who have we served?
What have been our greatest accomplishments?
What’s important to us?
What are the things we do not waver on?
What do we go to bat for? (i.e. address until it’s right)
What else makes us unique?

To spark some ideas, you might even show some photographs and get people to choose from them. Today’s graphic incorporates an activity I recently shared at one of our Remote Pathways calls.

Doing an activity like this will also clarify your culture as a team. I like to define culture as WHO WE ARE and HOW WE DO THINGS.

Save screenshots of the different questions as you go so you have something to refer back to and bring forward to your next conversation.

Enjoy the 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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2313 –Team Building Tip 242

4/30/2020

The last month has been full of disruption for most of us around the world. It may be at moments like this that we need to activate our metaphorical “jet fuel” to move us to the next place.

It’s been commonplace for organizations, teams and businesses to be stuck, shut and simply out of gas this month. Coronavirus has impacted everyone.

Next steps for many after this passes may look very different than what you expected and had envisioned earlier this year. Is it time to revisit your vision and think about what you want to create? What if you had some "jet fuel" to move you into the next stratosphere? What if…?

If you are interested in making a shift, today’s question of “What could jettison you forward?” might be of interest to explore and consider.

Enjoy your conversation,
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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2311 – Collaborating in the Remote Space

4/28/2020

One of the legacies of March and April 2020 may be learning how to effectively collaborate in the remote space. This is important whether we are collaborating with our peers, our leader, another team or even stakeholders. Today’s blog post explores four tenets of collaborating in the remote space:

# 1 - Create a clear end result and vision of success for this project. What are you wanting to create together? Why are you doing this? (Note: lack of clarity on this can create a lot of divergence as you go.) How will you know that you will have been successful with this?

#2 - Be proactive and don’t assume. In the remote space, at the best of times, we see each person’s world in a small box. This may not be representative of everything that is on the go.

#3 - Plan it. Take time as a partnership to ask yourselves, what’ important about this? What are you wanting to achieve?

What are your strengths? What are the gaps between the strengths of your partnership?

Find common ground as well as differences. What are the areas we foresee might be challenges? What can we do to mitigate against those?

#4 - Be proactive with communication and ensure you do this on a regular basis. Shift your mindset to one of “of course” to “What should I communicate?” Given that it’s likely we are under-communicating rather than over-communicating.

What’s going to help your collaboration work better?

For more on this topic check out other posts I have done on collaboration.

Wishing you 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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2298 Mid-Month Checkpoint for Virtual Teams

4/15/2020

It’s mid-month and a great time to do a check point for your team. Many teams may now have been working from home or remotely for at least a month. It’s also mid-month which is always a good time to stop and pause and consider how things are going.

Take a few minutes to reflect on these questions:

What’s working for us as a team right now?
What ways have we been able to pivot successfully to meet our business needs? Our team’s needs?
How are we doing in terms of our results for the quarter?
What routines are working well for us?
How are we doing on the foundations of team effectiveness? Rate on scale of 1-10 and have discussion on what shifts might be needed:
- Clear vision, shared by all
- Clear goals and understanding of what success looks like and how goals are measured
- Clear roles – Who does what?
- Shared team practices – regular meetings, and other touchpoints

Best wishes,
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

PDF copies of PlanDoTrack now available! Get yours here.

TEAMS365 #2292 – Team Building Tip 282: What needs more alignment?

4/9/2020

Alignment on teams helps ensure that the team is harnessing their best, and therefore maximizing their flow towards results. Teams hopefully are aligned around many different areas including:

Values
Vision
Processes
Communication

Let’s look at each one of these briefly in turn:

Values – Teams, especially remote teams need to be aligned around values, and also be clear on where their individual values may be different than their collective values. This is imperative on a remote team given that our values shape our behaviors. So, for example, if we as a team value customer service, I am going to prioritize a phone call before spending time on an internal report. If we value quality, we may have a process where someone else (even virtually) reviews our content before it goes out. As a team, what are the three or four values which are important to focus on? What are the values which need to anchor everyone’s behaviors?

Vision is another piece which is important to bring the team back to, particularly in times of disruption. What is the horizon you are moving towards? What are the things which are going to anchor your work? Vision helps us to prioritize.

Processes – Our processes also need to be aligned. These include things such as how we do things, what the process flow is, who passes to who, when does it need to be done.

Communication – Finally our communication needs to be aligned. What are the ways we commit to keeping conversations flowing? What is the minimum in terms of content and time?

What can you do to support alignment as a team?

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

TEAMS365 #2284 – Celebrating 16 Years Here at Potentials Realized

4/1/2020

Happy April Fools Day! I always love April 1st as it marks the day I came back to live and re-establish myself in Canada. Back in 2004, I made the transition from my former world of global work with the United Nations and the international humanitarian sector and came back home. Six days later on April 7th, I registered my new business, Potentials Realized, and haven’t looked back.

A lot of people often ask me what led me to start this company. There were a number of factors which led me to establish Potentials Realized.

First, I had spent several years prior being asked by my employers to take on special projects and/or take on internal consulting roles. It validated at into the second decade of my career I was building a series of skills and areas of expertise that could be useful outside of my regular role.

A second major factor for me had also been the impact to my vision due to an eye infection I had sustained in 2003. That led to an effect on one of my eyes which still exists today. It’s one of the reasons why I established Potentials Realized as a virtual business – so I wouldn’t have to travel like I used to. Today so many of us are having to live and work virtually, especially with social isolation measures in place. I hope that you have been seeing some of the more creative ways we can continue to work and meet in the virtual space.

A final factor in terms of moving to being an entrepreneur was the belief that it was time to go out on my own and create the programming I had dreamed about. During the years I was flying around the world leading organizational retreats for groups large and small, I hoped that I would be able to create something similar under my own umbrella. One of the greatest things I have enjoyed is not having had to do the travel I used to – of how I can bring dozens of people together for great conversation and work in the remote space.

What is your beginning story?

As we step into the new month, what are your goals? What’s important to be focusing on?

Best wishes,
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

TEAMS365 #2271 – Team Building Tip 279: What will help with focus?

3/19/2020

Focus and attention are key parts of business success today. It can be very easy to get off track, or down the rabbit hole of distractions. Focus has become an area that is getting explored in greater depth these days.

It’s not always just about whether you are focusing or not, but it is also the question of “What are you focusing on?”. Are you focusing on the things that are immediate and urgent, or are you working on those issues which may be what Chip Heath calls “upstream”? The more proactive, systemic issues, which I would call proactive or strategic. In another week I’ll be leading some strategic thinking training and what we know about strategic thinking is that it’s part creative, and a large part proactive. It can incorporate, WHAT IF, as well as WHAT THEN.

Professionally, I entered the workforce in the early 1990s and was privileged in my work in the non-profit world to be exposed to a lot of strategic thinkers and planners. This shaped a large part of my work as a leader and facilitator in the global sphere during the 90s and early 2000s. Some of my frontline work was in economies moving through significant transition and change. I had not realized until recently that some of these older stalwarts of strategic thinking had transitioned out of the workspace (which makes sense as I think of age).

We know that in disruption it’s as important to be agile as it is to have an anchoring vision and strategy. What are you aiming towards? How are you holding the tension of strategic thinking along with agile approaches? I do believe there can be an AND. What about you?

Enjoy your focus this week on the main question of “What will help with focus?” as well as “And what do you want to focus on?” or “What’s important to focus on?”.

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.
Contact us to discuss how we can support you and your teams and organization with remote work.
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!