We operate as part of a larger web. As Buddha wrote:
“As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of the net is an independent isolated thing he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes.”
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• What are the relationship webs or meshes you are part of?
• What are the ties you have made in your business?
• Who do you rely on to make things happen?

Even as solopreneurs or someone working remote we are a bigger part of a web. Being clear on how we connect and interrelate can help us be more focused and intentional in our messaging, marketing and communication.

This week take some time to draw out your web of relationships.

• Who are the people you connect with internally? Externally?
• Who are the people in your web that are influencers? Connectors?
• Which relationships need attention? Which new relationships do you want to develop?

Have a great Wednesday!
​Jennifer

Over the last month we’ve been exploring different skills and practices for virtual professionals. This week’s post focuses in on five people virtual team members need in their network. Given the more autonomous role of the virtual and remote employee, five people virtual team members will want to make sure they have strong relationships with, are:

• Their direct line supervisors - Given that matrix relationships may be more common, it’s likely that the virtual or remote employee is reporting to one, two or more leaders. It  may be someone local, someone on the project, and someone geographically.
• Mentors – An internal or external mentor can help navigate the waters of work and industry. Mentors provide valuable insights and stories about their own experience. They may also be a person you can take specific questions to who you cannot ask anyone else.
• Peers – Having a variety of peers to “go to” virtually is also important. Sharing best practices and resources to do your work more effectively is critical in today’s matrix environment. What are you doing to proactively build connection with other peers you work with?
• Connectors – People who can connect them to the necessary resources and people which will help them be successful. This could be a supervisor, a mentor, or it may be someone else…
• A community network – Remote work can be isolating. Having a local community network can be very important in providing support and an anchor.

Relationships in the virtual space do not “grow on their own” and earmarking time to have conversation can be important. It’s when we don’t have the answers that we realize we don’t know who to turn to. If you are new to a team, ask others, “Who else would you recommend I connect with?”. You’ll usually get a range of answers. Then the challenge becomes, when do you fit it in? Schedule a virtual coffee to meet others on a regular basis. All meetings don’t have to happen in your first few weeks!

Best, 
Jennifer

Week 18 Focus – Projects – Partnerships (RACSI)
Focus Question: We usually don’t operate in isolation. Who do you want to/need to liaise with to ensure successful projects and activities?

​Description
Partnerships are essential for coaches, virtual professionals and others. For most of us, we interface regularly with external partners and stakeholders, who are often located in some distance away from us.

As virtual and service-based businesses, we may create a wide variety of partnerships in our work. We don’t always do it alone. As soon as we expand our work to others, it can be useful to think about what partnerships look like.

From co-coaching, to Joint Ventures, bringing on sub-contractors to co-designing programs. What can partnerships look like for you?

Given that we are interfacing with different stakeholders around projects at any given time, it can be useful to think about how different stakeholders need to be updated and “kept in the loop”. 

Research/Story/Six Questions
Who are the partners you want to keep in the loop? What are the key tasks and responsibilities?

One of the more common frameworks for stakeholder engagement is the RACSI. RACSI stands for:
R – Responsible
A – Accountable
C – Consulted
S - Support
I – Informed.
Let’s look at each one in turn.
Responsible = person or role responsible for actually doing or completing the item. Who needs to do the work? This might be the team leader who has to gather the expense information in the new format and submit it.
Accountable = The person who is accountable is usually the person responsible for undertaking the task. Who has ownership of this? Typically, the "responsible one" is accountable to this person.   The accountable person might be the General Manager, the Team Leader's boss.
Consult = the person or role whose subject matter expertise is required in order to complete the item. Consulted - Who needs to be involved and asked for input? Those consulted may involve other team leaders who have gone through the change, and team members.
Support = Who needs to support the work? What type of support is required?
Inform = the person or role that needs to be kept informed of the status of item completion Who needs to be told about the change or informed along the way? Individuals who are not part of teams may need to be informed so they know what changes are happening.

The value of reflecting on a RACSI for each project is that it helps you consider who you want to involve and keep in the loop. Projects sometimes are not successful when they have not engaged different players or stakeholders appropriately.

Activity
Consider one of your upcoming initiatives/ programs/projects. Who are the key stakeholders? Who is responsible? Who needs to support? Who needs to be consulted? Who needs to be informed?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Any time we bring shareholders on or work closely with a community, or membership site, it can be important to be focusing on the RACSI, as we consider how to communicate our messages.

Great partnerships are usually co-designed with intentionality. To help guide you through these conversations, I share a variety of questions to consider at different times of the partnership journey – pre-design, during design, during implementation and after the project.

Be sure to also download the Co-Facilitation Chapter. This link is found on page 93 of PlanDoTrack and page 89 of the Coaching Business Builder.
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Leverage the tools including the Partnership Questions on Pages 93 and 94 of the PlanDoTrack or pages 89 and 90 of the Coaching Business Builder.
 
Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

In a virtual team it is critical to build capacity given that people are working more autonomously. Time spent equipping team members with the tools to influence, be proactive and also communicate is key.
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This week I wanted to zoom into three skills related to coaching that may be valuable to your virtual or remote team. These skills are:

1. Goals
2. Listening
3. Questioning

I often am amazed at how many organizations have not invested time, or resources, into helping team members work around goals. While there are many frameworks including:

• SMART Goals
• CLEAR Goals – see John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance writing
• WOOP Goals

I usually encourage organizations to consider what’s going to work best for you. A majority of clients I work with are aware of SMART Goals, which we morph into SMART – E Goals, E meaning Exciting. If our goals are not exciting or motivating, it’s unlikely that we will get them done.

As a quick refresher – SMART goals are goals that are:

“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – NAPOLEON HILL
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No person operates alone. Relationships are key to our success in business. Our customers can be great advocates of our work. Likewise, fellow professionals may also be a powerful source in sharing the word and testimonial of our work.
What time are you dedicating to building, and maintaining, relationships with others?
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There are several tools included in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner (for virtual professionals and remote/virtual teams) to help you focus on relationships. From the Top 20 list, to exploring collaboration more intentionally, I hope that you will put more of a focus on relationships this year.
Be sure to check out related posts on relationships and business in February 2019 at the Coaching Business Builder blog, as well as relationships and virtual business/teams at the Teams365 blog. 

Best,
​Jennifer

It’s likely that your virtual and remote team may not get the support they need. As I often write “Out of sight should not equal out of mind”.
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In a virtual and remote team, it can be very useful to provide peer support across the team. This might include things such as:

Mentoring pairs – If there are certain skills people want to develop, is there a way to create mentoring pairs across the team?

Peer partners - A valuable activity can be assigning peer partners across the team on an annual basis. Whether formal, or informal, having a partner people can meet with and ask questions to, can be valuable in sharing learning.

Job shadowing – Another interesting, and valuable, experience can be job shadowing virtually, where a more junior person is paired with a more senior team member. They may shadow meetings virtually and learn more about the behind the scenes work experience by co-working virtually. Consider how you might create a “take me to work day”.

Formal coffee break/meal sharing time – We learn a lot from each other informally. What are the informal pauses you can create for the team? This might involve coffee breaks where people can drop in for a chat once a week or every few weeks, or a lunch time potluck.

Co-working experiences - Where people bring projects they are working on and work together real time on a virtual platform like zoom, checking in at the top of each hour and working for several hour bursts. A session held like this once a month or more frequently can be incredibly valuable in terms of “getting things done” and also supporting learning across the team.

What are the different ways you can build in more virtual connection time across the team? This is critical for building your team culture.

Wishing you the best,
​Jennifer

Week 15 Focus – Partnership Mapping
Focus Question: Who are the partners who can support you in your work?

Description
Being able to lean into others is really important in our work as coaches and virtual professionals. We may not be able to do everything. Being clear on what’s the key partnership are and what value you bring is important.
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Partnerships may range from coordinating projects together, to Joint Ventures, to Co-Design of Programs and Co-Coaching/Co-Facilitation.

Research/Story

• Who are you working in partnership with?
• What is important about that partnership?
• How is it benefiting you?
• How does it benefit them?
• What is the learning to carry forward?

Activity
In terms of mapping partnerships, it can be useful to identify what you are bringing and why.

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
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​Has spring sprung in your part of the world? We are just around the corner from Q2 and I thought it would be useful to focus this week’s blog post on 10 Questions to ask in setting your Q2 goals.

1. How am I on target with my 2019 goals?
2. What were my major accomplishments during Q1? (Think about yourself and your team?)
3. What systems helped? What systems need attention?
4. Where is revenue/sales/impact coming from?
5. What activities are giving me/us results?
6. What can I do to magnify these?
7. Where do I need to become more efficient in my work? More effective?
8. What needs attention?
9. What am I doing to build relationships?
10. What are the items and conversations which are important to note and carry forward?

When did I last revisit my SWOT?  (A key strategic planning tool is the SWOT – if you are not familiar with this, be sure to check out the exercise in description of Section 4 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner)

What is going to provide you with efficiency and effectiveness for Spring?
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Best wishes,
Jennifer

Virtual and remote teams need attention too! Did you know that a 2016 study by Culture Wizard found that only 22% of remote and virtual teams benefit from focused team development time?
When working with virtual and remote teams we want to help them develop on several levels including:

• Results
• Relationships
• Process

Virtual and Remote Teams need to get clear on Results. This entails having everyone be clear on:

• What are our major goals?
• What will success look like?
• How does each one of us feed into successful achievement of this goal?
• What does alignment look like for us?
• What are the number 1 priorities?
• If nothing else gets done, what is essential?
• What feedback loops do we have around this?

I have written quite a bit on Virtual and Remote Team Development over at my sister blog, the Teams365 blog. One series you may want to check out is the A-Z of Virtual and Remote Team Development Series.
On the Relationship front, we want to be sure to:

• Know each other
• Understand what strengths each person brings to the team
• Consider how our strengths can be leverage collectively, as well as what gaps might exist?
• What is building, and distracting, from trust?
• What is each person’s unique working style? Styles impact decision making, conflict, communication, pacing, stress etc.
• How might I need to adjust my style to better support them/connect with them?

 
Process pieces also keep virtual and remote teams moving. These include team practices of meeting regularly, updating each other, sharing information, providing feedback. What are the process pieces which are important for the team right now?
What are the things that are helping you as a team right now, build relationships, focus on results and refine process?
 
Best,
​Jennifer

“Accountability is a statement of personal promise, both to yourself and to the people around you, to deliver specific defined results.” Brian Dive, The Accountable Leader

As you consider your current projects and goals – what does accountability mean? Who is going to do what? When? And How?
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Accountability can take many forms in today’s work space but still comes back to the basics – who is going to do what, when, and  where.

There are many different accountability frameworks and structures. From automatic tracers which give you reminders and prizes for achieving what you have set out for, to peer groups (see last week’s Mastermind post) which hold you accountable for what you said you would do.
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As virtual teams, accountability is important and may include portals and dashboards where people can keep each other updated and “in the loop”.

Accountability is part of a high-performance landscape – organizations and teams which are great at getting results usually have a clear sense of what kind of accountability is going to work best.

Take a look at this article for more on accountability  - 12 Keys to a More Effective Accountability Strategy.

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer