Week 25 Focus – Building Connection & Community While Strengthening Your Personal Brand on Social Media
Focus Question: What does building connection and community mean for you? Why is this important?

Description
Connection and community are yearned for by many operating in the virtual and small business space. What are the ways you want to build stronger connection with others, and create more community? This week’s focus is on using social media as an avenue to build more connection and community.

As a virtual business it’s likely that many of your days are spent operating solo, bouncing in and out of virtual calls with people who might be hours, and time zones, away from you. Isolation is often seen as a downside to virtual work. Virtual and remote professionals may be more proactive in exploring various avenues for creating community and connection.

In building community consider these questions:

• Who is important to connect with?
• What topics or focus areas do I want to be in regular dialogue around?
• What can I contribute to others?
• Needs I have in order to do my work most effectively are…. I might be able to find them ____________.

In building connection within the virtual space, it may be a mix of:

• Push versus Pull: Here’s what I have to offer (PUSH) VS. Tell me what you need (PULL)
• Social Media vs. In-person Environments: Social media often gets a bad wrap for the time involved, yet it may be the communication flow for many virtual professionals. Different platforms can serve different purposes and historically have attracted different audiences. For example, consider LinkedIn’s focus on professional issues vs. Instagram’s visual story telling. We’ll be exploring tips for leveraging these two platforms in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
• Building time for meaningful connection: On a regular basis, consider having an offline conversation with people you are meeting. This might involve having a virtual coffee for 15 minutes or connecting around a shared interest to swap resource tips.
• Social media community involvement: What’s the purpose of joining different groups? What can you contribute? What time do you want to offer?

Six Questions

1. How much time do you want to dedicate to social media?
2. Which platforms do you want to be present on? (Consider your strengths, passions, clients etc)
3. What’s the message you want to share?
4. What do you want to track?
5. What does value add and engagement look like?
6. What is important to keep in mind?

Activity
Review or create your strategy around social media. What’s the purpose? What are you doing to do, WHEN?

What can you do to magnify your message? Consider how you can magnify and repurpose. What can you share different spins on the same item across platforms? For example, if you have written an article on something, could you pull out a couple of quotes to make it a tweet, or serve as a quote graphic?  Could that same article become the seeds of a presentation?
Review visibility tips.
Consider what your strengths are and what your key message is.

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
The Monthly and Daily Trackers in the planner section of the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack can be used to track how much time you are spending on promotion, the different channels, as well as what impact you are getting.
Use the Content Planner to make a plan you can execute on.
Check out the Don’t Just Do it Once! Tool in the content section so you can think about magnifying your message.

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

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week!
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)

Week 24 Focus – 9 Different Promotional Vehicles
Focus Question: How do you want to get the word out?

Description
Whether we are representing our organization, building our personal brand, or marketing a product or service, becoming savvier with different promotional vehicles can be of importance when building a business case, communicating it or marketing a product or service. Section 3 of both the Coaching Business Builder and Plan Do Track explores 9 different promotional vehicles.
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Now that you have your message, what are the key ways you want to get your message out? Let’s explore the 9 Promotional Vehicles a little more in-depth.

Research/Story 

Activity
Identify 2-4 different strategies to help you “get the word out” this quarter. Complete the following chart:

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Section 3 explores the different marketing approaches more in depth. Review these and the associated questions to gain further insight.

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

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week!
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)

Week 23 Focus – What’s your message?
Focus Question: What are you doing to create a message that is clear, crisp and consistent? What is important to consider?

Description
We have spent the last few weeks exploring different marketing approaches which will have been of interest to virtual professionals and entrepreneurs. For those that are leaders and professionals internal to an organization, a reminder that positioning your message internally, and building a business case, draws on many of the marketing principles we have been talking about.

This week’s focus on “What’s your message?” is important to all virtual professionals and business owners. Being clear with your message, and its delivery is key to business success.

Across the span of a week we are constantly communicating. From formal presentations to meetings with your boss, to connecting with peers, communication happens formally and informally throughout the day.

This week’s focus is what’s your message? We’ll explore it in the light of making a presentation.

It’s often said that you have 7 seconds to make a good first impression. What’s going to capture the attention of others with your message?

Consider the following:

• Distilling your message down to 3 bullet points. Take a look at this week’s quote.
• Starting your presentation/communication with a factoid, photo or graphic to capture their attention.
• Asking a question to get people thinking about how the topic relates to them.

What’s going to make the impression you want? In today’s business context, being heard and being understood is critical.

Activity
Think about an upcoming presentation or message you need to deliver. It could the announcement of a new program or offering. Work through these questions:
What’s your core message? What is it that you really want to say? Distill it down to 3 bullet points. What’s your intent? What do you want others to do as a result of the presentation?
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Key to creating memorable messages is that it is:

• Memorable – What will make this stand out? Is there a story or image you can share?
• Clear – Review your message. What’s unclear?
• Understood – what are the terms or issues people are looking for? What are people listening for?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Using the content planners and brainstorming space found towards the back of the planner can support you with your messaging. Also consider referring to some of the tips in Section 3 (Marketing and Promotion Essentials) as well.

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

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Check out the Weekly Planning Hack Facebook Live each Wednesday or Thursday here. Be sure to like our page to be updated each week!
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013)

Questions form the backbone to any great coaching conversation. What is the state of questions being asked in your team?

While asking informational questions can be of great value, in the virtual team context, we may be in multiple conversations where we are using questions to:

• Help people clarify what they know themselves
• Create shared experiences and new shared knowledge
• Support people in coming up with a solution for their context

When we operate in the virtual and remote context it usually means that we aren’t having to advise, but rather coach. This can necessitate a different set of questions or a different way to ask questions rather than a Yes/No approach.

In creating more powerful questions for the virtual space we want to focus on a few things:

1. Make sure our questions are clear- Shorter is usually better. Are you asking one question at a time or more than one?
2. Consider when it’s more appropriate to ask an open-ended question rather than a question that will lead to a yes/no
3. Ensure that we are using language and terms that are more resonant to the person we are speaking with. The diversity on virtual teams can span language, technical skills, professional background, and geography to name a few. What is going to be understood best?

In coaching we usually encourage questions to be:

• Short and concise
• One at a time
• Starting with WHAT, rather than WHY (which may put people on the defense if trust levels are not high)
• Noting when HOW questions may put people into problem solving or how to, early
• Focused on both expanding awareness around issues AND supporting action

Take a look at this short video I created on 20 powerful coaching questions. You may find it useful to incorporate into your own work as well.
 
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

 (Last week I focused on the first of three coaching skills which can be important to equip all virtual and remote team members with. While these are often considered “coaching skills for leaders” in the virtual and remote environment, building this capacity in our virtual team can enhance productivity, peer support and results.
Last week I explored GOALS. This week let us look at listening.
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Communication occurs in many channels in the virtual space – from conversations by phone, to texts, to email and IM (Instant Messaging).

Each one has its advantages and disadvantages.

Research shows that a significant portion of our understanding comes from tone, which is lost when we lean into digital channels of communication – text, email and IM. This can lead to a lot of misunderstandings, misinterpretations and lack of clarity.

Our listening can be heavily influenced by a number of factors:

• Distractions (what we have on our plate, not reading things fully)
• Our relationship with the sender (what do we know about their context, their intent, their focus and priorities)
• Our understanding of the topic
• Thinking about what we want to say, rather than listening for what is really being said

When we are able to meet for voice conversations, we may hear the tone, if we are listening for it. Adding on visual cues – like streaming for a meeting instead of just using the phone – can add additional layers on to the conversation. Being able to share our screen and work together real-time can also help us understand the full context.

What are the things that are helping and hindering your virtual conversations?
Are distractions getting in the way? How are you using all the tools you have available?  What are you doing to increase your understanding of other’s context and priorities?

There are many more tools and ideas available for virtual teams in these various resources from me:

• Part 3 of my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, focuses on virtual team development, meetings and communication. 
• Check out the posts related to Coaching Skills and Virtual and Remote Teams over at the Teams365 blog.

Let me know how I can support your virtual team development. From virtual retreat facilitation, to offering virtual team coaching services, we specialize in virtual team support.  

Best wishes,
​Jennifer