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. 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:
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:
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: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timebound. What is important to note around GOALS right now? Best, Jennifer 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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram
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Week 16 Focus – Project Management 101 Focus Question: What are the projects you are involved in with your business and work right now? Description As small business owners we will often be managing a series of projects. Not all of us are trained in the areas of project management. Quality of a project is determined by a balance of Time, Cost and Scope. If one of these qualities change, there will be an impact on the other two elements. Projects may be as big as a book creation which is scaled over several months or years, or as discrete as writing a newsletter.
Story - Project Management 101 As a former project manager my world was always framed in program starts, mid-points and end of project reviews. Spending time on end-of-project review helps us reduce learning and mistakes in a second iteration. Regardless of how big or small the project is it can be useful to talk stop and pause and see how things are going. Some of the questions at the midpoint could include:
If time changes, the budget or scope needs to change. For example, if you had originally ear-marked 6 months to have a book published, and all of a sudden it needs to be ready in the next 3 months, you will need to explore: Adding more resources – paying for rush service, or bringing other people on board to help OR perhaps you need to make the book shorter, so instead of having it be 20 chapters, publishing it as a 10 chapter book this year, and aiming to publish Part 2 of the book as a follow-up next year. There is a whole slew of project management tools available. Tools to explore include Asana, Trello, or other apps. Activity Consider a project you are working on. What is the time, scope and budget? Break things down into project tasks and activities. What are the major milestones? What needs to be done by when? What do you want to do each month or week of the project? Map it out/create a timeline. Who are the key stakeholders you need to engage with and keep updated? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Every month use Monthly Daily Tracker to capture key learning from projects. Noting data (milestones, completions, meetings) may help with things like Time Estimation, Process mapping or other learning for this project or others. As you complete your Monthly To-Dos each month note any projects, tasks and activities you are working on. There is space in each of the Monthly One-Page Planners to note projects you are starting, continuing and ending. You can also adapt the Content Trackers or monthly trackers to track the different stages of the projects you are engaging with. 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
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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram 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”. 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 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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram The PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner is geared to virtual and remote team members. As I wrote in last week’s post, this month’s focus is going to be in the overlooked area of virtual and remote teams. Spending time more intentionally on on-boarding virtual team members can go a far way. Today’s post reaches back to a post from the Teams365 blog in 2018 – Questions New Virtual Team Members May Have. Here’s what I wrote, “While this list is no means comprehensive, some questions new virtual team members may have, and areas you will want to cover (in an orientation or on-boarding program) are: Team Issues:
The new team members’ role
Relationship between the team leader and new team member:
Who should I reach out to around:
What other issues are important to note? Best, Jennifer 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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram Week 14 Focus – Automation Focus Question: What can you automate in your business? Description There are many tasks in a small business which can be automated. Automation brings the benefits of scaling, supplication maximizing your resources. Think about these items:
Research/Story As much as AI (Artificial Intelligence) is feared, it’s also something which can be leveraged to further level the playing field for small business. Here’s a quick story. Flashback to 2014 and the introduction of offering on-demand video-based programs. Filming, voice over, selecting the graphics could take hours. In 2017, I found Lumen5, a video program which harnesses AI to provide quick creation and rendering of short videos. That platform now enables me to import content I’ve already created (think blog posts and articles) and then have the system convert it to a short video. Total timesaver and a creative tool! Check out the Fall 2018 quarterly planning video here. Check out the Vision video here. (3 minutes) Activity Consider some of the tasks that could be automated in service to your work and business
Connection to the Workbook and Planner Include any automation tasks in your workbook. Consider the systems you might want to automate (Refer to Section 3 - Pages 70 - 75 of Coaching Business Builder, or pages 73 to 80 of PlanDoTrack). 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
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 Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram For many years in my global career I faced multiple complexities which would get in the way of a regular work day. From regular periods of no electricity, to political and natural disasters which pulled work off course. I learned early in my career the value of two things which continue to help me flourish today – #1 – Focus – Focus when you can, even if it is for a short while. Productivity is not always about the long haul, it can also be about the short burst of focused effort. This is especially true in my world where I am regularly juggling roles, hats, responsibilities and clients. As much as I would love to have huge swaths of time to undertake my work, it’s unlikely. Therefore, focused burst of work, coupled with #2, help me (and the business) keep moving! #2 – Be clear on the top 3 – 5 goals for the day, week and month. My world was the world of contingency planning on steroids, so being clear on what top 3 or 4 to-dos were for the day, or the week, or the month, created a powerful anchor to planning, and also feeling satisfied when EVERYTHING on the list did not get done (which was almost every day). What are your top 3-5 goals TODAY? This week? This quarter? Do you review these regularly throughout the week/month/quarter and adjust accordingly? Best, Jennifer 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) Welcome to Spring – What Are Your Quarterly Goals? 10 Questions to Ask in Setting Your Q2 Goals.3/25/2019 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.
What is going to provide you with efficiency and effectiveness for Spring? Best wishes, Jennifer 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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram Week 12 Focus – Systems Focus Question: What are the tasks and activities which need to appear seamless in your work, like the same person is doing it, whether the task is completed in Toronto, Las Vegas, London, Auckland, or Shanghai? Description Systems help us scale a business, reducing the time to do things, ensuring tasks are done consistently, and enabling us to accrue information so we can learn, and pass on to others as our team grows. In growing a virtual or coaching business there are five key areas which can be important to focus on. This is an area we continue exploring at both the Teams365 Leadership Lab (for virtual and remote professionals) the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (an annual group focused on coaching business development). If you are a remote or virtual worker, as the team context becomes more fluid with people becoming part of matrix teams where things may be one differently, systems create clarity and efficiency. They also help to capture key institutional learning as organizations grow, making it easier for people to step into roles that others once held. As a business, systems help us automate and scale, reducing the time to complete tasks that may not require as much effort. Common areas which entrepreneurial businesses or virtual workers may find a focus on are:
Activity Review the systems you have available to you in your business or work. What helps streamline? Ensure consistency? Allow you to scale? What are the areas you want to focus more around? Who can help you build your toolkit in these areas? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Refer to Section 3 in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack for more on systems. 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
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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram Week 11 Focus – Enabler: Habits Focus Question: What are the habits shaping your work? Description Habits are things that we undertake, almost subconsciously, to the point of sometimes not even being aware of them. As repetitive actions, habits are a powerful force, in shaping our work and business. Story At the beginning of each year, I find that conversation starts to flow towards dialogue around habits with my coaching clients. Perhaps this is because it’s time for a new year, or maybe because it’s a clean slate. Here’s what I wrote about habits at the Teams365 blog, “Habits and practices are things we do automatically, sometimes unconsciously, because they have come so ingrained. There are many schools of thought that create a link between habits and success. That habits lead to success.” As the tagline in the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack asserts: Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum Habits play a key role in shaping our regular actions. Habits are things we do automatically, and if we are able to instill regular go-to activities that can help us move forward, it can support automation of tasks and activities. As you consider your current goals and priorities: 1. What will help you be successful this year? 2. What are the consistent behaviors and actions you want to or need to undertake to move you towards your goals? 3. What could amplify, or magnify, those goals? 4. What's missing that could make a difference? 5. What small shifts would make a new ripple? 6. What does consistency mean for you around habits? 7. What could get in the way? 8. What is going to remind you about your commitment to your goals? 9. What do you notice about how your mindset is influencing your habits? 10. What is becoming automatic for you OR what needs to become automatic for you in your successful pursuit towards your goal.” (Source: https://www.potentialsrealized.com/teams-365-blog/teams365-1466-2018-kickstart-day-5-of-8-habits-and-practices-to-move-you-towards-your-goals) Activity Make a list of the top 5-10 habits that shape your work as a business owner, solopreneur or remote worker. What are the things you consistently do, no matter what? As part of the iceberg in Section 1 of the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, you are invited to review pages 25 and 27 to identify your habits in work. Consider how they are helping and how they are hindering you. What are the changes you want to make in service to your goals? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Complete pages 25 and 27 in both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, to identify your habits in work, and how they are helping and how they are hindering you. 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
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. Follow the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series on Instagram 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:
On the Relationship front, we want to be sure to:
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 Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013) |
AuthorJennifer Britton is the blogger behind the popular Teams365 blog, a daily,blog for team leaders and members since 2014. Her latest publication is the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. Pick up a copy at Amazon. Pick Up a CopyUpcoming Programs
Join us for the 21 For 21 Virtual Co-working Sprints - $21 US. Want to access the recordings and bonus worksheets? Join us at the Booster Pack $79 US early bird rate. Sign up at 21for21 Virtual Co-working - STAND OUT VIRTUALLY! Stand Out Virtually - Incubator - Running an online, virtual or digital business and want to get the word out to organizations? Join us for the 8 week Stand Out Virtually Incubator. Next group starts April 2021. Build out your brand, offers and proposals. Virtual Facilitation Essentials (8.5 CCEs)- Expand your toolkit for better remote and virtual conversations. This is a virtual train-the-trainer - 5 weeks: Fall 2021 programming starts in October $495 US Learn more and register. Coaches! Register for the 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator. Join us for 60 Days support and ACTION for coaches wanting to grow their businesses. On-Demand Course. PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training Program (24 CCEs) - Starts again in October. Contact Jennifer to discuss. Month-End/Quarterly Planning Session: Thursday September 30th - 8 -9 am ET Archives
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