​What do you do each month to capture your learning and what you’ve achieved? One of the favorite things I have enjoyed doing since launching the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner last summer was holding virtual month end planning sessions. These are a short paid program, which takes you through a series of reflective prompts and opportunities for capturing your learning over the last few months, and what you are planning for the month ahead.
 
While one hour might seem hard to find in your schedule, the benefit of having a focus for the next month is invaluable. Connect this with capturing learning (what worked well and what didn’t) from earlier months, makes it a very powerful process. 
 
Month end planning sessions are usually held on the last working day of each month from 6-7 am ET. Yes, it’s early, AND have you read the literature on what successful people do before breakfast? I’ve moved into my 2nd year of starting work at 5 am ET. I am not sure how much of the creative projects which fuel me, I would be able to achieve without this time.

If you are not an early bird, the good news is that this month's Month End Planning session will be held on Friday March 29th from 3 - 4 pm Eastern/New York on zoom. Those joining me for this paid one-hour one-off program will benefit from getting a chance to do a Quarterly Review as well. More info and registration at the top of this page.

We are going to be exploring questions related to your achievements, learning and plans for the next month and quarter.

If this is a topic of interest to you, be sure to check out the Facebook Live I did earlier today which is now posted at the PlanDoTrack Facebook Page, as well as this article "Create a Pause for Clients via Quarterly Reviews or Retreats, I wrote for the Coaching Tools. You can read that article here at their site.

Hope that you will join me for the month end planning session later this month! You can sign up here.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

​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?
​
Best wishes,
Jennifer

“Journal what you love, what you hate, what's in your head, what's important. Journaling organizes your thoughts; allows you to see things in a concrete way that otherwise you might not see. Focus on what you think you need to…” – Kay Walkingstick

Did you know that for the last few months I have been sharing weekly journaling prompts over at the Teams365 blog? 
 
Dedicating short amounts of time each week to pause and focus on what’s important to you can become an important practice in terms of reflection and learning.
 
For many years I kept a regular journal, documenting my life and experiences while I lived and worked overseas. It was an important vehicle to capture experiences and memories, identify learning and work through insights.
 
For many of us (myself included) life may seem pretty standard, it can be valuable to building reflective pauses on a regular basis. It can also be useful in business to create regular pause points to note what is working, and what is not.            `
 
Here’s a selection of 9 of my favorite weekly journal prompts –









Grab a pen and your journal and I hope that you'll enjoy capturing some thoughts as we usher in spring later today!
​Best,
Jennifer

​

“Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.” – Francis Bacon
 
Making things more visible is key to productivity for some in today’s digitally distracted world. Our brains can only hold a certain amount of information   - usually said to be 5 + or – 2.
​
Think about how well you remember what you thought about doing yesterday at lunch.

Research is also pointing to the fact that we also remember things differently when we grab a pen and paper and write things down, rather than put it in our device.
 
How much energy have you spent this week trying to keep ideas in your head?
​
Dedicating a small notebook to ideas, plans, and resources can be a great memory jogger, and creates a great capsule to reflect back on periods of your life on. I just came across a very small notebook (think smaller than the size of an index card) that accompanied me over 3 months of travel and work in Central America when I was 21. Just seeing it, unlocked a series of memories I had not thought of for years!

What is the practice you want to get into in terms of writing things down?
​
For those that like high level bullet-form ideas, be sure to check out the Monthly Daily Planner – One Line a Day in the PlanDoTrack and Coaching Business Builder Planners. It only takes one minute to jot some ideas down!

Enjoy your writing!
​Jennifer

​Week 10 Focus – Strengths
Focus Question: What are your innate talents and strengths? How do you use these every day?

Description
Each of us brings our own unique and innate strengths. What are the strengths you bring to the table every day?

Research/Story
For many decades now, Gallup has studied the impact of strengths on work. They have found some very compelling statistics behind why we should focus more on helping people connect with, and leverage, their strengths every day at work. Did you know:

• Gallup has found that when employees get to use their strengths every day they are:
  • 6x more engaged
  • 3x more likely to report having excellent quality of life
  • 8.9% more profitable
• Teams which focus on strengths have 12.5% greater productivity.

Gallup Strengths Center. 

Author Marcus Buckingham undertook research and he writes that “1.5 Million employees on 50, 000 teams were surveyed, and they found that the most important lever to team performance was ‘Do you have an opportunity to use your strengths at work every day?’ (Reference: Go Put Your Strengths to Work)
Those that “strongly agreed” found:

• 38% highly productive
  
• 44% high customer satisfaction scores
• 50% higher employee retention

(Marcus Buckingham, The Business Case for Strengths, 2016)
While we cannot always use our strengths at work every day, over time we may gravitate to jobs which do cultivate our strengths. As we set up businesses or work remote, being able to leverage strengths regularly can be an important motivational factor. When we are able to leverage strengths, we are more apt to move into flow and find greater job satisfaction.

Strengths over-used can become a blindspot. We may over-lean into our strengths in times of pressure, urgency and resource constraints. Notice what happens when your strengths become over-magnified.

Activity
If you have not yet worked with strengths, spend some time identifying what your strengths are.  There are several different strengths assessments you may want to explore including Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0, the Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, as well as Positive Psychology’s VIA Character Survey.
If you have not undertaken one of these assessments to ascertain your top 5 strengths, take a few minutes to do that this week, reflecting on the questions:

• Where are you able to use your strengths regularly?
• How does this support your work and priorities right now?
• Where are you over-utilizing your strengths? What blind spot is that creating?
  

What other strengths are needed in your work? How do you outsource these pieces of work, or bring others onto the team, over time?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
There are several touch points throughout the planners to get you thinking about your strengths, including - Section 4 of both books which explores the Ecosystem as well as:

​ What are your strengths, and how you can leverage them?

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

Trust is critical for any team’s success. As virtual and remote teams, trust may be the lubricant which helps the group move from being a collection of individual contributors, to the “well-oiled” machine of a team.

What can we do to build more trust and connection on our virtual teams?

Here are some things to consider:
Be aware of magnification – Our touchpoints in the virtual space are often fewer and less frequent. We often do not see each other every day, even in passing. With this in mind, our words and actions can become more magnified for good or bad.
What is important to note around what’s getting magnified within your team?

Be clear and intentional with communication – Our word, even more than our actions, can translate further on a virtual team. Given that we aren’t seen “in action” on a regular basis, our words do live on – via email, text.

Follow-through – Given the magnification effect, as well as the spotlights that we only see in limited windows, follow-through around what we say we are going to do, is critical.
​
Be proactive and make things visible- Out of sight does not equal out of mind. What are you doing to proactively reach out to the team? To help them form connections? To surface issues?
Making things visible may include naming issues at play, sharing more of the context you are operating within, or literally making things visible for the team.
In building trust and connection within your virtual or remote team consider:

• What are the touchpoints created for team members to connect and get to know each other?
• What are the issues which need to be surfaced?
• What are the elements which need to be made clearer or more visible?
• What goals and results do we need to make more visible?

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

Week 8 Focus – Enabler: Mindsets and Beliefs 
Focus Question: As you move towards your vision, what are the mindsets and beliefs that will help you?


​Description
Adopting a Growth Mindset
In both workbooks I write a little bit about the Growth Mindset, a term that was brought to life by Carol Dweck. Mindset is below the waterline and shapes our perspectives, behaviors and motivation. What mindsets do you have as you approach your work? What are the things that are going to help you grow, persevere and succeed?
Growth mindset is characterized by:

• Trying
• Ongoing Learning
• Something that is not perfect
• Coming to terms with that it might not be ready – yet!
• Trial and Error

The opposite of growth mindset is fixed mindset. When we approach tasks with a fixed mindset it needs to be:

• Perfect
• Complete
• From an expert perspective

What are the tasks you embrace regularly from a growth mindset perspective? Which do you embrace from a fixed mindset perspective?

Activity
What are the mindsets you are bringing to your work every day? Be specific in thinking about the last week or month. Note where you have been – in fixed, or growth mindset. What’s needed?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Mindset in Iceberg – pages 25 and 26 (CBB and PDT)
Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking here.
Best wishes,
Jennifer
Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking

​Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Author of several books including: PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized  - Specializing in support to virtual and remote teams, leaders and entrepreneurs
Award-winning Coaching Skills Training
Join us for one of our 2019 Annual Coaching Groups - Teams365 Leadership Lab for Virtual Leaders and Team Members or
Coaching Biz Growth Lab - for coaches and other virtual entrepreneurs
(416)996-8326

Stay Connected

Week 7 Focus – Resourcing and Past Experience
Focus Question: What can you do to leverage what you already have done?

Research/Story
What helps coaches be successful with their work? As a professional it’s likely that you have already had many accomplishments. These can be leveraged for future successes.In this week’s focus you are invited to think about what pat successes you have enjoyed and created for yourself.
​
Activity
​Take a few minutes to list the top 10 things you are most proud of accomplishing.
As you identify the experiences, note:

• What were the skills you utilized to make them happen?
• What was the learning created through that experience?
• How can you apply that going forwards?

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking here.
Best wishes,
Jennifer 
Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking

Week 3 Focus: What is your theme?
Focus Question: What’s your theme for this year?

Description
Like the name of a book or TV show or movie, themes provide an overarching focus. A tag line for a year, or a program, helps to cut into the “essence of it”. Like a metaphor, a theme will often capture many layers of ideas in just a few words.
As we wound down the year, I asked all the group members I worked with what their metaphor or theme was for the new year. Metaphors help us move to the bigger picture, 30,000-foot view, or what some coaching models call the Meta-View. In times of change and turbulence, leaning into our metaphors become extremely powerful. Spend some time thinking about what you want your theme or metaphor to be for the year.

Research/Story
There can be many ways of exploring and identifying themes. Many times, I like to go and select a card, or roll the “story cubes” and see what comes up.One of the three annual programs I run is called the Learning Lab and Design Studio, and focuses on support to professionals wanting to create their own learning programs (on-demand, coaching programs, webinars, retreats). Here are the nine icons which were rolled early last year, creating the following story around the LLDS 2018:
The apple – As the first cube selected, I take the apple as a representation of Knowledge – very appropriate for us at the Learning Lab and Design Studio where the lens is about all things learning and creating engaging learning and growth experiences for the groups and teams we work with as coaches, trainers and facilitators.
Magnifying glass – Every month in my annual programs (the Learning Lab and Design Studio (LLDS), the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (CGBL) and the Leadership Lab (Teams365 LL),  a different theme gets put under the magnifying glass. As a facilitator myself, it encourages me to continue my pursuit of learning, keeping abreast of new trends in our field, and exploring topics I can bring in my own work to my clients.
The Flower – As an avid gardener in the warmer months I was pleasantly surprised to see this come up. It got me to researching to see if different flower symbols have different meanings – and in fact they do – here’s a cool list. For this story, I’m taking the flower as a representation of the importance of building up your garden bed and taking time to appreciate the beauty they exist. I think that for many of us doing a lot of work with groups and teams we are moving so fast (like our clients are) that it’s quite rare to have a quick pause to take stock of what we have, and what we can do. The LLDS creates one of these important pauses.
Footprints – The LLDS is also about taking action and leaving your mark. Once a quarter I host a 4-hour virtual retreat afternoon, geared to get you into action around your own work. This year I’ll also be hosting quarterly program hacks so you can do some real-time design work in a compressed time frame.
Lightening Bolt – One of the two calls each month is a facilitation lab. In establishing this program in January 2016, I felt that it was really important to create a place where we as facilitators could try out different tools, and experience them as learners ourselves, before taking them into work with our clients.
Book - There is an abundance of topics we cover throughout the year, and I’ve loved how there are now more than 24 sets of templates, articles, and almost 50 recordings for LLDS members to explore when they have time.
Conversation – One of my favorite symbols (the conversation bubble which is also on the title of my newest book, Effective Virtual Conversations) was next in the storyline. The other element I love at the LLDS is the conversations that ensue. It is a small group conversation experience, and unlike larger group webinars where everything might be chat only, we engage every week in rich conversation.
Fountain – The fountain to me represents the fact that there will always be a myriad of topics left to explore. Our work and professional field is not static. It’s ever changing and evolving. The LLDS provides a regular reminder to keep learning.
Tree – For the last three or four years now I have been returning back to my roots as an environmental scientist in different ways, particularly as I speak and write about ecosystems. My work has always been very multi-disciplinary, and the tree symbolizes how at the LLDS many of our conversations span the different disciplines of coaching, training, learning, education, e-learning, facilitation, social change….
Source: http://groupcoaching.blogspot.com/2018/01/setting-new-year-intentions-at-learning.html 
If you work with a favorite card deck pull it out now and select a number of card randomly. If you have a set of Story Cubes, consider rollilng these to get your theme for the month (or year!).

Share it with us using the hashtag #dscam2019 (Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum)

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Every month you are invited to start your month with a blank page entitled “Monthly Plan for ____”. See page 147 (CBB) or page 151 (PlanDoTrack) for the first one in the series. 
When I run the month-end planning sessions, note that I make sure to ask the question, “What’s your theme?”. Like I have just shared, monthly themes can continue to pull us forward, particularly through the ups and downs experienced over the course of a month.
Include your  monthly theme on your Monthly Plan page.
You’ll also note these theme boxes scattered throughout at the bottom of other pages - Monthly To Dos, trackers and others.
Themes take us back to the bigger picture of business and can “infuse” the activities we undertake.
What theme have you set for your work this month?
 
Download a one-pager to create your own annual analog resource. 

Enjoy!
Jennifer

It’s the last day of 2018 and time to turn the page (metaphorically) to a new chapter. Before we do, try to grab a few minutes today to wrap things up and wind things down.
Here are some of the questions I like to include at the end of the year. I’ve taken them from Teams365 Blog – post # 1091, at the end of 2016.
Here are ten questions to support you in taking a look back at the last year:
1. What's been your biggest success this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?
3. What habits have most supported you this year?
4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?
8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
10. What and how will you celebrate the successes of 2018? With whom?
​
Have a wonderful last year of 2019 and I look forward to stepping through 2019 with you, with regular blog posts and ongoing calls to support you in becoming more focused and intentional in your work.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now Available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner – Pick up a copy today on Amazon
 
Is 2019 your year to move things forward through group learning and accountability? Join me for one of our annual groups -
The Teams365 Leadership Lab (focusing on team leadership, virtual teams)
The Learning Lab and Design Studio (focusing on program design)
or the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (focusing on  business development)