Week 33 Focus – People Management 101 Focus Question: What makes your people exceptional? Description People are at the heart of any great business, or team. People management is a critical element for success. If you are a first-time team developer there’s lots to learn. It is often said that the move to first time supervisor or manager of people is the largest step you’ll ever undertake during your career. In PlanDoTrack, I explore core skills needed by both team leaders and team members. Given the autonomous nature of virtual and remote work, it can be beneficial and valuable to build these skills across an entire team – not just with the leader. As a leader of people, there are a variety of different conversations you will engage in. Here are several of them:
Activity Consider your skill base right now. What is one skill area you could become more effective in to boost your impact as a people leader? Connection to the Workbook and Planner Complete the Wheel of Virtual and Remote Work in PlanDoTrack and review the skills listed in Section 1 of PlanDoTrack. What do you notice? Where can you improve? 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
0 Comments
Week 32 Focus – One Percent Rule to Business Development Focus Question: What are the consistent daily steps you want to undertake? Description Since 2005 I have been sharing what I call the One Percent Rule to Business Development. I've heard from a lot of entrepreneurs that they like this notion of incremental business action. So here it is! The 1% rule to business development consists of a series of 8 different stages: 1. Create the Vision: Our vision sets the broad swath of possibility. It gets us thinking about what is possible. It also helps to anchor us when we think about where we want to go and what we want to do. Making our vision detailed and keeping it visible can be important. How are you enshrining your vision? 2. Prepare. During the preparation phase we want to get clear on what the requirements are for our work and projects. We want to know what a successful result looks like. We want to be clear on what resourcing is needed. During the preparation phase we will gather all the information we have so we can pull together a plan. 3. Create an action plan. In my work as a coach, I usually get my clients to create a One-Page Action Plan. The value of the One-Page Plan is that it contains all of the most important information in one page. The One-Pager be placed in a visual location so that you can refer to it quickly AND regularly. What’s on your action plan? 4. Seek out support. What is going to help you achieve the key goals you have set out for yourself? Support can take many forms – financial, technical, people. What do you need to be successful? 5. Take ongoing small steps. As my father, a retired entrepreneur himself, always reminds me that “Rome was not built in a day”. The premise behind the workbook planners is about taking REGULAR, CONSISTENT action. In building a business by ourselves burnout may be a possibility if we move too fast. It can be important to take regular small steps to create the momentum needed for things done quickly. 6. Test, Learn, Retest. In the sixth step were going to test things out. Today's volatility and complexity requires that we experiment regularly. With the data we receive from the initial test or action we can learn and apply then retest and learn again. This is an iterative process which continues. Throughout the business cycle we may move through different bouts of experimentation. Each cycle creates an opportunity for learning and growth. 7. Learn, Iterate and Act. Each action creates a reaction, which over time creates its own momentum, making it easier to achieve the goal. Along the way learning and feedback will help to shape what we do. 8. Ultimately our goal is achieved. Based on our experience we will further refine the vision that we set out for ourselves, expanding it or modifying it based on our experience. This will further support and shape our actions are we move forward with the next cycle and process. This cycle may take place in a short amount of time, for example a day or it may be phased over the longer term of a project. Activity Using your business or a current project, work through the One Percent Rule. What can action and learning look like around one of your most important goals? Map out the 8 steps of the One Percent Rule. Connection to the Workbook and Planner Refer to the One Percent Rule to Business in Section 1 on page 29 of the Coaching Business Builder, or page 31 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 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 31 Focus – Marketing Review Focus Question: What needs a tweak with your 5 P’s? Description Last week we started to take stock of where you are around dialogue and marketing of your work. Whether you are internal, or external, we are regularly marketing ourselves. Internally we may be focused on personal branding and/or creating and positioning a business case for our work. Externally, we want to offer the best item of value to our customers or clients. When we explore the topic of marketing and program/product design, we often talk about the Marketing Mix or the 5 P’s– Product, Placement, Promotion, People, and Price. Knowing our 5 P’s and reviewing it regularly ensures that we are on target with what our customers or stakeholders want. This week, as review, note what’s worked, and what hasn’t recently in the five different areas of the 5 P’s. Activity Use associated worksheet to note what’s worked and what hasn’t around the 5 P’s around your product or service offering. Undertake a review of your metrics. This could include numbers of subscribers, engagement, posts, views, follows, comments etc. What do you notice? What’s working around your marketing right now? Consider the business which has come in, over last six months. What sources led to it? What is in the pipeline? What has shaped this? Do an audit on your content. Consider:
Connection to the Workbook and Planner Part of doing a marketing review is reviewing metrics and trends. Take a look back at your notes. What do you notice? You may want to:
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 27 Focus – Communities on Social Media – Facebook, Mighty Networks, LinkedIn etc.… Focus Question: What are the communities you want to build on social media? Description In early 2018 Facebook announced it was going to place an emphasis on communities in their social media ecosystem. In addition to having a profile on the varying social networks, building community intentionally on social media has multiple benefits including cultivating connection with like-minded people, sharing resources with people who have a common interest, and also adding value to a community who can refer. What are the communities you want to build on social media? There are several different platforms you might want to consider including:
Activity Consider what community you might want to spearhead in social media.
What content would you populate your new community on social media with? Consider material you have created, go-to resources from others, and polls to find out what people want. Consider dedicating each day to a different theme: Throwback Thursday, Motivation Monday… Connection to the Workbook and Planner Use the Content Daily Trackers, and Content Brainstorm to identify key content you are sharing or plan to share. 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 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:
Six Questions
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) 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:
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 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:
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:
In coaching we usually encourage questions to be:
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 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 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 Welcome to Q2! What are your top 3-5 priorities this quarter? Where do you have them enshrined or written down? Have you completed your Quarterly Planning Pages? (found on pages 139-148 of PlanDoTrack) As we step into a new month, it is time for a new focus. On Mondays here at the PlanDoTrack blog I will be shifting my focus for the next two months to more of a focus on virtual teams. Whether you are an entrepreneur working with an extended team, or a corporate employee leading a remote team, you’ll find these next 2 months of posts useful. This month also marks the start of our 15th Year Celebrations. It is hard to believe but it was 15 years ago that I founded Potentials Realized. I returned back to Canada on April 1st, 2004, after having spent most of the 90s and early 2000s working across Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe. An eye infection “gone bad” led to permanent vision impairment in one of my eyes, a significant factor in bringing me “back home to Canada”. While it’s easy to say now that everything turned out well, one of the reasons I’ve shaped such a virtual business has been in part to circumvent my limitations, as much as possible! I am thankful that technology has made the team support even easier today than it was 15 years ago, turning this into a very viable business model. I hope that you will join us throughout the next 12 months for monthly celebrations. I’ll be sharing different case studies of the work accomplished, and each month will have a different spotlight. You can download the 15th anniversary calendar here. And stay tuned at the PlanDoTrack Facebook page for announcements! Now onward to our April Focus….. The focus in April will be around virtual teams and on-boarding new members. In the virtual space, investing time in welcoming and on-boarding new team members is a very important function. This month I’ll be sharing a variety of posts to support virtual teams with the on-boarding process. It’s likely that you may not have a formalized process, or there may be one that is more geared to in-person work. I’ll be referring back to a number of Teams365 posts I have offered in the past, so if you have not yet found that resource, be sure to check out this sibling blog geared for leaders, team members and others over at my main site – Potentials Realized. 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 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 |
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
January 2021
Categories
All
|