Resource for Team Leaders : Teams365 Blog

This year I have embarked on a new blogging adventure - the Teams365 blog. The blog is geared for

team leaders and team members. Every day during 2014 I will be posting a question, quotation or other resource to stimulate thinking and action for teams and team leaders to do their best.

You can follow along daily at our Potentials Realized Facebook page, or follow the Teams365 blog at our Potentials Realized site.

Here are some of the most popular recent posts:

Team Leader Behaviors that Build Trust (a five minute audio). Click to listen in here.

Posts around teams and strengths: Read them here.

10 Essential Teamwork Skills - Read them here.

I will continue to post several times at month at this blog, and  if you are interested to join us for the daily Teams 365 blog posts during 2014.

Enjoy!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Leadership and Team Development, Coaching, Retreats
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Email us to find out how we can support you and your team in getting your best results through coaching, training or a retreat program
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

Leadership A-Z - P is for Priorities

Today’s leadership a-z journey brings us to the letter P for priorities. Prioritization is a critical skill set for

Strategic Issues Map - photo Britton

leaders in today’s business context of ongoing change, and doing more with less.

Priority comes from the Latin root of “ prioritas”,“prior” or former. It can be defined as “ a thing that is regarded as more important than another.”

Throughout each business day we are prioritizing on individual and collective/team levels. In today’s post, I wanted to share with you four prioritization tools you may find useful in your own work and also in  working with others.

Tool #1 - The Urgent/Important Matrix. 

Made famous by Steven Covey and his work, the Urgent/Important Matrix gets us to think about what is really important and urgent in our work. Where are we spending our time? Are we focusing on things that are in the crisis zone of urgent and important, or are we able to be proactive and spend a bulk of our time in the not-urgent and important area of planning, building business relationships. Many professionals may find themselves getting bogged down with the urgent and not important tasks - things like meetings that are not relevant, email, reporting. And of course, the final part of the matrix is the land of the “time suckers” spending time in the not- urgent and not important tasks. Some of the topics in the “time sucker” category include excessive time on social media etc. 

Activity: Think back to where you have spent your time over the last week. What quadrant are you spending the bulk of your time in? What’s the impact of this?

Resource: Steven Covey - Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Prioritization Tool # 2 - Prioritization Matrix

As I was looking around the web for some different prioritization tools I came across a great one from Workshopbank.com and Nick Martin called the Prioritization Matrix. Here is a link to the site.

Using post it notes, it gets teams to identify all of the priorities they have, then rate them regarding their impact and do-ability. From there each task gets plotted on a large piece of paper which everyone can see. 

What I like about reading this activity is the fact that it also is very visual, and stimulates dialogue amongst the team members themselves. An important part of the prioritization process for teams is about sharing information, and also busting assumptions that might be held. This seems to have the potential to be a great structure for facilitating that conversation.

Prioritization Tool # 3 - 80/20 Rule

The Pareto principle, most commonly known as the 80/20 rule is also another useful framework to have in mind when you are considering prioritization. The 80/20 rule asserts that we get 80% of our results from 20% of our activities. 

Teams can benefit from undertaking some analysis of where they are getting the bulk of their impact (whether it is sales, key relationships, customer service etc). Getting clear on these will help us to prioritize them in the larger scheme of things.

Tool #4 - Strategic Issues Mapping

One of my favorite strategic prioritization tools I bring in with some of the work I do with teams and organizations is Strategic Issues Mapping. This too is an exercise to stimulate identification of issues, conversation and sharing across a team. 

Strategic issues mapping (see photo) can be done on multiple levels. You can start by putting the issue in the center of the circle, and having each team member brainstorm and write down all the issues/topics/challenges they can think of related to that topic. Depending on the topic, you may want to label the surrounding circles according to short term, medium term and long term issues OR it may make more sense to label the issues according to impact - local, national, international. One at a time, have people place their post its in the relevant area. From this you may have dozens of issues. 

Depending on time you can work through all issues, working circle by circle. As one of the starting points of these more focused explorations of each circle, I hand out colored dots to each participant and get them to dot the top 2, 3 or more from their own perspective. This provides the team with a snapshot of where the collective sees the priorities, which can then feed into more dialogue,planning, and action.

These are only four prioritization tools out of a myriad of possibilities. What prioritization tools and methods have you used and would recommend to others? As always, please feel free to comment below.

With best wishes,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC

Potentials Realized  - Leadership and Team Development | Coaching |  Retreats

Supporting teams and organizations through enhanced conversation and skills, more focused results to do their best work.

(416)996-TEAM (8326)

Ideas for Your Year End Retreat Processes - Leadership a-z is I

Year end team building or retreat programs can be a great idea, but often are not as leveraged as they

SWOT Planning - Photo Britton

could be. If you are planning a year end retreat, here are some things to consider:

1. What's the purpose? What's the purpose of the program? To start building connection amongst team members, to undertake some strategic planing or goal setting for the next year? To build skills in areas such as conflict resolution? To get to understand each other better? These areas are not exclusive to each other, however, you will want to be clear in your engagement of a facilitator what's the focus and what emphasis do you want to place?

2. What's the follow-up? Many great ideas are left at the retreat site. Build into your 2014 programming time to revisit and follow-up on your retreat learning, actions and commitments. When do you want to schedule a follow-up to continue the conversation?

3. What venue will be conducive to your event? Event venues can range from boardrooms, to specific retreat sites. What location will be conducive to your team? What is the environment you want to create? How easy will it be for participants to get to and from the venue? What transportation and other office arrangements need to be made so everyone can "leave" the office for the day?

4. What type of activities do you want to include? The range of activities offered in today's retreat programs can vary from ropes-courses to strategic planning. How active do your staff expect to be? What are the three or four main areas you'd like to include in a day long program? Looking back at the purpose of the program, where would you like to place the main emphasis?


For more tips and ideas for your retreat programming, you may want to read an article I wrote years ago entitled "Six Essential Design Principles for Your Corporate Retreat" here.

Wishing you a successful retreat process!

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author of Effective Group Coaching and From One to Many: Best Practices of Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Phone: (416)996-TEAM
Read more about our retreat and leadership programming

As an author Jennifer Britton is known for her thought leadership in the area of group and team coaching. She is also a former leader and team builder who spent the first 13 years of her career working within the United Nations as well as the international aid sector. From Boardroom to jungle, beach and forest to mountains, Jennifer has worked to develop teams and leaders in more than 18 countries, and virtually many more. She founded Potentials Realized in 2004 and focuses on leadership, teamwork and coaching skills training

Leadership A-Z: F is Frameworks for High Performing Teams - NaBloPoMo

A large part of my work with organizations of all sizes (non-profit, SMEs, governmental agencies and
corporate) revolves around creating the conditions for more effective team work, usually through a mix of coaching, training and other performance improvement support.  Whether I am working with a team in a one day team building offsite, or having sustained conversations over the period of months, I like to share the following definitions. First, what is a team?

 In the Wisdom of Teams, Kazenbach and Smith offer us this definition " “... a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common
purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (p 45).

A framework I usually share, and get leaders and team members to rate themselves, are the six factors of High Performing Teams. Katzenbach and Smith found that High Performing Teams have:

1. Shared purpose or mission
2. Shared performance goals
3. Shared behavioral norms
4. Shared team practices
5. Shared Commitment
6. Clear Roles

Coaching Questions:
1. On a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being low, and 10 being high) where do you rate yourselves in each one of these six areas?
2. Which ones are your strengths? What can you do to leverage these?
3. Which ones are your weak areas?
4. What are some specific action steps you can take to address areas which you have a lower score. If roles are not clear, what could you do to clarify them? If performance goals are not clear, what needs to be done?
5. Who needs to be involved in these dialogues?
6. When do they need to happen?

Interested in finding out about what your team can do to address these? Please contact me or refer to the chapters on team coaching in my latest book - From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

Have a great week,
Jennifer


Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized
Phone: (416)996-TEAM
Supporting leaders and teams through enhanced skills, better conversations and focused performance
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)


As an author Jennifer Britton is known for her thought leadership in the area of group and team coaching. She is also a former leader and team builder who spent the first 13 years of her career working within the United Nations as well as the international aid sector. From Boardroom to jungle, beach and forest to mountains, Jennifer has worked to develop teams and leaders in more than 18 countries, and virtually many more. She founded Potentials Realized in 2004 and focuses on leadership, teamwork and coaching skills training.

Did you find this post useful and want to share it? Please do so by linking and attribution. Thank you! 

Exploring Your Team Strengths

Significant research has been done by the Gallup organization and others on strengths, and strengths-based leadership. 

Did you know that:

•         People who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job.
•         Teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity.
•        Teams that receive strengths feedback have 8.9% greater profitability.

(Source: Gallup Strengths Center,  https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/)

How aware are you or your team members about their strengths? Are you able to use these every day? 

Here are some possible ways for you to explore and start using your strengths:

1. Undertake a strengths assessment. Two strengths assessments I usually recommend and work with my team clients with are the StrengthsFinder 2.0 as well as VIA Strengths. Each strengths assessment takes about 30 minutes to complete and are available online.  Reports of varying length are generated when individuals complete each assessments. 

2. Spend time as a team looking at strengths.  Completing the assessment is not  a”be all and end all”. What is interesting and important is what emerges in conversation about our strengths. Whether you as a team dedicate part of a team meeting to discussing strengths or you set up a separate meeting (virtual or in person) about strengths, key is exploring:

- What strengths exist on the team?

- How are they being used?

- How are strengths not being used?

- What gaps exist? What patterns do you notice?

From my experience teams really benefit when they have the opportunity to move through a structured conversation, using an external facilitator to the team.  These conversations can take place in person, or virtually for those teams that are geographically dispersed. When I work with teams on this process, I recommend we spend at minimum 2 hours exploring the strengths and developing an action plan, optimally half a day, or part of a series of conversations.

3.  Sustain the focus - As part of your own team process, check in regularly and discuss  how strengths are being used in the team, and what gaps may be present, particularly if team members are changing. What strengths are required for different tasks facing the team? Who might find it easiest/most rewarding to take that project on? 

Resources I would recommend those interested in exploring strengths are:

VIA Strengths Survey

StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Tom Rath

Strengths Based Leadership - Tom Rath, Barrie Conchie

Go Put Your Strengths to Work - Marcus Buckingham

Check out my other posts on strengths here at the blog.

What are your next steps to exploring, and using, your strengths?

Best regards

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton

Potentials Realized

Leadership | Teamwork | Retreats

Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)

Phone: (416)996-TEAM (8326)

Questions for Leaders and their Teams

Some of the work I've been enjoying lately has been with teams - some at full day offsites, some as we connect virtually, and one where I get to meet with them face to face every few weeks. This year on our Potentials Realized Facebook page, I am posting weekly questions for leaders and their teams. These are questions you may wish to incorporate into your team meetings, or even circulate by email.

We know that high-performing teams have a clear vision, clear roles and shared commitment. Extraordinary teams aren't just born, they emerge out of conversation and work together.

I hope that you will continue to follow the weekly team and leader tips throughout the year at the Potentials Realized Facebook page. Here are the first eight questions from the first two months of the year:

1. What are your most important goals this year? What do you need to get there?
2. Which habits are working for your team right now? Which ones aren't?
3. What strengths exist on your team? How are they being leverage? How are your strengths being overused and perhaps creating a blindspot? 
4. What has been working in this so far this year? What do you want to be doing more of? Less of?
5.  What are the critical skills for your team right now?
6.  What is the conversation you NEED to have this week? What will be the benefit of having this conversation?
7. Where has the team been focusing so far this year? What's been working well with this focus? What changes may need to be made?
8. Where is the team getting the most traction and results right now?

Teams will continue to be a major focus of my work this year. As some of you already know, my next book will be focusing on team coaching. The new book - From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching, will be released in mid-June and is already available for pre-order at Amazon.

Best regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC

Leadership | TeamWork | Retreats | Coaching
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Email: jennifer {at}potentialsrealized {dot}com
(416)996-TEAM (8326)

New Article - Six Essential Skills for Teamwork

2013 has started off with a strong focus on teamwork for many of the organizations I partner with. I have a new article available online entitled Six Essential Skills for Teamwork which I hope that you will find useful. You can read it over at EzineArticles.com here.

Whether I am working with a team during a retreat, training program or coaching session we will usually explore many of these six essential skills I mention in the article:

1. Communication
2. Adaptability
3. Appreciation of Differences
4. Trust and Respect
5. Emotional Intelligence
6. Commitment, Accountability and Follow-through

 These are not the only teamwork skills required to make teams exceptional, however, they are an important part of the foundation and fabric of successful teams. How does your team stack up in terms of these skill areas? Which ones are you strong with? Which ones could use a bit of development? What might that look like - retreat, training, coaching, other?


Each week this year I will be posing a question for teams and leaders at our new Potentials Realized Facebook page. I hope that you will join me there to continue the conversation.


Have a great week!

Jennifer
Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Potentials Realized - Leadership, Teamwork, Retreats
Phone: (416)996-TEAM (8326)

Year End Team Questions

The end of every year is often a blur with holiday parties, lunches, and running to get projects wound up. Are you and your team building in some time to reflect on your successes, and learning, this year? Even 10 minutes spent in dialogue looking at key milestones can be important in supporting the team to create awareness around your achievements.

Some of the questions you may want to bring into a staff meeting before the end the year are:

1. What have been our biggest achievements this year?
2. What has been our biggest learning this year?
3. What strengths/bench strength are we developing as a team?
4. What is our team known for (or getting known for - in our organization, across teams, with our customers or stakeholders)?
5. What is the one outstanding project/task if left undone this year, could derail us?
6. Our most important focus for 2013 is going to be _________
7. I'm going to commit to bring the following to the team/to work: ____________________
8. I am looking forward to __________________ during 2013.


Realistically you may not have time to discuss all of these as a team. They can be useful in incorporating into one-on-one conversations you have as well.

What are you and your team doing this year end to pause, reflect and celebrate?

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Potentials Realized - Retreats, Leadership and Teamwork
info{at}potentialsrealized{dot} com
(416)996-8326

Some of the other related posts you may wish to look at are :
Corporate Retreats - 4 Things to Consider
Teams on Thursday - Teams in the Downturn
10 Signs it's time for a Team Tune Up
Mapping Your Team's Strengths

Styles and Teamwork

It's very common for  a multitude of styles to exist within any team. Some people are more detail oriented, others love the big picture, some like to be "hands on" (doers) while others may be more cerebral (thinkers).

What are the different styles that exist within your team?
How do different styles create conflict?
How do the different styles allow your team to do exceptional work?

Some of the work I do with teams is to provide them with further detail about their styles and strengths. "Knowledge is power" and may provide new insights about team members' preferences, what they value and how they may prefer to work.

Perhaps you are looking to do some work in this area. Depending on your budget, amount of time, team size and focus, you may wish to explore these assessments:
 - DiSc
- Personal Styles Inventory
- Myers-Briggs
- StrengthsFinder (more of a focus on strengths than styles. Can be very useful for teams)

The key to introducing any of these to your team is to use it in expanding the awareness of the group. It's not just to say " I'm an ENFP"  or "I'm a Sensor, and hence I am an x....". Assessments can be useful in reinforcing, or enhancing our awareness around our preferences in how we work, and where our natural abilities/affinities may lay. Sharing this information within the team context can help facilitate a deeper understanding about the overall team strengths, gaps, blindspots, areas of opportunity and potential threat (i.e. all team members are strong in big-picture orientation but not in detail).

How might a conversation about styles and strengths benefit your team?

Have a great week!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley 2010)
Potentials Realized - Team Services | Retreats | Leadership Development
Phone: (416) 996-8326 (TEAM)

Corporate Retreats - Four Things to Consider

Corporate Retreats can be a great opportunity for teams and entire organizations to get away and FOCUS on things that are important. Unfortunately, retreats are not always as productive or fruitful as they can be. In planning for an upcoming corporate retreat, here are four things to consider:

1. What is the purpose of this retreat? Is it for strategic planning? Team building? Unplugging and focusing on what's really important in our business? Skill building? Time taken to get clear on the purpose of the retreat process is invaluable in ensuring the FOCUS is right. Once you have selected a facilitator to work with your team/organization, ensure that the purpose is clearly articulated.
Consider: What is the purpose of our retreat?

2. What approaches will work best for us? Choosing a facilitator that can bring a style and approach that matches your needs is critical. Are you looking for a planner? A team builder? Someone who can work at the strategic level? Do you have someone internally who can support this work, or do you need to look externally?
Consider: What is it that we are looking for in terms of the retreat approach?

3. What do we want as outcomes and takeaways? Consider what tangible takeaways will be best. Is it the core of a strategic plan? Annual workplans? Resource lists? New skill development? Each team/organization will have different needs. Keep these outcomes and takeaways front and center as you move through a retreat process.
Consider: What do we want as outcomes and takeaways from the retreat process?

4. How will we sustain the process? For many years I ran retreats internally for organizations I worked with. A key challenge was always around how we sustained the process. Great ideas were often left at the retreat site. For the past eight years as I have worked as an external facilitator of retreats, I have encouraged my partner organizations to consider how do we sustain the process, and keep the conversation going? It may involved dedicated staff meetings for follow up, several conference calls to keep the conversation flowing, or even a couple of shorter off or on-site "tune-ups" throughout the year.
Consider: How will we sustain the process? What will work best with our organization?

Have a wonderful week!

Jennifer
Jennifer Britton
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Potentials Realized - Coaching, Training and Consulting Services
Corporate Retreats - Read about some of the retreats we have developed with partner organizations, and download a retreat planning checklist
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com
Phone: (416)996-8326

Mapping Your Team's Strengths

Professionals, and teams, flourish when they are able to use their strengths. Did you know that...

"When an organization's leadership fails to focus on an individual's strengths, the odds of an employee being engaged are a dismal 1 in 11 (9%). But when an organization's leadership focus on the strengths of its employees, the odds soar to almost 3 in 4 (73%). When leaders focus on an invest in their employee's strengths, the odds of each person being engaged goes up eightfold" - http://strengths.gallup.com

What are the strengths of your team members? How aware are they of these strengths? How are you creating environments for people to use their strengths?

A few weeks ago I worked with a wonderful organization who chose to invest time and focus on their team strengths, through focus and investment in an off-site retreat process. The day focused on really getting to know who was on the team, where the strengths lay, and what the gaps were. That, coupled with some skill development, can take a team a long, long way.

Great resources in this area are:
StrengthsFinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
Strengths-Based Leadership
Go, Put Your Strengths to Work - Marcus Buckingham

Consider the following:
What are you doing to invest in strengths? To help others identify their strengths?
Where do your team strengths lay?
What's missing? A gap? What's the impact of this?
What can you be doing differently to leverage the team strengths?

If you'd like to learn more about how coaching and/or retreats incorporating the strengths based approach would benefit your team or organization, please feel free to contact me. I would be happy to share some case studies of how this has benefited other organizations and professionals.

In closing, what can you do today to more fully utilize YOUR STRENGTHS?

Warm regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Phone: 416.996.8326
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

Team Players - Who Are They? What Skills Do They Need?

"Teamplayer: One who unites others toward a shared destiny through sharing information and ideas, empowering others and developing trust."
- Dennis Kinlaw

Ask yourself:
What are you doing to foster a team player mindset?
Who are your team players? What skills to they bring? What value does it add to your team?
What information and ideas are being shared readily? What is being held back?
How is the team "feeling" empowered?
What is the state of trust within the team? What needs to be shored up?

Overall, what's the one focus area that will move your team forward this week?

Have a great week!

Warm regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC
Potentials Realized
Team Coaching Services

High Performing Teams: What Will Move You?

A few weeks ago I spoke to HR Professionals in Halifax regarding High Performing Teams. I often get asked what's the difference between a team and a high performing team?

Here are some of the characteristics which Kazenbach and Smith identified the following as differentiators:
1. A Deeper sense of purpose
2. More ambitious performance goals
3. More "complete" approaches to work (better work approaches)
4. Mutual Accountability - the recognition and importance of all being jointly accountable to team goals, in addition to their own responsibilities
5. Complimentary, and often interchangeable, skills

As you look at this list, consider what it would take to move your team towards high performance:

1. How many of these characteristics does your team exhibit?
2. In which area would your team's growth really make an impact?
3. What would it take to develop in this one area?

As we move into late spring and summer, it is always a popular time for Team Retreats/Offsites, Workshops, Group Coaching as well as Team Coaching Engagements. If you are interested in learning more about our services in these areas, please feel free to contact me directly or visit our Team Services page. A few dates for June and July are available for bookings and we are starting to develop fall programs with clients.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) - Also avaialble at Amazon, Wiley & Chapters
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com
Phone: 416.996.TEAM (416.996.8326)

Leadership - Harnessing the Diverse Styles of Your Team

A great leader is in touch with the different needs and preferences of the group they lead. What are the unique styles that exist within your team?

I often undertake work with teams to explore the styles that exist, how these styles are complimentary and where they are not. We also look at how styles impact communication, leadership, conflict, teamwork, for better or worse.

What do you know about the unique working styles of your team? How are they contributing to your team success? How are they creating blindspots?

Some wonderful style tools you may wish to bring into your team work/building/conversations are the DiSc or even the PSI tool.

"Do you want a collection of brilliant minds or a brilliant collection of minds?" - R. Meredith Belbin

Have a great week!

Warm regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Phone: 416.996.TEAM (8326)

Great Book - The Orange Revolution

I've been enjoying a great book which any team leader can benefit from. The Orange Revolution - How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization, is a must read for teams across any industry.

I really liked this book for its' practicality, as well as the research included of 350,000 participants by the Best Companies Group.

The book covers practical suggestions for leaders and team members in creating "breakthrough" teams.

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton have done a terrific job in creating a book that also provides practical approaches to building highly motivated, breakthrough teams.

You can pick up a copy at Amazon, and you may also want to check out the resources available at their site at http://www.organgerev.com/resources.

Have a great week
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)

Common Team Challenges

In a couple of weeks I'm speaking at this year's HRPA Conference, co-leading a session entitled "Tips, Traps and Frameworks for Creating High Performing Teams". As a coach and consultant who works with teams who want to get better, I am often asked What are some of the key challenges a team can face in their life-cycle?

In today's post I am tackling three very common team challenges faced in almost every industry:

New Leadership - In this era of change, teams encounter new leadership, sometimes more frequently than they would wish. New leaders bring the possibility of new opportunities and certainly a new history for the team. It may take 90 days for a new person to feel comfortable in their role, AND it may take a team even longer to feel comfortable with a new leader.

Ask yourself:
What are your plans to really get to know your team? Discuss expectations?
How is leadership having an impact on your team?
As a new leader what is important to recognize and acknowledge within this team? What changes do you want to make?

Matrix Management - A majority of my career existed against the backdrop of matrix management often across global boundaries. As a Program Manager and Director, it was very common for my own team to have several supervisors. How do you create a sense of team identify when operating in a matrixed environment? It is possible, and requires strong relationship building and communication skills. This team challenge is a definitely a topic for several posts. I hope that you will check out what I have said about matrix teams under our tags.

Ask yourself:
What communication channels need to be opened in your matrix environment?
What information needs to be shared?
What roles need to be clarified?

Silos - Silos are a common challenge in so many workforces today. Even as organizational change is designed to "bring down the silos" many times, new ones emerge or old ones become even more entrenched.

Ask yourself:
What is your organization doing to foster communication between different parts of the organization?
How is your team impacted by silos?

If you are attending HRPA's conference this year, I look forward to meeting you!

Warm regards
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized Team Services
Team Coaching, Workshops, Retreats
Phone: 416.996.TEAM (8326)
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)

Team Buidling Series Feature from Investment Executive

I wanted to let you know of a series on team building articles I was featured on this week. Fiona Collie of Investment Executive's Build Your Business column just put out a great three part series on team building. Click on the links to read her articles on:

Turning Your Staff Into A Team
Improving Your Team Communication
Making Better Decisions As a Team

Enjoy the tips, and as always I look forward to your comments and how YOU are putting the tips into action! Feel free to comment below.

Warmly
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)

Team Building Critical for Smaller, More Virtual, Teams

There was a great article last week by Marcia Heroux Pounds entitled, "Go team! Need for collaboration greater when there are fewer employees". Click here to read the entire article.

Whether it's conflict resolution, getting to know one another better, or learning to leverage new roles, this fall's focus really seems to have moved to the team environment. I must admit that the requests we've been getting for team retreats, team coaching, and team assessments has increased quite significantly this fall. I hope that you will enjoy reading through the Team on Thursday column from the last year and a bit.

How have the recent economic and workplace events shifted your organization's value on team work?

What's the most burning issue facing your team - virtual, or intact - right now?

How would an investment into your teamwork transform business issues you are facing right now?

Questions about what support might benefit your teams right now? Please give me a call or drop me an email.

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Phone: (416) 996-TEAM (8326)
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

Team Productivty and Conflict

What happens to your team productivity when there is conflict?

There is a wonderful article recently published by the Vancouver Sun "Productivity affected by conflict management" which highlights research looking at the impact of conflict on team productivity.The article states,

"Researchers Kristen Behfar at the University of California, Randall Peterson at the London Business School, Elizabeth Mannix and William Trochim at Cornell University, say there are three types of teams that get bogged down in conflict and suffer as a result.

In their recent study in The Journal of Applied Psychology, they observed that rule-bound teams, equality-focused teams and unresolved teams paid dearly when conflict was not handled well. They noted that productivity declined as did team morale."

Conflict is inevitable for teams. What conflict is showing up in your teams? What is the impact of it? What approaches are supporting the team(s) to successfully navigate the conflict?

Have a great week,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP

Potentials Realized

Teams on Thursday: Teams in Transition

With change becoming the new constant in today’s workforce, more than ever teams are now in transition – sometimes with new leadership, sometimes with new team members, often with both.

How do you create an environment for the team to go from 0-100 (or at least 60) with limited budgets, resources and time?

I am in the process of writing an article on essentials for teams in transition in which I explore six essential ingredients:
1. Creating a Common Vision and Goals
2. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities
3. Looking at Common Values
4. Identifying Trust and Respect
5. Looking at Individual and Team Strengths and Capabilities
6. Developing Effective Communication Strategies

How does your team rate on these? How much attention are you giving these factors?

Without a firm foundation teams cannot meet, or sustain, their optimal productivity.
What other ingredients do you see as essential for teams in transition?

Have a great week!

Warmly
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP, CPT
Potentials Realized
Ph: (416)996-TEAM (8326)
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com