Join me on Twitter for the 100 Days of Biz Success Questions

Tomorrow, September 1st, I'll be starting a Twitter exercise of my own which I hope that you will join me for. For the next 100 days I'll be posting a Biz Success Question of the Day - 100 questions in total. You can follow me @jennbritton.

Many of you know that I've offered the 90 Day Biz Success program for the last few years. It's a program designed to support business owners in their own business growth. We meet over a 3 month period as a small group and 1-1 to look at core business areas (systems, marketing, social marketing) and take forward action on your business. We cover topics such as:
- Developing (or refining) your business vision and values
- Identifying and movning through limiting business beliefs
- Developing core business sytems (bugeting)
- Identifying your competitive advantage (what your strengths are and what makes you stand out)
- Creating your marketing strategy for the next 12 months
- Leveraging social media and networking for your benefit

The next 90 Day BizSuccess program will start on Friday September 10th (11-12 noon Eastern), with registration currently open. There's space for 8 business owners to join me. Will you be one of them?

I hope that you will enjoy the 100 day Biz Success Questions whether you are a leader of a team, a professional or a business owner. Log on to http://www.twitter.com/jennbritton to follow me this fall!

Looking forward to your comments!

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Author of Effective Group Coaching
Phone: (416) 996-8326
Email: info(at)potentialsrealized.com

Mentoring and Leadership Development

Many readers will know my affinity to boosting leadership development programs with additional mentoring and/or coaching support. One of the mentoring training programs I developed has won an industry award in the financial services sector. Over the past two years a number of my client's programs have benefited from stuctured mentoring components. As we look out on the landscape, it's interesting to note how many leadership and succession intiatives are now being supported by a formal mentoring process.

You can read some of my earlier posts on mentoring here.

There was a terrific article recently published on the Reliable Plant blogs by Debbie Zmorenski entitled "Developing Your Leadership Skills Through Mentoring" . In the article she defines mentoring as as makes the distinction between coaching and mentoring.

In particular she identifies the following 7 tips for maximizing your mentoring experience:

"If you are considering seeking out a mentor, here are seven tips for maximizing your mentoring experience:
Know your goals.
Choose the best mentor to meet your goals.
Begin your mentoring relationship by discussing mutual goals and expectations.
Practice the highest standards of professionalism.
Learn to accept and give feedback.
Practice good communication.
Recognize that your success is your responsibility."

Definitely check out Debbie's article for many more useful tips on how to avoid the pitfalls of mentoring!

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Author of Effective Group Coaching
Potentials Realized
Phone: (416) 996-8326 (TEAM)

Work Life Issues Back In Focus?

It's been quite a while since work-life issues have been on the front page of the news, but this week, a recent Canadian study - the Canadian Index of Wellbeing - pointed to new research which finds that 25% of Canadian workers are working around the clock. As an article in this week's Globe and Mail states "We're more stressed, less rested and have less time to devote to our kids"

More Canadians are working non-traditional hours - weekends, evenings and nights - and many Canadian families are running from extra-curricular activity to extra-curricular cutting into traditional " family time" and leisure time. National parks in Canada are facing their lowest attendance rates in 15 years.

Some of you may be familiar with the work I've done in the area of work life over the years, stemming from my own 80-100 out of balance work weeks as a former manager. I blogged for several years regularly on tips, tools and ideas for work life issues at the Your Balanced Life blog. I continue to run the Your Balanced Life! Virtual Retreat and Group Coaching program, as well as delivering customized programs for organizations. Later this summer, I will be releasing a resource guide/workbook for managers and leaders entitled Leaders in Balance(TM) with fellow coach Lynda Monk.

Are work-life issues showing up on your radar screen these days?
What's your biggest work-life challenge at the moment?
How are you planning to unplug this summer?
What renewal strategies are you using in your work, or with your team?

Have a recharging weekend!

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010)
Phone: (416) 996-8326
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

6 Key Ingredients for Mentoring Success

Solid Mentoring Relationships do not just sprout up overnight. In fact, several ingredients can contribute to making a mentoring relationship GREAT.

6 Key Ingredients for Mentoring Success include:

1. Think about what you want out of the mentoring relationship - Both mentors and mentees can gain from doing some pre-work and thinking about what they want out of the mentoring relationship. It's often thought that the mentee gains the most, but in fact, mentors also benefit.

2. Establish clear boundaries - How frequently are you going to meet? When? Where? How can you be contacted and When? It's amazing how some of the snags that mentoring relationships meet are caused by lack of clarity around boundaries.

3. Focus on building your relationship: Spend time in your first meeting talking about how you are going to work together, and what your expectations are for the relationship.

4. Follow through. Follow through works both ways - as a protege what have you committed to following up on? As a mentor, what do you need to follow up on?

5. Create a Mentoring Roadmap. Having an agenda, or a roadmap, of where you want your conversations to go, will help maximize the time you have together. In your first converstaion it may be beneficial to identify several themes/topics the mentee wants to have insights around.

6. Check In Along the Way - At the end of every mentoring conversation discuss what was useful, what next steps are, and any changes you want to make for the next conversation.

Having worked to support hundreds of mentoring partnerships across industries over the years, I have found that ensuring these six ingredients are present typically make the mentoring relationship that much stronger and more effective and beneficial for all parties involved.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Phone: (416)996-TEAM

5 Tips for Managing The E-Undation

Did you know that many professionals spend up to 40% of their day managing email? How much time to do you spend on email every day? Does the time you spend, match the payoffs you receive.

Email is an essential part of business today, but the question has become who is running the show - you or email?

If you have found that your inbox has run amok, here are 5 tips to support you in getting it under control:

1. Check email at regular points throughout the day. Many organizing experts suggest checking it two or three times a day only, and turning it off in between so you are not tempted to see who just emailed you.

2. Communicate to others when you will be checking. If people are expecting a response right away and don't know that you are only checking at selected points of the day, it may cause even more problems.

3. Unsubscribe from lists you really don't need, or read.

4. Colour code/flag emails of different priorities so you know which ones are urgent (red), of medium importance (yellow), or low priority. This visual map can help you quickly identify what is really important to respond to.

5. If you don't need it DELETE it! If you really don't need an email, delete it. Microsoft has some great tips on helping you decide what you may want to do with your email box. Known as the 4 Ds, do you want to do it, delete it, delegate kt or dump it? (Note: the 4D tool is a great tool for time management as well).

Question:
What's the one thing you are going to do today to tame your email box?

Have a terrific week!

Warm regards,
Jenn

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

5 Benefits to Mentoring

Mentoring continues to be a popular informal learning approach to enhance internal learning, knowledge and skills transfer, across industries.

Earlier this year I spoke about how Mentoring is an Essential Component to any Talent Management Strategy to the HRPA Annual Conference. The next week I was in Senegal, West Africa, working with an incredibly talented group of professionals in delivering a Coaching and Mentoring Skills Train the Trainer program. Last month, I was involved in running the third year of training for mentors (and this year for the first time, proteges) for a financial services organization.

So why mentoring? What is mentoring re-gaining popularity?


Here are five benefits to mentoring:

1. Helps to Build institutional or industry knowledge - Mentoring is an essential strategy to building organizational knowledge, as well as industry capability. A critical type of informal learning, mentoring can help to share the unwritten knowledge that exists.

2. Mentors Share real How-tos - From how to navigate amongst the realities of an organization to the practicalities and the politics, mentors can help less experienced employees understand how an organization operates, and how to navigate.

3. Enable more junior staff to hear about organizational/industry realities from someone who is not their boss or their peer. Mentors often share insights about what the real opportunities and roadblocks are in an industry or organization.

4. Provide a place for more junior staff to ask questions they might not otherwise surface. Sometimes employees are hesitant to take their questions to their manager for fear of performance reprisal or other factors. Being more removed, mentors are often seen as a more unbiased source.

5. Mentors can act as a sounding board. Given a mentor's greater level of experience, the mentoring relationship can be a place where a mentee uses the mentor as a sounding board.

Whether a mentee brings 1 year experience or 2 decades, we can all benefit from a mentoring relationship with someone in our organization or industry. Who would you like to have as a mentor?

Have a great week!
Warm regards,
Jennifer

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

Time to Virtualize Your Global Training?

Some of you may know that global travel was a huge part of my former life as a manager and early business owner. The recent air travel chaos caused by the Volcanic eruption in Iceland, has had me thinking on a number of different levels regarding the impact - to communities, as well as to learning.

My first thoughts took me back to my work asa project manager for several development projects in the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The volcano has been active in Montserrat since the mid-1990s and I know first hand how destructive volcanic ash can be for everything - humans, animals, agriculture and even buildings. In recent days there has been a lot of focus on the impact on travel because of the volcano, but how about the impact to the geography and communities affected in Iceland?

My second thought was what about the thousands of professionals stranded on either side of the Atlantic. Many of us, myself included, still take forgranted the ability to cross the ocean swiftly and be able to attend to business, or lead training the next day. A few months ago as I passed through Paris on my way to Senegal, I had fleeting thoughts about what if we are delayed? What will happen to our training?

The volcano is another indication of how quickly events can take over business as usual, and how it is an opportunity to look proactively at how we can more effectively bring together global professionals for training.

Virtual Training - by phone and web - is becoming an increasingly popular modality, and even the standard in many global organizations. It may never replace the impact of face to face environments, but used effectively can enable ongoing learning and dialogue amongst dispersed groups. Virtual training has been a keen interest area of mine since 2005 when the arrival of my son pushed me to virtualize most of my training programs. Over the last 5 years, I've seen more and more organizations embrace virtual training, as well as more and more facilitators learn to adapt their skills for the virtual environment. One of the chapters in my book, Effective Group Coaching, addresses the issue of virtual program delivery for facilitators, tips and ideas, as well as a check list to help you identify whether you are ready to lead training programs virtually. If you are a facilitator, I'll also invite you to check out my Group Coaching blog at http://groupcoaching.blogspot.com which has lots of other tips and tricks for facilitators.

On Wednesday last week I met again with the team in West Africa - this time luckily by web. If not, I might have been one of the thousands stranded in Paris for the weekend. Yes, there could be worse places to be stranded, but it sure was nice to spend the weekend with my family.

Have a great start to the week!

Warmly
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416.996.TEAM (8326)
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

We're in the top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs

I found out a few days ago that we've been honored to be included in the listing of the Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs pulled together by Jurgen Appelo. We've joined the ranks of Steven Covey, Tim Ferris and many other great writers, leaders and speakers. You can see the complete list here

The blogs were scored according to their Google Page Rank, Bing hit count, Alexa Ranking, Technorati Authority, Twitter Grader, PostRank and FeedBurner count.

I am looking forward to getting back to more regular posts here at the BizToolkit in the coming months. The first 4 months of 2010 have been wonderfully full with great work with clients here in Canada, the US, and West Africa, as well as a lot of speaking on my new book published in January by Wiley and Sons - Effective Group Coaching - which continues to be snapped off the shelves by coaches, educators and HR consultants around the world. Thanks for your support!

I look forward to being in touch in coming weeks.

In closing, what are your favorite management and leadership blogs? As always, feel free to share your thoughts below

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Group Coaching Essentials
Phone: 416.996.TEAM (8326)
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com
Follow me: twitter.com/jennbritton

What's Happening with Creativity in Your Team or Organization?

What's happening to creativity in your team or workplace these days? Is it increasing, or decreasing?

There was a terrific article last week in the Globe and Mail entitled Workplace Creativity Shrivels on the Vine by Jennifer Myers

The article includes 3 quick questions to stimulate creativity, creativity by the numbers and a look at what CEOs are doing to bolster creativity.

Click on over - I think that you'll like it!

Warmly
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Email info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

What Skills are Employers Looking For?

I am just back to the office after a week spent in Senegal, West Africa, delivering a 5 day Coaching and Mentoring Training of Trainers for UNICEF. It was a wonderful experience! More on this later.

World at Work published "Employers Rank Communication Skills First Among Job Candidate Skills/Qualities" last week about what employers are looking for in terms of skills in the workplace.

Based on the NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) 2010 Outlook, the top 5 skills employers are looking for are:

1. communication skills
2. analytical skills
3. teamwork skills
4. technical skills
5. strong work ethic.

How is your skills training in these areas? What are you noticing about new applicants and their level of competency in these areas?

What would you rank as the top 5 skill areas needed in today's economy?

Have a great week,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP

Potentials Realized

Author of Effective Group Coaching

Manager Shortage Ahead?

I read about some interesting research put out by Randstad (2009 World of Work Report) in an article in this month's HR Professional magazine. Chair of the HRPA Board of Directors, Antoinette Blunt writes:

"The report, draw from a survey of 2199 employees and 833 managers in the US, found that only 49% of employees aspire to be managers, and, specifically, only 42% of generation Y employees (aged 18-29), 47% of generation X (aged 30-44), and 50% of baby boomers (aged 45-63)."

Pretty interesting findings from Randstad. Blunt continues that the research also found that "sharing knowlegde with others, being responsible for the success of an organization, and able to influence decisions in an organization" are motivators for employees

What are you noticing about the enthusiasm of succession into management in your organization? Does this reflect what you see? Is stepping into management positions motivating in your culture? What are the implications, if any?

Have a terrific week! For those who may be attending HRPA's Conference this week I look forward to connecting with you. I will be presenting on Thursday afternoon on Mentoring: An Essential Ingredient for Any Talent Management Program, followed by a 4:30 booksigning of my new book Effective Group Coaching at the Conference bookstore.

See you there!

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Group Coaching Essentials
Potentials Realized

How to Find the Right Mentor

The New York Times ran a great article over the holiday season regarding some practical tips about what mentoring is and to finding the right mentor. You can view the article "Finding the Right Mentor Can Bolster A Career" here.

As we are seeing on both sides of the border, mentoring is increasingly being turned to by individuals and organizations alike, as a cost-effective and impactful way to build capacity, networks and knowledge.

If you are in the Toronto area later this month I hope that you will join me at the HRPA 2010 Conference as I speak on Mentoring: An Essential Ingredient for Any Talent Management Strategy. I will be presenting on Thursday January 28th at 3 pm, follewed by my book signing on Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) at 4:30 pm. My presentation will include practical tips for designing and implementing your own mentoring strategy and program internally.

I know that many of my corporate clients across industries and sectors have added, or are considering adding, mentoring into their learning, succession planning or leadership development approaches and programs.

What role can mentoring play in boosting your organizational capacity this year?

Have a terrific week!

Warm regards,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP
GroupCoachingEssentials and Potentials Realized
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

What's your meeting style?

I'm sure that many readers here at the blog participate in virtual meetings. Prehaps maybe even too many! As a facilitator, I am always interested in seeing "who" participates in meetings, and what their style is.

There's a terrific article on The Top Ten Meeting Personalities which Jackie Yearney over at FastCompany.com has posted. Take a look. She's cut to the core archetyping some of the key personalities that show up on virtual meetings.

Which meeting personality matches yours?

Have a terrific week!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton

Potentials Realized

Infusing Coaching Skills into Managers

Coaching skills are critical for managing in today's ever changing landscape. Equipping managers with enhanced coaching skills is an important piece of building internal capacity, strength and resilence within organizations.

Dan Kennedy over at the Great Leadership blog wrote the following article on Infusing Coaching Skills into Managers. He proposes four solid tactics to start equipping your management team with enhanced coaching skills.

I appreciate Dan's comments, especially as I am working right now with a number of corporate clients on enhancing coaching skills and/or developing internal mentoring programs. Several months in to many of these medium term iniatives we are starting to really see tracking and a changing landscape of business relationships with is having an impact on the bottom line.

How are you building coaching skills with your management team?

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP
Potentials Realized
Phone: (416)996-TEAM (8326)

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

How to Develop a Leadership Development Strategy

Dan McCarthy, over at Great Leadership, wrote a fantastic post last month on How to Develop a Leadership Development Strategy. He goes through 7 key steps/stages which are essential in developing a leadership development strategy.

Regardless of economic situations, leadership development is still seen as a critical investment for many leading organizations. Staff and teams may be getting leaner, and in these times GREAT leadership is imperative.

I really enjoyed Dan's post given that I have been very involved in developing several leadership development strategies with partner organizations in the year. A number of them are now rolling out in pilot and secondary phase, and it is amazing to see how seeds planted are starting to sprout within these teams.

Dan's really got a handle on the importance of a holistic, structured approach, one that is grounded in competencies.

What do you see as essential ingredients for GREAT Leadership development?

Warmly
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP, CPT
Potentials Realized
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960
Email: info{at}potentialsrealized.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

How adept is your workforce to change?

A recent survey from Right Management found that"employees of nearly one-third of North American companies — 31 percent — adapt poorly to changes at work, hurting their productivity", as reported by Carrie Mason-Draffen of Newsday.com. The survey also found that only about 1 in 4 employees had the "agility to change". Read the whole article here.

How adept is your workforce to change?
What support are you providing to employees?
What vehicles are you using to support changes (training/coaching etc)?
What areas are you providing support in change management for?

A number of readers have emailed me regarding the silence here at the BizToolkit blog -- thanks for asking how things are going. It's been a very busy 2009 -- providing support to teams and inidividuals throughout the change process through team coaching, workshops and offsite retreats. It's also been a busy spring working on establishing and building a number of mentoring and leadership development programs with clients. On top of it, I am also working on the completion of a book which will be published in early 2010 by Pfeiffer Wiley.Needless to say, as much as I would like to be keeping up with regular posts...my creative juices have been somewhat overstretched. I do hope to be able to return to regular posts in the next few weeks when a number of these projects are onstream and/or completed.

With all the changes that are happening these days a huge competency for teams and professionals is around resilence. This is a topic that's been quite popular with clients. Consider the following questions:
What is your own professional resilience these days?
Which employees and teams are the most resilient in your organization?
What support do you need to shore up your resilence?
What action steps can you take to boost your resilence this quarter?

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments...please feel free to comment below.

Warm regards,
Jennifer

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

BizTip: Creating Boundaries

What are the boundaries you have established with your business? Many business owners only realize their boundaries once they have been encroached on.


The ability to be your own boss and have greater flexibility and self-direction are characteristics which often lead people into self-employment.



Take a few moments and ask yourself:

• What are your current boundaries for you and your business?
• How are you respecting these?
• How are your boundaries being encroached on?
• If boundaries are being encroached on, what's acceptable?
• What needs to change?

Some boundaries that you might want to consider are:

* The times of day that you work (i.e. you don't work before a certain time, or after a certain time)

* The times of day that you meet with clients

* The amount of money you are willing to invest in ....

* The amount of time you are willing to invest in .....

*The number of interruptions you are willing to have

* The amount of time you are willing to give things



After you have looked at these questions, select one that you want to focus taking some action on. What specific change will you commit to? Start developing a habit around this new area through ongoing action.



Jenn



Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
BizSuccess Group Coaching

Virtual Team Leadership: Resource

As many of you know, Virtual Teams and Leadership are two ongoing themes for this blog, stemming out of my earlier work as a leader with virtual teams globally through my work in the international development sector. I continue to be amazed at how virtual team leadership skills, along with project management and global/cross-cultural management skills continue to be some of the most important skills for this decade, and unfortunately, skills that many organizations are really needing to improve.

There was a great article this month in CLO Magazine which addresses this increasingly important area of virtual team leadership:

Virtual Leadership for a Virtual Workforce by Jerry Fjermestad as featured in CLO Magainze, March 2009.

Jerry mentions that

"Leaders are responsible for the vision, planning, engaging the team, coaching, training, team learning, networking and promoting, among other skills".

He also mentions that

"The results are that virtual teams are at least as effective as face-to-face teams, and according to Powell, Piccoli and Ives, under some conditions, they are even more effective. Leader development leading to high-performance teams leads to successful organizations in this new virtual environment".

• How are you developing your leaders for the virtual realm? What's working? What's not?


• What are the challenges you are experiencing as you move forward with leadership development for these leaders?


• What else, beyond strong leadership, is needed to enable virtual teams to florish and really perform optimally?

Have a great week,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CHRP

Potentials Realized

Email: info{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

Ph: (416) 996-TEAM (8326)