Focus Question: What is the state of boundaries in your work right now?

Description
Boundaries are a critical part of remote work. They are important for productivity as well as well-being.
​
Consider the multiple layers of boundaries which can be important including:

•       Boundaries around hours of work
•       Boundaries between work and life
•       Boundaries between project roles
•       Boundaries between hat you wear – parent and other
•       Boundaries between the virtual world and in-person

What are the boundaries which are important for you to take note of?

What happens when boundaries aren’t clear?

Which boundaries need some shoring up?

​Boundaries often get clear when we explore priorities and values. What are your core priorities for the next three months and how can these help you get more discerning around what you are going to say YES to, and NO to?

Activity 
Take note of the boundaries which exist in your work right now. What needs to be clarified or strengthened? What’s the cost of too many lax boundaries?

For more on this topic check out:
PlanDoTrack sections on Delegation.
Teams365 blog posts on Boundaries including:
Teams365 #2087 – Remote Working Myth – Boundaries aren’t important. Find this at here.

Best,
Jennifer

Focus Question: What’s important to note about your work right now?
​
Description
Every quarter, I’ll be including a pause point to undertake a quarterly checkpoint. In addition to weekly and monthly planning, it can be valuable to spend time doing some quarterly planning. Looking across your goals and achievements over a three-month period, can provide a different perspective.

Activity
Earmark 30 – 60 minutes to undertake your Q3 checkpoint for the last 3 months. If you prefer to do this in the company of others, consider joining me for a quarterly planning session.

Grab a pen and your planner or journal. You may wish to set a timer, giving yourself 3-5 minutes to reflect on and capture your thoughts around each of these questions.
Note the following:

• What have you accomplished?
• What are the things which are still needing to get done?
• What has been your key learning over time?

 
Over the last three months ask yourself:

• What are the patterns you are noticing?
• What has shifted?
• What has stayed the same?
• What are you surprized about?
• What are you doing to leverage your strengths?
• What strengths are becoming overmagnified?
• What habits are helping you? What habits do you want to put more attention around?

 
Note your programming and/or services deliver. Ask yourself:

• Where have you been spending your time?
• What have you done to prioritize? What’s working and what’s not?
• How much volume of work have you been completing?

 
For more on this topic check out:
PlanDoTrack – Quarterly Planning Section
Remote Pathways New Guide – Quarterly Checkpoint (Day 30)

Enjoy your reflections!
​Jennifer

Focus Question: What are the skills which are really going to move you ahead as a remote professional?

Description
“The research shows that for jobs of all kinds, emotional intelligence is twice as important an ingredient of outstanding performance as ability and technical skill combined. The higher you go in the organization, the more important these qualities are for success. When it comes to leadership, they are almost everything.”
 - Daniel Goleman

In the virtual space, helping team members become more proficient in developing and utilizing Emotional Intelligence skills, not only helps with getting things done, but it helps people in self-management (managing triggers, and enablers), and in building effective working relationships.

Under the umbrella of EI we can have more than a dozen skill sets – from optimism, to change catalyst, to empathy, and adaptability. It is a four-quadrant model – and emotionally intelligent people are strong in a number of skill areas.
Since the 1990s EI training has been offered to leaders. This is a skill set required by all team members. It is usually provided as a four-part model focusing on self- management, self-awareness, relationship management and relationship awareness.

Why is this important
“Emotional Intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It defines how and what we learn; it allows us to set priorities; it determines the majority of our daily actions. Research suggests it is responsible for as much as 80% of the “success” in our lives.” - J. Freedman.

Activity
Spend some time learning more about Emotional intelligence. You may wish to do one of many EI assessments available in the books listed in this week’s reading list or reach out to us to learn more about the Agile EQ Everything DiSC assessment we offer. Email us at jennifer@potentialsrealized.com. 

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Focus Question: What is important to communicate in your next presentation? How do you want to capture people’s attention?

Description
As a remote professional it’s likely that you'll be giving presentations to a wide variety of audiences, in possibly both the in person and virtual realms.

Fear of public speaking is usually listed as a Top 10 fear of adults. So how can we prepare to give a WOW presentation?

As a starting point, take 5 minutes to brainstorm. Make a list of everything you could possibly talk about. What are the topics that your clients or customers would really appreciate?

As someone who's been involved in presentation skills training for almost 2 decades, here are a couple of key things to keep in mind:

1. Speak in bullet points – reinforce what the main points are at the start, middle and end. What would you like people to take away from the presentation?
2. Connect people early on to what’s important about the topic for them. We often call this the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?)

​One of the biggest pitfalls you can experience as a presenter is that no one wants to participate. Tips to get participation happening:

• Be clear with process let people know what process will unfold. Describe what they can expect to take away from the session (3 bullet points). Return to this throughout your session.
• Connect them with their WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? Connect people early in your presentation to how this topic has relevance to them. You might do this by asking the question – What’s important about this topic to you right now? OR Who has a story that they can share? Consider how you will connect people early on.
• Have a variety of strategies to engage people on a regular basis. From the litmus test of incorporating a pace change 7-10 minutes, to a more frequent pace change virtually, we want to keep things moving and involve the audience. Virtually, this can range from breakouts to annotation to polls. Get people involved in the presentation. Bring in their stories and voice.

Activity
Consider an upcoming presentation:

1. What is important to note about the process? What is the purpose? What is the presentation all about? What do you hope people will take away?
2. What will you do to connect people to their WIIFM?
3. What are the strategies you will use to connect people to their WIIFM? When?

 
For more on this topic check out
Section 3 of PlanDoTrack, specifically pages 81 and 82.

All the best, 
​Jennifer

Focus Question: What do you want to focus on today?

Description
There are many competing priorities in a business. What are the things you want to focus on today? This week?

As solopreneurs, it’s unlikely that our To-Do list will ever be complete. We can overwork ourselves to the point of burn out.

As virtual and remote professionals the issue of prioritization takes on immense significance given that we are likely to be part of multiple teams, working across different time zones, with each team and leader having different priorities. Having to work more autonomously, and independently, we also can benefit from prioritizing what’s important from the “bigger picture” of what’s on our desk at any given moment of time.
​
In Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I share four different prioritization tools which will help you identify what is going to give you more focus:
1. The Strategic Issues Mapping
2. The SWOT
3. Covey’s Urgent/Important Matrix
4. Urgency/Importance Matrix

Activity
It can be useful to adjust our lists and tasks laying them out in different ways get different perspectives. Here are several ways to slice up your current list:
Make a list of the most important tasks you have on your plate right now. Assign them a weighting in terms of a 1-10.
Then look at the original list again and distribute them according to whether it’s something you can DO, DELEGATE, DEFER or DUMP. Now renumber them again. Assign those that can be deferred to a new list or schedule them in. Dump items need to get dumped. Delegate those onwards that you can. What do you notice now?
 
If you are doing some longer-term planning, refer to the SWOT and/or Strategic Issues Mapping which you’ll find in PlanDoTrack If you are feeling overwhelmed, stuck or working on immediate priorities consider using the other prioritization tools.
 
For more on this topic check out
Pages 118 to 125 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner. These sections cover the topics of Time Management and Personal Productivity for the Virutal and Remote Professional.

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

Focus Question: What does renewal mean for you?

Description
The fields of sports and business shows us that teams that excel, are great at both “playing hard” and also resting hard. When working remotely, our boundaries between work and life often get blurred.

Just as physical renewal is essential after a long race, periods of renewal are key in business to help us remain at our prime. What does renewal mean for you? When is the last time you took time to renew?

Decision fatigue, social media burnout, task switching and cognitive overload, take a toll on us as professionals. When things become unbalanced it can also become luggage we bring into our family life.

As solopreneurs, keeping ourselves “at our prime” is key as the business relies on you. Without you there, it’s unlikely that it can keep going for long. Therefore, renewal should take a priority.

Here are some different ways to consider renewal:

• Taking vacation time on a regular basis
• Scheduling time away from our work (i.e. conferences, meetings with colleagues)
• Enjoying a compressed 4-day work week at different parts of the year so you can enjoy a longer weekend
• Having clear boundaries around “when you are ON” and “when you are OFF”
• Swimming/running/hiking/going to the gym over lunchtime on a regular basis
• Going on a retreat

 
What will help you renew?

Activity
 
What are the things that are going to help you renew? Build some time in to do this.
 
For more on this topic consider tracking your routines and renewal via the Daily Monthly Trackers.

All the best,
Jennifer

Focus Question: What are the tasks which you need to let go of and have others complete?

Description
Following up on last week’s focus on delegation, what do you need to say no to?
Saying no is just as powerful as saying yes.

Focus Question: What are the tasks which you need to let go of and have others complete?

Description
There’s usually never enough time to get things done in our work. One area which most professionals struggle with is delegation. This is particularly challenging when working in the remote space as we need to be even more specific and strategic in what we can delegate, to whom and what it can look like.

Delegation is successful when we are clear about the task that needs to be completed, when we ensure that the person doing has the resources and authority to get it done, and that we also follow up regularly with the task.

Throughout the last three decades of my career, in teams large and small, intact, and remote, I’ve found delegation to be a growth edge for everyone – leaders and team members alike.
​
In the spirit of keeping things simple, I have had people reflect on the 5Ws and an H of delegation as they think about:

• WHAT they want to delegate?
• WHO has the skills to do it?
• WHEN can they do it? What are key milestones towards project completion? When will you get things done?
• WHERE can the person being delegated to go for information and resources?
• WHY? What’s important about this task? What does the person need to know about WHY the task needs to be completed on time, with accuracy etc. Provide context around this.
• HOW can they do it? What are some of the key steps and resources required? Are there specific decision points they need to be aware of?

Using these questions as a conversation prompter can be valuable in terms of making sure that delegation is successful for everyone.

Activity
Today I am inviting you to take stock of all the things that are on your plate. As you consider past focus areas like the 80/20 Rule, what do you notice about where you are getting your impact and results in your work? You may recall that the 80/20 Rule – also known as Pareto’s Principle - indicates that we tend to get 80% of our impact from approximately 20% of our efforts.
​
Key Tasks I need to do (or delegate):
Identify one or two tasks you would consider delegating. Using the following chart, work through the associated questions:

Best wishes, 
​Jennifer

Focus Question: What are you committed to as a team?

Description
What are you committed to, no matter what?
Teams are as strong as their weakest link. What are you committed to no matter what?

Focus Question: What are the shared team practices – meetings, huddles, social events – which keep the team connected and in conversation?

Description 
Meetings and team practices are a key part of “keeping the conversation going”. This is crucial for remote teams who may quickly find that their focus and understanding of each other without regular touchpoints started to morph outwards, away from your common purpose.

Team Practices might include:

• Team Huddles

• Formal Team Meetings
• Project Status Updates
• Social Time Every Week/Bi-Weekly (Yes, virtually.)
• A Quarterly Retreat (virtual)

What do team practices look like for you?

One of the recent challenges posed by everyone shifting to stay in place and quarantine has been the shift of poor meeting etiquette into the remote space.

A reminder of these 8 Essential Meeting Questions:
Taking some time to pre-plan your virtual meetings can go a long way. It can be useful to frame out your conversations with these essential meetings questions. Consider using these 8 essential virtual meeting questions I share in Effective Virtual Conversations:
1. What’s the purpose?
2. What takeaways do we want?
3. Who needs to be on the call?
4. What preparation is needed for us to be most effective in the meeting?
5. What pace to do we want in order to keep it engaging?
6. What will help keep the focus?
7. What’s absolutely essential? (Versus what will be nice to cover or where can people go for more information around topics?)
8. What follow up might be required?
(Excerpt: Effective Virtual Conversations, Britton, page 304, 2017)

Activity
Take stock of the team practices you use. What’s important to note?
 
For more on this topic check out Chapter 9 of Effective Virtual Conversations on Meetings in the Virtual Space.

Wishing you the best,
Jennifer​