Jeremy Davidson, MAAL

I have enjoyed using Microsoft Teams for chat, video, and calls. I use it everyday for meetings with stakeholders. It make it easy to message groups and share notes from your meetings. I have found it very beneficial for pulling all the threads together from my meetings throughout the day. I have found the ability to seamlessly move a video/audio chat from my laptop to my phone very handy on multiple occasions when working on the go.

I have had great success in using both Google and Microsoft for sharing/editing documents. I use Airtable as a file management and digital asset manager for our team. We use Interfaces in Airtable to build role-specific workspaces and tools. All these tools allow me to control access and set permission levels.

The tools that have worked best for me include Airtable is excellent for for report building, project management, task management, and multiple types of CRM solutions. Airtable is a 'swiss army knife' platform that I find easy to adapt to so many business uses. I have used both Microsoft Teams and Google solutions for collaboration and task management with success.

I have found it helpful to start the week by blocking time and keeping certain blocks week over week. If you don't control your time, somebody else will. I keep a link to schedule a meeting with me within my email footer. I have used Calendly and Outlook for this feature. It is a time saver. I have also found it helpful to set the expectation up early with potential board members and volunteers about when we hold meetings. We have a set time and expect people to adapt to it. 'If you want to make everyone happy don't be a leader, sell ice cream.' I find this true for scheduling as well. Use your calendar to lead others.

In my experience I focus on building trust and safety within my team. I believe you can measure the amount of support people will feel if they trust enough to speak up and feel safe enough to fail. In the same fashion as a leader, I want to trust that they are going to try something that others feel like they will fail at and feel safe to say hard things.

In my experience as a child care center director I learned quickly that concrete-thinking in task-related conversations are the best pathway to achieving the work at hand for both the children and the staff. This means clearly outlining the tasks, objectives, outcomes, resources, roles, rules, and responsibilities. Another important principle is to frequently communicate the plan with your team. With my kids we use the '1-2-3 Magic Method' whereby we communicate the task we need accomplished, the timeline in which they have to accomplish the task, and the reward/punishment for not completing the task with each number we count.