The very effective tool of keeping a journal can be used in your workplace as well as at home. It is a powerful tool that can enhance our lives and support our personal and work well-being. Whether you journal your personal work experiences and goals, or use team journaling, journaling can easily be applied to your work environment.



The idea of team journaling is to incorporate journaling as a means to assess and track past, current, or future projects and goals. To get started, pick a team moderator, the person(s) who all journaled information will pass through. They will coordinate and monitor the journaling process to keep it on track, and moving in the team's designated direction and purpose.

As a group decide the purpose and goals of the team journal. Then date and write those down. Next decide what vehicle you will use to record your journaling in. You can use a blank book, and pass it from person to person or keep it in a designated place. You can journal on the Internet via a group list, at http://www.yahoo.com, or on a web log, called a blog, see http://www.blogger.com. You can also create a private message board on your company's website. Any of these systems allow an exchange of ideas, feelings, thoughts, and experiences of the goals and directions you have already determined.

You will want to set some boundaries that will need to be respected and adhered to during this process. Date these and write them right under your purpose and goals. For example, there should be no personal attacks regarding ideas or personalities. Keep what is a fact separate from what is a feeling. Having feelings is OK, just don't confuse what is a fact and what is a feeling. At all times agree that respectful expression and disagreement is adhered to. You may want to limit the amount of content anyone can journal at any one time, say a paragraph, or a page. Set any other project guidelines that the team decides to incorporate.

As you begin your team journaling project you may find that the original purpose and goal changes or evolves. You may also find your guidelines need to be added to or modified. In your journaling process meeting in person or via conference can be added to update and relate how the journaling process is working or being effective toward the team goal.

Creating a series of questions related to the team goal and purpose can be an effective way to start the journal process. These questions can focus and motivate individuals, and inspire the creative writing and thinking process. Or making statements and asking if these are agreed to or not is another way to start the process.

The team journal can become an integral part of any companies process to achieve greater clarity and focus about purpose, goals and intentions. The process of team journaling also can create new relationships with the people involved.

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