The Best Was Always Within Us

2020 caught us off guard. In our collective lifetimes, we’ve never been held captive like this. 

We all have our own stories. There was a rapid, unparalleled swing, ok,…immediate mandate…to work from home. Some of us loved it and some of us hated it, and clearly, it scared most of us.

There are those who found blessings in the storm. We found ways to develop while navigating this work from home world. There are those of us who found it utterly difficult to navigate our next steps. Most of us were successful in our new endeavor of virtual work. Did we really have a choice? (BIG NO!) I think we can agree, there’s no right way to do it. There are, simply, different ways to do it. We found no secret sauce that is duplicatable, nor sustainable, for all. We haven’t emerged with a playbook on how to “do” this virtual work. 

We’re at a crossroads now, as we contemplate going back to “normal’. Some of us are excited about going back to the office and back amongst our people.

 As many of us are just as scared of “normal”, as we were when we first started down this “abnormal” road.

Both, families and organizations, blasted to rubble, the mountains and distance between us. We "ZOOMED". Alot. We are still "ZOOMING". A majority of us know the term. We had virtual everything: parties, holidays, baby showers, school, vacations...everything. We have lots of different opinions of how we feel about web conferences. Podcasts have replaced reading. We’ve found ourselves spending too much time on social media, too much time watching network news, too much time watching EVERYTHING. We are finding ourselves more attached to our electronic devices, than ever before, and frequently, we are anxious and depressed. Humans weren’t designed to stare into a screen of any kind for hours, days and months on end. We breathe air, not screens. Excessive time with electronic devices inhibits our ability to observe and experience activities that we need to engage in. This leads to “tunnel vision” and is detrimental to our ongoing development.

 So now, we GET to decide how we move forward. We are finding that much easier said than done.

As we migrate back to the office, we can, and we must, choose to support each other, build-up each other. We get to use some of that recently heightened resilience, empathy, flexibility, and awareness we’ve developed over the last year. We have evolved, and now we are in a most wonderful position to share our learnings with our co-workers, our employees, our front-line workers, and our leadership, especially our leadership. This is how we will flourish.

We have the opportunity to rewrite how work will occur. We can do this. We just witnessed, have lived through, and are living in, a life changing event. One that we had and have no control of.

Maybe we don’t realize it yet, but we now know how to communicate when there’s no obvious way to communicate, how to connect, when there’s seemingly only barriers.

If we choose, we are now equipped to find and be our best selves. We’ve learned a lot; too much? Maybe. “When we know better, we do better?”

It’s profusely obvious. We ARE stronger than we ever thought; we always were. The strength simply manifest. We always had the answers, and now that we are aware, we can share our strength.

As we lace up our boots to start this, yet another new journey, now is the time, especially as leaders in our individual organizations, to get the needed help to our employees. It starts with awareness.   We have it, and we can develop it. Our organizational future depends on it. 

The best was always within us.

Let me show you. Email me here: [email protected]