Faceless Perceptions & Reckless Energy

Many here who are reading this piece may be remote working for many months now. Some of us enjoying it better than others. Many who are reading this may not even have seen the faces of people on your screen for months now.

My trainer who trained me on POSH recently advised me, that it is sensitive to request people to put on their video cameras. A year back, I almost insisted that people were ready to come on screen. Why did I do that then? Well for starters it made me feel like a buffoon starting into a screen filled with empty circles, alphabets or display images and speaking my mind. But more importantly It left a huge gap in communication.

Isn’t communication and relationship building all about completing the loop of speaking- listening- hearing- paraphrasing and Acknowledging. Today most of the times, I find myself only speaking and assuming that people are hearing, forget about the listening or acknowledging. I am perceiving people may be on that meeting, just to check their meeting participation record and not really to contribute. Many a times I am perceiving that people are doing other things than hearing to me…again forget listening (because that involves para phrasing and acknowledging). So how are we effective?

Then it goes further. Based on the few perceptions my dramatic mind conjures up, I package it into an email. The drama in my mind plays into a drama on the email. Email is another weapon where reckless, thoughtless energy can be disposed of easily. Why? Because there is no person sitting right across to engage. A disposed email, instant message swishes past us and then begins the dominoes effect of hampered relationships. Slowly breaking away. It is never a loud break, it is very often quite unnoticeable cracks , cracks caused by perceptions, cracks caused by the drama our mind plays on us. Lo and Behold, one fine day it breaks and then we regret

Hence my innate need to get back to my workplace, face my colleagues, my customers, my stakeholders, my vendor partners, my managers. It is in facing people that we can nurture good quality relationship , have engaging conversations and using that power to do some great work