How my brother inspired me

One of the things that has occupied me at work over the last year has been the struggle to keep our organisation motivated and engaged at a time of COVID lockdowns and future uncertainties. As leaders, we often try to paint the high-level picture and then make organisational changes to improve our business and engage colleagues. Yet recently, I’ve been realising that often the true solution to staying on top of this pandemic (at work or in private) is much more individualized. We all need to find our own individual ways to keep busy and remain optimistic for the future. And it is up to us as leaders to create the space and dialogue for colleagues to find the right individual approach for them.

I saw first-hand this morning, when I spoke with my younger brother, how doing things differently can have a massive positive impact. Unlike me and my other brother Mehrdad who both went into pharma, Mani (in the middle of our family photo above) is self-employed and makes his living short-term renting flats in Vienna to tourists. It won’t surprise you to hear that Mani’s business the last few months has been pretty quiet, leaving him with plenty of time to reflect and wait for better days to arrive again. 

Instead of becoming melancholic or seeing the glass as half empty, however, Mani has decided to find a fascinating new hobby: restoring old mechanical watches. 

It’s clearly delicate work but the way he described it so passionately made me think how much work and magic goes into these watches which marry beauty with function. The level of detail is quite stunning and it is clear that Mani could spend a lifetime with his new passion. And now he’s also started putting those videos online and I see a little piece of him in every tiny, deft move of his fingers – do take a look, it’s quite mesmerising!

But in addition to admiring his newfound skills, I was reflecting back to work and my organisation, and how we all individually have to find things to get passionate about and keep ourselves motivated in this pandemic. Regardless of where we live and the state of vaccination in our country, better days will arrive. But as leaders, we need to remember that this historic rupture has taken its toll. We have colleagues in many parts of the world who have been in lockdown for well over a year now, with little sense of respite. We should be seeking ways to create dialogues in our organisations to unleash those individual solutions that might make everything that little bit brighter in a time of unease.

That is how we can start once again to see the glass as half full and find ways to keep our minds busy, our engagement sharp and our souls replenished. 

If you have any ideas, either for new pursuits that have helped you get through the pandemic or for creating helpful conversations in big companies like ours, please comment below or get in touch!