I miss the hugs.

There’s a joke about how people hate presenting – they’d rather be dead, right? But some people really hate presenting. They don’t have a chuckle about preferring to be in the casket instead of delivering the eulogy and get on with it. They feel sick to their stomachs, freeze up, and do anything they can to get out of it. In one of my courses eight years ago, I had one of those people. After the wrap up and send off, she came up to me and gave me a hug. 

“You have no idea,” she said. “This course has changed my life.”

The same thing happened this past fall when I taught that course for another company. The same thing happened in January after running a story building session for a small software company in Denver. In fact, over the eight years I’ve been facilitating, speaking and teaching, it’s happened a lot. It surprises me and warms my heart every time. 

But “it” isn’t overcoming fear. “It” is the hug. 

I’ve had three conversations with work colleagues this week that left me immediately wishing that I was in the room with them so I could give them a hug. I’ve had one conversation with a work colleague this week that left me hoping that she was wishing she could give me a hug. The hug is as much a part of working together as is presenting, or preparing reports, or going to meetings.

And work hugs are different from the hugs at home. There’s a layer of pleasant surprise iced onto a work hug. A magical change from just being at work together to being in something together. And frankly, when we spend so much of our time at work, that magical change can turn an ordinary day into a day you remember eight years later.

In September I went to Barcelona with my friend, Anne. We spied a small dress shop on a short narrow street in the Gothic Quarter and went in. The woman who owned the shop was warm and lovely, and so proud of these dresses she had designed and sewn by hand. I tried one on. It was gorgeous. I would never find one like it at home. The woman gushed in Spanish while she clapped her hands in delight. It cost enough Euros that I couldn’t decide right away. She didn’t speak any English and I didn’t speak any Spanish but I managed to make it understood that I needed to think about it and – Promise! – I’d be back tomorrow.

Well it turns out there is a lot to see in Barcelona and the line ups to see anything built by Gaudi were horrific so it was two days before Anne and I remembered the dress and we finally went in search for her shop. After spending an hour turning my phone upside down and right-side up so I could make sense of Google’s Gothic Quarter map, we found the short narrow street again. She was sitting outside. When she spotted me, she ran down the cobblestones and when she reached me she gushed happily in Spanish and gave me a hug.

Work is upset right now. Like trying to read a Google Map of a centuries old Gothic Quarter, I don’t always know which way to hold the phone to navigate this COVID crisis. And I think while I do try to navigate it, I’m going to take some wrong turns and hit some dead ends and maybe even rub some people the wrong way. They won’t want to run down the cobblestones because they'll want to throw a cobblestone! How will I connect, create some empathy, and make it all better on a Zoom call?

A lot of what I count on about work has disappeared and I don’t know yet what’s going to come back, or when. Live classroom workshops? Brainstorming sessions around a boardroom table? Cocktail parties that would require a one-of-a-kind, hand-sewn Barcelona dress?

My friend sent me an article this weekend. The author encouraged the reader to take advantage of what he coined The Great Pause. He wanted us all to not just wonder what might come back, but to think about what we want to have come back. When we arrive at this mysterious destination we’re calling the “new normal,” what do we want that new normal to look like?

I’ve thought about it. 

I want somewhere to wear the damn dress. Definitely. But mostly, while I'm there, I want to give someone a hug.