Living & Leading in a Pandemic-era world

It is no secret that the world is hurting. We continue to struggle with what living life looks like in a covid-19 pandemic era and it is affecting every aspect of our human society. It was always true that the covid-19 pandemic ushered us into Grey Zone Change[1], a space between the current state (system A) and the emerging future (system B) that is undefined and unknowable. What is true of grey zone change is that we accept the assignment of stepping into the unknown, to get to a transformational new way—the promise of a better future. In doing so, we also accept that as part of journeying into the unknown and working through the in-between space, there are costs we must contend with in the transition as we learn and develop forward.

The covid-19 pandemic has brought with it human/psychosocial costs, economic costs and geopolitical costs and of course the compound cost of each impact when viewed from an intersectional lens on the people groups most impacted. The human/ psychosocial costs include the ongoing health impacts on global society, such as the immunity gap and debt, mental health crisis and widespread traumatic impacts that ensued after 2 years in and out of isolation to save lives as we learned about the coronavirus. We are also seeing reductions in empathy and rising incivility, both in terms of diminishing of basic norms of respect, politeness and consideration of others and in terms of threats to public-mindedness. Public-mindedness is both moral civility as respect for the fundamental right of others’ civic standing such that we do not tolerate racism and discrimination; as well as justificatory civility, requiring avoidance of justifying political rules based on self-interested and political agendas.[2]” The economic costs include continued global inflation impacts and food insecurity and concern for geopolitics with the war in Europe’s pressure on energy and food costs. And of course, we are grappling with historical and ongoing structural inequities that have been exacerbated and illuminated for marginalized people groups and nations states across all these dimensions when assessed from a systemic and/or world-system lens.

It is one thing to know all this. It is another to live it. These costs show up in daily life, when the price of basic groceries or to fill a car tank means you are double checking precarious bank account balances; when cold, flu, respiratory syncytial virus or covid-19 means parents and children are missing days of school and work at a time and there is no children’s medication on pharmacy shelves to ease symptoms; when you wake up to more news of war and famine impacts around the world and yet another racial or oppressively violent incident in the public sphere or at work; when you wake up unrested and lethargic and wonder if you can make it to work but drag yourself there because bills need to be paid; when you reach work to learn another team member, or the one boss that keeps you going has decided to leave as employees from individual contributors to the C-suite continue making transformative life choices in the Great Reconsideration/Resignation/Reshuffling…

Where does this leave us? In 2022, and for the foreseeable future, we must get better at living with and through the costs of transformation…and for those who lead, supporting others on the journey as well.

~~~See full post here for 3 radical commitments for the journey~~~