Soap, EQ, Courage, Kindness and Positivity - We Need Them More Than Ever

The latest events have, as they should, called every percept of work that we were accustomed to into question. We all are going through a huge amount of turmoil and are at our most fearful and weary. We have families to try and protect, it’s the only reason we do this “work” thing, so it’s little wonder tempers online are flaring up and that in essence, people are cognizant of the need for the debate on the future of a potentially exclusively digital workplace (where possible) but are not in the frame of mind to apply themselves to it. 

On the rational side, the age-old remote versus co-located debate hasn’t changed but accelerated. There is enough statistical data to support both parts of the argument. Those who say it can’t be done and those who advocate for it. While we have to accept that obviously, exclusively digital is not possible for some industries, it’s fair to say that the ones where it is, still have a serious mental barrier in accepting the possibility and delivering on it fast. 

 Some of the elements discussed aside from the practicalities, are:

• “Can humans be close online?” - Or can they be effectively as close as if they were in the same office? This is not a different debate than if we were applying it to any of the other human relations that have moved to the online realm as of the last few years - friendships, romantic connections, etc. There is an overwhelming body of evidence to show that the depth and substance of human emotion is not encumbered by the virtuality and furthermore, these teams are not forming online, to begin with, but are, for the most part, transferring to online so there is a hefty amount of emotional investment pre-existent to aid and sustain the new one.   
• “Are we losing the chance to relate and create Psychological Safety when we lose the day-to-day physical interaction?” A lot is lost when an interaction is not in-person, of course. Body language, micro-signals of relating from shared humour to sudden banter and so much more are gone in a digital environment and teams that have been distributed all along will tell you they miss those moments and to recreate them or their equivalents takes undeniably more sustained and mindful emotional work. 
• Isolation. One of the biggest topics is how lonely remote workers could feel. This is substantiated by stats, reports put 2 out of 3 at perceiving themselves as insular and despondent as a result. Nonetheless, this is true of those that are individual contributors and not the case for close-knit teams.
• Leadership at a distance- it’s hard enough to read your team’s mood and their state of Psychological Safety and therefore productivity and effectiveness in the same room, how are leaders to hope they can do so with everyone in their home office? 
• The importance of emotional intelligence This one is a very interesting one as not all of the detractors of the hypothesis of successful remote work have been big advocates of the importance of the human connection, to begin with. In other words, they wouldn’t have ranked “have closeness” as high as “have standing desks” and yet they are concerned with it now. Which is ironic but positive and also, a valid topic as most employees are ill-equipped to deal with emotional topics and self-care with most of us lacking in “soft skills” and empathy enough to effectively sense and react to our team member’s emotions online. 

On the emotional side, we have to find ways to remain stable and hopeful. Being faced with the biggest global event of a generation is an injection of VUCA no one is prepared for and it calls every ounce of resilience, flexibility and courage we have into view. We have to keep our cool but we can’t ignore how monumental and dangerous this is. 

We have to keep courageous: as usual, no one says it better than Brene Brown 

We have to keep thinking of the work-family aka the team and the ways to redefine work in the digital playing field with an emphasis on their EQ: get in touch with us at PNT if you’re preparing a team for remote and kitting them with the right tools to manage this as we are offering everyone who does, aside from extended trials of our Psychological Safety software, a free 1-on-1 online EQ crash course for their team leaders.

We have to keep kind. Being rational in this situation can easily be perceived as detached and callous and isolate those around us so it’s important we all remain intensely anchored in our humanity and allow each other spaces —online or otherwise- where we ask important questions such as “Who are you afraid for?”

We have to *try* and keep positive: maybe the hardest one of them all considering, but if you look at the image focus on the second figure in this live data dashboard (that is thankfully making the rounds which in itself is positive!) - the nearly 73000 of recovered cases and have faith in our ability to beat this thing. 

For all we know, work as it was may never return. Once we shake this, -and we undoubtedly will, ideally sooner than we hoped for!- there’s a good chance some economies would have been floored and some ways of work would have been changed forever but all that matters is that we held on tight to each other, kept our physically vulnerable safe and bandied around our emotionally vulnerable in a display of team like we never had before.