Three lessons I learned during the covid-19 crisis

Three lessons I learned during the covid-19 crisis

I rarely had the time to write and share my thoughts on social media platforms. I was more into in-person conversations and debates. I always enjoyed deep conversations with friends and people I like and respect. However, we are living in strange times where we are approaching 4 months of living, working, and communicating remotely. Such times force you to change and adapt, and remind you again that change is truly the only constant in life.

Being in solitude from the outside world has forced me to think deeply and reflect on several things around my professional life. Below I summarize the top 3 lessons that I learned during this period: 

1- Job security is an illusion; personal development is real

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The idea of a "safe" job has always been absurd to me. However, it is something that is always being discussed in family gatherings and around old-timers. I remember having an argument with my own father when I first graduated because he was not convinced of my decision to go work for a management consulting firm instead of applying for the public sector or the usual suspects in the private sector (i.e Aramco/Sabic/stc). My point of view was, and still is, that hiding behind a big name for "security and stability" is a very risky strategy in the long run for three main reasons.

First, it leaves you with no leverage. You are just another person in this big universe where everybody wants to get in. They might move you around between departments, assign you non-essential tasks to keep you busy, or suddenly reduce your benefits to improve their bottom line numbers when the market is bad. What are you going to do? Nothing. You should be thankful you still have a job, remember?

The second reason why hiding behind a big name for security is a risky strategy is that it makes you get too comfortable. People get a false sense of achievement for getting into those places at an early stage of their career and they get stuck in that comfort zone and stop growing. There is nothing more depressing to me than seeing someone in their 20's calculating their end of service packages from their current employers (and I have seen it many times). Your comfort zone is your biggest enemy. It drags you down to a level where you justify other people's success as just "luck" or that "they know someone from upstairs", which brings me to the third reason; relationships.

Hiding behind big names for stability and security limits your ability to spread your network and improve your circle of relationships. Eventually, you develop a very narrow view of the world. There are some exceptions where other factors come into play (i.e. family name/business), but I am talking about the vast majority of people who do not have that privilege. I notice this a lot in people who have been in the same place for a very long time, including some of my own friends and family relatives. One way you can detect this is when you have a conversation about anything outside of work. You can easily tell who is narrow-minded and who is diverse and interesting.

So, what is the alternative? Continuous personal development and growth. By always improving yourself and pushing your limits, the thought of "job security" does not even cross your mind. Developing strong skills build your reputation, and a strong reputation gives you leverage. I want to make one thing clear. I am not saying working for a stable company is inherently bad. I am only saying that if your main reason for working there is to be in a safe and secure place then it is not a wise move. If, however, you are working in a stable place while improving and challenging yourself everyday then there is no problem with that at all.

Living through this pandemic has reinforced my belief in the above. I am seeing some of the people in the supposedly "safe" jobs getting their salaries and benefits cut while those who focused on their personal development and growth are getting promotions and new opportunities in spite of the current situation.

2- Financial freedom and security; are you secure enough?

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There has never been a time in our lifetime where we had such a wake up call not to take our income (or anything really) for granted. Seeing the world economy comes to a halt makes you seriously think about your own financial security. It forces you to stop and ask yourself very important questions. How many sources of income do you have? How much savings do you have? How much is your debt, if any? How secure and diversified are your investments/assets?

Dealing with those questions passively and telling yourself that everything will be fine can be very fatal to your financial stability in the future. Obviously, there is no single solution to address this, but there are many things you can do today to get more financially secure including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Increasing your savings and limiting your spending on unnecessary stuff
  • Investing (or learning how to invest)
  • Improving and diversifying your skills to increase your current income

I believe it is a useful exercise to do a stress-test for your financial situation and see how long you can survive if your income stops today. Use this as your motivation to improve and do more. Be realistic with yourself. Do not expect your employer or your government to handle your financials for you. Your number one priority is to take care of yourself and your family.

3- Emotional intelligence (EQ) is now more important than ever

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The number of virtual meetings (Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams, Zoom) I had in the past two months is more than all virtual meetings I had in the past two years combined. Think about that for a second. I know I am not alone in this as this spike was a result of remote working. However, this sudden change has made communication and human interactions much more difficult. I noticed three ways where this behavior added more complications.

First, it eliminated the concept of "business hours" and started creeping into your personal time. I heard this from almost everyone I know. Statements such as "I have this WebEx call at 10 pm" or "Sorry I was on a Teams meeting till midnight yesterday" became a norm. This is slowly increasing stress and fatigue among us. Normalizing this behavior is very risky for the well-being of your workers in the long run. Workers have a right to spend time with their families and to relax after a long day/week. After all, we are living in a pandemic and it is wrong to assume that work/business is the only thing in your workers' minds. You have to consider other factors such as their living situation, their mental health, the well-being of their elderly family members, and so on.

The second complication in this remote working culture is the absence of body language. Most of our business is conducted on the phone or through virtual audio-only meetings. This makes it extremely difficult to read a person or a situation. It forces you to be extremely careful in your voice tone and your choice of words. It also makes you train yourself to give people the benefit of the doubt all the time. I attended a virtual meeting once where someone was abusively mad that others were interrupting him while in fact it was a connection problem that made his voice to break during the call.

The third problem I noticed is that the ease of setting up virtual meetings increased the number of unnecessary meetings. I attended several virtual meetings that could have easily been resolved in a quick phone call or an email. This is part of a bigger problem of having unnecessary meetings in the first place. However, it is becoming more of an issue since it is easier than ever to set up those virtual meetings to "discuss" problems rather than actually solving them.

The above are only a few examples of why improving our emotional intelligence in this new digital era is now more important than ever. I believe we should actively try to improve ourselves in this area to be more efficient and effective in our work and communication.

2020: how will you remember it?

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To conclude, 2020 was a strange year from all aspects. Rather than focusing on what went wrong, I believe that those of us who were lucky enough to survive this period should focus on the positive side and use it as a learning experience to prepare for a better future. Personally, I used it to remind myself to keep improving and growing (lesson #1), to pay more attention to my financial stability and investing strategy (lesson #2), and to educate myself further in Emotional intelligence (lesson #3).

I hope this article was useful to you. If you like what you read please share it and let me know your thoughts. If you are a young person looking for advice or books to read on any of the above, please reach out to me at [email protected] and I will be happy to help you.

Abdullah

Yasser Almutairi

Genetic Services Consultant | Data Science | Data Analytic | Management | Business Development

4 年

Reading your article reminds me how I used to enjoy your topics and discussions in old time. Well done

Raghad AlMady

Strategy Manager at Accenture

4 年

One of the most enjoyable articles I’ve read in a while!

Great Observation! Really nice Article. ?? for EQ para

Interesting points. Thanks for sharing ????

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