Its day 8 of self-isolation and its starting to hit home how hard this will be; coughing child seems to be recovering energy and appetite but the number of stories of friends of friends on ventilators growing by the day and my parents and Rachel’s in isolation and its hard.
It’s totally clear we are not alone in any of this. The families feel in a pressure cooker, the singles feel lonely and the new couples now locked in together are about the hit the fast forward button on their relationships.
RedQuadrant has been pretty good.
Perhaps because we are used to working remotely, working to crazy deadlines and in high stress situations, Fraggle rock is a familiar place to us. However, not everyone is so lucky and I have had a few accounts from friends and relations of people crying through exhaustion, fear and frustration on work video conference calls.
The technology will be a life saver in all this; but it’s also a danger. It can dis-inhibit very bad behaviours including micro-management. When we meet face to face a basic human mechanism kicks in and we start to register the emotional state of the people around us; it’s hard wired into us to do this. Working remotely massively reduces our ability to do this as does stress. Not being in the same room as your team can make you less included to trust they are doing their jobs.
I am also seeing many new websites being set up without anything substantive behind them; it feels like magical thinking by senior leaders to imagine new websites can save us without people behind them. Perhaps it’s just easier than large scale engagement and delegation.
That may sound a bit luddite; it’s not. I’m saying that technology acts as a force multiplier. It can help deliver good ideas and help bring people together and help people do more. But, without the good ideas and good people and delegated authority there is no force to multiply.
So if you are a leader I think it’s time to wake up, listen and trust your people enough to empower them.
You can get in touch with me to discuss via RedQuadrant at gerald.power@redquadrant.com or DM me on twitter @geraldpower happy to chat and share
