Working from home might have seemed a great option, especially in this crisis.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great to still have a job and be able to work from home!
Many others don't have that option.
Some of us have been laid-off.
Others can't work from home because they are there, in the front line, taking care of the rest of the world.
But...
This work from home is not our regular work from home. It wasn't our choice. We have to do it because our health is threatened. And it is in the midst of a huge crisis.
So what does this mean? Well, like any crisis, it means people NEED to plan, to communicate, to discuss, to meet, to engage in meaningful conversations related to their work, their future, their lives.
Someone told me the other day: 'this is crazy, working from home turned into meeting frenzy!'.
Familiar? Thought so.
What I want to say is, of course!
When we feel threatened, we switch to the good old fight or flight response.
And what this means in modern times is that, in a crisis such as this one, people who found themselves in a virtual team all of a sudden had to come up with a way to ensure they come out 'alive and well' at the other side of the 'virus'.
So we meet, we plan, we strategize. We HAVE to fight. Because there's no where we can flee.
And because we need to communicate and, most of all, we need to feel we still BELONG.
Now, for those of you who need to focus and create the next plan, strategy or maybe simply your next email, and can't do it because of this new order of the 'meeting frenzy', don't despair!
Here's a well-known technique you can apply to allow yourself the time to focus.
Crisis Management - Voice of Experience Interviews
Home-Made Crisis Management
Home at Work and Work at Home.
The Strategic Management of a 'hostile takeover'
As I've started to do the mini-series of videos related to managing virtual teams in a crisis, I realized that we also need to start talking about individual team members. Because everyone became a member of a virtual team, basically overnight.
I keep saying that this kind of virtual / remote work is not 'business as usual' for anyone, not even for those who were already working from home or used to managing virtual, remote teams.
So I sat down with people who were used to working from home before the crisis. Moreover, I decided to talk to people who are also somewhat used with uncertainty as part of their work.
You guessed: entrepreneurs.
Even more, I thought we don't talk enough about the challenges of also having the kids around, especially those families with young kids!
So I had a virtual, intercontinental chat with Diana Medrea-Mogensen, an entrepreneur based in Denmark who coaches people on reaching their goals through a strategic workflow developed based on business and project management principles.
In this 30-minute dialogue, Diana shares how she applies her own expertise in strategic project management during these times.
She does this so that both her and her husband can continue to work, while also caring for their two sons, who are 1 and 4 years old!
Check Diana's full strategic plan in the interview. For starters, a quote:
"To begin with, my husband and I decided to work in shifts so we can get block time to push the work forward. The occasional 15 minutes here, an hour there, did not work very well. Spending time with the kids and making sure they are active, it is very important for us and quite a challenge now that they are home and we cannot do our regular "weekend" activities."
Email meto ask any questions on how to manage your virtual team in this crisis, or if you'd like to share your own tips of managing yourself or your team.
So grateful to live in this time and age where we can make the best use of the technology available to be able to keep connecting and supporting each other!
Online learning has made it possible for people from all corners of the world connect before, and now it does so even more than ever before!
And I believe in the kind of online learning that is interactive and fun and LIVE!
For everyone out there placing in-person course content on to online environments, a few tips that worked for me, hope they're useful:
I re-tweaked the content to fit the online environment and make it an interactive Virtual Class!
I uploaded support documents on their e-learning platform (if you don't have one already, email follow up and Google docs are also good options)
I also created a Forum for discussions. Again, if you don't have a platform to create the Forum on, you may want to consider a group chat option (like WhatsApp).
By the way, the same goes for presentations that you are making virtually to your team.
If you have any questions about moving learning content to fit online environments, email me and I'll be happy to help!
I always thought great learning experiences connect people! Well, I also think having lunch together connects us, too!
So why not both? I know, not the same as having lunch downtown, but still.
Bring Your Own Lunch and join me for this LIVE All Personal FREE learning session organized byPost-Secondary Education Professional Associationon April 8th, at noon EST.
We'll talk about a super useful tool that we can communicate better with, especially in times of crisis: feedback!
Managing ourselves is a big part of Emotional Intelligence as a skill muscle. And it's even more important now that the world around us has changed so much and so abruptly!
Here are a few resources for you to work out your self-management skills muscles and work well with everyone on your team and with your clients, even remotely.
Learn how you can listen effectively, what motivates you and your team, what the universal expressions of emotions are, how to meditate and so much more.
Be well & stay safe! We're all in this together. We'll go through this together.
Imagine. Believe. Become.
They are YOUR skills muscles. Train them. Regularly.
