Perhaps, like me, you have someone living in your household right now who wishes they were somewhere else. It’s another COVID casualty. One of our daughters had been hoping to move across the country for university, and instead she is studying in our living room with her younger brother. Not quite the first-year experience she’d imagined.
Her emotional roller coaster seems to be closely tied to where she fixes her gaze. Compared to building a new life in Vancouver, staying home is a drag. But she does get to be in the same city as her boyfriend unexpectedly, her beloved 16-month-old niece, and her dad the math whiz. It’s not all bad.
It can be tempting, in COVID times, to highlight what you wish you were doing or would have been doing under different circumstances. Those losses are worth grieving, but in your work with your teams, I’d suggest resisting that temptation. Highlighting what we’d otherwise be doing brings everyone down a notch emotionally. It reminds us of what we’ve lost. Plus, it is actually quite irrelevant. It adds nothing to the current experience, draws attention away from being fully present and undermines our ability to performing at our best in that present moment.
It’s like attending a presentation where the speaker flips rapidly through slides they don’t have time to show us. Please don’t.
Instead of pining for what we wish we could do in person together, focus your energy on becoming an amazing digital facilitator and collaborator. There are lots of benefits in that space that outweigh face-to-face — let’s leverage those instead.