Staying Engaged During the Pandemic

For the past two years, the pandemic has been such a challenge for so many of us, and probably more so now than ever, we hear about the importance of being versatile amid today’s rapidly changing workplace and marketplace. Can you describe a time when your versatility helped you to achieve your goals when you were confronted with a difficult situation at work?

Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely the obvious challenge that COVID presented, which is a decision within a week or two that we have to go completely remote to protect the health and safety of the employees. And I resist it, because I really enjoy seeing employees, I enjoy the energy. I think one of the things that we all miss right now is the in-person connection provides more energy than this connection as an example, right.

And so the very basic science, and I don’t have a degree in any of this stuff. But I know that this screen that I’m looking at is producing some type of wave that is probably going to give me a headache if I look at it for 20 hours in a day. But if I was meeting with you in person for 20 hours, I would not have a headache, right? It would be different, like we’d be laughing, it would just be different.

And so I knew that was going to be hard for the business. I was worried it was going to be hard. But the employees…But I definitely adapted, we quickly did a lot of things to support customers, employees, and everybody did a great job. The productivity, I would say in the first six months of COVID, was through the roof. And most CEOs I talked to would agree with that. Everybody was rushing it up to make sure that their company was going to be okay. Then you had obviously the social justice, and the fires, and the election, and all these things that were coming at you and I think energy has waned a little bit. I think the productivity, it’s still fine. But I think that in-person energy is missing for folks. And I think we get to store that energy, and I think that’s missing.