Don’t be a dick: Adapting to the New Normal

I’m one of the lucky people who still has a job – which it turns out is comprised entirely of back-to-back Zoom meetings. On the plus side I don’t have the daily commute to contend with, on the down side I am now fitting in up to 16 meetings a day, over an 11 hour period.

I have great colleagues, and that helps a lot. We’ve been talking a lot about ‘wellbeing’ and ‘adapting to the new normal’ and I’ve been trying to figure out what that means. Here are a couple of reflections:

Firstly, it’s not (just) the physical stuff: our conversations keep gravitating in the direction of ‘walking around’, ‘workstation setup’, ‘yoga’ and so on. Although these are essential hygiene factors, it’s just the start.

1. Don’t be a dick: hard to quantify, but it seems the biggest negative impact on wellbeing stems from people who ‘cast a shadow’. People who bring stress, accusation, judgement etc. into meetings and otherwise engage in ‘micro-aggressions’ that impact the mental wellbeing of everyone they come into contact with. I get it! – we’re all stressed – but spreading your unfiltered frustration is like spreading Covid by not wearing a mask.
   
2. Assume positive intent: the secret seems to be assuming that everyone around you is doing their best. I can’t stress this enough. Once people start thinking that other people have an agenda, there’s no ‘informal space’ in which to correct it. Instead, we lie awake, worrying.
   
3. Have fun: “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun” (Mary Poppins). What we’re missing from the office is the all the fun, informal stuff that makes up normal conversation – and it’s killing us. Coffee chats, bumping into people, gossip, having lunch together has all evaporated in favour of some daily Zoom marathon. It’s not just about wearing funny hats to Zoom meetings, just ask yourself “what percentage of the meeting did I spend laughing?” If it’s zero, fix it.
   
4. Simplify: We’ve got to have simpler, human conversations. Like the Dutch. We can’t carry on talking like we are in the office, out of the office. We have to be able to speak like we would to a friend in a pub and say things like “I’m just gonna go off and sort this” or “yeah, I screwed up on that (and smile) – I’ve got a plan to fix it though.”
   
5. Forgive: sometimes we forget that in a meeting everyone hears something different. We all imagine everyone else heard what we heard. Well they didn't, they never will, and that's why we have conversations. In our current environment there’s less room for iteration, informal alignment, check-ins… so we have to accept that things won’t always turn out exactly as we might have imagined – and that’s ok! We’ve just got to be much more tolerant.

Image: @matthewhenry