Sylvia's Journal

The thing with numbers is that you have to keep looking at them and keep collecting them, to see trends. I watched this animated counter about COVID19. It tells you something about leadership.

My personal numbers from two weeks ago have shifted only slightly, some things holding steady, others at rock bottom. They can only go up, like miles driven in our new car, or hugs with our grandkids.

Every morning the Gloucester Times has a little yellow box at the top of the front with the numbers: COVID19 cases confirmed and deaths, in the world, in the US, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It’s the first thing I scan after I have washed my hands that may be contaminated from removing its wrapper. All those numbers are trendng up, but some not as fast anymore, except in NH where the realization that this pandemic is for real appears to be finally sinking in.

My volunteer activities are picking up. The demand for my complimentary sessions is increasing. As I prepare for them through interviews and emails, all teams, no matter where they are in the world, appear to be struggling with the same thing: balance. Balance between attending to personal needs (the anxiety, worry, burnout, stress, sense of isolation or overwhelm), and the needs of others, and balance between attending to task (getting the work done) and process (how it is being done).

I see teams struggle to continue to work as if they are still in the office and as if the pre-pandemic team norms, whether implicit or explicit, still hold. Yet everything around them has changed. This is the next frontier I am heading for: understanding how to be of service to teams in times of unspeakable turmoil.