Be Deliberate

Welcome to part one of this three-part series, in which I attempt to make sense of the various possible workplace trends coming out of the response to COVID19. 

Late March 2020. All of a sudden many of us found ourselves at home, reliant on technology to communicate everything from major organisational changes to the social ‘hello’ and usual over-the-partition conversations.

Once the dust settled (from the hoardes buying new computer monitors at Officeworks) we suddenly had to think more about how we communicated with our teams. What was appropriate for email? What about all those chat apps? When do I actually need to pick up the phone and call someone?

Not only that, but all of a sudden there were more things that needed to be discussed. Not just how work was going, but how was life going, how are you really? Are you OK?

Clients told me that rather than communication suffering during this time, in some cases it actually improved. The act of having to think about how to communicate a message meant a more deliberate approach to communication in general. The fact that the workplace now extended into our homes and lives meant that our conversations became more full of life – whether it was the shared joy of wearing ugg boots to work, or the appearance of the pets and children in the team meetings. 

For many of our clients, pre-COVID19 communication was one of two choices – have a meeting or send an email. Suddenly the reality of videoconference software, messaging apps and shared work platforms meant communication was broader, more frequent and often more targeted than it had been before. 

Good management also meant that specifics of tasks and priorities needed to be more clearly articulated. We found more clients using delegation methods like ‘CPQQRT’ to avoid ambiguity about what needed to happen with a task – as it was harder to recalibrate and check-in along the way. (Don’t know what CPQQRT is? Send me an email and I’ll send it to you)

So, is one of the lessons we can learn from this period, as we transition to our new normal, that communication works better when we are conscious about how we do it? Can we all benefit if we take a few moments to consider the medium for our messages and the level of clarity we need to get our message across? One thing is for certain – before COVID19, most people we spoke to thought they had too many meetings and were drowning in email. Did we just find a better way?