Author: neil

The south of the country, particularly Melbourne, had gale force winds waking them up this morning, damaging homes and pulling down power lines, leaving many disconnected.

Here in NSW, it was the second consecutive day of 30C weather. My table fan fought valiantly, and overtime, to cool the hot wind blowing throughout the day and through the windows.  The heat makes it really hard to even think, let alone do any work. And although it is nearing 10pm, it is still pretty warm here and I’m struggling to find the words to describe the day and the conversations I have had.

Instead, here’s a picture I caught tonight on a walk by the beach, with very little light left in the day. It’s a grainy picture at best, and I’m still not adept at using the “expert” mode on my phone so I had to make do with the default settings.

 

With our home lives “leaking through our screens” as my friend Alex says, we catch glimpses of the humanity of the people we work with.

During a meeting today, one of my colleagues had his boisterous kids in the background deciding to wrestle. His Dad voice didn’t quite work, probably because they knew he was distracted. He muted himself on our meeting, got up and tried a louder/sterner (?) voice with them. Some of us with older kids gleefully remembered the times we went through, and joked about the fact that it was someone else’s kids as the current center of attraction.

Help quickly arrived in the form of a superhero, Mum, who seemed to magically quieten the two cute brats. She bundled them away from behind Dad’s microphone.

My colleague continued with his presentation while his wife got the boys to make up just outside line of camera sight. When she walked past him, she gently, tenderly, brushed his shoulder. And for the briefest of moments, I heard his voice soften.

If they’re anything like my wife and I – and I’m certain they are – both of them were able to recognise and acknowledge the help without making a big show of it.

I’m getting some practice (and requests) to do presentations lately. They’re all virtual, and mixing up the type of content has meant I have the ability to craft a story that’s holding the audience’s engagement for about 30 minutes.

What’s interesting out of this experience is how few people actually reach out after the session to connect or say anything at all, particularly when they are one Teams message away.

What if, after every session that I chose to attend where I had not seen the presenter before, I sent an acknowledgement of their effort, and the messages I took away?

Funnily enough, the opportunity to present arose just now to a group of grads. Building a network, and working on communication / presentation skills are the topics I’ve been asked to talk on. This will be great practice, and I will have to connect with a very different audience than the ones I usually speak to. Exciting!

Met my team for lunch this afternoon, in person, after 4 months of lockdown and seeing everyone through a screen. It was a joyous affair – every single one of these people I would make time for even if we didn’t work together. The sentiment is reciprocal: even someone who no longer works with us joined us for a meal in a public park. We spent nearly 3 hours, talking, ideating, and rebuilding social capital that CoVID has inevitably eroded.

I used the commute to make some headway into the suggested readings of the course I’m doing. While I still dislike the commute (how on earth have I done it for a decade?), the empty carriage and the time-box (two boxes to contain me!!) meant I could get through discrete pieces that I had been putting off reading.

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Swimming lessons have also recommenced, which means I have the ability now to write this while I wait for the lessons to finish. I remember this rather vaguely too – the noise of the pumps and water sloshing in the background while the instructors yelled over it at the kids to perfect this stroke or to kick stronger and harder.  It has been a long time for sure!

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Writing a hundred – or two hundred – words is not too hard when I tackle multiple things. Writing the same with focus on ONE idea is a little more challenging. That is really evident when I have a lot on my mind: zoning out of all those, and zoning in on a single idea is something I want to get better at.  Most of the work writing I’ve done recently has required me to shrink the idea down to its quintessence because people who read it “don’t have time”, and inevitably, it turns out to be false economy.  They ask more questions and I spend more time explaining.