It's Been A Long 3 Days - Now What?

How are you using this time?

Are you forward focused or stuck in time?

Do you have a plan?

As I write this, in New Zealand, we are at Day 9 of our snap 3 Day Lockdown.  I have spent many hours on phone calls and zoom sessions with clients from all sorts of industries. Unlike the first time this happened, people have a greater sense of what to expect and a little bit more knowledge and wisdom around what they can do along with the potential impacts on their teams, customers and business. For many, the challenge around being at home and working, is that the degree of urgency is not as high due to a multiplicity of factors, including having family around; being in an environment that your mind associates with rest and not quite knowing what the future holds.  We look to Friday, 27 August 2021, when the New Zealand Prime Minister will announce our ‘new’ stats level, and “hope” we can have some degree of normality (whatever that now means!)

Doing a Zoom presentation to a team, I was asked to focus on:

1. How to use this time to best effect

2. Maintaining focus during lockdown

3. Keeping a mentally strong and positive mindset in a lockdown.

These three points are very common and capture what a lot of people are looking for. 

The key to success is to focus on what you CAN do. Brainstorm this as a team.  Here are some ideas: 

• Call clients to see how they are managing lockdown (make these CARE calls NOT sales calls);

• Clear your inbox and any queries that you were “just waiting for enough time to do”; 

• Plan – What focus will you need when lockdown lifts? What marketing will be useful? Who will need to be updated on delivery dates?;

• Learn – Online learning, Create SOP’s, training manuals, FAQ. Once you have a list of what you can do, ensure you prioritise the actions that will have the most impact.

Mindset has a huge impact on health. What do you ‘set’ your mind to? Energy flows where focus goes. You get more of what you focus on so focus on what you want more of. What you put into yourself comes out in your thinking and conversations – watch the balance between watching the news and social media to be informed, and drowning in negative news. If necessary, time how long you spend in aps that tend to be negatively focused. I use an app called “Rescue Time” to give me hard data on where I spend my screen time. (It works across all my devices so is very good at providing accountability)

As previously shared in former articles, the human mind needs Autonomy, Achievement and Relationship. How can you help your team to ensure they are well equipped to be receiving good amounts of all three of these? Regular team check-ins (via phone or Zoom) allow team members to share what they are going to be working on and allows the team to keep a list of what needs to be done; what has been done and to share goals and results.

 Is this something your team could benefit from now?

Here’s to your success!