Living through difficult times: together, remotely

We feel that we are living surreal times, in which things we take for granted, like being able to walk on the street freely, go for a coffee with a friend or - most important of all - the life and health of our loved ones, become precious.

“Social distancing” seems to be crucial to slow down the spread of the pandemic and not put pressure on hospitals to the point of having to make very difficult choices. We know this “distance” is not possible for health and other professionals who ensure that we continue to have food, electricity, water, internet, etc., and to whom we are very grateful.

For the rest of us, it is essential that we do our part in this great global collective challenge by working remotely. This implies learning to work in this new way, to relate to our remote teams and to support each other from a distance, to maintain serenity and hope.

Working remotely has been a habit for our team. We’ve had many virtual meetings and work sessions with clients and between us for almost four years. But for many people, this is quite strange and difficult. 

In the beginning, we also felt resistance in our team, that we reflected upon and learned: we don't all need the same things nor in the same way. Thus, we adjusted the time of the meetings and the themes, and the final balance of each meeting.

We also learned it’s very important for us to start with a time to express how we feel / what is impacting us at the moment. We call it “check-in”, and it is essential to understand what is happening at that moment with each person, which can also impact the meeting. This "check-in" seems to us even more relevant at this time of our collective experience.

We have also learned that it is very useful for our emotional support to share the difficulties and challenges we anticipate and experience from our work with each other, and to discuss together how we can deal with them.

Keeping the connection while respecting “social distancing” seems very important to us. So, we are challenging our clients to continue ongoing projects by experimenting with new remote ways of “doing” and even creating virtual emotional support spaces 😊.

For the rest, we recommend some Google resources: https://grow.google/intl/europe/remote-work