Author: Andrea Foot
We saw how the past two years of the global pandemic caused individuals, organisations, and countries to enact unprecedentedly rapid changes in all areas of their lives. Where it was an option, employees picked up their computers and essential office equipment and headed home to figure out how they could work from there. Commenting at an early point in the pandemic Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, noted that “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months”.
Clearly, we saw how such a dramatic existential threat facilitated the swift implementation of enormous change. But what are the lingering after-effects of this traumatic time along with that sledgehammer blow of change, and how might they be consciously and unconsciously influencing you and your organisation?
In my own working life and my recent work with clients, it feels that we arrived at a sense of how we work now by focusing on the new practicalities and rules of work. What feels to be missing is time for reflection on the journey and the significant anxieties that have surrounded this. I’m curious about how set in our new work ways we have become. It can be seductively easy to accept the now-ness of how we work because it very quickly feels like it has long been our usual way of getting things done.
What is the history of your journey to ‘now’, especially in your role at work? What is piquing your own curiosity in how you are experiencing your role, your team’s behaviours, and your organisational norms? I’m hearing about how important it is to go deeper in understanding what is happening in our world of work and with our teams so that leaders can help their teams feel valued and to uncover and work to resolve disfunction.
A Group Relations Conference (GRC) is a unique way to explore one’s unique experience of being in a role in an organisation. A GRC is a chance to feel how we take up our authority and what happens to us as we move through large and small groups. At the end of 2022 I’m joining the staff of an Australian GRC, hosted by Group Relations Australia. If you’ve been working to make sense of changes in your leadership role and in the dynamics of your teams and organisations, then attending is an opportunity not to be missed.
