Canalys Events blog: Riding the emotional COVID-19 rollercoaster

Fear. Anxiety. The need for reassurance. Waves of sadness. Hysteria. Everyone is riding this rollercoaster of uncertainty and experiencing all these mixed emotions. When you’re having to deal with this, it’s hard to remain focused on work and the future. It certainly doesn’t make our jobs any easier.

• As a parent, wife or husband, you are anxious about what the future holds.
• As a sibling, child or grandchild, you fear for your family and struggle to cope with when you’ll physically be able to see them again.
• As a manager, you want to act like a protective parent and provide reassurance and safety to your employees.

It’s tough! Emotions are high – don’t try to bottle them up. The best solution is to offer genuine, open and honest communication. We truly don’t know what the outcome of this situation will be. Let’s explain to our teams what we do and do not know, by sharing the pain as well as ideas and options that can help. There will be tears and we’ll all have to make sacrifices. Difficult decisions about people’s jobs will unfortunately have to be made. We will try to reinvent ourselves in both professional and personal ways, but ultimately change will be on the cards.

I’m personally very much looking forward to getting off this rollercoaster! And when we do, I hope that we can look back on this time and realize just how this experience has dramatically reshaped our future.

 

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