Greatest Hits of This Week’s Virtual Conversations

Greatest Hits of This Week’s Virtual Conversations

The most fascinating questions and juicy bits of useful insights come in the last 10 minutes of the web conference meeting.   The feelings come out and the questions that each has politely held back start boiling over.   This is the moment where many on the call may think, Wouldn’t it be great to get this conversation going sooner?  And can we take this to the bar and continue?

Then it hits us and hurts us again, we are not in person and the bars are closed.

Still, the number one comment coming out at the end of nearly all of the calls that marched across my days this week was this:

“I crave the stories and insights that I used to get, all the time, in stand-up meetings and casual conversation.”

Top 10 Hits From This Week’s Journal

Forever the journalist, I listen by taking notes in a daily journal and sometimes I close my eyes to listen deeper, to what the person may be struggling to get out.

When looking at pages of notes from the week, what appeared as fascinating and useful were the comments and questions that sounded the same. Even though each call and topic was entirely different, most were about how the credentialing industry leaders and others just like you are feeling flummoxed.

The top 10 gems from all conversations this week may validate your current situation.  It would be great if you had something to say about each of these.  We’ll say how that might happen, too.

Here’s what I heard:

1. Is it just me or does everyone CRAVE the conversations with stories, insights and problem-tossing, problem-solving?
2. Do your days seem fuller and richer than before?
3. Do you feel highly productive or does the day go by and you still didn’t complete what you started this morning?
4. Are you wondering in your isolation if people are forgetting about you?
5. Are you rethinking the time you used to spend in the car or the 500 hours you’ll never get back that went to travel, by any or all modes of transportation?
6. What is it you don’t miss about the way you were working before shut down?
7. Are you jamming two years’ worth of digital transformation into two months? You know, those online and virtual workshops, meetings, events that you talked to bits earlier, but never assigned money or deadlines?
8. Are we really all in this together? Is the certification business above the unemployment and other misery or are we feeling the impact differently?
9. Do you feel in touch with your own constituents? Are you tracking this with real numbers or just guessing and assuming? Are you aware of how many of them are beyond struggle and headed into an unbearable stretch of unemployment or under-employment?
10. Is this what early retirement is like? Home office. Physical limitations that mean no travel.  No scheduled meetings. Networks gone silent. Uncertain if the money will last.

Shall We Start a Feel Good Friday Conference Call?

What do you think about a call on Friday that has only one agenda item?  We could call it Feel Good Friday: What Do You Crave? Specifically, everyone gets to speak up and say what kind of information they are craving from everyone on the call–mostly colleagues in credentialing and professional development.

Turning on your camera is optional.  Most of us would love to see faces.  A lot of us need a haircut, badly, and don’t want to scare you.  Go with what gets you into the conversation.   Your voice and feelings are what we crave to experience.

Feel free to jump in anytime and say what you think a Feel Good Friday “open mic” chat ought to include and do for you.

I’m willing to host such a call, but you have to send a note to me at Georgia@Communicators.com and say you would show up, with your great question for everyone.

I know you have great questions because that’s what I’m hearing at the end of every organized call.  I’m hearing the juicy, honest questions—the ones behind the safe questions.