My team spans timezones and continents and first languages and areas of expertise. We manage ongoing customers and new project implementations. In the pre-pandemic days, we crossed oceans and land masses to learn and laugh and share together.

For most of us, the pandemic hasn’t been easy. We’ve been uprooted from routine, separated from our family and friends, or maybe, quarantined too close to them. My team has stood strong through the changing dynamic and I’ve learned a lot from them. My team

• Thrives on challenges – As our customers were responding to the pandemic and pushing us for solutions, my team got engaged and excited to deliver on those solutions. They truly looked to the uncertainty as opportunity and delivered on it.
• Supports each other – as life continued, we together celebrated successes and life events and showed compassion to schedule changes or adjusted to uncertainty. They showed flexibility and compassion with each other and sometimes with themselves.
• Craves the connection – not surprising given the general closeness of the team, but the remote work left us all craving our connections to each other. Zoom fatigue and increased workloads and life interruptions makes it hard to prioritize those virtual meetings, but 1:1 check-ins were much appreciated.
• Needs to smell the flowers more (and nurture the roots) – sometimes we get so caught up in the issues of the day, we forget to focus on how far we’ve come or what else we need to do to cultivate our roots to make our ecosystem stronger.
• Needs more bees – Just like nature, we need an army of bees to bounce around between the team members, and expertise and cross pollinate the knowledge. As an organization, we have a fairly strong set of documentation but still have challenges with its maintenance and ensuring it’s consumed and recalled when it’s needed.

Clearly, I have spring on my mind given the flower and bees analogies. I’ve been very lucky to have the team that I’ve had during this most challenging of times. We did a see a bit of turnover, but we were also able to bring on some new talent that invigorated the team dynamic, despite the remote onboarding and continued work. We continue to get challenged by what is going on in the world, but I know that we’ll be able to pull together to deliver the best we can.