What Is in My Hands to Do? – ElPropósito7 min de lectura

Coronavirus: my offer to partner with you through coaching

With the virus spreading so badly across the planet, I’ve been reflecting deeply on what I can contribute, and why. Science has pushed its frontier further than ever, and its achievements deserve every credit. Still, the lesson is that finding a solution, a cure or a way through this pandemic takes time and will keep taking time. Technology, robotics and artificial intelligence are letting us predict and crack problems that seemed impossible until recently, and yet solutions at the speed we love still take time.

As human beings, at moments this critical, when life can change in a blink and the situation outruns our ability to respond, we’ll need a good while to think and to build the capacity that opens the new paths ahead, especially for our future and what we want to achieve.

Business management in all its forms has also hit unimaginable limits. We can see how relying on a single country for all kinds of transactions (goods and services) led us to put all our eggs in one basket (see What I’ve been Viewing in the VELA, in the postscript). Reducing that dependence and finding new ways of doing business after a problem this size will take time.

Today we’re at the crossroads of staying home to break the chain of transmission. It’s another big lesson for a society where, in theory, we can do anything, deserve everything and need it all "yesterday", where we set the limits ourselves (in theory) until something bigger comes along, overwhelms us and forces us to comply or live with the consequences. Ignoring it may well prove fatal. Even so, we’re slow to learn from others, despite how fast the virus spreads and the hundreds of documented cases of people who carried on as if nothing were happening, knowingly or not choosing to be part of the problem.

To paraphrase Alvin Toffler, we’ll need time to unlearn and relearn to get through this, so that what Aristotle warned about doesn’t happen to us: "Nations that ignore history are condemned to repeat its tragedies".

Which brings me back to the purpose of this post: what is in my hands to do? To offer my coaching free of charge to anyone who feels they need it during this crisis. Yes, you read that right. Get in touch, and I’m fully willing to give you as many free coaching sessions as you need, for as long as it takes, until you find your way through this. Here’s a short questionnaire I designed to help you decide whether working with a coach makes sense for you right now. Are you worried about losing your job? Are you a director or manager unsure how to lead a team virtually? (Coaches have extensive experience running virtual sessions on platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.) Do you want to find your own way of working virtually because you have commitments and deadlines? Do you want to know how to respond to what’s happening, and how to act in your environment and on your commitments? Are you a business owner with no idea how to approach this? I’m fully and completely willing to partner with you. It’s my way of giving back, and of doing what’s in my hands to find meaning in this situation and move forward. You can always count on me.

Something else in my hands is to call on every coach I know, who knows me and with whom I’ve been close, to open a channel and a space to partner with more people. What we’re living through is complex and unusual, and people need us. Our job as coaches is to challenge our clients and partner with them as they step out of their comfort zone and look where they weren’t looking before. Now that life has pushed all of us out of our comfort zone, we carry a great responsibility to partner with many people as they find meaning in this instability and see the opportunities in the mess they’re in, and we’re in, above all by doing it in the genuine way we know. Things may get worse or, with luck, better. Either way, the world won’t be the same, and we’ll surely need a different, innovative, special and unique kind of support to learn this situation’s lessons and find new ways of doing things. Whether we’re still in it or already out, that’s where we coaches can offer our skills to others. I’m counting on you to start a think tank, a small initiative, a first big step (call it what you like) where we develop strategies to partner with others (and ourselves) so we come out of this stronger and inspired, with all the creativity we’ll need for whatever comes next. If my inbox overflows with coaching requests, I know I can count on you.

The best is yet to come. My warmest regards and all the best to you,

Rodrigo Baccaro

My email: [email protected]

This week’s VELA:

• What I’ve been Viewing: Coronavirus: the economic, social and political impact on Latin America. A masterful talk by Professor Alberto Trejos of INCAE, whose classes I had the privilege and honor of taking there. When I heard about COVID-19, I admit my first thought was how dependent we’ve become on China as the main supplier of all kinds of products, raw materials, chemical inputs and more, and how, despite everything, we kept putting all our eggs in one basket, as James Tobin, Nobel laureate in economics, pointed out in his portfolio theory. What stood out in Professor Trejos’s talk was his ability to explain the full impact on Latin American economies, something that rarely gets translated into Spanish, and even more rarely into the business language of our region. Every business owner, large, medium, small or micro, should watch it.
• What I’ve been Listening to: Anthony Fauci: Talking with patients about COVID-19. A powerful podcast and one of the best conversations I’ve heard about the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci sits on the current US government’s COVID-19 task force and is an expert in immunodeficiency diseases such as HIV. It clarified the basic measures we should take and the advice he gives other doctors. It has full subtitles so you can listen and read at once. Worth a listen.
• What I’ve been Reading: Coronavirus: the most essential people to follow on Twitter during the COVID-19 outbreak. Who to believe and who not to. With so much information, and misinformation, across every kind of media and social network, it matters whom you follow and where you get informed. This FORBES article collects Twitter accounts that will keep you as well informed as possible.
• What I’ve been Learning: What is COVID-19? I like to go to the primary source in any field I want to learn. This time I went to the WHO to start with the first question I always ask, "What is it?", and found this page, which I think is worth reading. What stood out: "A novel coronavirus is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans". SARS and MERS are coronavirus strains too. COVID-19 is a strain that had not previously spread between humans and is now transmitted from animals to humans.

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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