How to stay in touch without completely burning out

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

I got an email from a client-turned-colleague-now-also-friend not long ago. It was a spontaneous reach-out and she really nailed it in terms of balancing competing priorities, like how to stay in touch in a genuine and meaningful way without inflicting more video call fatigue—or just plain fatigue—on either of us.

I’ll call her “PJ.” Here’s what PJ wrote:

Please think twice before you ask this question

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

There’s a particular question that I have come to hate being asked, starting in about March of 2020. I resist it slightly less now, but only slightly. I’m sharing my further reflections on the matter, not because I like to divulge my idiosyncrasies on these pages (though there is that), or because these Weekly Tips are sometimes my public therapy journal (that, too), but because I think it really matters in terms of how we’re connecting with each other these days—or not.

The (new) 80/20 rule for virtual relationships

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

I’m just back from several weeks of staycation. I am refreshed. It’s a new year. Some things have changed. And yet lo and behold: our virtual working reality persists! Colleague Noelle Mykolenko and I did some thinking in late 2020 about how best to build trust under our collective circumstances. I’m thinking a recap that includes all the best practices we came up with would be helpful as everyone’s new normal continues.

I have been needing these three reminders. Maybe you have, too?

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

Note to readers: I appreciate your ongoing patience and understanding with the disruption to my weekly Tuesday cadence in the last few months. Signs are promising for a return to more regular publications very soon!

What a rollercoaster. And by that, I’m referring to last week. And last month. And 2020 as a whole. I’ve recently found myself needing a little extra help with managing the ups and downs, so I dug back into my missives from the last seven months and unearthed three reminders that quickly stood out. They’re all in the realm of “personal mastery,” which I’ve long said is the foundation of relationship mastery. I’m sharing them here in case they’re helpful to you, too.

The surprising barrier to learning and changing for the better

This post is part of our Monthly-ish Tips series.

 

Note to readers: Given my commitment to be thoughtful and relevant with my current series of posts, combined with the general havoc that the pandemic has wreaked on life and work life, my weekly Tuesday cadence has been disrupted. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

I have written the last four tips specifically for corporate White people like me, reflecting both my personal passion and my professional mission to promote masterful work relationships that make space for all people’s spirits to come alive. I’ve been sharing what I am learning and believe are fundamental lessons on important topics like White privilege and implicit bias, along with my more traditional self-revelatory exposes, like the five trust lessons I learned from my own churn about this series, and now this one about a compelling force that recently almost stopped me from practicing what I preach.