Virtual Surprises

We're now about eight months into the guarded physical and emotional reality forced upon us by Covid 19. I came home from a road trip March 12 and haven't left my state of home quarantining since. What's more, it could easily be another eight months before an effective vaccine is widely available. I'm thankful that my Amtrak travel credits don't expire with temporary inactivity.

While the pandemic has resulted in all manner of strains on individuals and households, I want to focus today on some of the impacts I've observed among cooperative groups—some of which are not very surprising, but some of which are.

1. The Tension Between Individual Rights and Group Safety

Interpersonal friction among groups didn't cease just because meetings in the same room came to an abrupt end. If anything, the cracks that existed before are likely to open up under the strain of travel bans, and social distancing. It can be particularly cruel on folks living alone, who were likely drawn to community for its social benefits and are now proscribed from enjoying them face to face.

On the one hand, communities are almost certainly doing a better job of checking on each other and supporting one another as they can, within the context of health limitations. On the other, a number of communities (especially the ones meant to be senior-oriented from the get-go, but also those who have grown their own senior class merely be being successful) have a significant segment of their population in the high-risk category and thus need to be on their toes (just not on anyone else's).

While no one build their communities or developed their social norms with a pandemic in mind, here we are, and the adjustments have not all been characterized by laminar flow. In particular, there has been strain in many places that mirrors what we've seen at the national level between those who: a) feel it's a fundamental individual decision to determine what constitutes risk management and they are loath to have their rights trimmed by the anxieties of their neighbors; and b) those who are horrified with the concept of trusting their neighbor to determine, without a conversation mind you, what behaviors should be acceptable to them. They want a collective conversation about safety in the time of Covid, and struggle to understand what they see as unconscionable selfishness by those who don't want to talk about it. It can get ugly.

What constitutes an appropriate level of home quarantining for an entire community? What can be expected (required?) in the way of testing for community members? These are not simple questions.

To be fair, my sense is that communities are working through this stuff, but the road has been bumpy and the collateral damage has not all been addressed or repaired. There is clean up work here.

2. The Potency of Zoom Facilitation

Over the course of my 30+ years as a professional facilitator and process consultant, I've held the view that there was no substitute for being in the same room, where you can feel the energy and track nonverbal clues. While I've always maintained a lively email correspondence and steady phone traffic, these were invariably meant to augment my working with groups in place… until the last eight months, when the only place that existed for a consultant has been virtual.

Forced by Covid to adapt to a changed world, I have experimented with facilitating from afar, via Zoom, and have been surprised to find how effective it can be—even with groups I've never met before. This was a happy discovery—and one I didn't expect. Unless the group is larger than 24 (I can get a 5x5 array of boxes displayed on my laptop screen—numbers above that result in multiple pages of participants, which are much harder to visually track) I've been impressed at how well it can go. 

I've thought a good deal about why that might be, given there is necessarily a loss of granularity with Zoom—that is, there is clearly less information available to work with. My best guess is that I have developed a certain amount of refinement in my skills over the years and redundancy in the ways I take in input, even at the cellular and intuitive levels, such that the loss or constriction of some channels still provides enough bandwidth to do my work, even when the dynamics are messy and complex (which is probably redundant).

Given that messy and complex is more or less my specialty, it's a damn good thing that I can still deliver. I experimented cautiously at first (not wanting to overpromise), but now I have enough Zoom experiences under my belt to feel confident in what I can deliver. I'm even resuming the delivery of three-day facilitation trainings, entirely by Zoom. It's a brave new world.

3. The Courage of Zoom Participation

Finally, I want to make a surprising observation about doing emotional work via Zoom. As you know, our wider culture is not known for its forthright acceptance and facility for meeting one another on the emotional plane, and it's my firm belief that we have to develop that capacity in order to realize the potential of community living. Without it, our interpersonal relationships—the heart blood of community—are stultified and incapable of fully blooming.

What I've discovered, while endeavoring to work sensitively with feelings using Zoom, is that many people feel less trapped in the spotlight when unpacking emotional distress from the comfort of their own home. Neither are they as prone to indulge in rants as they are via email. It's a double blessing. On the one hand there is more accountability when addressing one's neighbors through the visual pane of a laptop. On the other, I suspect people may feel safer than when working these dynamics in the same enclosed room. It's an unexpected sweet spot.

To be clear, I'm not reporting a sea change. Distress still exists and groups still struggle with how to respond. I'm only reporting a certain subtle shift in there being somewhat less reactivity via Zoom—an unexpected yet nonetheless welcome deescalation in work that can be often be highly volatile. In any event, I'll take it.