00:00:00 Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 60. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich, and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader. It's being able to look at each other and recognize the common humanity within both of us. It's it's being able to look at another human being and see that they are divine creation and they are loved,
00:00:33 and that you are called to love them. It's being able to look at another person and think of ways that you can walk with them beside them and help them welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true color.
00:01:00 In the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact The word In. Tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about whether virtual is here to stay. I also talk about the opportunities and challenges that can arrive with the virtual world. And I share with you some tips that no matter what you can do to make things better.
00:01:35 Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really, really tough. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this, and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity,
00:02:04 not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.
00:02:27 But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch is virtual here to stay is telecommuting and zoom calls going to be the new normal that we're all living with from now until the end of time.
00:02:58 Of course, the answer to that question is probably not, no. I mean, at some points, things will begin to resettle and return and we'll see things change again, because things always change. Even if we do keep telecommuting and people don't return to the office, I guarantee you a year from an hour or two years from now, or 10 years from now,
00:03:21 the tools and the techniques that we use to do it are going to change. You know, the truth is that that's probably the surest thing that we can bet on is that no matter what things will change virtual has definitely affected a lot of us during this pandemic where suddenly there were jobs that we'd previously believed would never be able to be done remotely. I've talked to some salespeople that have always done their sales in person,
00:03:50 where they've walked up to someone and had a conversation with them and sat in the same room and talk to them. We're talking about expensive items that really require a lot of conversation around them. And now they found ways to do that remotely. There's other people that have jobs or perhaps like restaurants that I've seen pivot and begin to do things like teaching online classes about how you could cook the meals that they were famous for,
00:04:17 but at home. And they're actually teaching people how to do that as well as doing delivery and take out instead of dying in, you know, there's all sorts of ways that you'll see companies and individuals pivot and develop new skills and new abilities. Even just look at the tools that we're using for telecommuting. Now, like a zoom call. One of the reasons that we get so exhausted during a zoom call is because in a normal conversation,
00:04:43 if there's a group of people sitting in a room, all having a conversation, we don't stare at the speaker said, we'll glance at them. We'll look away. We'll begin to move our eyes around the room. We'll look at other speakers and so on, but in zoom, we've got this feeling and it's correct that we need to look at the camera all the time to show our attention,
00:05:03 but that feels very unnatural, both to us as the watcher and to the receiver, to the speaker at the other end, it feels almost intimidating to have all of those eyes upon you. And so that drains our energy. We tend to see ourselves on the screen and be drawn to that instead of looking at others. And so we can't begin to sync up our communication and recognize all those subtle cues that come to us about what the other person is thinking.
00:05:30 And so it's exhausting. And there's example, after example, after example, like we've talked about this week, there's great things about the virtual environment, but there's also tremendous challenges that arrive. You know, I've been looking back and reading a bunch of stories about the Spanish flu pandemic that took place in 1918 to 1920. It was different. Of course it was a different time.
00:05:56 It was a different world. And there were certainly differences in that virus of that treatment. You know, this was around the time of a war. And so one of the reasons we call this, the Spanish flu is because the Spanish were kind of the only place because they were neutral. They were reporting what was really going on with the virus. When many other parts of the country and of the world were not because they were facing war footing and they didn't want to admit that there was all of the sickness going on.
00:06:25 And so they hid the news. And in fact, that's one of the lessons you can take from it. One of the problems with the Spanish flu that probably made it as bad as it was, is that lack of information about what was going on. But there's the interesting thing. Notice I said it ended and around 1920 and in the 1920s was known as the roaring twenties in America,
00:06:51 there was a time worldwide where there was this bounce back in the economy, Oh, don't get me wrong. The Spanish flu had tremendous personal and social and economic impact. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people died. There was loss of jobs. There was loss of life. There was even impacts on unborn children that cause them to have problems when they grew to adulthood,
00:07:17 that could be traced back to the flu of their parents when they were at a young age before they were even born. And these sorts of things, these sorts of impacts shook out over decades. But what was interesting is there was also this Renaissance of new and creative ways of doing things. It affected how we did healthcare, but it also created new jobs and new opportunities and new businesses that had never existed before.
00:07:46 The truth is whenever any time the world goes through a tremendous change, like we're going through right now, as surely as it creates challenges and impacts us and creates huge problems. That also means it opens up the possibility of new solutions and opens up the possibility of learning that there were things that we were doing that weren't working. You know, I used to work in a corporate environment and one of the things they would do is they would do this annual process of kind of the all hands on deck meetings,
00:08:19 where you would have a four or five hour meeting. And they would cycle through over different days or different components of the company would attend the meeting. And there was a big Huron and the company heads would talk and the vice presidents would talk. And we would look at earnings and how everything was going. And it was to build our company culture. And in fact,
00:08:40 I've heard from people in corporate that that's one of their big worries about working from home is that it will damage the company. Culture. People will no longer feel like they belong to part of an organization, but here's, what's interesting. I never had that meaning in me a sense of company culture and felt instead, it felt like an obligation. And I've heard that there are some companies doing their company wide meetings differently this year.
00:09:05 They're, they're doing it via remote video and via video clips. They're keeping it short and targeted and to the point, and they're even allowing and showing some examples of how we're operating in this new world. One VP I heard while they're giving their talk, their two kids came into the frame. One of them climbed into their lap and the other one was dancing behind them showing this idea to the company that,
00:09:31 yeah, it's possible. Your kids are going to walk into the middle of a video call, but just keep going. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. It's not going to be a disaster after all. And the VP finished their talk that got rave reviews from the company. It created a company culture. See the truth is it's not that being remote or being together creates connection in human beings.
00:09:54 What creates connections in human beings is empathy and understanding. It's being able to look at each other and recognize the common humanity within both of us. It's, it's being able to look at another human being and see that they are divine creation and they are loved and that you are called to love them. It's being able to look at another person and think of ways that you can walk with them beside them and help them.
00:10:24 And that's what makes up all of the great things that can come in the virtual world. You know, the truth is what you can do to make this better. If you're struggling right now, by the way, one example right now is there are a lot of people who truly can't do their job virtual. If you go into the grocery store and there's people there working,
00:10:47 stocking the shelves, if you go to a restaurant and there's a worker passing you your food, we even if it's taken to go, if you see these people that are in healthcare and law enforcement and firefighters and other essential workers that are not allowed to work from home and couldn't do it even if they wanted to, or the military, any of these sorts of jobs recognize that those folks truly are heroes from the quote low paid worker,
00:11:19 all the way through to the highest paid doctor or nurse. It's about the fact that they're out there doing what they can do to make things as good as they can for you. And so what we can do to make this better, as we can all recognize that in each other, we can recognize the struggle that we're all going through. And we can look at each other and say,
00:11:43 thank you, say, I love you. Say, what can I do to help you today? How can I make your life a little better? And instead of complaining and being angry and being upset and focusing on the negative and the stress and the strain, we can find those moments in each other's lives where we can laugh. We can smile together.
00:12:08 We can cry together. We can give each other a virtual high five, and we can say, I see you. I hear you. And I understand you. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively, listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:12:42 If you enjoyed this episode, please, please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate. All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures,
00:13:14 develop your influence and impact the world.