Vanya Wryter Consulting Services
Business operations, instructional design, and editing services.
What comes to mind when you hear “teamwork” with your coworkers? Most likely, working in person in an office together with other people. However, these days, teamwork has taken on a new meaning for global companies with employees and contractors in multiple time zones. How do you develop a sense of community and company culture when your remote team is spread across countries?
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Fear is scary. It can physically and mentally cripple you. For example, people have gotten stage fright and forgotten their lines while standing, momentarily paralyzed on the stage. Have you had a similar experience? What are you afraid of?
Everyone is afraid of something. The harder part is facing your fears and conquering them. The secret to defeating your fears is to break them down into pieces.
Here are four fears and how to conquer them.
Fear of becoming overwhelmed. In life, we can be overwhelmed by everything we need to do, from personal to professional projects. Selling or buying a house, leading your first major project, or starting a job that is different from what you’ve done in the past. You are hit by a tsunami of questions – what do you do first? What if you forget to do something important?
The first step is to make a plan and break down a major task into a series of steps. If necessary, get help from a mentor or an expert or someone available. Ask for advice on what to do when buying a home. See if a coworker can help with a piece of the project. Just work on one small task at a time, instead of taking on everything as one goal.
Fear of things. Phobias are often out of your control. You just fear what you fear, such as spiders, snakes, heights, or tight spaces.
But if you arm yourself with knowledge, you can slowly start to chip away at your fear. For example, if you fear spiders, read a book about spiders and learn everything you can about them. The question is WHAT should you fear about your fear. Being bitten by a spider and reacting to the venom is a true concern. Being fearful of a tarantula because it is sitting next to you, minding its own business and enjoying the weather – that’s a fear in your mind. Knowledge is power.
Fear of situations. Public speaking is a term that many people dread. You have no control over how people think of you. Will you make a mistake when you speak? Will people judge you and think that you’re awful even though you thought your presentation was flawless?
To overcome your fear of these types of situations, put yourself in these situations more often. (This probably seems like a nightmare in itself.) Start with something small, such as going onstage to announce the next speaker. Or making a presentation in front of a small group of supportive friends before you start presenting in front of a large group of prospective clients.
Fear of failure. Everyone fears failure. It’s embarrassing, and it’s a terrible feeling to disappoint yourself or someone else. However, failure gives us painful but valuable lessons. Any business owner will tell you that the road to success is not easy and failure (or failures) is something you encounter on your journey.
To succeed, you develop mental toughness. When failure happens, ask yourself what you would do differently next time. What lessons did you learn? In business, it’s tough when you think you have a prospective customer or client, and after much discussion, talks fall through. Or you find you have successfully closed what turns out to be the client from hell. It happens. It’s a learning process.
We face our fears every day. Today, on Halloween, take a moment to think about your greatest fears and how you will overcome them.
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These days, we are asked tough questions. We are living through difficult times.
You hear stories of people losing their job for the second time in the same year.
People who have applied to 500 jobs and gotten no responses or job interviews.
Businesses that have been posting jobs have no responses.
These are tough times.
What advice do you have to connect those looking for work with those who are looking for employees?
The fall season is a time for change, both in scenery and in our goals and priorities. Warm, sunny weather turns into colder temperatures and more rain. It’s a time for preparation.
If you have a home or business, then it’s time to winterize and think about safety. It’s an opportunity to rake the rainbow of autumn leaves from the ground to avoid clogging the gutters and storm drain. If you live in northern climates, you may need to buy salt for when the sidewalks and roads freeze over with a layer of dangerous ice. It’s the season to check if your heater is working.
Fall is also a time to set goals for the year’s final quarter. Did you meet your income goals? If you have a business, will you achieve your financial goals for the year? For some businesses, it’s time to complete a wave of new hires before the end of the year. For startups that have been growing, it may be time to revisit the company operating procedures and rethink how they can scale and grow.
As the season changes, it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming year and set new goals. The past few months have seen rapid changes in prices and the economy. Will you need to change your budget for next year? Find a new job or ask for a raise at your current one? If you’re a freelancer or own a business, the fourth quarter is a time to revisit your marketing and branding for next year. Will your products and services be the same, or will you need to make some adjustments?
Like a squirrel in the fall, stockpiling for winter, we can take a moment during this season to reflect on what we need to do to prepare for the coming months.
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Fitness and comfort have influenced the fashion style of work from home (WFH). As technology continues to make working from home more commonplace, it won’t be as necessary to pack a suitcase for a business trip. In the near future, we could be going to work in a digital outfit.
Two years ago, when the world almost shut down because of the pandemic, WFH became a household word and began a trend that continues today. When that switch happened, many people became uncertain about what to wear for work.
Home was where you walked around in PJs, fuzzy slippers, or gym clothes. Were you expected to dress up in slacks and a shirt while working in your home office? People continued to dress the way they did for the office because it was familiar. Later, the fashion became a hybrid of styles. At virtual meetings, people wore business casual tops for the camera, and shorts or yoga pants for under the desk.
As the years continued, people accepted that the worlds of work and home could be blurred, and they showed up to virtual meetings wearing clothes that they could do housework in. Work-from-home fashion became more casual and influenced by sportswear.
For example, the fashion has become cardigans, sweatshirts in material that’s too nice for gym clothes, comfy dresses with pockets, and pants with a jogger waistline. These pants have a flat front and elastic back to like very casual slacks.
Fashion continues to evolve.
In the near future, video calls will be replaced with 3D digital projection. The technology will reduce travel costs – an important consideration with the rising cost of EVERYTHING from inflation. Consider the time saved from traveling to and from airports and the money saved on hotels and airfare!
In these futuristic meetings, your image is beamed from your location to the meeting location. Your image will be able to look around and interact with the people in the meeting room – you’ll be much more lifelike than in current 2D calls!
For the 3D projection to work, you will stand in a portal surrounded by cameras and microphones. However, you will need to dress up for the presentation (unlike a virtual meeting in which you only need to be presentable from the waist up).
We wouldn’t be able to shake hands or hug people during a virtual call yet, but we’re getting closer to that technology.
Perhaps the next advancement in virtual meetings and networking would be alternate projections. Just like our current capability to create virtual backgrounds, you will be able to roll out of bed with your PJs and project a pre-programmed image of yourself to your meeting.
There won’t be a need to dress up or check your appearance. Your pre-selected meeting outfit is ready to be projected with the press of a button. As technology advances, the possibilities are limitless.
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Vanya Wryter Consulting Services