Social Distancing – keep up Social Connection

The image above is from a blog last week from the amazing Maff Potts of Camerados, who wrote on: “When hugs are banned – when the world finally noticed social distancing“.

I saw Maff speak at Meaning Conference last year and love what he does. The Camerados movement is all about human contact, about removing true social distance in the form of human connection. They do this by setting up “public living rooms” all over where we can just sit with other humans and avoid isolation by being present to each other, simply being there to listen and talk.

So, we all now know the term “Social Distancing” and, I hope, are being responsible to others by doing this assiduously.

With that, let us ensure that, in “Social Distancing”, we absolutely maintain our physical distancing, but let us also find and commit to ways to maintain and build our social connection…..

Social Connection – we can move it online

I have shifted my daily posts in recent times to be of support around the Coronavirus crisis, first around crisis leadership, and now this week on a focus on maintaining connection, along with granular tips on how to connect remotely and also host and be part of online meetings.

From a human connection standpoint, whilst we all consider the day to day details of shifting to working online, please remember the social impact of this. In the last two days I have already posted about this, and today I repeat it. Call people, set up daily group zoom calls (I do this with my sons overseas, for example), perhaps set up a daily “neighbourhood meeting” for the people you will no longer “bump into” in your neighbourhood, a “virtual coffee”, like the one I have with my sons on their “lunch break” each day.

Of course, I recognise that some (typically older) members of our communities may not have the “tech-savvy” for this. For them, let us fill the gaps. I, like many of you, am volunteering in my area to be of support in non-tech ways.

My focus today, though, is on using online connections in ways not simply to replicate what we would do offline, but perhaps to augment what was there before. For example, in the coming weeks, I intend to host Zooms for neighbours and, when all this passes, I feel sure many of us will have made more connections and friendships to continue, perhaps even with hugs x

As Maff noted at the end of his post:

“Let’s see this for what it is: a big, frightening, very serious H.G. Wells kind of a story that teaches us something by revealing how we relate to each other, how we need human contact and connection and maybe when this is all over maybe we’ll know that we have to “look out for each other”

We are all in this together, let us be the best of ourselves and show what community can be, both online and offline.

With that, I repeat my offer to all those with the responsibility to lead others to book a call with me, I will be keeping a wide-open diary to volunteer myself as a Sounding Board to others, doing my part to help us all through this to the other side.