YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON ON THE OTHER SIDE.

I remember how shocked I was when I learned how my supervisor had to manage hundreds of emails per day, fifteen years ago. How is it possible to get that many emails? I thought that was what it meant to be a manager.

Today, considering all the social media and digital platforms we use to communicate getting hundreds of notifications a day is the new norm. We feel so connected and informed that I think we sometimes forget what the full picture is behind the scene. I was reminded of this last week when I got the flu and felt very sick.

When my email communication slowed down and I had to decline meeting requests, I got some unhappy responses from individuals.

I did not fully explain why I was slower than usual with my pace of communication as I didn’t feel that was necessary. But their reactions reminded of me of how I may have had, at times, judged others too, or evaluated situations based on what I thought was true, instead of understanding the whole truth. It’s always our unconscious bias that kicks in when we pass hasty judgement. In this digital age, we forget how little we truly know about what really happens behind the scenes. Building a strong self-awareness and deferring judgement as a creative leader is very important. This insight reminded me of that very lesson: that we never truly know what happens behind the scene. How can we be more mindful and open-minded about it? How can we communicate the importance of this in team collaboration?