What the COVID-19 crisis is teaching us about community and connection
In the second week of March, following the difficult announcement that due to the COVID-19 crisis we would be postponing the GenderSmart Investing Summit to December, I received an invitation.
It was from FutureWomenX, a leadership development community I’m a part of whose sub-group of leaders in gender finance had been planning to come together for a retreat immediately following the Summit, and who were now looking for a way to support each other online instead. We were already in the habit of connecting, but it felt more urgent than ever that we check in on one another in this moment.
The following week, SheEO announced that they were going to start bringing together their Ventures and Activators each week on Zoom to share Asks and Gives, where community members connect and help one another sharing what they need and what they have to give. Soon after, Toniic, launched weekly “Campfire” conversations for its members to share on how they were doing and how they could support each other. Aspen Institute fellows spontaneously connected from around the globe to talk about what was going on for us and how we could help each other. Inspired by SheEO’s call, Women in Social Finance, a community I co-founded here in London in 2011, began meeting virtually to share our own asks and gives. The GenderSmart Investing Summit, meanwhile, rapidly pivoted to tell the stories of the amazing work happening in our community, and, starting in May, will begin bringing online some of the conversations and meaningful connections through “Solution Salons” that we’d otherwise be having right now in person.
It seems like everywhere I look, our gender-smart investing community is connecting online: in many cases even more powerfully and purposefully than we were before the COVID-19 crisis began. We may be physically separated right now, but in some ways I feel more connected than ever.
Here are some of the lessons I’m already taking away from this time of crisis and collaboration:
1. Sometimes, when everyone is staying put, it’s easier for people to show up.
Many people in our community are juggling big jobs, intense travel schedules, family and other responsibilities. The COVID-19 crisis hasn’t reduced those responsibilities — for many people, it’s intensified them — but meeting online has reduced some of the frictions that can prevent us from gathering in person. You don’t have to commute, or coordinate travel schedules, or brave the rain after a long day to be part of the conversation. It’s okay if your kids or your partner or your pet appear in the background. Yes, you still need a telephone connection and Wifi to be part of the conversation — and globally, that’s still a big deal — but the barriers to connection are less than the financial and opportunity cost of, say, an international flight.
2. Everybody, no matter what their job title, their seniority, or the company they work for, has something to give.
If part of what we’re trying to do as gender lens investors is rewrite old power and relationship dynamics, there’s a lot we can learn from the conversations we’ve been having online over the past few weeks. No one knows that you’re VP of “XYZ” in most of these gatherings: all they see is your name and the insight and generosity you have to offer. On Zoom especially, everyone has the same size square. The usual dynamics of entrepreneur and investor, established company and newer business, or senior people and those earlier in their careers, don’t apply as much. Everyone has something they need, and everyone has something they can give.
3. We’re forging deeper connections with each other through vulnerability.
The Ask/Give model especially helps participants immediately get to the heart of things: what you need to move forward, and what you have to give. It forces us to step away from being in pitch mode and instead to get real, and in turn opens up the potential for real connection. Many of us are not used to being vulnerable, sharing facets of our personal lives, or asking for what we need at work. In many professional workplaces — especially in finance- we are actively discouraged from doing all of these things. But when it comes out in an authentic place, vulnerability can help us become more effective in our work.
4. For those of us in the gender lens investing space, this may result in new partnerships and investments down the line.
They say that if you want money, you should ask for advice, and if you want advice, you should ask for money. And right now our community has a lot of opportunities to ask each other for advice. As people get to know one another and relationships grow, that will likely lead to investments and partnerships that otherwise might not have happened. The conversations we’re having and the relationships we’re building right now aren’t just about supporting each other through a crisis. Ultimately, they’re about supporting our shared commitment to positive change.
Conclusion
For many of us, the COVID-19 crisis has brought unprecedented challenges: physically, emotionally, mentally, economically, and technically. But I am heartened to see that in this time of crisis we are not turning away from one another but rather towards each other. We are recognizing our interconnectedness and finding new ways to come together — seeding new conversations and connections that may never have come to fruition in the old mode of connecting.
Someday, this period of our lives will be over, although we don’t yet know when or what that will look like. We will be able to meet friends and colleagues for dinner, stumble upon a new collaborator in a coworking space, and get on a plane to go to a conference once again.
And I hope that when we do, we take the lessons from this time to make those connections and collaborations even richer and more powerful. That we will have built some new muscles, seeded some new relationships, but also built new — more authentic, generous, and equitable — ways of being with each other.
