It’s Friday, Follow-Uppers,

I’ll be honest, this has been a hard week for me. And a jarring thing is the “normalness”‘ of the work this week. I’m currently in Phoenix and people are still delivering packages and serving meals and conducting business. It is likely that for about half of the population, this is normal. And it’s also likely that for many of us, we’re excellent at compartmentalizing. 

What does this have to do with follow up? Everything.

We are whole human beings. What happens out of the office impacts our work and attitudes in the office. What happens at work impacts our volunteering and community service.

So who we are impacts our follow up.

Here are a few thoughts on following up for the next few day. 

1. Do follow up. You may decide to adjust your follow up to be more relational than closing the deal. That’s up to you. But we still have over 7 weeks in the calendar year. Lots of time to move your projects forward.
2. Be prepared for wide variety in the responses you get. Here in the USA, you have about a 50% chance of reaching out to someone who is swaggering in victory or someone who is hurting and scared. So a more reserved tone may be a wise approach.
3. Listen to international news agencies. If you have international prospects, listen to what other news agencies are saying. Many of the people I’ve spoken to this week have international prospects and colleagues asking them what the heck happened here. 

One other area of follow up: this may be a fruitful time to revisit your personal and organizational values. Some colleagues I’ve spoken with are having discussions with their team about how the organization’s values should shape how they market and strategize their work. If you haven’t done a values exercise like this, download our values inventory. It holds space for personal and organizational values.

And be sure to take care of yourself. I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and finished N. E. Davenport’s sci-fi and fantasy The Blood Gift duology. I also enjoyed some very tasty fry bread!

Whatever you’re experiencing, be sure to follow up with yourself as you keep moving forward with your team’s goals.

For this Follow Up Friday,

Marc