What We Learn About Connection While Disconnected
By MJ Gabriel, Account Executive
In late August, Cincinnati was consistently slammed with severe storms, wicked winds and not an insignificant amount of tornado warnings. On August 11, one such tornado warning struck while Rasor was in the office, meaning we all became very familiar with a never-before-seen portion of our office building: the basement. After the novelty of the new working environment wore off, reality sank in: I had no Wi-Fi, a nearly dead phone and plenty of deadlines.
Sending emails? Not going to happen. Attending client meetings? Forget about it. Gone were the days of Outlook, Dropbox and Teams. All I had was me, my colleagues and few office neighbors, all twiddling our thumbs in our concrete confinement.
Agency life can move fast, that’s no secret. When it comes to a sudden halt by Mother Nature’s decree, what do you do? I could panic about my deadlines, or I could take in the atmosphere. And in my hour of observation in the bunker, three lessons in communication came to me.
1. Humans look to a source of truth in crisis.
What is the truth and who has it? To whom are you turning to know where the storm is coming from, how much longer until it passes, its severity, what kind of damage it left in its wake? Huddled around an iPhone screen, we clung to our last glimpses of service to watch the local weather channel – the truth – to satisfy our curiosity and bring us comfort. In moments of crisis, humans look for a beacon of knowledge to feel secure. This is why crisis communication is so critical and so challenging; delivering one clear message to provide peace of mind and protect all parties is a difficult balancing act.
2. Common ground is the quickest way to human connection.
Lacking my modern technological communication tools, the old, familiar communication tactics came out as I sought human connection. These tools – a joke, a story, a question – brought 12 strangers together. We were able to connect through shared experience, as we were all stuck in the same sorry state. When on common ground, the fruits of connection are abundant: a new friendly face in the hall, a new joke to tell, a new number to call when in need. Human connection is the gift that keeps on giving and you find it on common ground.
3. “Putting out fires” and putting out fire are two very different things.
While my head does its best disco ball or record player impression on the daily as I attempt to manage my to-do list, it suddenly knows how to stop when something critical happens beyond the walls of work. This isn’t to say work isn’t important or deadlines are arbitrary or any other anarchical philosophy. But a “fire” at work pales in comparison to a fire in a building (or a giant tunnel of wind and rain coming right toward you). If nothing else, my time in the tornado shelter showed me that some things can wait.
And some lessons you can’t learn from a communications textbook.
Rasor is an award-winning marketing agency in Cincinnati, delivering crisis communication strategies and human-focused message development to industries including healthcare, municipal and infrastructure and B2B/B2C. Email us at info@gorasor.com or call 513-793-1234 to learn more.
P.S. There was actually Wi-Fi in the basement, we just didn’t realize it until 5 minutes before the tornado warning was lifted. Sigh.