🎨🖌️by: César Villareal.
Dear friends and colleagues,
I am writing you from my office at home, working on remote with my team in Spain and my partners abroad. As you may know since last Sunday, Spain declared the state of emergency and we are all to stay at home in order to try to get the COVI-19 under control. Every day, there is another country that joins the quarantine, and this is the one of the very few times in our recent history that all peoples and countries are acting accordingly.
As we are learning how to cope with this new and unexpected situation we must learn how to deal with uncertainty and keep a healthy state of mind. Leadership once again becomes of the outmost importance because we seek for answers to questions that cannot be explained.
But there is not one leadership now, we are all leaders in our own way. This is a time for strength and resilience, a time for supporting each other and a time to be responsible with the role we must play. We are required to stay home, and this is what we will do.
RHR has defined four key concepts when leading your team in times of uncertainty:
Inform: As people struggle to make sense of the situation that we are going through, we are particularly hungry for information, answers, hopes and solutions that may not come for a while. Leaders should share what they know and what they don´t know, don´t create false expectations.
Connect: In times of uncertainty keeping distance is not the solution, instead leaders should encourage a feeling of responsibility and trust, not only among their teams and colleagues but also family and friends.
Guide: When we don´t know what future brings, people seek for strong leaders who can explore creative solutions and ways to overcome the crisis. Leaders should be confident about what to do, when and why.
Unite: In turbulent times people value a sense of human community. In these exceptional days of global uncertainty, we have created a sense of solidarity that is growing beyond boarders. The more countries enter in the quarantine, the more citizens that are working together towards a common goal.
For more information on these four key concepts, refer to RHR special white paper “Leadership in Times of Uncertainty”
I am positive that this crisis will be under control I just don´t know when or how. What I do know is that Infinite Spur will continue to work to offer great international leadership experiences for our students in the future.
For now, all our early May and June programs have been cancelled due to International Restrictions and Governmental Guidelines. Our July programs are still “on hold” although it is very likely that those cancel as well.
Our commitment to partners and students is to keep them informed of any updates that we may have. Cancelled programs will be rescheduled as soon as possible, and in the meantime Infinite Spur´s team is working hard on making the courses available online, so students can still get the taste of the program, even if they are at home.
Once this is over, we will be able to celebrate and resume all international travel and experiences. Until then, we will be in actively in touch with all of you through our Social Media, email, videoconferences and online courses.
Finally, I want to take a minute to thank all our partner´s and student´s support these past days.
Thank you for being there “todo saldrá bien” in the meantime let´s stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Marta Walliser, PhD
Executive Director