I have an operating theory about the effect COVID is having on everyone’s capacity to engage with organizations and people that might be useful. This theory first emerged on a call with a group of Lutheran pastors in upstate New York with whom I’ve been working as they grappled with keep their own parishioners engaged during this period of seismic upheaval.

Imagine that each of us has an internal gauge that ranks our connection to people and places that is ranked 1 (unengaged) to 10 (hyper engaged). COVID in one fell swoop lopped off a full 3-5 points of engagement. Let’s accept that for the sake of argument.

That being the case, if you had an employee who came into this period with an engagement score of 9, they are now at around a 6. If you had someone working in your organization who was at a 6 pre-COVID, chances are they might be down to a 3. Finally, if someone was struggling personally and professionally and came in at a 4, she might now be in red figures.

The same holds true for you. If you were professionally unengaged prior to COVID, you might be running a deficit as well. Let’s just be honest here.

The real kicker in this model is that the things we’ve lost to the pandemic are likely the very things that most sustained us: personal interactions with our co-workers, daily comedy from our students, collaboration with teammates, etc. So this aggregate drop in our scores is especially difficult to combat as we face an uncertain future.

By the same token, accepting this algorithm allows us to re-think our work, our workplaces, and how we engage with others. For the foreseeable future, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to do anything to bring back pre-pandemic connections. While perhaps depressing, this can also be liberating. Instead of feeling pressures to re-create our experiences of old, we now can think on more basic terms of how to gain points back here and there as we can. The cumulative affects of small measures taken will outpace resignation to the current state.

What are the small ways we lead meetings that infuse engagement back to depleted staff? What do YOU do that adds energy and spirit to your work that you might be missing? How do you