“Out of sight, out of mind”
It is easy to forget about other people who we are not seeing, or who we haven’t seen in a while.
I’ll give you one example from my recent travels.
As you know, every time you are about to aboard a plane, there comes the ritual of the group number, the having the boarding pass ready for scanning, and the parade through the Jetway. Most Jetways are not designed to be lived in, and their heating, cooling, and ventilation systems are not the best.
While boarding in Tampa, the warm Florida weather heats up the Jetway. Not a big deal if you just walk through it at a brisk pace, but when you have to stand in there for a few minutes, together with a few dozen of your fellow human beings, it can start to be suffocating.
The wait, the slowly moving queue, is mostly due to the passengers in front of you, who already boarded, who you can see, as soon as you get past the aircraft door, that are not in any particular rush for stowing their carry-on away, and get seated, neatly out of the way.
They don’t care. It is their turn to do this. Key in this, is that THEY CANNOT SEE the people still in the Jetway, in the suffocating heat. The most ironic part? It is not that they don’t know, they just been there!
In the virtual or hybrid environment we are all now, every one of us, and especially leadership, must make a special effort to compensate for this flaw of our human personality.
What are the consequences for the people you cannot see? What’s going on “in the Jetway”?