Have I worried? Yes, I would be lying if I said otherwise. We have had Coronavirus illness in the team, there is a lot of business uncertainty and our business has been affected dramatically as have most others. But, at the same time, I’m also optimistic as we see new opportunities as well.

Firstly, and most importantly, the good news is that our team member and his family are now well on the road to recovery after a long time self-isolating.

Quiver Management business

So, what is our experience at Quiver Management here in early May? In short: A mixed bag!

Our executive and business coaching are holding up well. All but one client are continuing their coaching and we are getting more new assignment inquiries than usual. I guess this is to be expected. The benefits of a good sounding board, support and challenge are needed more than ever, as they respond to the sudden lockdown in March and its ongoing impact. We are now seeing the focus of our coaching conversations shifting to the medium and long-term future, and how they position their businesses for success post-COVID-19.

Inhouse training workshops with our corporate customers have largely been postponed wholesale until after May and may be pushed back further. We are now seeing some customers returning to explore how we can run virtual training during the lockdown. Our experience is excellent, not only in terms of quality of learning experience, but also the uptake being higher than usual, probably as some staff have more time and are taking the opportunity to up-skill their leadership and coaching competencies.

All our open programmes have gone virtual and we have seen a big upsurge in the number of people signing up, so much so that we have added more virtual coaching certificate and 1-day coaching training course days to our open programme. We are getting excellent feedback. Many are surprised how good the training experience is as we use the full interactive wizardry of Zoom. Some participants even say the virtual courses are better than in-person workshops. We now plan to run virtual open courses alongside in-person training post-COVID-19.

We were due to start some culture change consultancy projects in April and May, but they have been put on hold. Likewise, conversations around new prospective assignments are awaiting more clarity around how we will come out of the lockdown.

My keynote speaking career which was really starting to gain good momentum in 2019 has dropped dramatically. A few event organisers have decided to run virtual events, but most have postponed or simply cancelled.

Optimism

So, overall, we have had a drop in direct delivery activity in March, April and May. But we have used the time to convert to open virtual training courses and create online courses and webinars on the Quiver Management Academy online platform we invested in in 2019. The response has been tremendous, and I see a bright future in the mixed learning experiences and online courses well beyond the lockdown.

We have been delivering virtual coaching ad-hoc for several years, but most clients have previously preferred the in-person conversations. The experience our clients (and we) are now having using Zoom, Skype or Teams for the coaching sessions has been very positive and I expect that this will become much more the norm going forward, which benefits us all. The costs for the clients are lower, less time is wasted travelling and we reduce carbon emissions.

So overall it is a bit of a mixed bag, but we are optimistic about the future.

What is your experience?

If you are interested in virtual coaching or virtual training don’t hesitate to contact us.

Stay safe and well!