Adapting to…One Heck of a Year

2020 has been a wild ride for all of us at Sephora Singapore, no doubt around the world too. If I had to identify themes for my 2020, change and coming out of my comfort zone would be the two prevalent ones. For something that is a constant, change can be extremely terrifying for human beings. Over here at Sephora Singapore, the effects of COVID-19 meant that we went from being unsure if we could possibly work entirely from home, to now being unsure if we could ever get used to traveling to a workspace and spending 8 hours there each day! Thankfully, we also have a knack for being adaptable to change, and that’s so important in the workplace and everyday life.

And Adapt we did

For my team, we were lucky to have had the habit of doing daily standup meetings, so that naturally transitioned to daily morning calls. I know what you’re thinking, daily calls are just for managers to ensure everyone is awake and working. Duh, what else are they for? In all honesty though, it helped the team remain connected and offered an opportunity for us to clear any roadblocks and ask any questions, ahead of what we will be working on for the day. This definitely helped us adapt to the change of not being readily accessible to each other outside of an office setting. What was once a tough task of getting your audience attention during physical meetings is now made even tougher over a zoom call. Even though I was initially apprehensive about it, I now learn to make it a habit to be video-on at all times as it makes it easier to understand facial expressions and the general vibe of the call (your audience will follow suit). With that said, I can confirm that general interest in my presentations have not increased on video calls compared to physical meetings.

Change is the Only Constant

Coming out of my comfort zone, I volunteered to give an introduction to A/B testing session as part of the Sephora XLearns series earlier in the year. Even though thoughts of regret was immense throughout my prep for the session, I eventually came out of it feeling a sense of achievement.

I also challenged myself to just do it whenever I have second thoughts about having an uncomfortable conversation with someone unfamiliar. This was identified to me by someone close and has since been at the top of my mind. ‘The secret to success is defined by the number of uncomfortable conversations you have’ (Max, 2020).

2020 or not, change is always going to be here, my takeaway from this year is not to be afraid of it but spend that energy learning how to adapt to it. To end this stream of (hazy) consciousness, I just wanted to reach out to you behind the screen and tell you that, friend we are all going through the same thing…Hang in there!