I have become a digital nomad, which means that I am location independent and use technology to perform my job, rather than being physically present at my client’s headquarters or office.
In 2020 when Covid was at its worst and we were incarcerated in our homes and only allowed to leave to go shopping and for one hour’s exercise per day, we decided to complete our Caribbean villa which we were in the process of building and relocate to Dominica.
Dominica is not called the nature isle for nothing, with whale watching, waterfalls, rivers and lakes, turtle watching and some beautiful beaches – what’s not to love?
During 2020 I barely worked because all the projects I had in my diary involved face to face meetings, both in the UK and abroad and 100% of my income involved face to face delivery.
Move forward to 2022, I now live in Dominica and travel to the UK if family or business require. Since living here I have spoken at 7 conferences in the UK via zoom and facilitated management and leadership development programmes using either Microsoft Teams or Zoom, for my international clients. I have had to upskill myself to use these platforms but also to learn how to engage audiences online, when you can’t see body language properly or those subtle nuances that tell you if your point is hitting home. I read an article recently where it was suggested you had to have ‘Virtual Charisma’ to really lock people in to deliver a memorable message online! Well, I am still perfecting this!
If you had asked me a few years ago I would have decried delivering sessions and holding meetings online as not being effective, but some feedback from a management development course that I recently delivered, where a delegate wrote to thank me and said that she had found speaking on Microsoft Teams had increased her confidence and allowed her to voice concerns that she would not normally articulate. This increases my belief in this way of working and more of my clients also seem to see the benefit of using these platforms to deliver workshops.
