Jerry Sorenson

Background

About Jerry Sorenson

In my years of experience I’ve come to the conclusion that balancing your work with your family is a daunting task especially when given the project of building an 3.8 million square foot Amazon facility. The demand on your time and commitment to meeting schedules and quality in a normal work environment can bring out the best and the worst in anyone and everyone. That with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s added protocols to the controlling contractor and the sub-contractors was unprecedented. Making it through was costly. Leadership suffered because bringing teams together was fractured. Teams which normally worked together were divided to prevent mass contamination and cohesion suffered. Leaders weren’t trained to develop skills from within a remote environment they adapted on the fly with varied levels of success. I watched as the cohesiveness decayed and frustration and anger as well as ownership and communication faltered. Human interaction is one of the most powerful tools a leader has to employ as well as face to face communication, body language and touch. The family suffers with the daily frustration brought home and the anger that the project you’ve been given is already demanding and time consuming enough under normal working conditions and adding COVID to the mix. So after all this what is the answer to survival in this. Your Faith! Your faith in God, if you believe. Your faith in your family that at the end of the day they understand. Your faith in the decency of humanity and the inherent desire to do what’s right. Your faith in your teams and the understanding that they are experiencing the same things. Finally faith in yourself that in spite of the challenges you can make a difference. That you’ve taken ownership of the things you have the power and ability to change and prioritize as such. Maybe you thrived in this pandemic. If you did well done! I am not ashamed to say I was not equipped and my work and family were hurt by this. I took my focus off my faith and focused on the obstacle… bad mistake. I won’t do that again. Thanks for reading I hope it helps you.