A Message from the GSR President

 

 

 

 

Hello all,

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself.  My name is Cindi Brooks and I am the fiscal year 2021 Gulf States Region President.

What a year we have had so far!  Not only are we dealing with COVID 19, we have been dealing with catastrophic weather events that have affected many of our chapters in the Gulf States Region.  Hurricane season has hit the gulf on multiple occasions along with tornados hitting Nashville and Chattanooga.  Our sincere heartfelt thoughts go out to the members and their families that have had to experience the devastation and are now rebuilding their homes and lives.

With COVID the way we do business and exist has changed drastically. We are social distancing, wearing masks and most importantly washing our hands.  Many call it the new norm.  Interestingly, I do not notice when someone is wearing a mask, we now see each other with our eyes.  I notice more when someone is not wearing a mask.  We all need to do our part to protect each other.

There are several advantages during these trying times that CSI is offering.  Most chapters have gone to Virtual meetings and presentations.  The Gulf States Region has an events calendar on the website.  Anyone that has a virtual meeting may post their event on the calendar. This enables the presenter to have a larger audience and gives the members more CEU opportunities while supporting our local product representatives. Contact Randall Lewis at rlewis@jhharchitects.com to have your event posted.    Not only is this benefit available on the region website it is also available on the Institute Website.  Talk about a larger audience!  Members from all over the country will be able to attend these virtual meetings. Contact education@csinet.org for more information on how to post your event.

For years we have had the Gulf States Leader newsletter.  This year we are changing it up a bit.  Instead of a newsletter we have the GSR blog. If you have an article of interest and would like to post please contact John Murray at jmurray@ccdarchitects.com for more information.  This platform will be our communication tool to spread the word for upcoming events for the Region, Institute and the Chapters.

Please watch for emails regarding Institute Elections. This year the Gulf States Region Institute Director nominations will be on the Institute ballot.  Your vote is important!  If your chapter has a nomination for GSR Institute Director please forward a letter of nomination to our Nominating Committee Chair, Kent Kile at kentkile@comcast.net.  The Institute will be calling for nominations after the first of the year and we need to be ready with our nominations.  This position on the Institute Board of Directors is a three-year term beginning July 1, 2021.

Finally, the Huntsville and Birmingham chapter are working hard to plan our Region Conference for June 3, 2021 to June 5, 2021.  We are optimistic that the world will be in a better place with COVID by June for us to move forward with the conference.  It will be held in Huntsville, Alabama.  Huntsville Chapter’s Tech Day will be held on Thursday, June 3^rd with CEU learning units available.  The conference will begin Friday morning and continue through Saturday.  Please mark your calendars and we will be forwarding additional information as it becomes available.

I hope you all have a Happy Holiday season and hope to see everyone soon.

Sincerely,

Cindi Brooks, CSI, CDT

Gulf States Region President

cbrooks@msprestress.com

 

Managing the Mayhem

 

 

What can I say about this year other than it seems like a bad joke and a serious advertisement for the Mayhem Man and that anything that can go wrong did.  So where do we go from here?   

Obviously we are attempting to establish some sense of normalcy.  Wearing masks is now the new norm. Fist bumps and elbow tags are the new norm. Video chat is now the new meeting norm. So now the real difficulty begins. In my seminar on "Working Smarter "  one of the key tenants is Effectively Communicating and in delving into how we communicate 93% of our communication is non-verbal.

As an example every married guy knows exactly what his wife is saying when she gives him the "look".  The other cues that we glean is openness, truth, seriousness, humor, and tons of other idioms.  That is why most foreigners have so much trouble with our language because on top of words meaning multiple things we can also infer additional meanings or signals with our facial expressions.

Now we introduce masks into the equation and you can't tell if the person sitting across from you is happy, sad, mad, postal or depressed. Body language accounts for 55% of our communication, tone accounts for 38% and words account for 7%.  Different studies will show slightly different numbers but hey I went with Forbes Business School.

So now that we have figured out why we can't effectively communicate and are totally frustrated what do we do?

(1)  Keep it simple and direct.

(2)  Try to be polite and professional.

(3) Re-read all written correspondence for tone and ambiguity.  Have someone else read it to make sure it says what you really mean.

(4) Don't send massive emails - One paragraph max.  Bullet points are even better.

(5)  Be clear about deadlines. Set intermediate deadlines to review. 25%, 50%, etc.

(6)  Be reasonable and understanding.  Family life is now even more of a struggle with schools doing virtual learning.

(7) Use reminders to prompt people (don't nag or harass them) especially about appointments and deadlines.

Don't forget to smile, take a deep breath, take a walk and remember to go with the flow. Eventually we will all get through this. I don't know about you but this is November and this sums up how I feel about 2020.