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Interview with Michele Madore, History 150 Spring 2023, Conducted by Brianna Glines, March 26 2023.

Overview:

In March of 2020, the world shut down due to  the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses were transformed either by shutting down or moving to virtual platforms. Regulations were put into place to help these shifts. Even public schools went virtual. We all had to social distance and because of this traveling stopped and businesses were very heavily affected. Small businesses specifically were very affected as well. Businesses that constantly were traveling prior to the pandemic completely had to shift and it was hard for some of them to continue. This is all social change because the world had to completely change into something that we were not used to, and every single person was affected by it.With these regulations put in place my grandmother’s businesses were heavily affected. She used to travel every month to different countries to teach her clients and then completely had to change and that is what is highlighted in this interview. Michele Madore, talks about in this interview how her business had to completely change and how that affected her as well as her business. She talks about some positives and negatives that came out of the pandemic and goes into how moving fully virtual affected her clients. She gives a lot of interesting information on how overall the pandemic affected her business.

Biography:

For my interview, I interviewed my grandmother, Michele Madore. She is 63 years old and owns her own business. Her business has always been something that she is very passionate about and something she is very experienced in. She works in leadership development and is a change consultant. She finds ways to help businesses and clients through a transformation change. This job is something that came to her over a lot of different experiences with companies, but she feels that this is something that she is called to do. With her business she used to travel the world and meet all of her clients in person, and that had to completely change with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research:

When Covid- 19 hit so many small businesses had to shut down or completely change how they were running. COVID-19 truly shocked the world and no one really knew what to do and could not prepare for such a change. The change because of the pandemic did not just last for a couple of months, it has changed the business world forever and how it operates. When the pandemic first hit 43% of businesses had to shut down. Some businesses had to move remote because health problems and concerns, social distancing, not being able to travel, and just for safety of themselves and employees of peoples businesses. All businesses globally were heavily affected by the pandemic. Similar to my grandmother’s situation some businesses had to fully shut down the traveling aspect and that completely changed how the business ran.

According to research,  the pandemic has astronomically changed the business world and especially for leaders at an organizational level. This is apparent in my grandmother’s interview, since  she is a leader of her own business and faced similar struggles. Covid- 19 also drastically changed the traveling world as well. People could not travel for over a year without permission and it was very hard for businesses to get back into the traveling scene. Around 73% of jobs received an immediate decline in traveling because of the pandemic and a lot of countries also depend on tourists and people traveling to their country.

Transcription:

Brianna Glines 0:03
Hi. So today I’m here with my grandmother Michele, and for this interview, we’ll be discussing how the COVID 19 pandemic has affected her business.

Michele Madore 0:14
Hi Brianna

Brianna Glines 0:16
So my first question for you is, can you explain your job title better and what you’re actually doing with your clients?

Michele Madore 0:24
So I am a change consultant. And basically, what I do is go in and help organizations as they go through transformational type change. And what that means is the kind of change where their culture has to shift and the thinking and their mindset, as well as a lot of the practices and the processes and the things that you know how they’re doing their work every day.

Brianna Glines 0:57
Right. Mm hmm. Okay, and were there any major changes that the pandemic calls for your job?

Michele Madore 1:06
Yeah, actually, there were a lot of changes I used to travel all the time, and most of my work was in person, not not remote. I mean, almost all of my work. I have a lot of accredited programs and courses, so I had to go get them reaccredited in order to be able to do them online. So that was quite a challenge to go get them all reaccredited.

Brianna Glines 1:41
Right Okay, I’m sure. And since there are so many changes, how did that effect the relationship with your clients? If at all?

Michele Madore 1:50
Um, well, it’s a I mean, I was able to keep my clients of course, but I don’t always have repeat clients, some clients or new clients every time. But I would say that it’s a little bit harder to do the work I do, because a lot of like, leadership development work. So working with so I’m a professional coach, as well. So coaching people and doing some, like leadership work and team conflict work, it’s a little bit harder, remotely, working with teams, it’s a little bit harder remotely than it is in person. But that’s the that was the downside, I’d say the upside was that I’ve been able to get clients, more clients from around the entire world, who wouldn’t have been able to travel to take the courses, and now they can take them because they’re online.

Brianna Glines 2:49
Right. Yeah. Um, how do you like working from home opposed to traveling and seeing your clients in person?

Michele Madore 2:59
Yeah. So as I was saying, in the last question, it’s a little bit harder to do it. You know, remotely because people are multitasking, and they’re kind of, you know, kept their cameras off. And so it gets a little tricky when you’re working with conflict and things like that. But um, I do like, working from home, I miss traveling a little bit. I think if I had a mix of it, some working from home and some travel might get a little bit better, but I do prefer not traveling so much internationally, because it was pretty tiring.

Brianna Glines 3:41
Right, I’m sure. Did the transition from moving fully online affect your mental health and the beginning?

Michele Madore 3:52
Um, think so. Maybe a little bit um, you know, it was just never never going out anywhere. Just getting up and walking across the hallway to my desk. You know, just being home a lot. That was you know, that was a little bit challenging. I got more lonely doing that. But you know, I missed being around people a lot. So it took a little bit of getting used to but you know. Once COVID got better than I could get out a little bit more, that helped.

Brianna Glines 4:33
Right. Yeah. Do you think you’ll continue to do pretty much probably virtual like you have been doing for the past couple of years, or will you start to travel more?

Michele Madore 4:46
I’ve only travelled a little bit this like really only one trip so far this year. I’ll probably take another one. I don’t think I’ll ever go back. People just aren’t, like I’ve tried I just schedule a couple of in person things and we had to cancel because they people didn’t want to, you know, do it, they just didn’t want to travel. So far, it’s not worked for me to try to schedule things in person. I guess, I don’t know if that’s a sign that it’s going to stay this way. Probably will stay the virtual.

Brianna Glines 5:27
Yeah. When the pandemic, did you know how to react? And were you ever scared for your business?

Michele Madore 5:36
Honestly, I was a little scared at first. Because I didn’t think my work could be done virtually no one in my field had really done the work that I do virtually so. In fact, everyone kind of made the case that it couldn’t be done virtually. So we had already always made this case that you really can’t work with teams and do the work I do unless you’re there. So I initially got scared. But then I just jumped into action and started doing all the things that I thought I needed to do so. But yeah, in fact, I was in Arizona, when when COVID hit and I had to, I had to leave a client and they shut that, you know, they shut the company down. I had to leave the client come home. And so that was pretty scary at that.

Brianna Glines 6:37
Yeah, Yeah. I’m sure. All right. Um, my last question for you is, was this line of work, something that you were always interested in? Or was it something that came to you as you learned and grew throughout other jobs?

Michele Madore 6:49
It was definitely something that came to me as I grew, and, you know, experienced different work, kind of, I got a lot of different experience, but this was something I didn’t even know about when I started like, a long time ago. So yeah, I think I had a natural tendency to work with people to help people. I always had worked around a lot of change. So to become a change consultants. seemed like a natural fit for me, but I wouldn’t have known that that would been in my career. At the right place at the right time Brianna.

Brianna Glines 7:37
Yeah, haha that’s true. Okay, well, I just want to thank you for your time for this interview. But I’m glad that I got to learn more about your business and how COVID has affected you and your line of work.

Michele Madore 7:55
All right, you’re welcome Brianna. Good job.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Bibliography:

Bartik, A., Bertrand, M., Cullen, Z., Glaeser, E., Luca, M., & Stanton, C. (2020, July 28). The impact of covid-19 on small business outcomes and expectations. Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/17656\

Collings, David G., et al. “Leading through Paradox in a COVID‐19 World: Human Resources Comes of Age.” Human Resource Management Journal, vol. 31, no. 4, 2021, pp. 819–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12343.

Fairlie, Robert. “The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence from the First Three Months after Widespread Social-Distancing Restrictions.” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7461311/.

Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria. “The Covid-19 Travel Shock Hit Tourism-Dependent Economies Hard.” Brookings, Brookings, 9 Mar. 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-covid-19-travel-shock-hit-tourism-dependent-economies-hard/#:~:text=The%20COVID%20crisis%20has%20led,120%20million%20direct%20tourism%20jobs.

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