Office Hours x Atlanta: Communicating Effectively in Today’s World

On Thursday, October 27th, Axios Atlanta reporters Emma Hurt and Thomas Wheatley led conversations with key power players in Atlanta on lessons in leadership and crisis management in a new era of business. Guests included The Gathering Spot co-founder and CEO Ryan Wilson and Collab Capital managing partner Justin Dawkins.

• Ryan Wilson on building community in a new era of remote work: “Our thesis is, we have a lot of awesome tools to connect us online, but nothing really can replace the in-person experience of meeting people. We place a real premium priority on making sure that those experiences happen, and through those programs, we believe that there really shouldn’t be limits between who you are professionally and who you are socially. So we’ll talk about your taxes, and then the next day turn around and talk about dating in the city. And so through those experiences, people were able to build meaningful relationships and that’s how companies continue to grow.”
• Justin Dawkins on investing in the health and wellness of your team: “What we found over the last two years, investing in what I would say is one of the most wonky markets ever…the health of your team is now something you have to strongly consider…and so one of the tools that we look at a lot is networks, and also mental health. So one of the things that we enacted for our portfolio is mental health services, so we provide up to six therapy and counseling sessions just to keep our founders comfortable.”

In the View from the Top segment, Edelman Atlanta general manager Radina Russell highlighted how Americans’ trust in technology has been declining over the last decade, while societal expectations for tech companies to lead on social and economic issues has grown.

• “76% of people across the world say ‘we trust technology.” But when you look in the United States in particular, that trust is sliding, it’s actually down 24 points over the last 10 years. So what does that mean? What do we have to do, what are the challenges that we’re seeing? Social media is actually decreasing our trust in technology…so it’s starting to drag us down, things where people don’t actually understand the technology, they are slower to adopt, so people not explaining what’s happening out there. And then also, we’re asking a lot of technology companies today, we’re asking them to kind of lead the way and pave the way for societal change.”

Thank you Edelman for sponsoring this event.