Leadership in a Moment of Disruption: Lessons from the Sidney Breakfast Club during March 2020

Among the many hats I wear, one of my favourites is helping organize and manage a monthly networking group called the Sidney Breakfast Club here in Victoria, British Columbia.

The Club has been meeting since the early 1990s. It began when a group of government workers involved in ocean and marine sciences realized they had innovative ideas—but not necessarily the business experience to commercialize them. So they started meeting monthly to share challenges, ideas, and lived experience, learning their way forward together.

By 2020, I was managing the group, which typically attracted 35–40 people in person each month. It was face-to-face, relationship-driven, and deeply human.

And then COVID arrived.

When “Stopping” Wasn’t an Option

Like everyone else, we were suddenly confronted with lockdowns, isolation, and uncertainty. The immediate question was simple but heavy:

Do we stop meeting?

For me, the answer was no.

Stopping would have meant losing connection, momentum, and community at precisely the moment people needed them most. So the challenge became how to adapt.

That meant technology.

At the time, online meetings were not common. Platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google tools existed, but they weren’t widely understood or trusted. I did the research and made a decision: we would continue meeting monthly—online—using Zoom.

The announcement was met with resistance. “You can’t network online.” “How do you connect when you’re just little boxes on a screen?”

But we had no real alternative. So we persevered.

Leadership in Practice: Adaptability and Patience

Early on, the speaker became more important than the networking itself. Human connection was harder, but people deeply appreciated simply seeing other faces during months of isolation.

I made a deliberate effort to stay positive as the organizer and MC. I reminded people that this was temporary, that we would grow through it, and that maintaining connection mattered.

Attendance surprised me. Instead of six or eight people, we averaged almost the same numbers as our in-person meetings.

Of course, there were challenges. Nobody knew how to use Zoom. So I created detailed instruction sheets—how to log in, costs, hardware requirements, broadband needs. And when meetings began, I fielded phone calls in real time, patiently walking people through the process.

Not everyone adapted easily. Some never fully did. But leadership in moments like this isn’t about perfection—it’s about persistence, patience, and meeting people where they are.

Unexpected Benefits

As difficult as it was, the shift revealed unexpected advantages:

• We could host speakers from out of town and even out of province
• Accessibility increased
• Digital communication skills improved
• Engagement was maintained during a period when many groups simply disappeared

Had we stopped meeting for two and a half years, I doubt the Club would exist today.

Instead, when in-person meetings finally resumed, something remarkable happened: attendance doubled. We now average 55–60 people per month.

Lessons That Still Matter

There were many lessons, but a few stand out clearly:

• Adaptability is not optional
• Resilience is a leadership muscle that must be exercised
• Maintaining engagement matters more than maintaining format
• Technology is a tool—not a substitute for human connection
• The future is hybrid, whether we like it or not

Today, we live in a world where work, meetings, relationships, and media consumption blend digital and in-person experiences. The organizations that thrive are the ones that learned to bend without breaking.

Why This Story Matters

My hope in sharing this is that you’ll see parallels between this experience and your own—whether in business, community work, or personal leadership moments.

By talking these scenarios through, identifying the leadership behaviours involved, and reflecting on what worked (and what didn’t), we strengthen our own leadership capacity.

That’s what the Legacy Leadership Lounge is about.

I’ll be sharing many more of these reflections in the weeks ahead. Thanks for reading. Thanks for spending time here.

See you next time.