Rosa Say's Blog: Managing with Aloha, page 5

Response-able: Life Skills in Responsibility

I’m rather fond of getting language, words, and the vocabulary we use daily to do their magic for us. The principle I routinely promote for this with you, is Language of Intention, Key 5 of Managing With Aloha’s 9 Key Concepts:

Key 5. LANGUAGE OF INTENTION:

Language, vocabulary, and conversation combine as our primary tools in business communications, just as they do in our lives: What we speak is exponentially more important than what we read or write. The need for clear, intentional, reliable and responsive communication is critical in thriving businesses — and in learning cultures, for we learn an extraordinary amount from other people. Drive communication of the right cultural messages, and you drive mission momentum and worthwhile energies. Communication will factor into every single value in some way as its primary enabler. The Managing with Aloha language of intention is inclusive, and is therefore defined as the “Language of We” with the value of KĀKOU as guiding light.

For instance, I love thinking about inspiration and being inspired, as being ‘in-spirit’—in our Aloha Spirit, and energized by it. Our current immersion with KULEANA is another good case in point, with how we started our study for 2018 with ‘self-motivation is really the only kind of motivation there is.’ —Motivation is Kuleana’s Inside Job.

Therefore, as you can imagine, I LOVED this, and wish I had thought of this word-packaging for responsibility years ago!

“All children want to see themselves as ‘response-able’—powerful and able to respond to what needs to be done. They need this for their self-esteem, and for their lives to have meaning.”

For it’s not just children; we all want to see ourselves that way. The good news, is that we can still achieve response-ableness even after we’ve become adults.

The quote comes from a Motherly article by Dr. Laura Markham, and I hope you will read it in full:

Chores, teamwork and high expectations: The 15 habits that raise responsible kids.

Markham’s “15 everyday strategies guaranteed to increase your child’s ‘response-ability’ quotient” focuses on blending the whys and how-tos of responsibility, i.e. no matter what the responsibility you have may be, it’s how you actually pull it off.

“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m in the midst of using Markham’s list as a model for new workplace training I’d like to offer on Kuleana. As the Managing with Aloha practitioner you already are, I’ll bet you get a few ideas for your own workplace as well. Here are her topics: Can you rewrite them for the workplace?

Before you scoff at the exercise, take a moment to imagine how truly functional and grown-up the workplace would be, if every person associated with it had already learned these as their life skills within responsibility…

Raise your child with the expectation that we always clean up our own messes.
Kids need an opportunity to contribute to the common good.
Remember that no kid in his right mind wants to do chores. Make the job fun.
Always let children “do it myself” and “help,” even when it’s more work for you.
Rather than simply giving orders, try asking your child to do the thinking.
Provide routines and structure.
Teach your child to be responsible for her interactions with others.
Support your child to help pay for damaged goods.
Don’t rush to bail your child out of a difficult situation.
Model responsibility and accountability.
Never label your child as “irresponsible.”
Teach your child to make a written schedule.
All kids need the experience of working for pay.
Create a “no-blame household.”
Teach your kids that, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, they not only have the right to be an individual, they have an obligation to be one.

This is exceptional advice for parents AND for managers:

“If you focus on helping your child take charge of his life, and support him as necessary to learn each new skill, your child will want to step into each new responsibility. Instead of your holding him responsible, he becomes motivated to take responsibility for himself. It’s a subtle shift, but it makes all the difference in the world. The bottom line is that kids will be responsible to the degree that we support them to be.”

Don’t think of responsibility as less-than-joyful obligation, think of it as skill building.

Related Reading in the Managing with Aloha Archives:

Vocabulary, Lexicon, Dialect, Morphology…oh my! It’s workplace word candy—Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology.
Your Responsibilities: Kuleana Joy or Clutter? Once your sense of responsibility about something asserts itself in your psyche, it will rule all else. It comes first, and has to be addressed first—you have to reckon with it.
Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers— Much good comes from the responsibility you accept, and decide to take ownership of. There is, however, a trap to be aware of as well.
UnReliant— I once heard it said that ‘unreliance’ is the ultimate success with accepting personal responsibility. To be unreliant, is to be totally on your own: Autonomous. Independent. Self-reliant. Self-sufficient.

These thoughts were originally shared within our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

UnReliant

I once heard it said that ‘unreliance’ is the ultimate success with accepting personal responsibility. To be unreliant, is to be totally on your own: Autonomous. Independent. Self-reliant. Self-sufficient.

Life is not a solo proposition however, and I do think a certain measure of healthy coexistence is a human necessity (coexistence, not codependence), just as we spoke of here: Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers—You can share your kuleana in a win-win way. Yet each time our value immersion practice circles back to Kuleana, the Hawaiian value of responsibility, I think about that assertion again;

UnReliance is the ultimate success with accepting personal responsibility.

To think about it, and weigh in with it, is to ask yourself if you’ve reckoned with personal responsibility enough—do you accept enough personal responsibility for your own life, or not? How can you become stronger in your self-reliance, and thus, more self-confident?

Upping your quota of self-reliance usually means you have more to give to others as well, because you can do so without feeling depleted in any way; you remain steady and sure.

Back Where It All Begins, by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

So ask yourself, “What keeps me feeling in balance in a self-reliant way?”

Beyond being in balance, what makes you feel abundant enough to share yourself with others, wherein you aren’t dependent on them, and they in turn, need not be dependent on you? —Have that be your Kuleana.

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Related reading on Kuleana in the Archives:

Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers
Your Responsibilities: Kuleana Joy or Clutter?
The Alaka‘i Benefactor: Sharing in the ‘Ohana in Business

These thoughts were originally shared within our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers

Preview: Much good comes from the responsibility you accept, and decide to take ownership of. There is, however, a trap to be aware of as well.

Kuleana;

The Hawaiian Value of Responsibility

Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers

When writing Managing with Aloha’s chapter on Kuleana, my focus was on the workplace gemstones we commonly associate with responsibility as a desirable.

Initiative. Involvement. Engagement. Ownership. The always revered and admired Accountability, and our current immersion, Motivation: Motivation is Kuleana’s Inside Job.

In my more recent coaching experiences, there is another facet of responsibility which rears its head, and this one is definitely not a ‘gemstone.’ It’s the danger of entrapment.

I speak from personal experience as well; as the eldest of five children, “eldest child syndrome” did not just occur naturally with me; my parents deliberately trained it into me. So much so, that the freedoms I associated with flying the nest at 18, all had to do with a very eager shedding of responsibility—and any of the familial guilt that went with it.

Work, and the healthy shaping of workplace culture, helped me reframe responsibility with the desirability of Kuleana, including the knowledge of how the delegation you share can be a gift for others.

Here are two Kuleana Keepers—keep them in mind;

1. To accept responsibility for something, including ownership of it, does not mean you go it alone.

We tend to think of responsibility as an all or nothing kind of thing, yet that often should not be the case, especially in a well-functioning workplace. Accepting personal responsibility is often step one; sharing it in a win-win manner with others is step two.

2. The Kuleana of good responsibility will fill you with energy and will help you grow; it should not drain your energy, slow you in an unreasonable way, or shackle you.

The responsibility you accept need not be a forever affair; there is nothing wrong with giving it a time limit, invoking the healthy discipline of a reasonable deadline. Second, define areas of responsibility better; give them reasonable boundaries and challenging constraints.

What can you do?

For 1: Share your Kuleana

Pair Kuleana with the values of Lōkahi (Chapter 8) and Kākou (Chapter 9). Coaching us in collaboration and cooperation, Lōkahi is often referred to as the value of teamwork; Kākou is the Hawaiian value of inclusiveness—It means “all of us” and “we are in this together.”

For 2: Constrain your Kuleana

Seek to connect workplace responsibility with culture-building, to shift it from too personal to more professional. To do so, it may help to give yourself a few self-imposed rules in the context of the responsibility you are working within. Review what that means here: Sunday Mālama: Debrief to Recharge your Aloha Spirit.

Related Reading on Kuleana:

Motivation is Kuleana’s Inside Job
Your Responsibilities: Kuleana Joy or Clutter?
Managers Make Promises They Can Keep
Life’s 3 Stops in Motivation: Happiness, Meaning, Service

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Your Responsibilities: Kuleana Joy or Clutter?

Responsibility. It’s quite the heavy-hitter, isn’t it.

Along the ins and outs of a lengthy working career filled with goal setting, initiative sharing and strategic objective plotting, I learned something unshakeable and consistent about responsibility. Responsibility rules.

Once your sense of responsibility about something asserts itself in your psyche, it will rule all else. It comes first, and has to be addressed first—you have to reckon with it.

If that sense of responsibility rumbling in your spirit isn’t aligned with those goals and objectives you plan to undertake, the chances you’ll triumph with them are few and far between. When responsibility rules, nothing can compete.

That’s not all.

Add one more hopeful wish to that list of career targets; dreams.

Responsibility will threaten your dreams if you let it, so don’t.

Backpacks and Pencil Boxes

Responsibility can be singular or plural. Either way, it’s heavy.

Descano Sketchkit, by HiWendee on Flickr

At some point, I started to think about responsibility as being like that lumbering backpack most kids carry through grade school. Most of the weight in those backpacks are from textbooks carried to class, and then home for homework. Learning what’s in them, is supposed to be our assigned responsibility while attending school. Learning is the work of being a kid.

The other thing we’d habitually carry in our backpacks was a pencil box, for without one, pencils left to their own survival lost their points, got snapped into pieces, or were lost altogether. Pencil boxes tend to be fairly cheap, so moms rarely object when their kids pick one out, and toss it into the cart while shopping together for school supplies. School is their kids’ work for the coming semester—why not brighten it up a bit?

Brightening it up is just the beginning though: Those pencil boxes are destined to become treasure troves.

As friendships get made, pencil boxes will start to hold notes exchanged in class when the teacher’s not looking. They’ll be big enough for a hidden calculator, or a smartphone you’re not supposed to have. They’ll hold onto a square eraser your first crush dropped and you picked up, so its worn corners could comfort you during a pop-up quiz or stressful exam. Pencils ‘grow up’ with you, in a passage of time, grade changes, recesses and playground smarts that morph into sophisticated mechanical pencils at some point, yet they’re really so much more than that. Watercolors replace highlighters, calligraphy pens replace those cheap Bics.

We graduate from school, and we sell our textbooks or bequeath them to our younger siblings, used, yet with the gifts of our margin scribbles that might give them their own creative impulses. The pencil boxes we keep, scooting them under our bed to wait for summer treasures, or tucking them high onto a closet shelf as a secret kept safe, for they’re holding the humble yet undeniable beginnings of our after-school dreams.

Kuleana: Joy or Clutter?

“Kuleana: Joy or Clutter?” is what we’ve called the responsibility reckoning we’ve done over the years since Say Leadership Coaching has been in existence, teaching and coaching the value alignment of Managing with Aloha—Kuleana in particular.

Everyone has to reckon with their sense of responsibility at some point—people come to work with the textbooks and pencil boxes they already have been carrying around with them for years. The ‘textbooks’ are largely made up of shoulding—they shoulder the responsibility they feel they should have, responsibility running the gamut from family obligation, income earning, skill learning, customer service, promotability and such—all those responsibilities stemming from ‘being an adult now.’

Quite frankly, most (not all, but most) of these textbook cases of responsibility has turned into clutter. It’s heavy. It gets in the way. It drains useful energy. It was practice. It’s temporary responsibility, and it should be.

Tucked away into our pencil boxes however, is the responsibility that is the stuff of our true, self-motivated, and Aloha-resonant selves. It’s heavy-hitter responsibility too, but it’s wanted. It’s our joy in being able to grow up by finally making our own choices with and about whatever we want to be held responsible for, and accountable for. It’s highly desirable and inspirational for us, the responsibility we want to initiate and own, but it’s still largely tucked away in some closed box within us. Why? Because our shoulding tells us that pencil box responsibility is a luxury we cannot afford to entertain until we deal with the textbooks that [might] help us grow up completely first.

I could tell you that’s rubbish, and that’s wrong or foolish, but I won’t convince you or change your habits. You do have to deal with that textbook responsibility first, and before you dare to tempt yourself with opening your pencil box. You want whatever dreams are inside, but you’re going to protect them until you know there’s little risk of their escaping, or getting broken in two because they fell out of the box and into your cavernous backpack of adult trepidation.

As for that lofty “goal setting, initiative sharing and strategic objective plotting” we think of as our professionalism—forget about it.

Kuleana Clutter-busting

Our Kuleana clutter-busting works for your personal stuff and for your professional stuff. It works at home and it works at work. So some of you will do it twice because you separate the two, others will just do it all at once mixing the two because they keep blending despite your efforts to segregate them; it doesn’t matter. All the responsibility you’ll be thinking about is now yours, and you’ve backpacked it long enough to follow your instincts.

This is a very easy exercise. The problem is that you just don’t do it until someone like me gets you to.

Ready? Good. I want you to work on three lists.

1. On List one, write down the responsibilities which are your keepers. Recognize that what you enjoy doing serves as an energy catalyst for you, and hints at your Ho‘ohana. The things on this list will stay in your inbox, on your To Do list, within your projects, and in your life, and you won’t mind one bit. You want these responsibilities to stay with you; you actually savor them, and feel them grow you into your Palena ‘ole capacities.

2. On your second list, write down the responsibilities you know you can reassign and delegate to someone else. These are quality items, and they are worth doing, so they will be meaningful for someone and their future growth, but that someone doesn’t have to be you, and is no longer you. If someone said, “take it or leave it” you’d leave it without a second thought or shred of regret.

3. On the third list, I want you to get ruthless. Write down the things that are busy-work and really not that important—yes; responsibility can degrade and become meaningless. If you forgot about these things no one would notice, but it would clear a lot of pending drag in your own brain and free your spirit. You’ve forgotten the reasons for this stuff, and you’re simply on auto-pilot for them. These things are not adding any value to your life, or to anyone else’s.

Joyful Work in Waiting—Be Clear on Who it is for

As you probably guessed, List 1 started to gel years ago in your grade school pencil box. It’s the responsibility that is not dreary, or energy-draining at all—it’s your responsibility turned Joyful Work in Waiting.

List 2 represents the textbooks which were the better ones, the ones most relevant to your learning (lots of scribbles in those margins!) and quite possibly, your career early on. However you did indeed graduate from these subjects, you have retained what you will need to remember or recall when useful again, and it’s high time you moved on. You know this despite what anyone might tell you otherwise—stop listening to the shoulding which bears an expiration date for you. Give away those textbooks to people who need them more than you do, along with your notes, your scribbles, and your once-valuable lessons learned.

List 3 is your clutter, and it’s time to bid it goodbye once and for all. Saying your goodbyes may take some time, but trust me, it will be time so well spent for you!

Be sure nothing related to List 3 sits at the bottom of your Inbox, is on any To Do List you have, or gets integrated into any of your future goals, objectives or dreams—deal with it in the way you know you must, in order to bid it goodbye forever. Be absolutely sure you collect any physical trappings that are associated with List 3. Once this collection is done, cackle with glee as you burn the list. Give away, donate, trash, bury or burn all the ‘trappings.’

One discovery many have made in doing this exercise, is that procrastination can indeed be a part of the responsibility you placed on all three lists. Another good casualty? Bad habits.

Don’t you feel better now?

It’s time to work on your worthwhile delegation to, and training or mentoring of others (List 2), and best of all, it’s time to work on your own dreams (List 1). Your pencil box has been tucked away for much too long now. Open it up, and work on your joy.

Postscript:

If you have a copy of Managing with Aloha, there is another exercise in Chapter 10 on Kuleana designed to help you with the delegation of List 2, those responsibilities you have graduated from. Think of delegation as sharing your learning, and not as sharing a burden. If you truly struggle with delegating something to someone else, ask yourself how worthy a candidate that responsibility really is:

—Why were you still doing it?

—Will you allow someone else to take it from you? What hold does it have on you?

—Do you have to clarify it and decide on your next action so you can complete a portion of it in some way first?

—Do you have to train someone else in it, and coach them before you can delegate to them?

—Could the answer possibly be ‘None of the Above?’ Do you have to just let it go, and cut your own emotional ties to it?

Related Reading:

Motivation is Kuleana’s Inside Job
Banish Your Possibility Robbers
People Who Do Good Work
Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Good

January’s Beginnings are in Our Good

When January 1st arrived, I just had two sentences in my journal as my 2018 candidate of intention—and in pencil no less!

Look for good.

Whether people, places, or things, turn them into your good experiences.

On January 2nd, I wrote over the pencil with a black Sharpie, deciding they’d indeed be my keepers, my wish, my theme, my intention, and my commitment.

Look for good.

Whether people, places, or things, turn them into your good experiences.

A few hours later, I saw this at our Kamuela Starbucks, the meant-for-Christmas poster our local proprietor liked enough to keep up for New Years week, and thought to myself, the world conspires—good!

‘Good’ has been a key word for me for a very long time now.

—I sincerely believe in what the Hawaiian values teach us, that ‘people are born good’ and that the Aloha Spirit couldn’t exist within us otherwise.

—I sincerely believe that management, and by extension Managing With Aloha, is not, and will never be irrelevant: We need managers in each and every workplace, managers who are dedicated to being the stewards of vibrant, healthy, and meaningful workplace culture. This calling we devote ourselves to is good, and shares good.

—I sincerely believe that ‘great’ managers are ‘good people’ first and foremost. Ethics, integrity, morality and compassion will never be irrelevant either. On the contrary, they become more important with each passing day, with every endeavor we call ‘work.’

Now I’m no Pollyanna, for I know there will always be some bad or less than good to be addressed, so it returns to its Aloha-inspired place of good, and can be corrected, refreshed and rejuvenated. It’s just that I’m feeling called at this moment in time, called to do a much better job of mining the good, recognizing it, elevating it, encouraging it, supporting it, and celebrating it.

I’m feeling that 2018 looms ahead of us as a year where we shouldn’t overly complicate things. Goals are not speaking to me as loudly and as assertively now as my values are, and my values are telling me that the best possible thing we can do is to Be Good. The right goals will follow. As we have often said before, “goals change; values are forever.”

Own your values, whatever they are, for values are “Elemental, visceral, and all good.” Hattip: Matt Cheuvront

Goodness 1st, and Greatness follows

This is a whiteboard lesson, which harked back to the very beginnings of Say Leadership Coaching in 2004: We work on Goodness first (some have said, “it’s my personal”) and Greatness second (the professional.)

Concepts in GREATNESS:

Ethics
Integrity
Morality
Compassion with Courage
Balance / Integration / Alignment

Concepts in GOODNESS:

Be Kind
Be Polite and Considerate
Be Gentle and Take it Slow
Be Modest and Humble
Share your Aloha Spirit

From the ManagingWithAloha.com Archives:

Sunday Mālama: Better Managers are Better People.

 

Will you join me all this brand new year through?

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, just released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Good Communication is Streamlined Communication

Communication gets streamlined constantly by those who wish to be good at it, and I surely do.

I’ve long been a believer in the “Less is More” doctrine, yet effective communication often proves to be repetitive; it can be wise to repeat your messages. Therefore, I have been thinking about, and investing my attentions in, this quote from “deep work” professor Cal Newport since he posted it on his blog this past March:

“When it comes to the world of work, more connectivity and more communication is not necessarily better. In fact, it often makes things worse.”

—The Obvious Value of Communication is Perhaps Not So Obvious

When is repetition good, and where should it happen?

As a significant, colluding force, March was also the month the weekly newsletter I write for our Ho‘ohana Community hit the 9-month mark, long enough for it to graduate from a communicative experiment to habit, that place where action meets repetition too.

Now, several months later, and with the cumulative content experimentation of 70 weeks of newsletter issues, I’ve made a decision that impacts those of you who subscribe to this blog feed, but not to the newsletter, a related decision I hope you will reconsider.

Thus, I write this particular posting to be sure I communicate my new publishing direction to you, as a very valued member of our Ho‘ohana Community of Managing with Aloha practitioners.

My decision involves changes that will be made both here on the blog and in my newsletter. Most notably, my “Day 1” postings for our bimonthly value immersion will no longer appear here as separate, additional blog entries. The Value Your Month to Value Your Life program will appear in just 2 places (newsletter and Ke Ola archives) instead of 3.

In a word, I’m streamlining, now that the results of my TinyLetter experiment turned good habit have made themselves so apparent to me. For example;

My weekly newsletter is clearly preferred to the RSS feed of this blog: Both new subscriptions and current-to-the-week readership consistently favors the newsletter by more than 300%.
Although both subscriptions (newsletter and RSS blog feed) arrive in your email inbox, it is also clear to me that you prefer sharing the newsletter with others, and you much prefer to respond to me directly via email; comments left on the blog have become quite rare.
When I ask for your feedback, those who are more directly engaged have asked that I write the newsletter in a more ‘letterly’ fashion, i.e. more self-contained at first reading, with links back to the blog primarily furnished for second readings pointing to additional resources.
A definite influence, are my beliefs in regard to email, and our responsibilities with proactive sending, versus reactive receiving: I do think of email as worthy communication, and as a form of messaging you cannot realistically opt out of, for the world has conspired to keep it despite new habits with texting and social media: Embrace Email—it works.

Now believe me, I am NOT abandoning this Managing with Aloha blog altogether! Never, and no way! This blog is essentially my book’s constantly updated sequel.

I will continue to publish articles here, but with the objective of having them be less time-sensitive, and more resourceful, improving the quality of my archives as a whole. A related decision I’ve made, is that I will further restrict the number of coaching clients I handle at any given time, so I can devote more time to my writing and publishing, and that includes a lot of clean-up work. I will be reediting the archives through an intensive audit of our 9 Key Concept categories.

Another way of looking at this, is that the blog will be revered as our post-book Managing with Aloha destination and evergreen resource; the weekly newsletter will contain our week-to-week journey. My bimonthly Ke Ola Magazine series on the 19 Values of Aloha will continue to be archived on RosaSay.com and the newsletter will continue to point to them there.

Therefore, if you are interested in #VYMTVYL—Value Your Month to Value Your Life—as our bimonthly value immersion practice, please subscribe to the newsletter, for going forward, that is where it will be published.

NOTE: In November and December of 2017, we move on from Lōkahi to Kākou in our value mapping process: You can read my Ke Ola kick-off essay on RosaSay.com as usual, and I will cover it in the newsletter Thursday, November 2nd: Let’s Talk Story with Kākou Invitation.

I will still use the newsletter to point you to resource articles added to the blog as they are published, however the RSS feed will remain active as well; keep it if you wish to!

Ultimately my mission in supporting Alaka‘i Managers has not changed; I want this blog to be the values-centered learning resource you can count on, and I do believe this new approach will help me reshape this blog as the stand-alone, definitive resource it should be, separate from the weekly newsletter coaching opt-ins —timeless while time honored. Now that my book’s 2nd edition is done, and we have triumphed with nearly 18 months of the newsletter’s learning curve, I anticipate publishing more resource articles here than has been my recent habit.

I’m excited, and truly looking forward to the writing and editing work ahead of me as I streamline our communications, so less duplication does deliver more focus. I’m very confident that you will find it becomes better for you as well.

Thank you for reading, and for sticking with me as you do.

Rosa

Click on the image below, to subscribe to the #VYMTVYL newsletter:

Go to the #AlohaIntentions Archives on RosaSay.com for my #VYMTVYL essays:

The top entry will list our current month’s focus.

Dedicate October to Truthful, Authentic Lōkahi Unity

A week after 12 Buffalo Bills took a knee during the national anthem, Bills wide receiver Kaelin Clay wore a pair of cleats to show support for Colin Kaepernick during warmups.

I received this text on Sunday, as televised coverage of the football games began;

“You’re a psychic Rosa! How did you know Lōkahi would be so relevant right now, with these #TakeAKnee protests?”

Our Value Immersion for September, 2017: Lōkahi

Have the NFL controversies —plural, with more than one issue to be talked about— been serendipitous given our current Ho‘ohana Community study of Lōkahi? Yes.

Surprising? No. And I’m certainly not psychic… this actually happens pretty often for us, that issues of the day can be seen and reflected on through whatever value lens current to our value-of-the-month immersion. That’s exactly the learning benefit values immersion is meant to give us,

—helping us to be open-minded (no blame, just help),

—helping us to be critical thinkers intent on uncovering truth within cognitive biases, and

—helping us to seek the good and the better within us as we choose our next actions as the consequence of the reflection we have done.

As for Lōkahi, a resounding YES, in that it is thoroughly relevant right now. For that, I’m filled with another value, Mahalo, “thankfulness for the elements which make our lives so rich and meaningful.”

Screen capture from Aaron Rogers’ Instagram, shared by Richard Chambers with, “Whether you like American football or not, there is a massive social/cultural/political moment in the U.S. happening today.”

I feel it’s important however, to point out that the NFL “unity” response is actually a case study for us in what the unity of Lōkahi is NOT.

The way I see it, the NFL owners have orchestrated and directed a ‘link arms, or stay in the locker room, or do it on your own time’ response which still skirts the issue: It fails to address the racism or police brutality that Colin Kaepernick had initially taken a knee during the national anthem for, losing his NFL career as a consequence.

There is only one belief I see the NFL completely unified behind: Football is big business for us, and we must defend it. For me, it is impossible not to immediately think of slavery when I see photos like this one:

The Washington football team owner Daniel Snyder stands with the players Josh Norman, Bashaud Breeland, and D.J. Swearinger during the playing of the national anthem before a game against the Oakland Raiders at FedEx Field. Image from: A football fan says goodbye to the NFL, a year after Colin Kaepernick’s first kneeling protest, by David Dennis Jr.

I feel for the players, most of whom it seems, do want to stand up for Colin Kaepernick or for their own convictions, fully knowing they earn lucrative paychecks given to them with expectations of loyalty to the franchise above all else.

While some of the NFL’s gestures of “resistance” were undoubtedly sincere (and some players, such as the Seahawks’ Michael Bennett, have made clear that they support the same cause as Kaepernick), other protesters in the league were less open about their motives. Some displays were disjointed: The Steelers deciding to not take the field for the anthem, with the exception of the army veteran Alejandro Villanueva, who later apologized to his teammates for not joining them, was more awkward than effective. Other efforts were virtually meaningless, like the Cowboys taking knees before the anthem only to lock arms and stand during it.

…

Of course, many observers still took umbrage. Baltimore Ravens fans signed a petition to remove Ray Lewis’s statue from the front of their stadium after he was seen kneeling with his former teammates during the anthem. DirecTV is reportedly offering NFL Sunday Ticket refunds for fans offended by protests, and Trump has continued his heated commentary about the league over the last week. As a result, friends and Twitter followers familiar with my stance have asked if my boycott has been complicated by the fact that others are now boycotting for the exact opposite reasons.

Will my message get lost if my tactics are essentially the same as those of people cheering Kaepernick’s unemployment? I don’t think so, especially not if I continue to be vocal about my beliefs and advocate the values behind my choice within my own circles.

—David Dennis Jr. for The Atlantic: Deciding to Skip the NFL Season

I think David Dennis Jr. has a good prescription (my bolding above) for all of us.

Boycotts are usually moderately or temporarily effective, if at all. What we can do however, is to be better, and set our Alaka‘i example of what Lōkahi unity is really all about, when truthful, when authentic, and when comprehensively, completely Kākou—for everyone involved.

We have talked about how money need not be ‘evil’ and how all other business motivations should be clear. Work to make it so in your own circles of influence, whatever they may be. Use the issues of the day, like this one within the NFL, as your talk story triggers, and apply the values which lead you to your good, your better, and your best.

Dedicate your October to truthful, authentic Lōkahi unity, and be the Alaka‘i manager and leader our world needs to look up to. Step up to your responsibility for good management and leadership: I believe in you.

Rosa

Alaka‘i is the Hawaiian value of leadership, and it is a quality desired both in managing and leading. It includes coaching, guiding and mentoring others to support their growth and self-development. Those who are Alaka‘i lead with caring for others. Courage and initiative are important, yet secondary. And this is critical: To be Alaka‘i is to lead and manage with good example, for your own actions will groom your empathy.

Let’s do this!

We are the Ho‘ohana Community of Managing with Aloha.

We are Alaka‘i Managers and Leaders.

We are culture makers, and we are legacy builders.

We are Alaka‘i Benefactors, and our Aloha Spirit knows no bounds.

Aloha to October, 2017 and Aloha to us!

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, just released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Well Served by Our Values: Recalling 911, with Aloha

Where did your thoughts go as 911 was commemorated today, and “Never forget” themes dominated the airwaves?

In recent years, I have usually thought about the non-competitiveness of Kūlia i ka nu‘u, as I had written about 911 within that context for its chapter in Managing with Aloha, where we rebuild to recover in a way that supports and strengthens our community as a whole. It certainly would’ve been natural and even necessary to think in those terms again, as several communities rebuild and recover this hurricane season; yours may be one of them.

This year, within the throes of our Lōkahi immersion, I found myself thinking about options, and about all the ways that a natural disaster or catastrophic event will bring us together. There are options in teamwork that are directly due to the sense of ownership and willing responsibility we bring to it, as individuals.

I like to think of it as our heart’s persuasion, certainly, for our empathy and compassion rises to the surface (to our ‘alo’ presence) so easily, and we feel it ‘in our veins.’ Those are the warm and fuzzies and ‘ha’ guarantees of Aloha.

“People will, by nature, return to their good.”
—The Managing with Aloha belief connected to our mana‘o that “Our values, by merit of our human nature, are inherently good; there are no ‘bad’ values.”

However, I also like thinking about how our emotional intelligence will kick in, guiding us and moving us to act with kindness, consideration, and neighborliness. Those are our natural entry points; being ‘nice’ is a Lōkahi trigger and lever.

Being nice triggers a connection that others are instantly willing to accept from you, one human being to another. When nice is your m.o. and you are consistent about it, those who will team up with you don’t feel they must accept you ‘with a grain of salt’ or otherwise pause to question your motives before they engage with you.

We came together quickly after 911, to do the Lōkahi co-working of cooperation, collaboration and consensus reaching, yet somehow, we allowed identity politics, racial divides, and economic strife to separate us, and to break the Aloha identities which had once bound us together in Lōkahi’s unity and harmony.

We shouldn’t need disaster after disaster to remind us who we really are. Let’s just get better at being those human beings we’re meant to be.

“Lōkahi is the value of harmony and unity.

People who work together can achieve more.”

Find a Way by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

Invoke Lōkahi for Harmony and Unity

Ninth in Series Two on Managing with Aloha | By Rosa Say

Lōkahi Teaming: Who do you work with?

As you work on your value alignment with Lōkahi, take an introspective look at your teaming:

Who do you work with?

Who would you like to work with?

If you could start working with someone new, who would you choose?

If you could begin to work differently with someone, how would you do so?

Find your openings this month, and make them happen!

Mother Nature gives us bountiful examples of thriving Lōkahi harmony. How many different plants do you see in this photo?

As we hum along within the work we do, we try not to hit automatic pilot with systems and process; we want to be aware of the possibility of refinement, reinvention, and any new opportunities.

Oddly, we often miss noticing how easy it is to fall into automatic pilot with people too, taking existing partnerships for granted, and missing our chance to forge new ones.

We fix broken systems and processes;

Let’s not have to ‘fix’ broken-in-spirit people.

—Workshop discussion,

The Role of the Manager Reconstructed with Aloha

Two common obstacles? Staffing pars and labor cost. Those long-standing budget and scheduling conventions have their purpose, however it’s incredible how they stifle our thinking within pure numbers. We reach some magic number, and we think we’re done, or that “We’re okay for now.” —Are you?

Use Lōkahi as your value-guided time to audit the integrity, effectiveness and usefulness of those numbers;

—You’re at ‘par’ number-wise; are you at par with talent, skill, and knowledge?

Are the relationships within your team harmonious, or just trudging along?

—You’re ‘in line’ with your labor costs; does your budget stifle you in any way?

Conversely, is it ballooning for any dead-weight reason?

Keep Lōkahi in mind as you answer these questions: Lift your team with refreshed attention to Managing with Aloha’s Lōkahi intentions for team harmony and unity, cooperation and collaboration;

“Lōkahi gives us a receptive demeanor to strive for in working with our peers in the most productive way. We want their help and ask for it. Many hands, laulima, make the work more pleasant, ‘olu‘olu, and they move it along faster.”

“With Lōkahi we achieve more by working together in harmony with others, for Lōkahi strives for synergy as what’s best in creating possibilities.”

—Chapter 8, Managing with Aloha

The question we started with this month:

How can you work well with others, better than you are now?

—Our Value Immersion for September, 2017: Lōkahi

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, just released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business

Our Value Immersion for September, 2017: Lōkahi

Lōkahi

Harmony and unity

Cooperation and collaborative work

People who work together can achieve more

From the preamble of Chapter 8 in Managing with Aloha;

Lōkahi is the value of harmony and unity.

Lōkahi seeks harmony in bringing people to win-win agreements. It is working with cooperation and collaboration, so all who contribute feel valued and unified.

Lōkahi brings these endeavors to teamwork, defining how those who work within an ‘Ohana in business can be most effective in their collaborative efforts.

Lōkahi gives us a receptive demeanor to strive for in working with our peers in the most productive way. We want their help and ask for it. Many hands, laulima, make the work more pleasant, ‘olu‘olu, and they move it along faster.

With Lōkahi we achieve more by working together in harmony with others, for Lōkahi strives for synergy as what’s best in creating possibilities.

Four hands on the #4train, by @EamonDolan on Instagram

I have immersed myself into some form of a value-of-the-month program (or two months, as we do now) since starting my Hawaiian value studies with Dr. George Kanahele back in 1988. I might call on certain values at seminal times, knowing the value I call upon will rescue me with sharpened focus, but for the most part, I’ve been pretty pragmatic about it since my book was published in 2004, cycling through the 19 Values of Aloha to seek out any adjacent possibility to them I may not have worked on yet.

Therefore, I’ve cycled from ‘Ohana to an immersion with Lōkahi roughly 15 times now, and while I might meander with its’ different components as I’ve described them in Chapter 8 of Managing with Aloha, I find I will always start off in the same place —a self-coaching question.

I ask myself, “How can I be working well with others, better than I am now?”

We seek to Be Lōkahi

This month, I would like to suggest that you start there as well, and answer the question for yourself:

How can you work well with others, better than you are now?

From there, our September value immersion will be fairly straightforward:

1—Answer the question honestly. Write your answer down with as many specifics as you can. (Past examples noted in the margin, where memorable people interactions come back to mind, will really help you in this exercise.)

2— As Stephen R. Covey would have said, we’re doing this to “begin with the end in mind.” Consider your answer to be the short term future you’d like to arrive at come the end of this month. Yep…just 30 days will be allotted for this; we’re going to work on another exercise in October.

3—Fill up your September value immersion with getting it done, with Lōkahi to guide you.

Need ideas?

The Call To Action steps you come up with, might include versions of these:

Improve my relationship with _____ (who?) by _____ —How? Be specific!
Try the debriefing Rosa just talked about, to curate my take-aways, and improve my follow-up with every meeting I attend.
Support _____ (who?) in the _____ project more actively, by _____ —How? Be specific!
Work on my listening skills with _____, for I know I am more impatient with him/her than I am with others. — Figure out why.
_____ (who?) and I are rarely in sync with the pace of our work, and it slows down the rest of the team. — Figure out how to solve your disconnect.
Ask _____ (who?) if they will mentor me with ______ (what learning, or coaching?), and set up times we can get together on a weekly basis this month to start.
Recharge the dinner conversation I have with the family every night by _____, ______, and _____. —Your personal life needs Lōkahi too!

Read Chapter 8 on Lōkahi in your Managing with Aloha book to see what else may be triggered for you as a worthy self-improvement goal. Think about your Ho‘ohana to help with your specifics—work on your difference makers.

As within our listing of Alaka‘i 24 Affirmations:

10. Champion change. As the saying goes, those who do what they’ve always done, will get what they’ve always gotten. The only things they do get more of are apathy, complacency, and boredom.

Invoke Lōkahi for Harmony and Unity

I take a more global and universal view of Lōkahi in the essay I have written for Ke Ola Magazine this go round. Here is a preview;

Find a Way by Thomas Hawk on Flickr

Ninth in Series Two on Managing with Aloha | By Rosa Say

If ever there was a time for Lōkahi, it is now. As the Roman historian Sallust avowed, “Harmony makes small things grow, whereas the lack of it makes great things decay.”

Look for the print edition of this article in the September/October edition of Ke Ola magazine at Hawaii Island newsstands.

I’ve heard it said that we feel discord more deeply when we are older, for we can look back on the varied events of our years and compare their temperature by merit of more experience. This sounds valid to me, for even in a lifetime which spans Hawai‘i’s Statehood, the Vietnam War, and a Great Recession, I don’t recall feeling America was at such odds as I do now, with our domestic disagreements testing us so severely. We’ve had disagreements before—many of them—yet we have always managed to be more understanding and civil, even as we’ve allowed our passions to flare.

However, this I know to be sure: Our discord started with us, and we can be the ones to solve it and heal as we must. This is especially true, when we evoke our Aloha Spirit and invoke Lōkahi, the Hawaiian value of harmony and unity.

…Read the essay in full, on RosaSay.com:

Invoke Lōkahi for Harmony and Unity.

Let’s do this!

We are the Ho‘ohana Community of Managing with Aloha.

We are Alaka‘i Managers and Leaders.

We are culture makers, and we are legacy builders.

We are Alaka‘i Benefactors, and our Aloha Spirit knows no bounds.

Aloha to September, 2017 and Aloha to us!

We Ho‘ohana Kākou,

Rosa

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter:

Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.

Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, just released Summer, 2016

Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business