Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology
Dear Readers,
I have constructed a NEW Reference Page for you; a MWA Conceptual Index.
Before I link you over there, let’s review the foundational building blocks which have led to it — Let’s do what we say we do, and be clear on our Why. Let’s briefly revisit our story as Alaka‘i Managers.
We ho‘ohana kākou,
~ Rosa
VOCABULARY: Word candy! As our chosen, and commonly used cultural definitions, vocabulary is the single most underutilized tool in all workplaces, bar none.
LEXICON: The vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. Our vocabulary is cobbled together to create our language, and our resulting dialect is often a mix of language forms and sources.
DIALECT: A particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group. In Managing with Aloha, we often speak of how our workplace dialects are influenced by Sense of Place, by Alaka‘i management and leadership direction and example, and most importantly, by our values.
MORPHOLOGY: In Linguistics (which is the scientific study of language and its structure), morphology is the study of the forms of words and phrases. How did they come to be used, and why? Why are they still so effective? i.e. Why do native speakers and writers like them?
WORKPLACE: However you define it, whether employed or self-employed, online and virtual or brick and mortar, local or global, learning path or career path. In Managing with Aloha it’s the collection of those places we deliberately work on and within our HO‘OHANA—— we work on work here!
LANGUAGE OF INTENTION: Key 5 in the 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha workplace culture-building. Article category 5 on this site—— our Managing with Aloha Central.
Language Deliciousness
Language of Intention is an absolutely essential focus in fostering healthy workplace cultures.
In Managing with Aloha, it is how we construct our communication deliberately, to Speak with Aloha, to Write with Aloha, to Read with Aloha understanding, to convey our values through story-telling, and so on—— all the how-to’s counted as the ways we’ll communicate with each other with Aloha.
The Alaka‘i Managers (managers with this calling) in my immediate workplace circle of influence (with Say Leadership Coaching and Ho‘ohana Publishing, my business entities) are fond of saying, “To walk the talk with Aloha, we’ve got to start with our talk, so, Talk the talk!” and I am thrilled that they have adopted it as their informal mantra. Great managers communicate with care: They do what they say, and they aspire to be that of which they speak of in highest regard — the sweet spot, when you blend ALOHA (spirit), KŪLIA I KA NU‘U (striving toward excellence), HO‘OHANOHANO (conducting oneself with distinction) and PONO (rightness and balance) as the m.o. of how you HO‘OHANA as a manager and leader.
Practically speaking, if you could have read and fully understood that last paragraph without needing my definitions in parentheses or taking any links, you’ve become part of the Ho‘ohana Community in workplace usage: You can talk the talk.
That insider’s in-the-know ease is what Language of Intention delivers when managers and leaders are deliberate about purposefully crafting it and using it as their essential culture-builder. It makes communication quicker without sacrificing the clarity of mission-driven intention. In fact, having a workplace Language of Intention will fortify that clarity — everyone is “on the same page” within all communications.
We often think of lexicon quickies as slang or as informal shortcuts, but in reality, cultural LEXICON offers up words and phrases which are actually more complete, energetic and robust: They are shorter-but-better.
Alaka‘i Managers set a good example.
We speak up. We are the best lexicon users around.
My goal here, at Managing with Aloha Central, is to be an Alaka‘i Manager who consistently sets that good example, and to give you any resources you feel you need in addition to my book, core reference of our 19 Values of Aloha.
Our VOCABULARY is definitely our word candy. The first reading of Managing with Aloha is like an orientation at work in book form, and we focus on the Hawaiian names of values as our vocabulary. When you are new to this site, the best way to add to your cultural vocabulary with us, is to focus on the 9 Key Concepts. You trace on-going conversations in our communications by using thosee Key Concept categories, and the value-verbing tags in article footers.
Our DIALECT in our Ho‘ohana Community of Alaka‘i Managers is a storied mix: A blending of English as commonly spoken, Hawaiian labeling for its founding values and kaona (hidden meanings and storied lessons), and the workplace context of business modeling (we identify as an ‘Ohana in Business: MWA Key 6) —— they are the dialect notes of the sweet harmony we’ll achieve as we work together on our “with ALOHA” mission and vision.
I’m a manager who is also a writer, thus I have often counted blogging, and this era we happen to be in technologically, as true blessings of the Managing with Aloha story, especially as a now global workplace movement. If you track our community by the publishing date of my book (November 2004) we’re approaching our 10th year untethered to locational geography. If you track it since founding, we’re nearly 18 years old as a comprehensively articulated and fully employed in-use work philosophy.
Those years have been full of good work, and we are KĀKOU: There has been a LOT of article writing on Managing with Aloha since it was founded. If you have written or shared something about it, mahalo nui loa, thank you SO very much! For the great majority of MWA practitioners in the Ho‘ohana Community, you have talked the talk, and walked the walk, and your value-verbing in the true grit of real workplace action is where our MORPHOLOGY has happened all these years.
You are managing with Aloha.
I cannot be in all your workplaces, but I can do more here.
People often ask me, “Is there a ‘Book 2’ for Managing with Aloha?”
I’ve published smaller e-books for related subject matter focus, but the answer is actually no, because I point those people here, to our community meeting place and learning place. This site, and TalkingStory.org before it, have been the embodiment of what any Book 2 would have been.
The longer we occupy this space, the more morphology, and our Language of Intention gets larger. We have a GLOSSARY but I’ve been feeling we need something more: There are more stories, and more articles, and the site archives deepen. Our 9 Key Category pages get longer, as do the tag indexes, and the initial, germinating WHY of our morphology can get hidden.
I had to find a way of revealing the hidden, making the key definitions of our vocabulary and lexicon more easily find-able, and a possible answer came to me within another one of my publishing projects: In my next printing of my book, I will be adding to the MWA Index Pages.
Thus, this new Resource Page: The MWA Conceptual Index to serve a similar purpose here at Managing with Aloha Central.
I hope you find it useful! I am also hoping this new Page will help me streamline my articles for a crisper and cleaner reading experience for you, where I can in-link less. As you can tell when reading, I love in-linking for the way it cuts back on explanatory redundancy, but the fewer the better in each new article written: Too many creates rabbit trails.
This has been long enough… click over and take a look.
The listings are a bit sparse at the moment, for I have just started to construct it from my recent articles here, but please keep checking back, for I will be consistently adding to it in the continual work I do with these archives as my new habit. I have already found this index very useful as site author, and have been thinking of it as a more advanced New Here? kind of page, where Alaka‘i Managers can more quickly find what they need as they learn more, converse more, and do more.
Help me out, would you?
If there is an article link you feel should be included in your past experience of referencing it, do let me know! Note it in the comments here, and I will add it in. This will not be a comprehensive index of all articles: That is how the archives, blog categories and tags should be used. It will be an identifier index, linking you to the suggested first read —— the initial article within which a concept was born, or had truly gelled within the morphology of our lexicon.
The Managing with Aloha Conceptual Index
Going forward, you will always be able to locate the link in the right-side column of the blog, within our listing of RESOURCE PAGES.
Mahalo for reading, and for being part of our Ho‘ohana Community. There is no true Managing with Aloha Language of Intention without you, and your Working with Aloha. You keep our mission alive and well, and constantly learning.
