Add ‘myth busting’ to your value-verbing

My clients don’t call my service ‘myth busting’ either, not initially. They usually call me for another reason. The phrase ‘myth busting with ALOHA,’ another example of ‘ing’ value-verbing, came about as an internal reference point for me in identifying what I need to achieve for them first, in order to achieve what they say they want done, achieving it completely.

For instance:  They’ll call me because they want a Mea Ho‘okipa class in customer service, or my ‘IMI OLA workshop for managers in goal-setting and conducting effective performance appraisals, and the myth busting comes with the territory in doing those things for them: It clears the way for the training they want me to deliver, so that training can actually take hold, and be effective.

As you already know, the value-verbing “with ALOHA” part of this, refers to the value alignment we seek in everything we learn to do. The value-verbing is your how-to, and “with ALOHA” is your why-to.

If you want to plant a strong and beautiful tree, start with a strong graft, not a mutant seed.

Myth busting is a kind of problem solving. It looks for root causes which stem from faulty assumptions. When your employees, team members, and other partners hold onto faulty assumptions which concern you, they have expectations which you can’t always fulfill.

Sometimes you don’t want to fulfill them: It’s far better to correct the assumption.

Best way to describe it is with a common example. I find this myth in nearly every workplace I visit where there is a disgruntled employee chomping at the bit, ready to tell me about how unqualified their manager is. The myth:

“How can my manager presume to manage me, when he/she can’t even do the tasks I’m expected to do?”

The myth, and it’s a long-standing one which sours nearly every industry I can think of, is the assumption that you can’t manage work you have not accomplished yourself. Completely untrue. Great managers can, and do supervise work they’ve not done themselves, and there are a multitude of examples how they do this every day, and do it well. Sadly, it’s a myth of self-sabotage too, for there are managers who also believe it: They initially held the myth as employees, and now they suffer from Imposters Syndrome because they never stopped believing it.

Those managers, and those employees, need to replace their faulty assumption with a healthier belief, and thus, a more realistic expectation.

I surprise that employee with my answer nearly every time, for I respond by saying,

“They don’t need to do the tasks you’re expected to do, and they shouldn’t. Those tasks are your job, and you need to be the one who does them. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

I continue to explain,

“I’m guessing that you were selected for the position you hold because someone believed you were, and are, the best person to do what you do. Your manager’s job is to make sure there are no obstacles standing in your way of doing your best possible work, and your most satisfying and rewarding work. If you face an obstacle that your manager isn’t helping you with, you need to explain it to your manager, and ask for their help. If you’re aware of the form of support you need, let them know exactly what it is, so you both aren’t working in yet another faulty assumption or expectation.”

“Unfortunately, empathy doesn’t work as well as we normally want it to, and hope it will, not even when you have a manager who used to do what you do now. Things change in all sorts of ways, and we often wanted them to change, and are glad they did! No one will ever be as close to your work as you are now, and if you want your manager to help you in some way, you have to ask, and ask well: Invite them in. Believe me, they’ll appreciate it! If you just wait for them to figure things out on their own, you’ll continue to feel frustrated.”

This is a conversation I seek to have with them one-on-one. When just the two of us, that employee will nearly always nod their heads in agreement, and just keep listening. They may challenge me with their examples, yet they do so because they actually want me to be right. They want to understand me completely, and get the affirmation that they ARE the person best suited for the work we’re talking about.

So wait — what about my manager?

In many too many workplaces, the fact of the matter is that employees opine on their manager’s performance because they aren’t quite sure what their manager actually does — the true role of the manager, and managerial performance is the biggest myth of all!

My best service to both the employee and that manager, is to get them talking to each other enough so that expectations are completely clear, and so the expectations they both hold are in LŌKAHI agreement. So that’s what I’ll do: I look for my opportunity to get them to follow-up with each other. Sometimes it’s as simple as ending that conversation by saying, “Promise me you’ll talk to your manager about this, okay? Do you need my help with getting the conversation started?”

When you start to do your myth-busting for yourself, my best advice to you is this: Learn to ask this question in your day-to-day workplace conversations with each other:

“Why do you think that’s so?”

Uncover the faulty assumptions and muddled up expectations in play as your root causes of any problem which exists.

Learn to listen in an open-minded way, for the moment you respond with a “yeah, but” or other “let me explain!” rebuttal, the conversation will falter. If it falters, you run the risk of never solving your problem because the other person retreats before you can completely identify it. Ask more questions that help you arrive at the clarity you need — questions that never get sarcastic or condescending, and will genuinely convey that you care about the other person, and want to understand so you can support them better.

In my workshops, the myth busting will usually come in the second or third hour after the training is presented, for the training is what everyone had walked into the door expecting: It remains the primary expectation I must fulfill, being there as their coach. I watch my audience carefully, for that arm-crossing and other body language that might mean, “I really don’t see this working for us, not here in our culture.” as the silent self-talk I’m up against. It may be verbally silent, but as a manager who teaches I’ve learned to read it loud and clear.

Myths come in a variety of workplace strains, and I’ll usually identify them by asking, “Will you have any challenges in adding this training to your skill set? If so, let’s talk about them. What are you expecting to face when you work on getting this done?”

Myths come tumbling out, mixed in with other challenges: Both are very real. To be clear here, I will not call them “myths” at that time, for the word has the not-real connotation to it: Myth is the way I categorize their challenge as a problem-solver wanting to help them get past it as the faulty assumption or muddled up expectation it is, and myth busting is my proactive verb of value-mapping action as their coach.

Lighten the load: What’s in your baggage?

Sometimes the myths will tumble out from the managers themselves, usually in the debrief coaching I hold for them. We all carry this baggage of old expectations with us, and we can proliferate our faulty assumptions until the day comes we talk about them more openly, being willing to change or replace them.

Each myth represents a problem to be solved, whether large or small, and I know you can handle them. Sometimes you’ll need to tackle systems and processes. Sometimes you’ll need to bridge interdepartmental concerns with other workplace teams which spill over into yours. Sometimes you’ll need to deep dive into the culture building work of value alignment, just as I normally do. More often than not however, you just have to talk story, and make more conversations happen.

When you are an Alaka‘i Manager, you are a problem solver — with ALOHA.

Key 4. THE ROLE OF THE MANAGER RECONSTRUCTED:

Managers must own workplace engagement and be comfortable with facilitating change, creative innovation, and development of the human asset. The “reconstruction” we require in Managing with Aloha is so this expectation of the Alaka‘i Manager is both reasonable and possible, and so they can channel human energies as our most important resource, they themselves having the time, energy, and support needed in doing so. Convention may work against us, where historically, people have become managers for reasons other than the right one: Managing is their calling. A new role for managers must be explicitly valued by the entire organization as critically important to their better success: Managers can then have ‘personal bandwidth’ for assuming a newly reinvented role, one which delivers better results both personally and professionally, and in their stewardship of the workplace culture.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

“Who has time for innovation when there’s so much other stuff to be done?”
“We work with equipment harking back to the time of the dinosaurs.”
“Nobody walks by this street corner anymore; our storefront is useless.”
“We can’t afford anything. When will this recession be over?”

And the biggie:
“Our boss is clueless and completely out of touch.”

There are exceptions to the rule, however.

Those exceptions are the people who do good work. They might be working with the same types of dysfunctions in their workplace, and probably are. The difference is that they don’t give in to them. They’re downright stubborn — in the best possible way. They refuse to let dysfunction win in the long-run; they consider a dysfunctional workplace culture to be one thing, and one thing only: Temporary.

You could say, that People Who Do Good Work don’t actually see any dysfunction at all, for any bump in the road, any obstacle or barrier or whatever you want to call it (Excuse? Justification?) is temporary too. They know they can fix it eventually. It may take some time, but it can be done, and they feel they, and the good work they do, are solvers who can get the job done, and will.

Coaching tip:

Alaka‘i Managers who work with People Who Do Good Work are fully aware of their impatience: They hate to be wrong about their own competency and effectiveness, and if they continually get stymied, they move on. They don’t recognize dysfunction because they refuse to deal with other people’s problems, and they refuse to listen to any whining most of all. If they can’t fix whatever needs fixing in their own circle of influence and effectiveness, People Who Do Good Work will move on and work somewhere else. They’re impatient because they value their own life, and the quality of that life. They know life is short, and their impatience is simply their constant reminder of that certainty. They may like you, and they may admire you, but loyalty is not going to stand in their way. The fact of the matter is that they are highly self-managed. They may maintain a partnership with you as a friend or mentor, but they don’t need you to be their boss, unless you can inspire or enable them in a way they cannot find elsewhere.

Good Work is underestimated and misunderstood.

People Who Do Good Work are going to do exactly that: GOOD WORK. Nothing is going to stop them, and certainly not some self-fulfilling prophecy of hopelessness that points a blaming finger at someone, or something else — even if it’s true! It’s temporary.

People Who Do Good Work consider blame to be a foolish waste of time, for the way they see it, blame amounts to admitting the defeat of incompetency, and they are certainly not incompetent! Blame is like saying, “I’m not good enough. If I were, I could rise above this stumble, and get my good work done, but I’m powerless.” They know that’s not true, no matter their company position, and no matter whatever other reason you want to come up with. All temporary.

Power is just another word for effectiveness, and People Who Do Good Work will figure out how to get their self-efficacy back (the belief you can be effective): Self-efficacy is always Job One with them, and they always move on and HO‘OHANA from there.

This attitude that People Who Do Good Work possess, sounds something like this: It runs on a never-ending loop of self-talk in their heads, and that self-talk energizes them, hands, mind and spirit:

“I’m not going to blame anything or anyone, and I’m not going to wait for them either. I can fix this, even if I must learn something, or do something else first, or put myself in a better position of effectiveness, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do, for I’ve got ideas and I’ve got dreams. I have my own good work to do, and no one will achieve it better than me!”

This self-talk is highly effective. It is not wishful thinking. It is positive expectancy.

We call it motivation (KULEANA).
We call it work ethic (the pairing of HO‘OHANA and HO‘OHANOHANO).
We call it self-leadership (ALAKA‘I).
When we manage with Aloha, we also call it courage (KOA) and pure, unbridled rightness (PONO).

Positive expectancy opens doors for your self-efficacy to step through, so you can take off running. If you are an Alaka‘i Manager, get this vocabulary, and this chain reaction into your workplace culture as the best contribution you can make.

Do Good Work. Do your best work.

Be one of those People Who Do Good Work and thrill to the life you can lead as you do so.

Isn’t good work what you prefer to be defined by? No one wants the kind of success that had traded on favor, or could only be attributed to good luck. It’s not sweet enough. It doesn’t satisfy you completely.

Whatever is in your way, consider it temporary. Be impatient in a good way.

Do the good work of getting your self-efficacy back, and you’ll feel powerful again. You’ll have the energy you need to do your good work, for blame is what had drained it away before, and you’ve put a stopper in that drain. Blame is not something you’ll do anymore, for the only thing it’ll do is slow you down.

Good work is the work of personal performance and not of situations others create for you. If they do, consider it icing on the cake. You’re the cake, and you’re quite tasty all on your own. You have ALOHA, and you work on your HO‘OHANA.

• HO‘OHANOHANO: You conduct yourself with dignity and distinction.
• KULEANA: You take personal responsibility for the work you have chosen to do.
• MĀLAMA: You take care of whatever you have to take care of.
• ALAKA‘I: You are the leader of your own performance, and thus your work, and thus, your life.

You have plans, and you have dreams. Oh, the places you can go!

Leading your life is something you were born for, and meant to do. The good work of making it happen is something you will not relinquish, nor should you: No one gets to be leader of your life but you.

So ho‘o and get on with it.

Key 2. WORTHWHILE WORK:

HO‘OHANA is the Hawaiian value of worthwhile work, and it requires a personal approach. Work with passion, with purpose and intention, and with full joy while realizing your potential for growth and creativity. When you Ho‘ohana you are actively engaged in creating your future; you work on purpose, and make things happen. You create your best possible life and you forge your own destiny, for you have connected your wide-awake intentions to the work you have chosen to do, or to learn more about.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

Related reading in the Managing with Aloha archives:

1. This, is what Ho‘ohana sounds like
2. Banish Your Possibility Robbers — and — Tear Down Your Walls
3. What should you do with your life? Find out!
4. Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it
5. What if I’m not a manager?

“Respect for making the distinction between work and photography! No, I didn’t work per se, but the body of work I produced went into my archive which has been generating enough royalties to live off for quite a while now.”
— Photographer Timothy Allen responds to a woman who asked him, “I’m curious, did you work while in India, or just photograph all day?”

I met Timothy Allen this past weekend.

Not in person, but close to it, for I heard his HO‘OHANA.

“No matter who you are, it is vital that you work on developing your own brand and elevating its presence on the web… these days the photographer’s own brand may well supersede that of [a publication or agency] which is something you should definitely be aiming for, and the reason why I say that creating a strong personal brand on the internet should be your ultimate mission for the next 5 years.

My best advice to you if you want to be a successful photographer is to practice your craft passionately and not to be afraid to share what you have with others. By this I don’t just mean your images… I’m also talking about your ideas and knowledge. It’s important to share what you know with others, especially your contemporaries. Many photographers fall too easily into the trap of believing that they will somehow put themselves at a disadvantage if they reveal their ‘secrets’ to others. As far as I’m concerned, this kind of attitude will never take you on to great things as an image maker.

Most of all. Do what you love doing. The rest will naturally fall into place in my experience.”
— Photographer Timothy Allen

Our world view is a window of possibility.

I understand what Allen is saying about web branding too. What I most appreciate about the internet, is that it turns our viewing screens of choice into windows opened to the rest of the world.

To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places we can Go!

Not taking that wondrous magic for granted is something I deliberately practice. Age is my blessing in this regard, for I’m old enough to remember, yet young enough to remember well, a time when I didn’t have the web at all — when we didn’t have it at all. Ignorance was a kind of bliss then, yet I still can’t resist contemplating, “but what if I’d had that window to the world back then? How would the story of my life have turned out?” I conjure up different scenarios, particularly in regard to specific work projects tackled with past teams and work cultures. I don’t believe my calling would have strayed that much, but I do surmise that its expression would have taken on a more varied interestingness — and more inclusiveness, an inclusiveness that would have rounded off and softened the edges of our group-think.

For more context, 1990 is the year that Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web, thus creating our ‘www’ nomenclature for its many windows. In the parallel universe of my world view, this was the same year I left a fourteen-year career with the Hyatt Corporation, and began working for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. It was the year I moved from O‘ahu to the Big Island of Hawai‘i, further rattling the cage of my Sense of Place. One of the benefits I had in working for hotel corporations who could afford them, is that I already used computers, and had relied on them for my daily work since about 1978-ish, but that meant I’d never touched one until a few years out of college; I completed my formal schooling without them. I guess that makes me a “fourth generation microprocessor” of the human variety.

A moment to share two reference points: Back then, computing referred to word processing instead of typewriting, using computers as fancy calculators that would remember mathematical macros, and highly proprietary job-related software. The programs I used, were little more than slick diaries for convention bookings and the banquet rooms that would contain them, but they were truly amazing to us. There was no web surfing, and more often than not, no web connection at all. Here’s a Brief Timeline of the Internet and Five Generations of Computers preceding the internet, both at Webopedia.

Thus the internet window existed, but I didn’t get to look through it until the late 90’s, when I bought our first desktop computer for the home. So sloooooowwwww… and completely unreliable. No Google search yet, you had to know what you were looking for, and the precise web address where it could be found — maybe. What a complicated, frustrating, and expensive endeavor it was to get that internet connection in our remote, rural neighborhood.

But I had to have it.
Once the window opened before me, there was no turning away from it.

I’m one of those business people who was introduced to the developing world of that decade by Fast Company magazine, for my employers were busy erecting firewalls that would keep us out of any internet time-sinks and safely away from its radical, public influences (including the otherwise forward-thinking Hualalai Resort circa 1996). Fast Company published one issue in 1995 and five the following year. It went monthly in 1998, and I was a raving fan, but with corporate work tyrannically and incestuously dictated as it was then, and young children to raise, I didn’t have much time to do anything but occasionally dream with it.

Those dreams however, would begin to infiltrate my waking hours more incessantly, especially since they were so closely related to the calling I had already defined, and was actively working on much as I knew how — they were talking about my Ho‘ohana!

“[Fast Company] made a statement that summed up to a view that we live in a world where all these 19th-century collective views of the workforce — where you’re categorized in cohorts and treated like digits, where you sacrifice your individuality and become a company man — that era was over.”
— Mark Fuller, chairman of Monitor Group and an investor in the Fast Company magazine start-up

“It was a really weird magazine. A guy senior to me said, ‘You’ve lost your money, George. It’s gone.’”
— George Stalk, senior vice president at Boston Consulting Group and an early investor

By the summer of 2003 it was crystal clear to me that I would have to leave corporate life behind me. Managing with Aloha was published in the fall of 2004.

Experiencing “a more varied interestingness” is never too late for me, for you, or for any of us, is it. Incredible, the change which has occurred in 22 short years. The windows which have opened are endlessly fascinating.

Treasure hunting the World Wide Web

‘Tis true that the internet is portal to a wasteland of rubbish too, but oh the delight of the gems when you find them! These days, our high-speed, wireless connections make it so easy to look for them, so why not Hō‘imi?
[Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it!]

I’ll do my best web-wide treasure hunting in those quiet times I have the house to myself and am successful with ignoring the should-ing guilt attached to pending work and other chores. Photographer Timothy Allen’s work was the treasure I found most recently, after filling my french press with the morning’s coffee: I could sit awhile, and indulge in deeply focused, unrushed reading.

Allen is the still photographer who shadowed BBC film crews during the production of the landmark television series Human Planet. It was the first time that a stills photographer of Tim’s caliber had worked on location with BBC camera crews: He narrates a wonderful 7-minute slideshow BBC produced here. His work is strictly copyrighted, and while he’s generous with bloggers, I’m not sampling any of it here, to encourage you in your own treasure-hunting: Do visit his website, or start with one of the other links I have included in this paragraph and the next one. You’ll enjoy the pleasure of discovery for yourself.

The web lends itself to stunning photography exceptionally well (as do the pixel-rich screen choices we now enjoy), however what I’ve noticed about Allen and several other photographers, is how their pictures beg insightful and personally articulate storytelling, beautifully building the writing talent behind the lens. Photographers who blog to share the stories of their photos rank highly among my favorite contemporary authors, whether they shoot for a living or for their curiosity, and the unabashed joy of seeing our world more completely. For some, (for many of us, I suspect) it may be a way of “finding our way home.”

Allen illustrates this well in the fascinating posting in which I initially found him: Forget Your Past, describing his photo-journey to Buzludzha, Bulgaria. It is quite the story of how a dedicated photographer will hunt down his subject, far beyond driving up somewhere and parking your car!

The valued voice of HO‘OHANA

HO‘OHANA is a value you hear when people talk about the work they do, and will explain why they do it, and what it has continued to do for them in return.

I meandered in my own storytelling, framing the way I discovered Timothy Allen’s work, now able to dip so easily into treasure hunting the web. The following excerpt is what I wanted to share with you, triggering my desire to write this posting in the first place. I am pulling it from another of Allen’s blog posts, in which he publishes the answer to a recurring question from others who admire his work, and feel a similar longing.

I want to quit my job and do what you do, any words of advice?

“Speaking from experience… Do it! I quit my job at a British Newspaper a few years ago and bought a one way ticket to Delhi. Just me, a Canon 5D, a few prime lenses and a huge smile. My biggest concern at the time was my mortgage. So, I sold my apartment and cut my overheads down to the barest minimum. A year and a half later I returned home with some great pictures and a revitalised passion for both life and my photography. Meanwhile, whilst researching story ideas for the series, a fledgling Human Planet team stumbled across my images from NE India on the web and the rest is history.

There are two important points to acknowledge here. Firstly, trying to predict the future is futile. However, as human beings we are all blessed with an inbuilt mechanism that tells us when we are moving in the right direction in life. It’s called enthusiasm, and in my opinion it forms the necessary essence of any fulfilling, creative lifestyle… in whatever line of work that might be. Enthusiasm is the gift that allows us to live in the moment without worrying about what lies ahead, so if you’ve got that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach and you’re looking for a change in life then why not trust the feeling and let something that really enthuses you guide you in a new direction?

Second point… Whilst I was in India having the time of my life, I was spending a fraction of the money that I would have been parting with had I have remained in my well paid job back home. Relatively speaking, I was far better off. More importantly, I had the luxury of time again… something that gave my passion the space to naturally unfold once more. The space that I literally couldn’t afford back home.

If you are lucky enough to be reading this on your own personal computer then I am guessing that you also have access to sufficient funds to make the kind of trip I am talking about. You don’t need a state of the art camera. If you shop around a bit, a second hand mark 1 Canon 5D will set you back as little as 400 quid these days, and you can get hold of a used 50mm f1.8 for about 50 quid. Both these pieces of kit were my work horses on that trip along with the great value for money Canon 85mm f1.8.

The moral of this story… Without sounding too corny… follow your heart. And for those of you that think that a statement like that is too wishy-washy, then I’ll rephrase it to… pursue the vocation in life that you feel most enthusiastic about. You know… the one that you’d do regardless of how much it pays you. In my experience, if you live this way then no matter what transpires, you will be walking in the right direction in life.

The likelihood is that nothing will turn out the way you expect, so I would recommend not bothering with any expectations of the future. Just concern yourself with enjoying what you are doing in the moment. That’s the place where all the magic happens.

… and if you have discovered that photography is your passion then think yourself very lucky. Many people go through life never knowing such a feeling. Don’t waste it.”

Take a look at the picture which crowns the post I pulled this from. Be sure to read the caption!

From the Managing with Aloha archives:
What should you do with your life? Find out! As Allen says, “Do what you love doing. The rest will naturally fall into place.”

I offer you the complete chapter on HO‘OHANA here:
Book Excerpt, Chapter 2: Working with intent and with purpose.

Postscript:

Feel free to skip this, for I’ve tacked it onto the ending of this posting rather self indulgently as I remember the context of my own history described earlier. However if you do have the time to return to it, and take the link offered, you’ll read more examples of HO‘OHANA talking out loud in the value voices of strong beliefs and convictions.

This is the beginning of a conversation in which the two founders of Fast Company talk about the magazine’s formative years:

“Bill Taylor, founding editor: I spent a lot of time in the 1980s and early 1990s in Silicon Valley. It was very much the era when the semiconductor and personal computing were transforming not just the technology landscape but the competitive landscape. The logic of the technology itself, which was speeding everything up, decentralizing how computing worked, and putting processing power lower and lower in the organization, was reshaping both competition and leadership.

Alan Webber, founding editor: The seminal event for me was a trip to Japan in 1989, at the peak of the bubble there. I had gotten this fellowship with the idea of meeting the next generation of leaders there–in business, government, bureaucracy, and journalism. What I came back with were very clearly formulated ideas about these themes I thought were transforming business.

The first was globalization. In 1989, people were still in denial about opening up borders. But there really were no boundaries in terms of the movement of money, ideas, and talent. The future was going to be all about global competition and cooperation. The corollary to that was a generational shift of bright young leaders. We were seeing the baby boomers become leaders. My hypothesis was that this generation was different from the one that came before. They had different attitudes and aspirations. They were interested in finding meaning through work.”

Read the rest of the conversation here:
A Brief History of Our Time by Keith Hammonds

The full write-up is interspersed with comments from founding employees, early readers, and people profiled in notable stories. For someone like me, who cut their internet teeth with Fast Company, it reads like a trip down memory lane, where reading their magazine was like hanging out with the cool kids.

Preface: This is an article I had previously posted within the Value of the Month coaching program we ran for Alaka‘i Managers in 2007 and 2008. I’ve included the comments I’d received back then, and preserved its snapshot in time. We were doing an in-depth study of HA‘AHA‘A that month, practicing the value of humility. I offer it to you again as follow-up to the gatekeeping discussion posted yesterday: Tear Down Your Walls. Solutions which open the windows of sharing can start in small ways, and the humble wave is a fantastic example, universal in its welcoming appeal, and so easily accomplished:

“We decided that waving would be part of our value culture.”

It is amazing how a simple, humble wave of our hand in acknowledgment of another human being can make such a huge difference.

Red earth V - Self portrait by BotheredByBees on Flickr

I have turned into a waver ever since I worked at Hualalai Resort and we decided that waving would be part of our value culture. It started back in 1996 from the moment I was employed there (the resort was still under construction then), and the habit now feels like it is set in stone with me… it was the personal, and cultural construction we built, as important as any other cornerstone.

I wave at people I know, and people I don’t know.

I wave at people the moment I sense I may catch their eye; I no longer look down or away.

I wave to trigger some magic connection to my face so I will smile within the same fraction of that moment I wave.

I wave to feel open, connected to hope, and expectant of our humanity.

I wave to feel safe. When I take my exercise runs and arrive at intersections, I don’t take another step forward unless I have waved to an approaching or stopped driver and am sure they have seen me. (They wave back, or at the very least will nod— good thing to teach your kids.)

When I travel, the culturally correct way to wave as a friendly and welcoming gesture is one of the first things I am careful to ask about (learned this when we lived in the Philippines), for there is simply no stopping my hands anymore, there is only the careful training of them.

Once, in asking that question, I had an older gentleman explain to me how to reach my hands out to animals in the right way, so I that I’d never get bitten, and so I would know if they’d allow me to pet them or not. Good information to know.

Then: Waving and the value of Ho‘okipa

Though easy to gain entrance onto the resort, and a footprint which includes a Four Seasons hotel, Hualalai is essentially a gated residential community of multi-million dollar homes. While I could work there and eventually became a corner-office exec there, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be able to afford living there.

There was one thing I quickly learned about the very rich. The biggest difference between them and we who feel like paupers in comparison, are not our bank accounts but the discretion we have with how we spend our time (though the argument can be made that the latter is a result of the former). In so many more ways we are quite the same, ways which are much more relevant to how we interact with each other and share our lives.

At Hualalai we referred to everyone within our resort community as part of the Hualalai ‘Ohana (family) and Ho‘okipa (hospitality) was a core organizational value for us. Therefore, once people were on the resort itself, and starting with their first sight of our greeter who manned the gate atop the hill, we wanted them to feel instantly acknowledged, totally welcomed, and warm with the feeling they belonged on the resort and had every right to be there.

We did it by waving.

Once you drove past the gate you descended into the resort taking in a spectacular view, both just outside your car window and as a vista far beyond you, and toward the distant ocean horizon. The speed limit was only 15 miles an hour, and the road meandered, but you slowed down because you wanted to versus because you had to; the beauty of the place made you want to look and take it all in. It was buzzing with activity too: As you drove along, you passed walkers and runners, landscapers and the golf course crew, residents in golf carts or electric resort cars, all sorts of people working on work, or working on life.

Back then, everyone waved at you. You’d also see them waving at each other.

It would be no more than about 5 minutes, tops, from your first turn off the highway, yet by the time you arrived at where you would park your car or deliver it to a valet, the community would have trained you to wave back. We didn’t know your name yet, only that greeter at the gate had said Aloha to you, and because of the wealth of different reasons possible, we couldn’t have even known why you had come and were there.

Still, you now belonged there. Whether visitor, vendor, prospect or stranger, we welcomed you in to stay as long as you liked.

Once you got out of your car and onto one of the pathways, the waving intensified, for there were so many more people around. People greeted you with a wave and a smile everywhere, every interaction. Frankly, it was pretty impossible not to wave back, and not to smile.

Now: Waving and the value of Ha‘aha‘a

Is it still like that at Hualalai today?

I hope so, however to be completely honest, I don’t know. Circumstances have kept me from visiting the resort for nearly two years now as I can last and best recall. So I don’t have the answer of first-hand knowledge anymore.

If they still wave at Hualalai is a question of something we talk about consistently here at Managing with Aloha Coaching: value alignment, and in this case, a matter of continuity by the new owners and their management team.

I haven’t been to Hualalai since the resort was sold to a new owner. What are their values now, as expected by their new organizational culture, and do their actions match up in alignment with those values? Do they still want to be an all-inclusive ‘Ohana as a community, or not? Is Ho‘okipa still valued, or not? Has the habit been reinforced day in and day out, or has it been allowed to fade away in favor of another? When new employees are brought on, is the talk story of waving still part of orientation as it once was, so they know why, what is expected of them, and what is to be perpetuated?

Value alignment is deliberate: You choose actions that match up to your values, you talk about them all the time, and you practice them consistently. You make them part of the culture, doing all you possibly can to make sure they stick.

I do see that these words still appear on their website:

Gentle hosts welcome all to their ‘ohana, family, with a heightened level of hospitality that is called ho‘okipa.

Welcome to Hualalai. In this serene paradise, the dream of Hawai‘i that everyone holds in their hearts is fulfilled.

They continue to make the promise.

All I can tell you for sure today, is that learning that humble wave changed my own life, because a habit was created in me that I chose not to break. I owe a lot to the ‘Ohana na Hualalai for making me a better person during those years I worked with them. They were so true to their values, and they made them so compelling and desirable, that those values became part of mine. If I already had those values in any measure whatsoever, they grew and were strengthened and fortified.

Today, and I am quite sure forever to come, I rather wave to people instead of looking down or turning away. I prefer to be open to the possibility that waving can trigger. I love the thought that waving, and then allowing your hand to train your face so your smile will surely and naturally follow, is a way to tell someone you are humble enough to know this:

No matter how complete, whole and healthy I may feel,
I grant my trust that there is an equally good reason you live on this earth with me.

I am open to welcoming you into my life if you want to step into it.

It needn’t be a major production, or even a conversation;
you can just smile and wave back.
Easy, quick, and smile-triggering natural.

Then, we both belong here,
as we share this moment, this place, and our Aloha.

No matter how good I may feel about my own life at this very moment, I still think of waving as connected to ‘Ohana, to Ho‘okipa, and to Aloha as the unconditional value of love and acceptance. However as time has gone by, and as my wave has become more personal versus organizationally expected, I now think of waving as strongly connected to Ha‘aha‘a and the value of humility, for I believe Ha‘aha‘a to be about being as open as it is possible to be, while being strong with the confidence that you are worthy enough, and capable enough of engaging well with another human being.

So try it with me, won’t you?
Let’s all practice Ha‘aha‘a by learning to be wavers this month of May. They say it takes 21 to 28 days to develop a habit, and today is the 4th of May: Shall we see what the next 27 days of waving can do for us?

We can start right now.

Here is my picture again, a bit bigger than usual: Imagine me waving at you, and smiling, and wave back!

With much aloha, and so happy you are here with me today,
~ Rosa

It’s one of the first forms of communication that we learn as babies, isn’t it? I can still remember the first time my niece waved to me. She was sitting across from me at a table in a cafe, and every time she caught my eye, she would give me a wave. In that wave was everything that she couldn’t express verbally: engagement, joy, recognition, love. Even as children get older, they still seem to wave more often than adults do, particularly to strangers. Waving to commuters standing on the railway platform. Waving to drivers stuck in a traffic jam. Waving to other children at the playpark. Waving to the salespeople in shops.
I think we’d all do well to take a leaf out of their book. I sometimes wonder if those who are wisest on this earth are also those who arrived there most recently.
I, for one, will be taking you up on your challenge, and I will try and adopt the waving habit.
Thank you for this lovely post, Rosa :-)
— Amy Palko

And I’m waving back to you, Rosa! I ride the train quite a bit and it’s interesting how many people wave to the train as we pass by…and of course, I always wave back. That’s the only time I see people waving.
Now that I think about it, I’ve always been a waver ;) Must be the little kid in me still…
— Maria Palma

Rosa, your thoughts on waving really resonated with me. Growing up on the farm in central Minnesota, we waved. If you are working in the fields, you waved at people driving by. Usually you knew everyone but it didn’t matter.
If you saw someone out in the farm yard as you drove by, you waved. There were even people where you wouldn’t see anyone outside and you would wave anyway and wouldn’t be surprised when the farmer stuck his head and arm out the barn door to wave back. Waving was part of the culture.
Now move the clock to the present. In our surburban location, I may not always know the people that drive by but I can’t break the habit of waving. If driving, much to the embarrassment of my teenage children, I will wave at someone out for a walk, even if I don’t know the people.
I’m a waver. Your post gives it new value.
Rosa, I always appreciate your insights. I’m waving back at you.
— Don Frederiksen

You know Don, your comment gave me some very early memories. Perhaps the whole Hualalai waving campaign was really an intensifying for me as well, for as kids we all waved in our neighborhood too. And your barn-door waver reminded me of the Faria family…
We had a neighbor a street over from ours whose name was Mr. Bathwell Faria. We kids thought it was hilarious that he had two last names, and adding nicely to our insider’s joke about it, his name was printed on his mailbox as Faria, Bathwell.
One Halloween our “trick” for him was to scratch off the comma, and ever after as we’d drive by his house on the way home, we’d stick our heads out of the car window and yell “Faria Bathwell!” and wave to him madly. He was crazy about his garden and often outside, and he’d wave back and laugh in such a pleased way. That was more than enough encouragement for us to yell at his house and acknowledge his spirit even when all the cars were gone and we knew no one was home. He never bothered to paint that comma back on his box.
Mahalo for the wave Don ~ I am waving back at you!
~ Rosa

What’s mine, is ultimately ours. As the saying goes, “you can’t take it with you” and you can only be with it in whatever todays you have. How much of your experience of privilege begs to be shared?

MĀLAMA gets to be exceptionally good value guidance whenever we lay claim to something as “mine.” In the spirit of MĀLAMA what’s mine becomes mine to care for.

From Managing with Aloha (Chapter 15 preamble):

To Mālama, is to take care of.
A manager is a steward of assets and caretaker of people.
Mālama calls upon us to serve, to honor and to protect.
Acts of caring drive us to high performance levels in our work with others. We give and become unselfish. We accept responsibility unconditionally.
Mālama is warm, and Mālama is personal. It comes from heart, and it comes from soul.
When we Mālama, we are better.

Sharing then, can be a celebration of your MĀLAMA accomplishment.

Gates and gatekeepers deny the ‘OHANA sense of belonging.

These thoughts will invariably come up whenever I visit a gated community here in Hawai‘i. There are lots of them. Even one is too many.

People are generally skilled in protecting what they have. We can make much greater strides in sharing what we have, and I so wish we would!

Gates and gatekeepers bring up several questions for me, about how businesses and other ownership entities will define their Sense of Place integrity in regard to rights, permissions, and privilege. Sadly, it’s a conversation most will neglect to have at all, failing to see how significant it can be felt by those who are ‘the have nots’ and living right there in their own communities. Those Have Nots deserve a better embrace, yet we deny them the sense of belonging which may in fact, be rightfully theirs. It goes beyond being selfish, to being cruel. Yes, I have strong opinions on this, and without apology, for consider this as a more proactive managing with ALOHA awareness: In its earliest stages, gatekeeping is HO‘OKIPA sabotage. It can be another Possibility Robber.

Promise-keeping shuns gates, and looks for windows.

As book readers know, I chose to work for the Hualalai Resort in 1996, a time when I struggled with feeling PONO about working in Hawai‘i’s hospitality industry: PONO is a contentment of satiated integrity.

From the Prologue of Managing with Aloha:

“I finally choose Hualalai for one significant reason: I meet a man there who I at first dismiss as a hopeless dreamer who needs a reality check. Yet several meetings later, he has achieved something truly amazing to me, and he has done so by talking about a concept that has long been stirring uneasily in my soul: sense of place. [That man will become] my boss, and he has given me his promise that this time I’ll be able to say I work for the Hawai‘i hospitality industry and hold my head up with pride and dignity. We will manage Hualalai with a respect for her culture and for our employees’ sense of place. We will engender an ‘Ohana in Business.

In that moment of promise my path became clear and certain. And it was exhilarating.”

I think we did a good job of starting to work on that promise of PONO back then. As with so many things however, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back on it, I realize we could have done so much more. I wish we had, and so I’m writing this posting to encourage you. If you believe, as I did then with Hualalai, that you work for an exceptionally good business, please look to MĀLAMA to challenge you. Are you caring for your place in a way that also intends to share its benefits with others?

Business lives up to its name quite easily, in that it gets so darned busy. We get pulled into the detail of operations, particularly as a business grows or gets more complex, and something truly unfortunate happens: We lose sight of our vision, or we settle for results which are commonplace. At Hualalai, we did ask the question — Can this gated community be shared with the community, even though it is financed by those of privilege? — for we sincerely wanted to give the spirit of the land back to the community in thankfulness that we could be there in the first place, and because we were proud of our stewardship and conservation of a land rich in cultural treasures. We also felt we owed it to our staff and their families.

As important as it is, asking the question to begin with is just that; a beginning. It begs much conversation, and an answer in the form of a promise that is kept.

So let’s break this down a bit more, and tear down our walls in the process of exploring why we had built them. As we do, I ask that you keep your own business footprint in mind: Think about what your proprietorship covers: Whether my property, my employment, my work or my Sense of Place — ‘mine’ covers quite a bit. What does the word mine evoke for you?

Think about your walls, and about the sharing possibilities which can become a window or two: Windows and walls are not just physical.

One: Asking the question of genuine intention — What will we share?

How wide will you open your gate?

Ultimately, this is a question on the rights of ownership coupled with KULEANA, the value of responsibility. At the Hualalai of my time of employment, we would not hesitate to say, “What’s ours is ours to care for as stewards of this land. We will then share it with the Big Island community in as many ways as we can.” with “as we can” referring to the individual property rights of homeowners and privacy expectations of The Four Seasons hotel’s clientele, and our intentions in making each of those things more inclusive.

We did not see it as generosity — as doing something extra, above and beyond expectations. We considered opening our gates wide as the responsibility of those who had inherited the land of our Big Island ancestors: What we (or others) had actually paid for our ownership rights was irrelevant. Our management team asked for this acceptance of specifically defined responsibility as a condition of our operations contract, and we received it!

In writing this, I make no effort to disguise what I personally think — that the No Gates expectation is PONO — but to others it will be quite a stretch, and you’ve got to delineate your own playing field.

I’m using access to the bounty found on Hualalai Resort’s footprint as an example because I know it so well, however genuine intent with sharing ownership assets with others applies to every business I can think of: Gates are found in employment qualification, in academic admissions, in computer software and social media apps, and in scads of other permission refusals or conditions. That’s how people outside your gates will view them, as permission refusals or conditions. You must view them that way too, if you’re to empathize with people enough to share what they feel is worthy of your sharing it — that’s what being in the service of others is.

Two: Answering the question which fulfills expectations — How will we share it?

When, and why is a gatekeeper needed, and are they really necessary? Can’t they be Mea Ho‘okipa instead?

This is where I get tough on Hualalai’s gatekeepers, for courageous, palena ‘ole groundwork was laid as condition of contract; to not follow-up on it more creatively and consistently is near criminal in its neglect. (I must point out here that I continue to use past history as an example for the sake of our MWA conversations in value-mapping. The ownership of the Hualalai Resort has changed hands since my employ there, and current ownership stipulations and agreements may now differ.)

Do whatever you can to tear down your walls. Consider the KĀKOU of inclusiveness, and imagine the benefits to be gained from letting others in. To share, is to explore a bigger part of who you are.

Sharing your assets (whatever you consider ‘mine’ to be) is where the value of HO‘OKIPA makes a grand entrance, and will make itself at home with you, or will fail to do so:

From Managing with Aloha (Chapter 6 preamble):

Ho‘okipa is the Hawaiian value of hospitality.
Ho‘okipa is to welcome guests, customers and even strangers with your spirit of Aloha, transcending the norm in serving others.
Ho‘okipa is the hospitality of complete giving. It defines a true art of unselfishly extending to others the best that we have to give.
In sharing our Ho‘okipa with others, we gain our own joy and we invest in our own well-being.

I think the world would be a significantly better place if we could eliminate two gatekeepers in particular: The poor service/no service which is the absence of HO‘OKIPA, and the expectation of reciprocity, where we trade permission or privilege transactionally, for payment or other return. There is no room for “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” where the Aloha Spirit is alive and well; it simply isn’t necessary.

Three: Making your intentions known — Shout them from a hilltop!

There are way too many lies of omission in gatekeeping: The possibility exists, where the Have Nots can be welcomed in to experience your Sense of Place, but you fail to make those possibilities known to them. In other words, full welcome is actually missing. It may be partially there, as a response, but not as a wholehearted, eager invitation.

To me, the limited access of having to be ‘in the know’ or chancing upon ‘the right time’ is more gate-keeping: It’s intentional deception, and self-righteousness at its ugliest. For instance, if you’re going to have Open House days, make them significant, and make sure people know about them. If not, don’t bother. Keep your gates closed, for we’ll be better off staying outside of them.

Let’s talk story

What I hope this posting does, is stimulate the conversation within your workplace, for I fully understand this as conversation our comment boxes may not be appropriate or sufficient for: Flesh out the particulars of your situation, and have those conversations! Gatekeeping is something that can be riddled with the sneakiest of Possibility Robbers, so watch out for them, and Kūlia i ka nu‘u: Strive for better.

Here is a review of the 5 questions we use in our MWA audits of the 9 Key Concepts: What would your answers be, in regard to your own ‘Ohana in Business? (Key 6)

1. How does this conceptual conviction support our values?
2. How does this support our mission (i.e. current work) and our vision (i.e. our best possible future)?
3. How can I help the work make sense, using this concept to continually improve our systems and processes?
4. How will this conceptual conviction fuel positive energies, helping us grow and get better as human beings?
5. What more can we learn about this?

Here are two articles previously published on Talking Story which may stimulate more thinking:

1. Curiosity tears down walls. People love windows: What can you show us?
2. Put that thing down! A short story on designing for customer service.

A Postscript for “A Sense of Place Delivers True Wealth”:

This posting came to mind after writing this one, which triggered another visit to my old stomping grounds at the Hualalai Resort. Much has changed there. Quite startling to see my beautiful corner office has been turned into retail shop space, but looking back on it, I didn’t spend that much time there anyway, not as compared to my walking around for The Daily Five Minutes and other in-person managing. The very best conversations can be had in the out-of-office/ outdoors proximity to your sense-of-workplace; they did then, and they did in my return visit.

One thing that has not changed, is that Hualalai reveals itself to visitors as a place of privilege shared in the thinnest slivers. Some were amazed at our HO‘OKIPA expectations of homeowners there, but as an ex-insider, I now know we didn’t go far enough. We can raise the bar so much higher! If I were with the Powers that Be today, I’d get the Parable of the Faithful Servant into all orientation packets, for residents and staff alike, refusing to be content until it truly became our Language of We.

“To whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked.”
— Luke 12:35-48, World English Bible, and Parable of the Faithful Servant

Alaka‘i Managers know that this is what every single workplace represents: The wonderful opportunity to create a special place. They seize the opportunity to co-create that place with those who share it, and then they’ll shepherd it. This is their joyful work, their HO‘OHANA — how could it not be?

A Sense of Place is rich, and extraordinarily so: Sense of Place represents wealth in personal well-being, and thus, an Alaka‘i Manager is fully cognizant of how it will also represent wealth in cultural well-being. What they actually see, is promise.

The richness of well-being is the wealth of human health.

A place can represent so many things to us, the people who dwell within it. It will model our definitions of concepts like grace, strength, resilience, courage, wonder and more.

Therefore, what Alaka‘i Managers will do, is key in to specific choices that will define the deliverables they’ll concentrate on as good shepherds. What will that place represent most of all? When a wild stallion wanders into their pasture it commands some attention, but only enough to send it merrily on its way again. As striking and noble as that stallion may be, the shepherd only sees true beauty in his sheep; they’re the ones who embody the beauty which inspires him. His deliverables must be about them.

As I continue to populate this site for you, which represents our Sense of Place for all things Managing with Aloha, these are the 5 Deliverables I’ll concentrate on, for I believe them to be the deliverables Alaka‘i Managers focus on in their culture-building too. As represented in these site pages, I want our MWA workplace to deliver these things for you:

1. An ALOHA-inspired place of comfort — Wealth in safe-haven sustenance
2. A sense of personal belonging — Wealth in co-authorship
3. ‘OHANA community and connectivity — Wealth in partnership
4. Practical usefulness and relevance — Wealth in worth
5. Benefits in the promise of learning — Wealth in knowledge

I hope you feel we’ve made a good start.

Do you deliver on your promise?

In my book I mention Samuel Ainslie, once my boss at the Hualalai Resort and someone I still think of as a mentor. Sam would constantly ask us, “Do we deliver on the promise?” It’s a question that has stuck with me ever since.

“The promise” meant our customer’s dream, and our confidence it would come true for them with our partnership and our Sense of Place stewardship. We truly thought of that promise as The Promised Land: Hualalai wasn’t just our workplace (though it was exceptionally special that way too). To us, Hualalai was the gracious, dreamy Hawai‘i of the customer’s dream in a native population of locals eager to embrace them — what exactly, did they expect to find when they came to us, and were we delivering it to them?

Our work then, was ho‘ohiki; living up to our promise in every way. If we did so, keeping our work genuinely meaningful would be easy. More importantly, it would be fulfilling: It would feel good and right to us as Mea Ho‘okipa — the good hosts who lived in, and shared in this Sense of Place too. All would be PONO.

“The feel of a place, and the feel for a place.”

Here’s the definition of Sense of Place from the pages of Managing with Aloha: It appears in Chapter 17 on NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, the value of personal well-being:

“In many ways nature is where it all begins for most islanders, and the Hawaiian people are no different in this regard. We call ourselves keiki o ka ‘āina, children of the land, understanding that our roots are within the land, and we grow shaped by our environment. In Hawai‘i the ‘āina is not just soil and sand, lava rock and dirt; the ‘āina is a statement of heart and soul for us. The very word brings forth deep emotion: Aloha ‘āina are our words for love of the land, for it is with Aloha we share the breath of life, understanding it is the land that gives us life and gives us sustenance. In a way, humanity and nature are considered father and mother, brother and sister.”

“When we opened The Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani, I had the privilege of attending classes taught by the late Dr. George Kanahele, a highly respected scholar and civic leader of the Hawaiian renaissance of the 1970’s whose Ho‘ohana at the time of these classes —the early 1990’s —was within the field of organizational consulting. The definition he shared with us for sense of place has always struck me as being concisely intuitive: He said that sense of place involves both the feel of a place, and the feel for a place. In our classes, he taught us that place (wahi in Hawaiian) is personally defined for people by their own “locational experiences.” He taught us to open the hotel with a spirit of hospitality that would create fertile ground for our guests to have their own place-connected experiences while they were with us, and in that way feel for themselves what the Aloha Spirit was all about. In my mind, he gave us the key to being “culturally correct” in the way we shared Hawai‘i with visitors.”

“The words “sense of place” echo much farther back within my consciousness; I cannot tell you when I first heard them, for it seems they’ve always been there. Beyond words, they’ve been more of an assumption for me, something I have —something I need —to help me grow in respect for Hawai‘i, the land that gave me birth and nurtured me as I grew up. And beyond paying respect, to Mālama her, honor and care for her whenever it is in my power to do so. Therefore, when I hear the words Nānā i ke kumu, look to your source, it means I need to consider my emotional sense of place as well as my intellectual sense of reason.”

Key 8. SENSE OF PLACE:

Think “working in my neighborhood” for no culture exists in a vacuum. Sense of Place is both the feel OF a place, and the feel FOR a place. Sense of Place is about greater community locally and connectivity globally. It is saying a “thank you” with stewardship, and engaging at a higher level with those places which have gotten you this far, and continue to nourish you daily in a multitude of tiny ways that collectively are absolutely HUGE factors in your success. It is giving back, recognizing that place nurtures and sustains us; it shapes our experiences and lends cultural richness to life. Always will.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

In the eyes of your Boss, or any coach or mentor who’s frustrated with you, Possibility Robbers are the villains who have robbed you of having a good attitude. They can muck up your other relationships too.

See them for who they are, so you can banish them once and for all, saying goodbye to them forevermore. Banish them, and your Language of We will blossom. You’ll be saying hello to much healthier work, and a much happier you. You’ll become magnetic: Others will be attracted to your positive energy like never before.

Let’s identify them, so we can truly see these Robbers for who they are, and what they are stealthily doing to you, until you have the foresight in stopping them.

There are 5 Possibility Robbers who haunt our workplaces:

1. “Yeah, but…” — the throwing up of justification and excuse
2. Should-ing — working within other’s expectations, instead of within your own
3. My way or the highway — resting on your laurels and/or refusing to collaborate with others, neglecting to make room for them
4. “Not meant for me” — self-doubt, self-limiting behavior, and the problem of low self-esteem
5. “I can’t” when you really mean, “I won’t”, and/or “I don’t want to talk about it.” — this is a ploy to delay, or outright denial, and a lack of courage

Possibility Robbers are the enemies of HO‘OHANA (doing the worthwhile work of your most passionate intentions) and ‘IMI OLA (creating your best possible future in a rewarding and visionary way).

Possibility Robbers are saboteurs. They throw obstacles in your path, and erect barriers. They put blinders on you, preventing you from achieving work to progress, particularly with the possibility potential in 1) change and reinvention 2) innovation and visionary thinking and 3) the growth of PALENA ‘OLE capacity development (MWA Key 9).

If you have been working on the LOVE or HATE exercise, identifying your Possibility Robbers is the next-stepping you can do. Possibility Robbers are sneaky: They aren’t as in-your-face as HATEs and tend to disguise themselves. They’re also harder to grapple with because you need to be more intellectually honest about them — HATEs will usually come from tasks you can eliminate, whereas Possibility Robbers often come from your own habits (for example, self-doubt), or you agreeing with the naysayers because pretending you agree is much easier than challenging them, and changing as you need to. The problem with pretending, is that your own brain won’t know the difference: It helps you forget about the issue and move on, when you probably need to deal with it in some way, whether symptom of something else, or root cause of a recurring problem.

The LOVE or HATE exercise is here: What should I do with my life? Find out!

A Personal Story ~

I’ve stared these Robbers in the eye too; none of us are immune to their charms. I clearly, painfully, remember the day I read the essay comments I’d received in a 360° Review done by my peers, when I served on the Executive Committee of a hotel. Right there, in black and white, and for all those peers to read, and hammer home with me, was written, “Rosa’s success works against her: Granted, her team is exceptional, but she says ‘yeah, but’ way too often to the rest of us, assuming she knows all they need to know: It’s hard to get our ideas into her team circle.” Ouch. It was a sucker punch to the gut that I felt both physically and emotionally.

It hurt, but it was also the best thing anyone could have done for me, because I certainly didn’t want to stay on that track! I’ll be honest, I got defensive and denied it, at first. Then I started to take better notice of my own behavior, listening to words as I spoke them. I couldn’t deny it once I heard my Possibility Robbers myself, and could newly see reactions in the faces of the people I worked with. I apologized for sins both past and present (a lot.) Now that I knew what to watch for, I sensed clues earlier, so I could catch myself, and correct course. It wasn’t an overnight improvement: I got braver about asking others on that Committee to call me on it whenever another instance of yeah-butting or laurel-resting haughtiness slipped through. The smartest thing I did was swallow my pride and ask them for more help: What can I do that will serve you better too?

Identify the Villains, and Root out their hold on you.

Identifying these Possibility Robbers is crucial as your first step, for saboteurs are masters in disguise. They can be devious and seductive. They can be hidden in different language, so take a look at that list again, and start listening for them, in both your language, and in what others are saying because they’ve taken your lead or followed your example. In my own story, I discovered that managers who reported to me were doing the same thing in their interdepartmental interactions, because they felt the more exclusive focus was what I expected of our team as a whole. Yikes!

Hunt down your Possibility Robbers by being as open-minded as you can, resisting the slightest impulses of disbelief or denial. How might the people in your culture be your mirror as a manager?

Once you identify them, investigate cause and effect: Why is the Possibility Robber in play — what’s the root cause of its effect? What’s your self-motivation, or honest vulnerability in hiding behind that Robber? When you answer those questions, you may find that correcting course is easier than you think. Sometimes change is required, but at other times a slight shift will do the trick.

Here’s a little bit more about each one, and the tonics which help you combat them:

1. “Yeah, but…”

— the throwing up of justification and excuse
We’ll often be careful about making excuses, but it’s quick and easy to come up with reasons that justify why we do what we do. Is there really any difference between the two? It’s harder to curb that defensive, self-protective impulse, and the trick is to replace it with something else, by asking ourselves, “Hmm… What if I try it?” instead.

You don’t have to feel you’re giving in to others who give you suggestions: Give yourself time to think about it, and say so. Whenever a “Yeah, but…” begins that impulsive itch in your vocal chords, say, “Let me think about that a bit more.” instead. Then ask a question about it, so you can begin to engage with the idea: Flirt with it. Ask for more information about the idea or suggestion so you can trigger the curiosity lying within your own interests. Curiosity is the tonic which cures resistance, for that’s what “Yeah, but…” is: Resistance, and you need to root out the cause of your push-back or hesitation.

“Curiosity [can be] neglected [because] it operates below the surface of our desires. It’s not as simple as thinking positive, being optimistic, being grateful, being kind, or feeling good. Being curious is about how we relate to our thoughts and feelings. It’s not about whether we pay attention, but how we pay attention to what is happening in the present.”
— Todd Kashdan, Ph.D. In Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life

2. Should-ing

— working within other’s expectations, instead of within your own
Alas, this one has stuck around since we were kids, due to an entire cadre of caring, well-meaning adults giving us advice in the guise of teaching, coaching and growing us. Their telling us what to do, robbed us of more practice in those early years, of telling ourselves what to do, or what to try, or how to dream our impossible dreams.

Well-intentioned advice turned into limiting expectations. We get to be adults, and find we’re saddled with “being reasonable” or “being responsible” when we should do the exact opposite, and push the envelope as hard, and as relentlessly and creatively as we can. We discover that we can’t work within our own expectations, because we haven’t really set any to begin with (as opposed to working on those set by others). No wonder goal-setting is so tough for so many!

Don’t let that be you: Dabble. Experiment. Dream crazy and dream bigger. Refuse to entertain ‘feasible’ and get edgy and rebellious. Should-ing is a burden which contains you, and you need to unburden yourself and break free. You’re an adult now, and the only one stopping you is you.

“Should-ing is a by-product of our cultural obsession with being well rounded and the prevailing corporate demand that we capitalize on our so-called areas of opportunity. This voice is powerful and persuasive, but you must not listen to it. If those activities make you feel drained, frustrated, or burned out, you should not be doing them, or at least not much of them, and not for too long.”
— Marcus Buckingham in Go, Put Your Strengths to Work explaining that stopping your should-ing is how we can curb the draining effects of our weaknesses.

3. My way or the highway

— the opposite of the first two, this is about resting on your laurels and/or refusing to collaborate with others, neglecting to make room for them
It’s the rare person who has this attitude of The Condescending Loner and keeps portraying it intentionally. Something else is going on: What are you protecting, and why? Does it really need your protection, or could it actually benefit from some liberation? Go off-roading, and slip a ways down that rabbit trail!

The more common occurrence of this Robber will concern the lack of partnership in your team dynamics (as it did for me), where you are too narrowly focused, or are becoming territorial. I know it’s a strong word, but unfortunately, territorial behavior runs rampant in business. Your immediate team becomes your everything, and it’s hard to let others inside. You risk the danger of being exclusive instead of inclusive, keeping diversity at arms length. Reset, and recharge with the value of KĀKOU.

Go for more abundance as your tonic: This Robber is motivated by scarcity-thinking, and you need to work on making room for the abundance which is possible — and which is likely to make your team’s work far more interesting. If you manage with strong values, you need not fear dilution. Quite the opposite in fact; abundance-thinking opens you up to partnership, corroboration, and stronger alliances.

4. “Not meant for me”

— self-doubt, self-limiting behavior, and the problem of low self-esteem
Do not confuse this with modesty or humility, and recognize it as the problem it can be for you. Others will see it as shaky confidence, a lack of self-assurance, a deficit in initiative and a drain on team energy.

“This isn’t meant for me.” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: If that’s what you believe, you’re right in saying you’ve limited yourself. You’ve slammed shut the doors to greater possibility. You cannot achieve something you won’t entertain: Our pictures of our future need to be painted in bright, bold, compelling colors so we reach for them.

You need more vision, yet I do understand how tough this can be.

One answer, and it’s a great answer for many of us, can be to enroll in another leader’s cause: Share in a passion that’s near and dear to your heart (no should-ing now, you choose!) and be the epitome of the supporter, real-life example and champion. Put your signature on exceptional followership (you can start by sharing more comments here on Managing with Aloha!). Being a good follower is NOT a passive activity, and it can be the best value-verbing practice you can apply your efforts to, until the day you choose to lead your own charge.

Additional thoughts: I have written this article in the vein of self-coaching. However, if you truly feel the depression associated with chronic self-doubt and low self-esteem, please get some help, knowing that asking for help is the bravest, smartest thing you can do. Don’t go it alone: Value the gift of your life.

Short of true depression, this is where Alaka‘i Managers shine, giving their gifts to the world. They are quick to encourage people, saying “Just try it, won’t you? I promise you: I’ll be here to help you navigate any mistakes as you learn this, and I’ll catch you if you fall.”

5. “I can’t”

— …when you really mean, “I won’t”, and/or “I don’t want to talk about it.” — this is a ploy to delay, or outright denial, and a lack of courage
Do you need to get rid of your busy-ness? That’s often an easy fix, and we needn’t dig much deeper — do your fixing! Ask your brutal questions in Letting Go, and explore root causes anytime you catch yourself saying, “I just can’t” even when you qualify it, saying “at least not now, maybe later.” — you know that’s a ploy, and you don’t intend for there to be any later. Deal with your cause now.

In my experience, the lack of courage is an extreme case or early symptom of something else — the longer we manage, the more courageous we usually will get. Denial is tricky: It’s another kind of saboteur connected to refusal, and is rarely ‘outright’ or obvious, so you have to put out your resistance feelers to identify your push-back with more specificity. If it is denial, admit it, and tackle it head on.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” is another clue, and a strong one: It’s another ploy of impatience and denial. This one gets dangerous as self-talk, for we rarely will say it out loud, knowing that the people who care about us (or who are frustrated with us) will say, “Why the hell not?” So say it to yourself: “Why the hell not?” You of all people should know: Talking story works, and it works wonders!

If you have other experiences with Possibility Robbers, please share them.

Tell us about the better tactics and tonics you have discovered as well. How did you banish your own Robbers, or shift team behaviors?

And thank you for reading: I queued this up for the weekend, knowing it was the longest article I have written here so far, but it is so, so important. Do not allow these Possibility Robbers into your life. Be the remarkable star of incredible ALOHA I know you are.

We Ho‘ohana ka ‘Imi ola Kākou, together,
~ Rosa

Postscript: “Yeah, but” in its Professional Suiting

When Managing with Aloha was first published, I encountered “Yeah, but” when it puts on a suit — or another industry-specific ‘professional’ costume. The arm-crossers in my audiences, who had not read my book, and were there only because someone else asked them to be there, were very quick to say, “Yeah, but you came from the hospitality industry, and we’re in manufacturing.” or “Yeah, but you came from the private sector, and things are different for us in the public sector (or in non-profits)” or even, “Yeah, but the people I work with are nothing like the people you worked with.” Oh my. If only they could listen to themselves, hearing what I was hearing! There were so many faulty assumptions in their statements, and so much resistance in their body language.

I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t ever buy it now. As an Alaka‘i Manager, neither should you. If they could’ve withheld quick judgement, and stopped erecting walls bricked with justifications, they’d have heard the victim mentality in those statements, for I wasn’t talking about challenging their industry identity, and turning it into the hospitality business (though a little more HO‘OKIPA service and hospitality never hurt anyone). I pulled their managers aside afterwards whenever it was possible to do so, asking them to seek out the root cause of that defensiveness, so they could talk about it more honestly, and then address it.

The Managing with Aloha message has always been about working on the way you work as the remarkable, ALOHA-powered person you are, so it can be the rewarding work of your HO‘OHANA. In no way am I discounting your area of expertise or the unique character of your profession, but service/product, profit/non-profit, public/private does not matter.

If you feel this way, expand your professional network so it is less incestuous. Jump into social media, and converse: The people you will meet are fascinating! Please start to benchmark other industries as your tonic, not just those industries similar to yours: It’s one of the best ways to get fresh ideas, and do the good questioning of visionary thinking.

I celebrate it each time I do it, and it makes me think about what a ‘victory’ actually is — just how much accomplishment must be involved, so a person will feel victorious? How much quantity (or how little, in that vein where “Less is more” ) as compared to how much quality?

It’s a glorious feeling, being victorious and being able to celebrate it fully, and it falls into that MĀLAMA category of what we Alaka‘i Managers must do for ourselves, so that we can empathize enough, to then do it for others. ALAKA‘I with HO‘OHANOHANO: Lead by merit of your own good example.

My victory may not sound like such a big deal at first, but it’s a victory which has been huge for me, and will be huge for you too. It took quite a bit of time for me to achieve it — too much time, which I’m kinda embarrassed about, so I’m writing this in the hope you’ll achieve it faster, once you think about it as a true goal of KŪLIA I KA NU‘U proportions. I think it’s worth thinking about as another verbing pebble for your bucket — work on it deliberately, with HO‘OHANA intention.

Those Brutal Questions in Letting Go

My victory: I don’t do Weekly Reviews anymore. Don’t need to.

I now do Monthly Reviews on the last day or first day of each month, giving myself a whopping dozen of my “What a great life I have!” celebrations each year.

What this victory means, is that I’ve finally reached this “older and wiser” place in my life, where Weekly Reviews aren’t required to keep me sane in all the madness swirling around me, madness I was shouldering when I shouldn’t have shouldered it at all. This victory means that my life has finally gotten manageable, reasonable, sensible and smart. Those are delicious words, vastly under-rated words: Manageable. Reasonable. Sensible. Smart. All worth celebrating.

Letting go of my Weekly Review practice, and not freaking out about it, means I’ve let go of those things I shouldn’t have held onto in the first place. And there’s the rub of the Brutal Questions: What should you be doing, and what should someone else be doing, and what shouldn’t anyone have to do at all?

These are the questions we must ask ourselves with brutal honesty if we’re ever to be in the league of the Great Ones.

2. Great managers believe they do not work ON or FOR their people, they work WITH them as peers; they enable and empower them.

…from A Manager’s Calling: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers

Pots and Pot Holders

There was a time I studied GTD, the Getting Things Done philosophy of David Allen, with great intensity and zeal, giving it heaps of my energy. His Weekly Reviews, and my subsequent MWA adaptation of them, served me well during a time when I needed them: So much stuff was already in progress for me (as opposed to work to progress), and I just needed to handle it.

I think it’s something we have to do before we can answer our brutal questions: We have to satisfy whatever we need at any given time, being able to identify what that need actually is. It’s like needing pot holders for sizzling pots: You can’t get a good look inside if you can’t even hold onto it.

Allen talks about doing Weekly Reviews and Monthly Reviews, but it was never something I was able to accomplish. Never. Not even occasionally. Never. My life was already in cyclone mode, and I could barely keep my footing.

Sound familiar?

I now know it’s because I didn’t see much difference between the two: A Monthly Review came so fast, and I couldn’t fit it in between my Weekly Reviews. It was all too much. I didn’t get what I now know is better: Doing the kind of Monthly Review that means you’ll never, ever need a Weekly Review again. Instead of handling your life, you live it in a way that means you’ll never need to ‘handle it’ ever again — you’ll just live it, and live it well.

My Weekly Reviews were pot holders.
They stole my weekends away from me for years. They cluttered up my focus because I was trying to focus on too much.
I was slaving away on productivity, failing to see it as the additional complexity it was.

My Monthly Reviews are when I can look into the pot.
And not just look inside: I can stir the pot, and taste what I begin to cook up, feeling it nourish me.
No ‘slaving away’ at all: I’m working on being the product of a good life. Simpler, and more sensible.

I have all my weekends now. They are open, and bright with beckoning possibility. I have better focus on what I’m newly able to do when working — and totally enjoy doing, like the great projects we spoke of here: Choose your next Project Kukupa‘u.

Don’t Maintain. Imua: Move forward

I’m not going to describe what I do within my Monthly Review, because you don’t need me to.

When you get to this place, where you can look into your own pot, you’ll know. You’ll celebrate too, and fatten up your life with great tasting morsels. Your celebration may be different from mine, but it will be a celebration, and not like a ‘review’ at all. No processing of productivity, just being the product. You will Hō‘imi, and look forward like you never have before.

If you’re on the week-to-week stuff-handling circuit, using those pot holders that are like oven mitts, covering you all the way up to your elbows, LET GO. Let go of your organizing of stuff, and tracking of that stuff, especially issues which belong to other people. Let go of your oversight and control. Let go of the responsibility that never should have been yours in the first place and reassess what your KULEANA is all about. Let go of the madness and start to enjoy your life.

I’ll be thinking of you come the 1st of next month. I know you can achieve this quicker than I did. Just set the goal, believing that your life is worth it, and it won’t elude you anymore.

If you missed it, the exercise in this article can help you look into your pot: What should you do with your life? Find out! Don’t allow a single HATE into your pot — those are the first things you can let go of.

Key 4. THE ROLE OF THE MANAGER RECONSTRUCTED:

Managers must own workplace engagement and be comfortable with facilitating change, creative innovation, and development of the human asset. The “reconstruction” we require in Managing with Aloha is so this expectation of the Alaka‘i Manager is both reasonable and possible, and so they can channel human energies as our most important resource, they themselves having the time, energy, and support needed in doing so. Convention may work against us, where historically, people have become managers for reasons other than the right one: Managing is their calling. A new role for managers must be explicitly valued by the entire organization as critically important to their better success: Managers can then have ‘personal bandwidth’ for assuming a newly reinvented role, one which delivers better results both personally and professionally, and in their stewardship of the workplace culture.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

We all experience both moods, but for the most part, Alaka‘i Managers are those who are licking their chops, wanting to move on. We choose Kukupa‘u, enthusiasm, because the alternative isn’t acceptable to us: We won’t choose boredom or complacency.

We have a ‘cruise control’ too… we define it differently

Our cruise control is of the HO‘OMAU variety. It sounds like this:

“This is (or has been) good work, and we’ll commit to sustaining it. It’s important, and it’s worthwhile, so we have to perpetuate it with smart energies, keeping all its goodness long-lasting.”

HO‘OMAU will add a measure of security to things, but it will dial it up slightly too, because we never want mediocrity to set in.

That “licking my chops in sweet anticipation” variety of “Now what?” is the stuff of KŪLIA I KA NU‘U, and striving for work that is somehow different: It’s another peak in your mountain climbing. ‘Work’ may be too big a word for the moment, for I’m not talking about switching jobs or careers (we spoke of that here: What should you do with your life? Find out!)  Let’s talk story about how you change it up in the work you’re already devoted to, getting that work to be more exciting again. It’s the next-stepping of work to progress (verb!), as compared to work in progress.

Learn to love Projects

In Managing with Aloha cultures, we’ve discovered that the next-stepping of work to progress is about learning to love projects, opening the door wide to the goodness in ‘IKE LOA, the value of learning.

Projects don’t elicit groans for us: They entice, make us curious, give us fresh energy, and get us to wonder: What’s ahead for us? How can we grow? Projects are the stuff of Palena ‘ole (Key Concept 9) where we can test our full capacity. On an elemental level, they refresh work, making it seem new again.

Project Pleasure is in the Picking

When I visit workplaces where people consider projects an inconvenience or extra burden, I ask questions about how the project originated: Whose idea was it? Was it assigned, or did hands shoot up in the air, with people eager to jump in?

It’s pretty simple, really. Unless the Boss comes up with some earth-shaking idea that affects everyone in a personal way, people prefer to work on their own ideas — that’s where their self-motivation lives, and needs no prompting; it’s waiting for its moment and chance to shine. This authorship can thrive in the LŌKAHI team dynamic as well, for the collaborative relationship is more intimate, closer to home in day-to-day work.

So, my dear Alaka‘i Manager, if that’s not how it works in your culture, I’d suggest it be considered as your very next project… How will you do your Project Picking from now on?

Remember the 10 Beliefs of Great Managers? This is number 7:

“Great managers believe the people they manage are more than capable of creating a better future, and will when given that chance. They hold great faith and trust in the four-fold human capacities of physical ability, intellect, emotion, and spirit.”

Relinquish control (you don’t need it)

Take a cue from your role as an Alaka‘i Manager: You are Alaka‘i ka ‘ike, a guide of learning. Be a good guide, by supporting your values, and your Big Picture mission and vision.

Allow those who’ll do the project work to do the picking, but suggest a KĀKOU framework and participate in the process as coach and mentor. Your partners will appreciate your assistance in keeping that “Now what?” question from being too big and overwhelming. You can also help in shaping those project expectations that will keep the project in the realm of worthwhile and important work, as opposed to the extra fluff of theoretical exercises nobody wants to bother with.

You don’t need to pick or control a project when there are so many ways you can MĀLAMA that project instead!

Use Who You Are to do What You Do

For instance, in picking our next project, we of MWA Inc. will return to our 9 Key Concepts, and re-sort them like puzzle pieces: Of the 9, which can we dig into with our next-stepping and value-verbing, and through that digging, do two things: 1— Recommit to the good convictions of the concept itself, while we simultaneously 2— Ramp it up, challenging ourselves to get better.

We’ll throw all 9 up on a flip chart or white board, and start a brain storming process which counts on our insider’s intuition and Language of We as the ‘Ohana in Business we are (Key Concept 6). The listing alone will often be quite telling as a current measure of where we are:

1. ALOHA as our Rootstock and Fertile Ground
2. Worthwhile Work, guided by our value of HO‘OHANA
3. Value Alignment, in both value-mapping and value immersion
4. The ever-supportive Role of the Manager on our LŌKAHI team
5. All our communication. Spoken with ALOHA, and in our Language of We, KĀKOU
6. Our ‘OHANA in Business, Mission model magnificent, meaty and meaningful
7. Our Strengths and our Skills Mastery, All in, and well employed
8. Our Sense of Our Place, all Senses afire
9. Our 4-Fold Capacity, Unlimited and unrestrained

Then, we question each other, highly interested in what others think and are feeling, with questions like this:

“Okay, when you look at the list of our 9 Key Concepts, which one struck a discomforting nerve with you, and why?”

“Which one had a void — it was like a blank sheet of paper for you, without enough writing on the page to be pleased with, and proud about?”

“Which one is steeped in good history, but it’s old history, needing a new Managing with Aloha story connected to it that’s about us today, in the here and now?”

“Which one is riddled with inequity or disharmony in our workplace, where some feel its benefits and convictions, but others are left out?”

“Which one has shorter-term potential, where the ideas are doing high-energy gymnastics in your brain, and with your emotions right now? Why, and what would be the small but quick win?”

‘IKE LOA and Palena ‘ole are in the background of each of these questions: Our intention in asking them, lies with curiosity about what we can learn (‘IKE LOA as our value) and how we can grow (with Palena ‘ole/ Key Concept 9 as our conviction.)

Good Projects will lead to Great Pilot Programs

I’ve come to love April and May for these efforts. April is usually about our Project Picking, and May gets devoted to kick-offs and great starts as our Project Working to progress begins in earnest, and with enthusiasm. Spring has a lot to do with it, but we also grab our gains from that release people feel after Tax Day: Whether you’ll pay or play, by now you’ll know which it is, and to what degree. People are ready to move on with some kind of next-stepping, and the financial education they’ve personally added to, gains its professional ripples.

Whatever the project picked, look forward to the Pilot Program you include on the calendar. A pilot is an experimental time of low-to-no risk, where project learning can be tested in real work applications, and final decisions have not yet been made because you value those test results. Everyone knows you are still in testing and learning mode, and it’s always a great time for practicing that kindness and understanding of MĀLAMA when mistakes are made, for everyone expects that to happen as part of the growing process.

Every single one of our 19 Values and 9 Key Concepts will apply to piloting projects in some way. Test your own MWA knowledge to date: What are the other connections which immediately come to mind for you?

Feel that energizing Springtime Kukupa‘u in the air, and feel good about bringing it to your workplace. Lick your chops in sweet anticipation, with great enthusiasm for the project work you can dig into, knowing that you have ‘IKE LOA and Palena ‘ole to guide you, and guide you well.

For more on Key Concept 9: Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it.

Key 9. PALENA ‘OLE:

Palena ‘ole is the Hawaiian concept of unlimited capacity. This is your exponential growth stage, and about seeing your bigger and better leadership dreams come to fruition. Think “Legacy” and “Abundance” and welcome the coaching of PONO into your life as the value it is. We create our abundance by honoring human capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. When we seek inclusive, full engagement and optimal productivity, any scarcity will be banished. Growth is welcomed and change is never feared; enthusiasm flourishes. PALENA ‘OLE is an everyday attitude in an ‘Ohana in Business, assuming that growth and abundance is always present as an opportunity. Given voice, Palena ‘ole sounds like this: “Don’t limit yourself! Why settle for ‘either/or’ when we can go for the ‘and’ and be better?”
Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 9 in Managing with Aloha on the value of KĀKOU:

The Language of We

Kākou is the language of “we.” And the language of we stimulates ownership and personal responsibility in the all-encompassing initiatives of a company. If you hear your employees talk about “our company” versus “the company” you know you’re on the right track. They feel they have a stake in what you do, and they take actions they believe are important and worthwhile. They are your partners, and these words of inclusiveness imply that they feel their voices and opinions are considered carefully in the decisions you make. The language of we is one of collaboration and partnership, and it also implies agreement and support of your vision. These are the words, the empowering force, and the strength of mind of Kākou. All of us. Kākou serves to give an affirmative voice to the unity you were able to achieve in your efforts with Lōkahi (Chapter 8).

I believe that every manager in needs to respect the needs of their culture, and figure out how to use the word Kākou in their own language, in the sentences they say to their staff every day. For the beauty of Kākou is that it includes the speaker in whatever is being said, and the message is explicitly clear that you are in it —whatever it is —with them. There is no me versus you, no us versus them, it’s all we and us. You may be the boss, but you are one of them. In a company you are all employees, you are all business partners, you are all on a mission. Your staff needs to hear this from you, and they can never hear it enough.

Let language lead to action

This is what happens when you incorporate something into your language, into the words that people hear you speak often: You have to walk the talk to keep your credibility and your integrity. The surest way to change your own behavior for the better is to speak the words that will force you to make it so. And the brave soul who will say to his or her staff with humility and sincerity, “I need you to help me with this,” often becomes their champion.

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 fifty times 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.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha