… let me save you some time as well: I don’t take guest posts, advertising, or requests to read your press release, or promote your product, book, website, service, or blog post… when time runs short, I skip reading those emails altogether. My mission is to mentor managers in alignment with the Managing with Aloha philosophy, and it’s honestly all I can handle: I commit my time to doing it as well as I possibly can.

I want to be nice, and graciously help people however I can, but that listing of what I don’t handle anymore is my truth in the framing of my life na ‘IMI OLA, and I think it is better to be upfront about it. Managing with Aloha is my circle of comfort and preferred place to be. Better yet if I state it in a way that owns my circle of influence, and hence, my circle of control.

As Austin Kleon says,

“Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.”

And as we say here, make it your HO‘OHANA work.

You’ve heard this before:

No single person can be all things to all people.

I can’t see you, but I can sense your agreement — and your relief that you’re off the hook!

You know what you are effective in and with. You also know what you cannot, and should not handle. Knowing those things, do you own it?

Let’s look at this through PALENA ‘OLE framing, Key 9 in our 9 Key Concepts. In the strictest sense of it, PALENA ‘OLE literally translates to being without limits, edges or boundaries. In our Managing with Aloha interpretation and strategically adopted key concept, we understand that limits, edges, and boundaries do exist, and further, they do help in the positive way that constraints will: What the savvy Alaka‘i Manager will do, is choose his or her limits purposefully.

Role-on-purpose will set the limits of positive constraint.

The commonly spoken identification of those intentions are as our parameters-by-design, our paradigms for success, or as we call it here, our circle of influence.

• The best paradigm of all? Our personal values.
• The best circle of influence? Where our personal values and our professional values are a match, and help define our chosen ROLE.
• For more clarity on this, scroll down to the sub-heading here, titled “Work your full circle.”

We do fairly well in scratching our line in the sand, and mapping out our basics. I take it a step further with you, and ask you for value-mapping, value-verbing, and Value Alignment (article 3 in this series on ROLE). I ask you to then walk your talk every single day, starting with good talk (Key 5: Language of Intention).

Today? I ask you to go farther and be braver with this mantra:

Say YES to the Role you Choose.
Say NO to the Role others impose on you.

“No thank you.” is polite, and it can be said with ALOHA, for your Aloha Spirit shines through when you are true to who you are meant to be, and it IS your ROLE.

The best “No thank you.” will always be followed-up with a demonstration of what you say YES to.

Reconstruct your role as a manager who manages according to your calling. Be ALAKA‘I in that you lead by merit of your own good example and consistent behavior — and that you set a higher bar.

Allow each NO to make you stronger.

I have to admit, that it was difficult for me to add those sentences to my contact page, for it is an obstacle thrown down another’s path: It’s a roadblock in reaching me. I have another page on RosaSay.com that was even more difficult for me to write: What’s free, what’s not. Yet after I wrote it, I felt liberated. I felt honest and true. I felt PONO.

So can you, when you turn each NO into your constraint of a more positive expectancy:

The epigraph of Managing with Aloha;
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist and philosopher

It has taken a career of twists and turns, and today I know who I am, and I know my best role. It can still be hard at times, but altogether it is easier and easier to own my role with each passing day — when that day’s passage means I have owned it, and I have done it well.

The conversation continues…

Aloha,
If you are newly joining us here, this is part of a mini series on The Role of the Manager Reconstructed. You can catch up with this reading path:

1. Now boarding; the ROMR Tour of Duty
2. An ROMR Archive Review
3. Reckoning with Role [to Value it.]
4. then back to the top of this page!

The Role of the Manager Reconstructed is one of our 9 Key Concepts in the Managing with Aloha philosophy.

This article may also prove useful to you if you wondered about the vocabulary we use:
Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology

Mahalo nui, thank you for being here!
~ Rosa

I daresay most people agree with him in primary thoughts about ROLE; that it’s a mask, and something you have to wear, and wear well to be successful, particularly when on the job.

No, no, no, no, no.
No manager should “trade in reality for a role” with a mask.

Lucky me, I was taught that role was something you could be — somebody you intentionally chose to be. It was good, not tragic (as it became for Morrison): It was something you aspired to, the pinnacle of personal mission. And that pinnacle was that freedom “to be what [who] you really are.”

Thus, that’s how I think about working on Managing with Aloha’s key 4, The Role of the Manager Reconstructed. It’s what the role of the manager can be, if only we take better possession of it as the somebodies we are — if only we intentionally choose it — and make it happen as the somebody we want to be.

We can have it all, by being it all. I truly believe that.

Designing Role

I saw another quote (one I liked), tucked into an article written by Matt Buchanan for The New Yorker: Breathing New Life into the iPhone. Buchanan paid Apple a fabulous compliment;

In sum, these things contribute to the feeling that your phone is something more than an inanimate chunk of glass and aluminum. This is, in part, the argument that Apple makes about why it is the best at what it does: Microsoft and Google may now have products that are well designed, but Apple, and what it produces, is design.

A Bonus Link: Take a look at this short (1:31) video Apple did, calling it Intention.

We managers cannot make the same claim, that we are design — or can we?

Valuing Role

We can certainly think of design as a verb, actionable within our value-verbing concept as Alaka‘i Managers. Let’s drill down into our favored vocabulary:

3. VALUE VERBING
Puts the process of VALUE MAPPING into the everyday language of workplace culture. We put value mapping intentions into executable actions with highly active, next-action verbs.
[Value-verbing tagged for learning.]

2. VALUE MAPPING
Names the process [of VALUE ALIGNMENT] — We map out how we intend to achieve our objective, much in the same way we map out objectives like mission and vision, and all our strategic initiatives.
[Value-mapping tagged for learning.]

1. VALUE ALIGNMENT
Frames the key objective — To align the actual behaviors of a workplace culture with the values we say we believe in from an intellectual and convicted point of view: We believe in this deeply, and therefore, this is what we consistently do, or aspire to do.
[Value Alignment as Key 3 category.]

Designing your role as a manager then, will first require that you value your role, as that embodiment of what you say you believe in from an intellectual and convicted point of view — your mana‘o. It’s NOT a mask — you understand the core values which drive role for you, and you choose them, as part of who you are, and who you fully intend to be.

And it will first require that you say so: “I am a manager.”

For as we know so well, we cannot do great things for the people we care for [within our calling to be managers] until we do great things for ourselves.

The conversation continues…

Aloha,
If you are newly joining us here, this is part of a mini series on The Role of the Manager Reconstructed. You can catch up with this reading path:

1. Now boarding; the ROMR Tour of Duty
2. An ROMR Archive Review
3. then back to the top of this page!

The Role of the Manager Reconstructed is one of our 9 Key Concepts in the Managing with Aloha philosophy.

This article may also prove useful to you if you wondered about the vocabulary we use:
Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology

Mahalo nui, thank you for being here!
~ Rosa

…I took a look at what has organically been added (i.e. not as a specific ‘tour’ or reading path) to our Key 4 category here on the blog since our March 2012 site redesign. There are already 32 articles indexed!

The benefit of clicking through the category pages, is that you get a snippet preview — go ahead and try it. Each page is listed from the most recent article to the older ones, you also see the classification footer (which contains the secondary categories the article intersects with, and the tag classification of that article in our MWA Lexicon).

However in this particular case, that also means you’ll have to click through 5 pages to see everything within the ROMR article category. So before our current ROMR Tour of Duty begins, I thought I’d help you out with a shorter Archive Index, and one which replaces any seasonal inclusions with another reading choice. Putting this together was a good review of the last 15 months for me too — I don’t want to be excessively repetitive in what I newly publish for you: I want to build upon it.

This page will end up in the ROMR Key 4 category index too, so you can always access it that way in the right column of the blog, but it will show up for you much sooner! You can also bookmark it in your own way if you prefer.

One last note: The argument can very easily be made that every single article here on MWA Central is in some way connected to reconstructing the Role of the Manager, for my core mission is to mentor, coach, and support the Alaka‘i Manager who answers A Manager’s Calling: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers.

In all honesty, choosing the primary category for any article I write can be a hard decision, and so this listing may get revised as I continue my audit… it should focus on ROLE RECONSTRUCTION for you, so that after each reading you are left with an actionable thought on how you can proceed, in next-stepping and reconstructing with each step forward you take. That would be a good approach in using it as a tool in tackling this: Management Style by Habit — which case in point, was classified within our Key 2 category, under Worthwhile Work.

That said, this entire site is written for you: If you feel something should be here, let me know!

An ROMR Archive Review ~ March 2012 through June 2013:

1. Now boarding; the ROMR Tour of Duty
2. 1-Catch the Good, 2-Tell Them!
3. Carry, and Use, Pen and Paper
4. Managing Basics: Study Their Work
5. The 4th Mortal Sin of Management
6. The 3 Sins of Management — and the Cure for all 3
7. Manager, Keep Thyself Together
8. Role Reconstruction: Design your Sweet Spot as Manager
9. Life’s 3 Stops in Motivation: Happiness, Meaning, Service
10. Alaka‘i Managers are the new Energy Bunnies
11. Getting the Old to Become New Again
12. They seem happy enough. — Goal!
13. Going Forward into 2013, with Aloha
14. Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7
15. The Bull in Your China Shop
16. When the Student is Ready, the Teacher will Appear
17. Give Managers their Chance to Excel
18. You can’t “Be fair.” Be consistent. (Redux)
19. “I’m a manager.”
20. The Sentence I Hear in Your Workplace Classroom
21. Managing: Learn how to ask “Why?”
22. Managing: Be a Big Fan of the Small Win
23. Managing: Let’s talk about the Basics
24. Speak up, I’m listening
25. Start with two words: “with Aloha”
26. Myth Busting with Aloha
27. People Who Do Good Work
28. A Sense of Place Delivers True Wealth
29. The Victory of Continuous Celebration
30. Choose your next Project Kukupa‘u
31. What if I’m not a manager?
32. A Book to Practice, at Work and in Life

I am feeling the need to take a little blog-writing tour, a brief tour of duty through what we refer to as Key Concept 4: The Role of the Manager Reconstructed (ROMR). It will be a ‘why we do what we do’ kind of tour.

It’s a “little” tour in the grand scheme of what we cover here at Managing with Aloha Central, with our 19 values and 9 key concepts altogether, but whether you’re a manager or the one managed, it can be big in its significance for you.

Here’s why.

There have been a series of happenings lately which have re-impressed upon me the importance of ROMR, which in short, calls for a reconstruction of the manager’s role in most organizations today, so the managers that reconstruction will affect can do a far better job (Give Managers their Chance to Excel), and a job they find to be much more satisfying and rewarding for them as well. Management is hard enough as it is, without the dysfunctional conventions of organizational structure getting in the way.

I’ll share a quick trio of those “happenings.”

— A conversation with an HR Director who stated, quite emphatically, that “All my colleagues [in HR] agree: Good managers are so hard to find these days.” She was so confident about the accuracy of her statement. Scary. Apparently, my dear Alaka‘i Manager, you are valued at a premium!

— Another conversation with a very frustrated founder/owner/boss who rhetorically asked, as he whined and complained about it, “Why don’t managers understand the basics of what their job is all about in the first place?” After listening to him for a while, I felt compelled to give him some gentle coaching on how he directly affected his managers basic understanding of “what their job is all about in the first place.”

— Seth Godin published a blog post which is getting a LOT of attention, called, “Memo to the Modern COO.” In it, he states that there should be 2 objectives of the job of the post-industrial chief operating officer today; increase alignment, and decrease fear. I agree with him, and I love those objectives, however Godin excels in thought provocation, and there’s more to it than that. How many managers, now tweeting it, and Facebook updating it, and LinkedIn to his blog post, will actually dig into it tangibly, own it in their current circle of influence, and do something practical and useful about it? How many managers will read what he suggests, immediately apply it, and then get better at it?

We will. ALOHA, ALAKA‘I and HO‘OHANOHANO are our values. They are our Why, and they are our How-to as we consistently “increase alignment” through values-based management, for Managing with Aloha is our Ethos, and increasing value alignment is our specialty.

Our objective is a personal and professional goal.

When I write this blog, I imagine writing to just one person — you.

The reality of business today (and hasn’t it always been this way?) is that managers must create their own destiny instead of waiting for some founder, owner, boss, HR Director or other team leader to do so for them. Those people are likely to have expectations for you, but giving life to those expectations is all on you, and there is ample room for your distinctive signature. As Alaka‘i Managers know, we call it Ho‘ohana.

It’s a win-win: The ROLE you create for yourself, is a source of your energy, and it empowers the destiny you create.

I implore those other people in leadership-by-title positions to help, and to support you, but managers have to lead the way in the ROMR reinvention we call for — you have to do it for yourself, and demonstrate how it’s done, and why it works.

And I know you can do this. You are much more capable than you think you are, and need not wait for any boss to tell you it’s okay, or hold your hand. And waiting is not an option when the people you manage depend on you.

Now boarding!

And so our tour for best duty begins.

Our stops along the way will be fresh ROMR article updates here on the MWA blog, and I’m announcing this to you before I’ve finished writing them, so I can’t tell you how many there are yet… we’ll work our way through them together, okay?

There will be ROMR archive stops too, including ones pulled from our storied history archived at TalkingStory.org: Catch them at the end of each new article I post (as related reading links) or follow the updates on MWA’s LinkedIn page if that’s one of your social media dwellings.

If you are new to Managing with Aloha, and to this blog, or if you want a little preview of what’s to come, start here: Role Reconstruction: Design your Sweet Spot as Manager.

Check out my New Here? page for a broader overview.

If there’s a stop you want to take on the tour, an issue you’ve thought about, or struggle with, in reconstructing your own role as manager, comment below or write to me privately and let me know so I can fit it in.

Thank you for being here, and mahalo nui loa for your own why in learning to be an Alaka‘i Manager who lives, works, manages, and leads with Aloha.
We Ho‘ohana Kākou,
~ Rosa

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.

Site category for Key 4: The Role of the Manager

Read about all 9: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha and The 9 Key Concepts — Why these 9?

I’m touring a workplace right before a coaching session with an executive team, and the manager showing me around introduces me to someone he describes as “one of my lead people, a star.”

After a short conversation, and as we walk away, leaving his star behind us, the manager starts to tell me a story about the feedback he had received from a customer about that star — glowing feedback, the kind of story you wish for every single day in a business, multiplied by every single employee you have, and with internal and external customers alike. An Aloha Spirit story.

As he ended his story-telling with me, I asked, “Did you tell him [the star] what the customer said, and what it meant to you, like you’re telling me now?” and he replied, “Uh no, come to think of it, I haven’t, and I really need to let him know, and thank him.”

My dear managers, I cannot tell you how many times something similar happens when I tour workplaces, a frequent opportunity and normal part of what I do as a Managing with Aloha culture coach. Well, I guess I can tell you about it, but the point is that I don’t want to — I shouldn’t have to bring it up, and this posting should be totally unnecessary, because you have made it a habit of your management style, to catch your people doing something good, or something right, or something important, or something inspiring, and you tell them, and you thank them: Management Style by Habit.

It’s great that I hear these stories, it really is, but I’m an extra conversation about them — the employees who are your key partners, and most important people in your workplace, are the ones who need to hear them. They need to hear how their actions positively play out, and they need to hear these stories about their peers as well, because You are being a workplace Aloha champion.

This is what those things we call ‘managing by walking around’ and ‘face to face encounters with our customers’ are for: Go on the hunt for good and elevate it. Seize every single opportunity you have to catch the good your people, your peers, and all your partnerships do, and never, ever, EVER take them for granted, feeling, “well, that’s their job, isn’t it?” To be clear, this particular manager did not say that in this instance, but it has come up before, or is communicated to me in a shrug of the shoulders which brushes off my suggestion, “Please, do tell him.” conveying to me that it probably won’t happen.

I know that there are a lot of good stories collected by managers, because they do make a point of telling employees about them as the ‘easy part’ of annual appraisals and performance reviews. But folks, why wait? Why not tell them right away — which is much, much more effective in encouraging the behaviors you want repeated — and why not do both, telling them right away, and then bringing it up again in their appraisal? Why not add these stories to your company history?: Collect Stories, Dispel Myths.

To this manager’s credit, he did something I’ve never had happen before. He asked me, “Would you excuse me for a minute, for I’d really like to tell him right now.” I didn’t feel slighted at all — I felt like a coach who was immediately acknowledged and listened to! — and I waited for him: It took less than a minute, and I watched that employee break into the biggest smile, his whole persona seeming to elevate as he went back to work, walking on air, and quite likely intent on doing more good, and doing it even better next time.

Then what did I do? I told the manager how great he had made me feel as a then-impromptu coach. I told him how pleased I was, and how proud I was of him, for it was my turn to catch him doing something exceptionally right, something wonderfully good, something critically important, and something incredibly inspiring.

Archive Aloha with related reading:

• You are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!
• Hana ‘eleau: Working in the Dark
• Managing Basics: Study Their Work and Managing: Be a Big Fan of the Small Win
• The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Parts
• Role Reconstruction: Design your Sweet Spot as Manager

For more reading paths, go to New Here? or click on the tags found in the footer.

A Manager’s Calling: What do the truly great managers of our world believe in?

There are managers, and then there are great managers.

The great ones, are those we call Alaka‘i Managers in Managing with Aloha: They manage because they have a calling to do so, and that calling is to elevate the human condition, particularly in that sphere of influence we call the workplace. That is where they choose to lead as well, Leading with Aloha.

It is extremely exciting to see those lights of recognition and renewal go on in managers’ eyes when they realize that the hard work of management can evolve into the gift of a calling in their lives. Catching glimpse of those mālamalama lights is one of the best things I experience in my work as a coach… Read more: A Manager’s Calling: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers.

Before I link you over there, let’s review the foundational building blocks which have led to it — Let’s do what we say we do, and be clear on our Why. Let’s briefly revisit our story as Alaka‘i Managers.

We ho‘ohana kākou,
~ Rosa

VOCABULARY: Word candy! As our chosen, and commonly used cultural definitions, vocabulary is the single most underutilized tool in all workplaces, bar none.

LEXICON: The vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. Our vocabulary is cobbled together to create our language, and our resulting dialect is often a mix of language forms and sources.

DIALECT: A particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group. In Managing with Aloha, we often speak of how our workplace dialects are influenced by Sense of Place, by Alaka‘i management and leadership direction and example, and most importantly, by our values.

MORPHOLOGY: In Linguistics (which is the scientific study of language and its structure), morphology is the study of the forms of words and phrases. How did they come to be used, and why? Why are they still so effective? i.e. Why do native speakers and writers like them?

WORKPLACE: However you define it, whether employed or self-employed, online and virtual or brick and mortar, local or global, learning path or career path. In Managing with Aloha it’s the collection of those places we deliberately work on and within our HO‘OHANA—— we work on work here!

LANGUAGE OF INTENTION: Key 5 in the 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha workplace culture-building. Article category 5 on this site—— our Managing with Aloha Central.

Language Deliciousness

Language of Intention is an absolutely essential focus in fostering healthy workplace cultures.

In Managing with Aloha, it is how we construct our communication deliberately, to Speak with Aloha, to Write with Aloha, to Read with Aloha understanding, to convey our values through story-telling, and so on—— all the how-to’s counted as the ways we’ll communicate with each other with Aloha.

The Alaka‘i Managers (managers with this calling) in my immediate workplace circle of influence (with Say Leadership Coaching and Ho‘ohana Publishing, my business entities) are fond of saying, “To walk the talk with Aloha, we’ve got to start with our talk, so, Talk the talk!” and I am thrilled that they have adopted it as their informal mantra. Great managers communicate with care: They do what they say, and they aspire to be that of which they speak of in highest regard — the sweet spot, when you blend ALOHA (spirit), KŪLIA I KA NU‘U (striving toward excellence), HO‘OHANOHANO (conducting oneself with distinction) and PONO (rightness and balance) as the m.o. of how you HO‘OHANA as a manager and leader.

Practically speaking, if you could have read and fully understood that last paragraph without needing my definitions in parentheses or taking any links, you’ve become part of the Ho‘ohana Community in workplace usage: You can talk the talk.

That insider’s in-the-know ease is what Language of Intention delivers when managers and leaders are deliberate about purposefully crafting it and using it as their essential culture-builder. It makes communication quicker without sacrificing the clarity of mission-driven intention. In fact, having a workplace Language of Intention will fortify that clarity — everyone is “on the same page” within all communications.

We often think of lexicon quickies as slang or as informal shortcuts, but in reality, cultural LEXICON offers up words and phrases which are actually more complete, energetic and robust: They are shorter-but-better.

Alaka‘i Managers set a good example.

We speak up. We are the best lexicon users around.

My goal here, at Managing with Aloha Central, is to be an Alaka‘i Manager who consistently sets that good example, and to give you any resources you feel you need in addition to my book, core reference of our 19 Values of Aloha.

• Our VOCABULARY is definitely our word candy. The first reading of Managing with Aloha is like an orientation at work in book form, and we focus on the Hawaiian names of values as our vocabulary. When you are new to this site, the best way to add to your cultural vocabulary with us, is to focus on the 9 Key Concepts. You trace on-going conversations in our communications by using thosee Key Concept categories, and the value-verbing tags in article footers.

• Our DIALECT in our Ho‘ohana Community of Alaka‘i Managers is a storied mix: A blending of English as commonly spoken, Hawaiian labeling for its founding values and kaona (hidden meanings and storied lessons), and the workplace context of business modeling (we identify as an ‘Ohana in Business: MWA Key 6) —— they are the dialect notes of the sweet harmony we’ll achieve as we work together on our “with ALOHA” mission and vision.

I’m a manager who is also a writer, thus I have often counted blogging, and this era we happen to be in technologically, as true blessings of the Managing with Aloha story, especially as a now global workplace movement. If you track our community by the publishing date of my book (November 2004) we’re approaching our 10th year untethered to locational geography. If you track it since founding, we’re nearly 18 years old as a comprehensively articulated and fully employed in-use work philosophy.

Those years have been full of good work, and we are KĀKOU: There has been a LOT of article writing on Managing with Aloha since it was founded. If you have written or shared something about it, mahalo nui loa, thank you SO very much! For the great majority of MWA practitioners in the Ho‘ohana Community, you have talked the talk, and walked the walk, and your value-verbing in the true grit of real workplace action is where our MORPHOLOGY has happened all these years.

You are managing with Aloha.

I cannot be in all your workplaces, but I can do more here.

People often ask me, “Is there a ‘Book 2’ for Managing with Aloha?”

I’ve published smaller e-books for related subject matter focus, but the answer is actually no, because I point those people here, to our community meeting place and learning place. This site, and TalkingStory.org before it, have been the embodiment of what any Book 2 would have been.

The longer we occupy this space, the more morphology, and our Language of Intention gets larger. We have a GLOSSARY but I’ve been feeling we need something more: There are more stories, and more articles, and the site archives deepen. Our 9 Key Category pages get longer, as do the tag indexes, and the initial, germinating WHY of our morphology can get hidden.

I had to find a way of revealing the hidden, making the key definitions of our vocabulary and lexicon more easily find-able, and a possible answer came to me within another one of my publishing projects: In my next printing of my book, I will be adding to the MWA Index Pages.

Thus, this new Resource Page: The MWA Conceptual Index to serve a similar purpose here at Managing with Aloha Central.

I hope you find it useful! I am also hoping this new Page will help me streamline my articles for a crisper and cleaner reading experience for you, where I can in-link less. As you can tell when reading, I love in-linking for the way it cuts back on explanatory redundancy, but the fewer the better in each new article written: Too many creates rabbit trails.

This has been long enough… click over and take a look.

The listings are a bit sparse at the moment, for I have just started to construct it from my recent articles here, but please keep checking back, for I will be consistently adding to it in the continual work I do with these archives as my new habit. I have already found this index very useful as site author, and have been thinking of it as a more advanced New Here? kind of page, where Alaka‘i Managers can more quickly find what they need as they learn more, converse more, and do more.

Help me out, would you?

If there is an article link you feel should be included in your past experience of referencing it, do let me know! Note it in the comments here, and I will add it in. This will not be a comprehensive index of all articles: That is how the archives, blog categories and tags should be used. It will be an identifier index, linking you to the suggested first read —— the initial article within which a concept was born, or had truly gelled within the morphology of our lexicon.

The Managing with Aloha Conceptual Index

Going forward, you will always be able to locate the link in the right-side column of the blog, within our listing of RESOURCE PAGES.

Mahalo for reading, and for being part of our Ho‘ohana Community. There is no true Managing with Aloha Language of Intention without you, and your Working with Aloha. You keep our mission alive and well, and constantly learning.

Collect stories. Dispel myths.

Every company has a storied past. Are you aware what yours is?

More importantly, do you know why your stories are so important?

When old timers tell the newbies stories about “the good old days,” or “how it used to be here,” or “the first time we ever did this” what are they so fondly recollecting? Why in the world do they keep talking about past events, often making the retelling far more wonderful sounding than you remember actually living the experience of them?

Is there any value in this memorable nostalgia?

When stories are told in the spirit of retelling your company history, your storytellers are often capturing the memorable parts; what they remember is largely what they want to keep alive because it felt very good to them at one time.

Stories of what had been give us a look back at those things we once believed in, and want to keep believing in [The instinctive, natural selection of Wanting]. They reveal the values which had bound us together and still do, and why in the aftermath of the story’s events we kept pushing upward and onward.

Stories will often chronicle successes and achievements, and tell of what people feel was a victory, because by nature we want our stories to be good ones; no one likes to recount their failures. However whether victory, mistake, or outright failure, our stories undoubtedly recount lessons-learned too important to be forgotten. We feel we can keep learning from them, and we tell the story to re-teach the lesson.

The best advice I give in my new supervisors workshop is this: “Find a good listener you can tell your workplace stories to. Get those stories out of past history, and talk story about them.”
— The instinctive, natural selection of Wanting

Myths however, are a different matter.

I’ve learned to be more wary of myths, finding that for some reason, those who tell myths instead of stories need to fabricate a past that didn’t really happen. They want to feel better about explaining the present, and why things are as they are. What that tells me, is that our values aren’t aligned, and I’d best discover why that is.

Myths may sound plausible, but they are far more fiction than fact, and they are often riddled with half-truths and concocted history. They can be intriguing, they can be wistful and fanciful, but because they never really happened they don’t deliver those lessons actually learned, just the what ifs that might have been. The more credibility the teller strives to give them, the more dangerous myths become, for stated plainly, myths are lies.

With stories you have a solid foundation of the values which served you well; they become predictable values you trust to keep a company centered. Myths don’t deliver this foundation. Instead, they create a slippery iciness on which you frequently lose your footing. Because a myth isn’t completely true, you can’t be certain; you can’t be sure-footed and confident.

People who tell stories are proud to own them; they claim them as part of their own history. Those who tell myths are building a case for some reason; and great managers will work to dispel those myths so they can get to the root causes of why the myth exists. What they are looking for, is why the teller feels the myth must be told.

People only lie when they feel the truth isn’t good enough for them. However the great managers among us always prefer the ugliest truth over the prettiest lie, for that way they always know exactly what they’re dealing with. They honor the truth above all else, for in doing so they honor their own integrity.

Collect stories to celebrate the values you believe in, and use those stories to help people identify with those values and claim them with you. Dispel the myths and banish any confusion so that the truth of who you really are is honored.

A bit more context, this month of May, 2013:

Think of your workplace stories as the “look to the source” goodness of NĀNĀ I KE KUMU:

Nānā i ke kumu

This is the value of personal well being. Literally translated, Nānā i ke kumu means “look to your source.” Seek authenticity, and be true to who you are. Get grounded within your sense of self. Keep your Aloha at the surface of what you do daily, and celebrate those things that define your personal truths. To value Nānā i ke kumu is to better understand your sense of place, and to practice Mahalo for your sense of self: Do you really know how extraordinary and naturally wise you are?

You author your stories every single day in the actions you take. A conversation is like a drafted word; follow-up taken (or not taken) like a paragraph, and repeated practice like one chapter which will sequentially, and consequentially, lead to another one.

Another way to think of storied history more collectively (i.e. in what you share with co-working partnerships), in light of our recent focus here on habit-building, is that it traces the roots of your ingrained cultural habits.

What is culture?

Great managers know that CULTURE is simply a group of people who share common values, and operate within those values.

Culture is learned. Culture represents a series of agreements based on value alignment, and results from honoring those agreements.

The great manager, and the great PERSON, manages their own behavior by tapping into their values as their source of human energy. It’s the way they “lead by example” conducting themselves with ALOHA distinction, and it’s the way they inspire the culture they operate within.

Archive Aloha with related reading:

• Myth Busting with Aloha
• Managing: Learn how to ask “Why?”
• The First Time and the Insider’s Advantage
• Talking Story is Thriving. It’s What We Do.
• Back to the Beginning

For more reading paths, go to New Here? or click on the tags found in the footer.

Management Style by Habit

‘Management style’ is one of those phrases bandied about in all workplaces, and it’s a catch-all; when we say it, we have to clarify, and add more to better convey what we mean.

Our management style can be seen in a good light — “He’s very compassionate, and fiercely protective of his team.” or it can be negatively perceived — “She’s a micro-manager and just can’t keep her nose out of my work.” The good is often said in gratitude, and the not-so-good as grumbled whisper.

Managers tend to have quick answers when asked, “What’s your management style like?” — So what’s yours?

Now the more important question: “Would your team agree with you, or say something different?”

Your management style = your Reputation.

For me, management style has long been synonymous with reputation, and reputation is something you have to earn: Others will award it to you as acknowledgement, “yes, [that] is indeed who you are — I see it consistently, and we all experience it with you.”

So you can’t select your reputation, not exactly: You either enjoy it when favorable, or work to change it when it’s not — and that you can do.

You “work to change it” by improving your habits, particularly those which will affect how you work with other people, and particularly those people who are the ones who award you your reputation (their whispers are the loudest ones!)

Simply said, you’re part of their lives; they’ll talk about you. The whisper gets louder because they start hoping you’ll hear it, and take it to heart.

Give them something good to talk about.

This is not about ego. Their perceptions about you are your reality about your effectiveness within your circle of influence. The opposite of, “yes, [that] is indeed who you are — I see it consistently, and we all experience it with you.” is “no, [sigh]… you really are clueless, aren’t you.”

They aren’t likely to come out and say that directly, but you can tell when they think it: Their working pathways steer clear of yours — that partnership founded in ALOHA, KĀKOU and LŌKAHI is m.i.a.

If you need to work on your management style, so you can start to reap the benefits of these values rooted in spirit-spilling self-actualization, the Language of We, and co-working synergies, work on your personal workplace habits — the ones which put you on automatic pilot in only good ways:

I am completely at your command.
80% of what you do, you might as well hand over to me and I will do it promptly and I will do it correctly.
I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
— from The Riddle: You are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!

How are habits ‘easily managed’ ???

The short answer is: Intentionally. It’s not something you leave to chance. You come up with a plan in which you’ll (you WILL) better direct your behaviors.

A more complete answer is what Managing with Aloha is all about: You choose your values too. You choose those values which match your deepest beliefs and convictions about how you want to work with others, manage them well in partnership, and lead them in mission-driven work, visionary thinking, and self-developmental growth.

Those are big choices. Sometimes they’re clear, and we are tasked with keeping them clear. More often, they’re muddled and we need to sort through them. Yet whether clear or muddled, they amount to choices and decisions in just three things:
1. Values.
2. Relationships.
3. Intentional work.
— Ethos: Be True to Your Values

Good habit-building is w.i.p. for all managers, all the time.

It’s work-in-progress all the time for me too. I do my intentional behavior-directing plan in habit-building as a recurring journaling exercise, so my at-work attentions will be directed to where I currently need them most. I use my Ethos/Habits framing as above, like this on a single page:

Self-coaching in Habit-Building

VALUES:
My value of the month is_____________ because I want to_____________ in value immersion.
[or] To lead by merit of my own good example, I must ‘walk my talk’ in regard to_____________ because my MWA Language of Intention recently has been about_____________.

Therefore: My habit will be to_____________________.

RELATIONSHIPS:
I am currently focused on my partnership with_____________, because_____________.
[or] The team collective of my recent D5M conversations has been about_____________, and my personal follow-up integration must be with_____________.

Therefore: My habit will be to_____________________.

INTENTIONAL WORK:
I am next-stepping with______________. [Next-stepping is introduced here, and as value-verbing here.]
[or] The value-steering of my_____________ project is_____________ because I need to achieve_____________.

Therefore: My habit will be to_____________________.

That completed page will function as my daily at-work prompt. I work on just 1 habit at a time in each of my 3 ‘characteristic spirits of ethos’: Choosing values, cultivating relationships and partnerships, and achieving intentional work. To think I, or any manager can do more is unreasonable; even 3 at a time is pushing the envelope of possibility unless you drill-down and get very specific in the habit you shape for yourself.

Once I feel good about my progress, I revise my planning sheet with my next set of goals. Those [or] brackets above were included to show you options on how I’ll tweak and revise my filling-in-the-current-day thinking. This is NOT an exercise about exhaustively including everything you do: This is about getting specific with current targets. Is there a problem you want to tackle, or a task you want to reinvent? Is there a work interruption you must get to root cause of once and for all?

Sort out your answers, and trust in those intuitive impulses, but then choose and concentrate on a specific habit. Effective habit-building requires deliberate focus, true readiness, and clarified self-motivation.

You may come up with a different framing than the one I use and have illustrated here, and that’s okay, but DO IT!  Here is another framing suggestion for you: Life’s 3 Stops in Motivation: Happiness, Meaning, Service.

Be proactive about cultivating your management style, and hence, your reputation of effectiveness in working with others. Step up to your calling as a manager of Aloha. BE the person your peers, team, and other partners crave working with, because in the process, you help them be better too.

Study Paths

If you are new to my blog, here is a quick index of articles which will share more in this line of thought, and with our MWA tribe’s Language of Intention. I recommend reading them in the order below:

1. What should you do with your life? Find out!
2. Next-stepping and other Verbs
3. A Manager’s Calling: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers {or} What if I’m not a manager?
4. Doing the Drill Down: Less is More {or} Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7
5. People Who Do Good Work

Then choose one of these tags for further reading as currently appeals to you: next-stepping, goal-setting, habit-building, value-mapping, partnering, managing change, self-efficacy, culture-building (there are more tag options in each article footer).

Alaka‘i Managers are big fans of gerunds; those ___ing words which turn verbs into achieved nouns! They are actionable energy buckets, and Alaka‘i Managers are the new Energy Bunnies :)

Preface: Thinking about force of habit will always remind me of The Riddle. Here is an update from a post of the same name I previously published on TalkingStory.org …and my updates will always trim shorter and be more on point over time, one of those Ka‘ana like good things!

This Archive Aloha is about your productivity and effectiveness, whether intentional or stuck on auto-pilot. It contains newer in-site learning/using links, and a template for peer-to-peer coaching.

The Riddle

I have attended dozens of workshops over the years, and when I narrow down their take-aways to those impact-full bits which have truly stayed with me, a now-yellowed handout is the first thing which pops into very clear focus in my mind’s eye. Yes, even more than all the handouts I give people for Managing with Aloha, for mine will somehow build on the certainty of this one.

I make sure this lesson is a part of every single class I do which specifically targets improving workplace productivity, an objective no workplace coach can ignore. If the lesson resonates with my students —and it always does— and if they choose to proactively believe in its magic, they will make it work in their favor. Everything else we set our sights on achieving will become so much easier as they reckon with their highly personal cause-and-effect behaviors.

It’s a riddle I received when getting my Ritz-Carlton certification as a 7 Habits trainer with the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center back in 1995:

Who do you suppose this is?

“I am your constant companion.
I will push you forward to success or I will drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
80% of what you do, you might as well hand over to me and I will do it promptly and I will do it correctly.
I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
Show me what you’d like to have done, and after a couple of lessons, I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of all great people.

Alas, I am the servant of all failures as well.
All who are great, I have made great.
All who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine; but I do work with the precision of a machine and the intellect of a human.

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I’ll lay the world at your feet.
Be easy with me, and I will destroy you!”

“Who am I?”

I would love to give credit where credit is due for this, but it was on a plain white sheet of paper to keep us guessing without clue or distraction until the great reveal of the answer. I am not sure if it came from Covey (not then Franklin-Covey), The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, where I was employed at the time, or Julie, the very smart Covey coach who gave it to me.

The answer, as you can more easily guess from the framing of my posting today, is “I am your habits.”

Habit-building requires relentless repetition, just like done by the waves lapping at the shoreline. When they ebb away, they have left their mark.

Those patterns are temporary though: They can be changed, and will shift when the waves return. New designs will emerge. And then there are those footprints…

Habits are powerful Human Magic.

Problem is that we tend to mostly think about bad ones like smoking, and biting our fingernails, or twirling our hair and not about the fact that there are exceptionally good ones too. Some are simple (Carry, and Use, Pen and Paper), but they make a profound difference in our lives, like biting your lip each time you are tempted to blurt out a negative statement, so you can catch yourself (Banish your Possibility Robbers) and say something more encouraging or nothing at all.

The best productivity tip I can give you, is to proactively create good habits that put you on automatic pilot in a good way, in an advantageous way.

For instance:

• Take a cue from your dog or cat: For two full minutes, stand at the side of your bed and stretch every morning before you head off toward the bathroom to brush your teeth. Do it consciously for the next two weeks, and you will find you do it from now on. Stretching your muscles to wake up every limb in your body and gain more energy for the day will become the automatic pilot of how you wake up. You will be more alert.

• Tune in with Aloha: If it’s in your hand, place your smartphone face-down on a surface in front of you every time someone approaches you to speak with you (in your pocket works too), and you will focus on them, listen better, and never be thought of as a rude crackberry addict again. All good relationships and partnerships start “with Aloha.”

• Give yourself the gift of a day KA LĀ HIKI OLA: Calendar the 1st day of every month as your “Value My Life Day” and make it the day you say goodbye to the hits and misses of last month and imua, go forward, by choosing your value driver for the month ahead: Value Your Month for One — You. Accept no other appointments on Day 1: Make it all about you and only you, and commit to the value-driver you have chosen by planning the month proactively with intentional value-mapping.

Extra Credit in the Workplace:

D5M: Do the Daily 5 Minutes!
D5M is THE best habit a manager can have, bar none.
Revisiting the Daily 5 Minutes: Lessons Learned.

Mix and repeat. Slow down, study and savor. Be better.

Read over the Habit Riddle one more time.

Take inventory of your habits, and choose to create some good ones which can replace the not-so-good ones.

And here’s a tip: It is much easier to replace one habit with a better one as opposed to working on breaking one; the not-so-good habits can simply get eased out of the picture since they no longer have our ATtention —and thus our INtention (like looking at a smartphone screen instead of at the human being in front of you).

• Which of your own personal habits are the ones which ‘push you forward to success’ and which ones ‘drag you down to failure’?
• Which of your own personal habits are you ‘firm’ with, and which do you ‘go easy on’?
• Manage with Aloha: In the context of HO‘OHANA, which of your habits align with your personal mission, na ‘IMI OLA, and which circumvent it, or only play in the periphery (the lands of Procrastination and Low Priority)?

Better yet, enroll someone else in your goal and ask them to coach you.

An Exercise in Workplace Peer-to-Peer Coaching

Get a good friend or team member to partner up with you in answering these questions in the context of the work you do KĀKOU, together; you may find that you both want to work on the same thing, a great place to start, in pooling your efforts, LŌKAHI:

1. What simple practices (like carrying pen and paper with you for remembering, and for better follow up) can help you make something stick in your habit-building?
2. What simple practices (like the smartphone one above) can help you make something stick in your habit-building?
3. If your manager offered to give you some help in grooming a new habit within your organizational culture, would you know what to ask for?
4. Taking my cues from the riddle, I have categorized this post in Key 2: Worthwhile Work, and Key 7: Strengths Management. Are those cues triggers for deeper discussion?
5. Agree on your mutual expectations. When you decide on the habit-building you’ll tackle together, work on one habit at a time. If you came up with a list, prioritize it, but agree to be okay with letting your decisions live on the list until you get to them (another mutual decision) because the previous habits listed have been newly accomplished.

Habit-building can be immensely enjoyable when done with a great work partner. Revel in the journey and don’t rush this; be present in your partnership and learn together. Celebrate your victories: Managing: Be a Big Fan of the Small Win.

Ho‘ohana ka‘ana like: Any thoughts to share?

I’m feeling annoyed this morning, because I got another pop-up telling me that Google’s Reader is being discontinued. The pop-up was a reminder to back-up my data so I don’t lose it, and I’ve been ignoring it since Google made the announcement in mid-March.

Hear that clunking sound? That’s thousands of jaws dropping at the news that Google Reader is going to be retired come July 1, 2013. That whooshing sound is “Google Reader” shooting to the top of Twitter’s worldwide trends, even on a day when a new pope was picked.

And that giant “NOOOOOOOO” sound is the Internet’s reaction to Google’s most unpopular decision in — well, as far back as I can remember.
~ Mashable Op-Ed: Hey Google, We Still Love Reader

Force of RSS habit, its marvelously easy convenience, and the fact that I love reading blogs, warns me: This is one pop-up I really shouldn’t ignore. I have more than a dozen folders chock full of carefully curated RSS subscriptions, and allowing them to simply disappear would be like deciding to become an uninformed, anti-social, uncaringly dismissive recluse. And it would feel stupid. Google Reader doesn’t just capture the magic of article feed alerts for me: Those subscriptions represent old friends and new knowledge. They’re a listing of real people I do care about; people I admire and greatly respect. My subscriptions reflect my experiments, and the careful choices I have made.

So why am I still ignoring the heads up that I should change to another service? Feedly for instance: Over 3 million new users have joined Feedly since the announcement of the retirement of Google Reader.

I’ve ignored Google’s pop-up reminders for me, because I’ve been otherwise preoccupied with answering those questions the Force of Change will always impose. Loudly.

Feels like a teeter-totter.

As a blogger and publisher, I’ll be straight up with you: Google’s decision concerns me because I probably will lose some of you. I care about our relationship, even if you’re one of those silent readers I’ve never heard from — I know you take ALOHA action on your own. If you’ve been reading this site on Google Reader, I’m hoping you’ve decided what next to do, and how to keep up, for I don’t want to lose you— please consider the email subscription I offer with Feedburner, even if only temporarily so, as you grapple with your own Force of Habit or Force of Change deliberations.

I empathize with the grappling, and with the impulse to just let RSS go and not look back.

For as an RSS reader and long-time student of habits and habitual behaviors, I can’t help wondering… Is this one of those times to give in to the Force of Change instead? Do differently, and be new.

Would shaking up my habit, even this dramatically (i.e. without switching to another RSS service) actually be a good thing for me? What if there was no such thing as RSS? After all, I did live without it for most of my life… 2005 was not that long ago: What do I remember about my habits, in those times before it existed? How would I duplicate or replace the benefit of RSS, and also eliminate the new clutter?

Every habit has its clutter.

We can’t assume that our habits are streamlined, and that they’ve been perfected over time. Every habit can have its share of unhealthy dependence and automatic pilot (the bad kind) — we’ve got to assess them every so often, and this may be one of those times.

This feels like another ‘Changes in Reading’ episode. We’ve gone through something similar in learning to select and purchase ebooks because their authors have said goodbye to print. I still indulge in both: Why choose either/or, when you can have and/with both?

So I’ve been telling myself, “don’t think like a blogger, or even like an author this time. Think like a reader, for isn’t that the basic function of RSS? You maintain your friendships and other chosen relationships in other ways, so focus: What does READING do for you these days? What do you think it should do for you?”

What if I had to start over in handling my subscriptions? What’s the core I’d start with? Where are my highest priorities? What has the most relevance to me, and how does that relevance (and my readiness) tend to shift— what are the triggers connected to my WHY?

I have only used Google Reader on my laptop… what if I switched to RSS reading only on my iPad or on my iPhone: What attention would that pull from my other apps now there, and would that be a good thing?

“5 Google Reader alternatives: 1. read newspaper by campfire 2. total guesswork 3. make stuff up 4. some sort of hovercraft? 5. bababooey.” ~ Dave Itzkoff

“Guys I found the best Google Reader alternative: Throw all your computers into the river and come with me to start a new life in the North.” ~ Adrian Chen

“Google: I WILL PAY. Let me keep my Reader.” ~ Nicholas Jackson

What if the very act of subscribing was no longer an option? How would I otherwise be a devoted follower of a writer I admire? How would I newly learn from them? Would I reach out to them even more than I do now, and widen their net in my attentions, going fewer yet deeper? Would I make fewer assumptions, and ask more questions?

Without automated syndication, would my reading choices vary more, and be more serendipitous? Would I better learn to search for what I need to know?

I’ve always taken this advice to heart, from Tim Sanders, in Love is the Killer App:

“If you haven’t found some application within a few months of reading your books, question your aggregation methods… Visualize a discussion. If you’re not using books in your conversation and in your business strategy, review your selection process.”

One of the important things I do use RSS for, is sharing, so how would I continue to share, or better share, without it?

What other ways of reading have I neglected to learn or explore?

It is maddening, how one Force of Change question will lead to yet another one. Force of Habit however, tends to squelch the questions, and you’ve got to be willing to accept that silencing.

We resist the Force of Change, when Force of Habit is easier.

It’s been easy, these past two months, to rail against Google as making an uncaring, ‘bite the hand that feeds you’ kind of decision, purely motivated by profit (Google Reader is free). I thought their mantra was to “do no evil”— what happened to that?

It’s harder to question your own reaction, and to make subsequent decisions that are thought out completely and evaluated well. It’s hard to lose your force of habit, and succumb to the force of change, until you tell yourself, “Don’t succumb: Be better.”

Our reliable Aloha Ethos: Be true to your values.

Thank goodness for ‘IMI OLA being my value this month. It helps me so much, as I seek the highest form for my best life. Thank goodness for ‘IKE LOA, as the value-driven way I judge my reading, and my learning. Thank goodness for a better habit I have with focus, in doing the drill down.

And thank goodness for you, so I can better empathize with being the best reader, and the best user of what I read, that I can be.

So back to my questions, until I answer them, satisfied with my answers, na ‘Imi ola. The pohuehue which adorns this site, blooms with a singular focus on the day ahead, and with expectations of the future instead of the past. So can we.

Ethos: Be true to your values.
Revisit the Why of ManagingWithAloha.com here: About the site.