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.

I want people to have a legacy they’ve attained through doing great work, and nothing but. I think of Managing with Aloha as our very active Ho‘o pathway forward, in making great work happen.

HO‘OHANA is good in and of itself, and it’s rewarding.

Ho‘ohana:

WORK which is
completely intentional,
thoroughly worthwhile and important, and
immensely meaningful and fulfilling.

Nothing else called ‘work’ will do.

We use the word ‘good’ quite a lot in our MWA language of intention (Key 5), because GOOD, and the state of being glowing with good, has to come before GREAT in the ways we largely think about it as ALOHA-worthy.

Good work will preface great accomplishments, and any side effects within the doing, are usually the beneficial offshoots of good. Good work is our consequential work leading up to great, happening in smaller, more achievable chunks of rightness. We tend to recognize good more easily than great, for great tends to be rare and more elusive, but it is reachable, and good gets us there. When we feel good, we know it. We also know, that we can feel good more often than we do; a lot of our limits are self-imposed ones.

We who are Alaka‘i Managers do what we do, because everything good about Ho‘ohana for others is our constant goal and purpose. The specifics of that goal will change as people come into our lives: We do our intentional work one person at a time. For us, the task at hand is all about that person, and about what’s best for them as they ‘IMI OLA to seek life and strengthen their faith in their present abilities and in Palena ‘ole, their future capacities (Key 9).

And work? It’s a fantastic vehicle for those future capacities. Work is our enabler, and it delivers our livelihood as we earn our keep. However…

Work can have its’ dark sides to overcome.

My language identifier for those dark sides has been Hana ‘eleau— work in a period of darkness.

Not darkened, not yet. When something is darkened it’s stained, whereas a period of darkness is more like a shadow.

Hana ‘eleau is temporary, and we can replace it with Mālamalama— “the light of knowledge, and clarity of thinking or explanation; enlightenment; when all is shining, radiant, clear.”

The work of the Alaka‘i Manager, is Mālama ka po‘e— Care for one’s people. Our compassions quicken Mālamalama kākou— In the light we bring to our teams and their work.

Personal darkness will spill over until it gets solved.

We managers do pretty well with some aspects of clearing out work’s darkness. Mr. Biv is a good example: We target the dark shadows of Mistakes, Rework, Breakdowns, Inefficiencies, and Variation. We talk system and process with relative ease, even when those systems and processes are broken. We set good expectations, and we clarify vague assumptions.

In other words, we do fairly well with the dark shadows of the professional realm. The shadows we shy away from dealing with, and the shadows we often fear, hesitant to approach them at all, are those we think of as personal darkness. And we all-too-quickly justify the decision we make denying the light we have available to share: When we know someone is hurting, we’ll say things like, “I know you’re hurting and this [whatever they’re personally going through] is very tough on you, but we both know you have to leave that stuff at home; we have a job to do here.”

Uh, no.

Saying that is not going to make it happen. The job will not get done in the way you want it to, until “that stuff” is resolved, and you know that! People don’t leave some parts of themselves at home, and bring other parts to work. Everything goes wherever they happen to be — you can bet a broken job situation affects them at home too! Everything about a person, whether personal, professional or potential, can be in-play at any time, and often will.

It’s so much better to ask a question that will encourage their confidence in you and your good intentions: “I know you’re hurting. How can I help you move past this?”

“One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”
~ Core 21, the mana‘o of Managing with Aloha

I’m not advocating that managers solve at-home problems; we aren’t miracle workers and we can’t solve every problem our employees will have. Nor do they want us meddling in what they consider their affairs. I am advocating that we take action FULLY within our workplace: We don’t shy away from what plays out at work, and in the context of work. We increase our own effectiveness by admitting what IS about our workplace, and by being more courageous in what we’ll tackle.

We managers must step out of our own shadows, and own our circle.

Work your full circle.

Stephen R. Covey, best known for his classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, gives us a good framing for what we managers can do, can effect, and can work with— without fear, and without feeling we are over-stepping our bounds. He calls it our ‘circle of influence.’ Even if you don’t know Covey, think about that phrase literally: There is a circle in your workplace that maps out your territory; it circles where your work is of best influence, and where your actions are most conducive to GOOD. The only question is if you dare to tread there or not, so good will fully happen.

As Covey points out, everything within your circle of influence is within your sphere of control— you can affect it, and be effective with it.

Workaholic behaviors are a good example of Hana ‘eleau in the workplace. Workaholic behavior IS in your realm as a manager, and it’s YOUR problem to solve, for it is indeed a problem. You’re kidding yourself if you believe workaholics work as much as they do because of their passion, or strictly out of a sense of loyalty.

Workaholics need balance (or work/life integration as is currently the bizspeak of the day) — they are not enjoying an ‘IMI OLA life of the highest form, and their at-work behaviors proliferate broken situations instead of actively solving them. I often find that workaholics are hiding from something and they avoid dealing with it; they work nights, extra hours and weekends because they don’t want to be home, and they want an excuse to be away from whatever darkness lurks there. Being at work is their escape and their refuge, but make no mistake about this — it’s not their light in that particular situation; it’s not Mālamalama.

The Alaka‘i Manager WILL talk about this unhealthy avoidance with them, smack dab within the manager’s circle of influence: They will point them toward help offered in Employee Assistance Programs which are often co-sponsored by community, union, and company partnerships, and they set the expectation, “Get the help you need. Deal with the issue as you must; don’t avoid it.” They will set the expectation that work gets done in a reasonable time frame, being explicitly clear on what ‘reasonable’ is, not more, not less. They dismantle any at-work hiding place. They immediately follow up if their newly clear expectations are not met.

Identify the dark shadows of Hana ‘eleau in your own workplace. Name them as the problems they are, and solve them.

I give you another example in chapter 13 of my book, on HO‘OHANOHANO (the value of dignity and respect): It’s the dark shadow of unintentional neglect, where an employee feels they’ve turned invisible, work off all radar screens, and are no longer seen by their manager. Neglect IS visible; you can see it when you actively look for it. It’s just as visible as those workaholic behaviors, and just as mixed up in that stew of the all-in-play personal, professional and potential. Neglect is easily fixed with the goal-setting of ‘IMI OLA, and with conversational tools— are you doing your Daily 5 Minutes?

If you have more examples of working in the dark, please share them here in the comments. Know they are temporary, and in your good work as a manager, you can solve them. Let’s talk story and learn from each other — add your lights in our goal with Mālama ka po‘e— Care for our people, and Mālamalama— Care for our goodness.

I have one more request of you: Go there.

Define your own circle of influence, and own it.

Don’t listen to how others will define ‘being professional’— be driven by what you know to be necessary and right for you and the people in your charge. What is PONO for you? What will be PONO for them?

To Ho‘ohana mālama ka po‘e (wow… you know way more Hawaiian than most do!) you know your place as an Alaka‘i Manager — you know when you have to ‘go there’ and you define your own limits and boundaries professionally, because you know your ALOHA. Your Aloha Spirit makes those decisions better than anyone else can ever advise you.

Go with your gut, for you also know your people (The Whole is Greater than the Sum of Parts). Trust in your intuition, listen to your spirit, attend to your good intentions, and go there. The first step in courage is a decision for good, to not look the other way.

So name the task at hand, and name it as your task. On Monday, or on whatever the next day you go to work, what is Hana ‘eleau, and the period of darkness you will bring your light to?

Suggestions for your weekend reading and further study:

If you have a copy of Managing with Aloha, review these chapters as a means of fully identifying where Hana ‘eleau may lurk for you:

• HO‘OMAU: In this chapter on the value of perseverance and persistence, we take a look at obstacles which may exist. Obstacles, excuses, barriers, and sacred cow justifications are all shadows, and you can clear their hurdles.
• HO‘OHANOHANO: I mentioned this chapter above in regard to unintentional neglect, and you’ll find more there to prompt your thinking about it. Think of Mālamalama lights as the spotlights which bathe people in dignity and respect.
• MĀLAMA: When we Mālama, we serve and honor, protect and care for. This is the value of compassion, but also of stewardship: How are you a steward in your workplace? Define your targets, and then assess if they are truly shadow-free.

Don’t get me wrong; those are all good things and they can be noble pursuits. They’re just so politically correct; safe and sanitized. Sadly, they’re most often said as commonplace statements that are simultaneously unrealized, in that they are under-lived. They are generally lofty, yet barren of individual specifics. They aren’t emotional enough. They aren’t personal. They aren’t real.

I deliberately chose Ho‘ohana (worthwhile work) and ‘Imi ola (self-created purpose) as beginning chapters in Managing with Aloha because they aren’t familiar to most people in the way I’ve labeled them, and because the best way to newly learn about them is to strip away those safety nets and internalize them: Real life is messy, but in a good way! I wanted you, dear reader, to ask yourself, “ALOHA… HO‘OHANA… ‘IMI OLA… How are each of these values about me?” then “Why is that so?” and more importantly, “What more can they be for me?”

I wanted you to hō‘imi — to look for better and best.

And we who are managers? We cannot give them to others as the true calling we choose, if we don’t live them ourselves. Messy but good. Emotional, personal, real. Courageous.

Ask the ‘Imi ola questions of a courageous life.

The values of HO‘OHANA and ‘IMI OLA aren’t totally foreign though; thus I say, let’s talk story about them, and ‘newly learn’ them. These two values are about two things we constantly do: We work for our livelihood, and we live out our destiny, best way we can manage. We constantly do them even when our heart might not be in them, because they are what all people do as life meanders along… we get up each morning and plug in. We continue and hope for the best. To ‘manage with ALOHA’ is to get some spirit into that plug-in, and in-spirit/inspire it and self-motivate it.

Those questions I hope you ask? I ask them of myself too. I ask them repeatedly, knowing I probably haven’t reached my endgame yet, and many more moves remain to be made. The older I get, the greater my sense of urgency about asking them, yet oddly, the more patience I have in working through them. I rather like the thought that I’m a complex human being. So are you. Your complexity makes you interesting. It gives you a wealth of choices.

So choose. Test your choices. Try them out and experiment. A good life isn’t passive.

‘IMI OLA is both personal and professional.

Personally, ‘IMI OLA is the value of self-created, purpose-full living.

Professionally, ‘IMI OLA is the value of mission and vision. (Read more here to get our MWA mission/vision vocabulary distinctions: The Mission Driven Company.)

An individual mission statement is HO‘OHANA in writing; it’s the visionary work of livelihood aligned with personal purpose via the pathway of company mission. The stories I share with you in Managing with Aloha, are meant to help illustrate examples of how that happens.

‘IMI OLA translates to seek (‘imi) life (ola) and it is the value which celebrates individuality and worth. We don’t seek THE right answer, we seek OUR right answer. When we’re successful in finding it —something which happens bit by bit, piece by piece, until the whole puzzle emerges— we discover it was the right answer for us after all! And our answers are seldom singular or absolute; we may have several good, right-for-me answers over the course of our lifetimes, each one another interesting puzzle. We seek them to reveal them, or to proactively create them, so we can eventually have them, and share their highly personal (and emotional, and real) expression with others.

Julia Cameron, play writer, director, and author of The Artist’s Way, points out that “any act of creativity is an act of faith” and there’s a virtuous circle there: “As you strengthen your faith, it strengthens your ability to create.”

Faith however, can’t be wholly satisfied if reduced to an intellectual exercise (which most politically correct statements are wont to do). You’ve got to make your answers come alive somehow — you’ve got to make them real through your own creative applications, and you’ve got to strengthen your faith so you’ll keep at it.

How do you strengthen your faith?

Figuring it out, would be a very worthwhile goal to work on this month of May!

I believe Cameron is right about this: “As you strengthen your faith, it strengthens your ability to create.” Your faith in your own abilities, will strengthen through ‘IMI OLA when you do create their possibilities for your own life; we each create our own potential — if you don’t do it, who will?

Julia Cameron chooses prayer and spiritual reading choices to strengthen her faith for the creativity required as a writer: Ernest Holmes is a favorite author she’ll turn to. I find that reading inspires me as well; the right choices will fill me with self-confidence and readiness too: I read stories I can see parts of me in, and I push myself toward where “I can see this happening for me too.”

In the MWA workplace, we use the value immersion and project steering of VYMTVYL which we talked about last time, because we know they push us toward action, and a lot of it.

I encourage you to make this your goal this month of May: Figure out how you strengthen your faith in your ability to create your own life.

The 24 days which remain as I publish this entry is plenty enough time: Examine your past experiences to identify what usually gave you hope, and spurred you to real action beyond just intellectually thinking about it. Duplicate those triggers, and keep pulling on them!

This is the perfect season: May eagerly springing into summer… Bright and vibrant. Varied puzzle pieces. It’s okay that they’re still a bit unorganized… the year’s still young. Messy perhaps, but good. Emotional, personal, real. Courageous. All the ways ‘IMI OLA is all about a very interesting you.

More from Managing with Aloha, chapter 3:

As an actionable value, ‘Imi ola causes us to ask ourselves that eternal question on the meaning of life —not life as we know it on planet Earth, but our own life. It recognizes that we are all unique, individually blessed with a complex pattern of DNA; it understands that there is no one else like us on the face of the Earth. Therefore our answer to this question is an answer unique to us as well; only we alone can answer it truthfully and completely, and have it be the right answer, our right answer. Best of all we are completely free to answer the question the way we want it to turn out: We have the individual power to create our own destiny instead of just letting it happen to us come what may.

This is our wonderful gift as human beings: We have the power and freedom to design and create the destiny we choose. We can seek life in its highest possible form for us. In many ways I think of ‘Imi ola as an incredible acknowledgement, for in its generosity it assumes that we deserve the very best that life can offer us, and that we are worthy. We are capable of great things.

We have a 7-letter acronym within the Managing with Aloha philosophy: VYMTVYL. It stands for Value Your Month To Value Your Life and refers to the value of the month program we recommend for culture-building in the workplace via value-mapping.

Those who’ve decided to have a Managing with Aloha workplace in intentional working spirit, will often map out their entire year: Ka lā hiki ola in January, Aloha in February, Kākou in March and so on, choosing values which will characterize and inspire the work they’re anticipating for the year to come. We do this for what value immersion can do for us conducive to value alignment, our MWA Key 3:

Key 3. VALUE ALIGNMENT:
Work with integrity by working true to your values, for your values will drive your best, and most desirable behaviors. Focus all efforts on the right mission and the right vision (yours!) for it honors your sense of self and brings compelling pictures of the future within your reach, making them your probable legacy. Whether for a business partnership or specific team, deliberate value-alignment creates a healthy organizational culture for everyone involved: When we want to collaborate and co-create, shared values equip and energize us.
Site category for Key 3: Value Alignment

If, for instance, you’re rolling out a major company initiative in June, Ho‘ohana or Kuleana are great choices for the value of the month in July: Ho‘ohana would relate the initiative to worthwhile work both professionally and personally, and Kuleana would deepen and better define sense of responsibility and personal accountability specific to that initiative at the time it’s needed most; that beginning stage prior to habit creation. There might be a specific connection to the initiative itself, such as Mālama for the stewardship of workplace assets, or ‘Ike loa to accompany a new training program.

A value of the month program feels strategically proactive as we look ahead toward months that currently seem pretty distant. It is also immediately practical and sensible: In working one month at a time, we break our big picture vision into 12 chunks of more manageable mission-driven work effort.

There are only 30 or 31 days in a month however, with just 28 or 29 in February, and so we impose a meaningful deadline on ourselves too. With at least 4 weeks, a month is a good chunk of time to get things done. The month-end deadline gives us a healthy sense of urgency, where we WILL Ho‘ohana, and make things happen without procrastinating about them ‘someday-maybe.’ We speak the Language of Intention of our chosen verb during the month more than we’d otherwise do, and we use value-verbing to help us walk our talk.

Do you want to study this concept a bit more?
Apply this Mini Course in Value Alignment:

1. Let’s Define Values
2. Next-stepping and other Verbs
3. Ethos: Be True to Your Values
4. The Rub of the Business Model is Solved by your Values
5. Purposeful Following

There are so many benefits to VYMTVYL. Why not grab them individually?

If your workplace isn’t on board with a value of the month program, create one for yourself. Be Alaka‘i, and lead by merit of your own good example.

Make it simple, as a means of effectively sorting your ATtentions, and thus, directing your INtentions. You needn’t map out your year in advance; when doing this personally, I think it’s actually better if you don’t, and you nalu it (go with the flow) instead.

Start with a ‘what’s happening right now?’ list that is meaningful to you. Mine for instance, looked like this for the month of May, with some extra info in the parentheses to explain:

• Waning days it will feel like Spring and not Summer (I have a Sense of Place transition to be aware of)
• May Day and Plumeria (they’ve long gone together for me)
• 5th month Goodness of 5 (in numerology and my other batching habits)
• Mothers’ Day. Gratitude as both mother and daughter.
• Updated financial resolutions (they often result from doing our Income Tax returns in April personally, and for financial literacy initiatives in my business — May is a great month to teach and coach our Key 6 business modeling)
• ‘Imi ola for July/August publication (one of my publishing deadlines in my Writing with Aloha business)
• The 12 Rules of Self-Leadership (currently being revisited for a series of workshops I’m doing)
• Lighter than usual travel schedule (means I can realistically tackle a meaty project this month)

Pull out a piece of paper, and hand-write your own list before you read any further.

Melia na Mei:
— There will be many lei of all variety given on this May Day. For me, the month has always been about the plumeria, and I’m grateful for the beauties which grace our yard in yellow, pink, and gold.

Got your list?

The next thing I do, is assess my list. What am I hoping for this month? How can I begin, with the best ends in mind? What values will help me, with the alignment they tend to trigger and drive?

Then, having directed my INtentional thinking this way, where my current attentions have stirred the pot of my mindfulness, I decide on a value driver for my month.

Now you try it:

Assess your own list— What would your answers be to these questions?

1. What are you hoping for this month? It might be in achievement, in productivity, in partnerships or other relationships, or in mood (attitude shift). Think of them as 30-day goals.
2. How can you begin, with the best ends in mind? Identify the actions which will be important in making real progress with your goals for the month. Do starting actions differ from ending actions, and if so, how? Be specific.
3. What value(s) could help you, with the alignment they tend to trigger and drive? What value associations are you thinking about? Trust in your gut instincts.

I always push myself toward one value, but there have been months I work with a pairing of values. I’ll also trust in the glaringly obvious ones on my list: For May, I decided on ‘Imi ola. I added another sentence or two for each item, interpreting or clarifying them through my ‘Imi ola lens.

Then, my personal VYMTVYL program is quite simple: I immerse myself in the value I chose all month long.

I become a student again, and re-learn it. I push myself to talk about it with others whenever I can, and push myself to speak it. I write it on post-it notes I’ll post in various places — the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator door, the flat surface of my laptop keyboard, the car dashboard. (Speaking of post-it notes, check this out: So very cool, and so very MAHALO!) I publish at least one blog post or Writing with Aloha article on it, and I constantly doodle it onto other notes I write. Within my photography hobby, I look for photo subjects I think will illustrate the value for me, in the way I like to think about it — or need and want to think about it: The instinctive, natural selection of Wanting.

May has just begun, and it’s never too late to plot your own value-mapping. What value will you choose to add managing with Aloha to your life this month?

When May 31st arrives, this may happen for you… and this too. Values speak up for us at the most opportune times.

Footnote:

Value Alignment is the subject of my third book, Value Your Month to Value Your Life: I wrote it to guide Alaka‘i Managers through the what, how, and why of Value of the Month programs conducted in the workplace. In my view, these programs are pure gold as a Managing with Aloha jumpstart, for you choose your own values and begin your culture-building in a personalized way as you learn more about the MWA philosophy as a whole.

From the book’s synopsis: “Value mapping is a way that good begets good, beginning with the good which already resides within you in the form of your personal values. To illustrate, we’ll cover two workplace how-to’s: The Value of the Month program, and Value Steering for Projects, both which help foster healthy business cultures.” You can buy VYLVYM on Kindle and on Smashwords.

So how do you get that done? Handle the right now, and handle it well.

Forget your laptop, and put away your smartphone. Great managers know that the best tool they have is as analog (i.e. ‘by means of hands’) as it gets: Pen and paper.

Pen and paper will annoy you in a good way: If you carry it with you and don’t pull it out and use it, you’ll feel you missed something, forgot something, got careless, or were too lazy — and you’ll likely be right. Overwhelm is the plight we managers share, but it’s fixable.

Management is about handling the details, and seeing the most important details in the people who surround you. When you do so, you ‘get it.’

Thus, great managing requires writing things down, re-reading your notes for the mindfulness they’ll trigger in you, and then doing something about them. You’ll have to take action. You’ll have to respond. You’ll have to dig into whatever you didn’t know enough about yet.

Please trust me on this: Opening your laptop to record your thoughts after something happens isn’t the same thing. Pecking into a note-taking app on your phone, or talking into a voice memo recorder isn’t the same thing. You have to write with pen, and on paper. It’s a physical act which comes from within you and your Aloha Spirit, and not the mechanical wizardry of a machine. Your writing combines with the detail you capture, and it gets transformed with your intention to remember, to assign importance to something, and to follow-up.

There’s another big difference too: Jot down a note during a conversation with someone, and you can still lean in to them. They feel listened to and acknowledged. The conversation digs in.

On the other hand… Look into your smartphone screen and peck in the very same note, and they suspect you’re taking a shortcut. More often, they think you’re being rude and dismissive. The conversation hesitates and becomes more guarded as the other person wonders how much you really care.

“One of the best things you can say about a pen is that it is ‘pocketable.’ Because a pen you can easily pocket is a pen you are likely to take with you every day and a pen that you take with you is a pen you will use.

A good pen is a promise to an empty page.

Paper is always ‘on.’

Paper is never passive.”
— Patrick Rhone

I like that — “A good pen is a promise to an empty page.” A written note, is a promise to the good intentions of your calling as an Alaka‘i Manager.

So please dear manager, carry, and use, pen and paper.

Keep those papers as records you can look back on, for as your habit takes shape you’re likely to notice a shift over time in what you write down to capture. You sharpen your perception, and you activate your intuition as the true sensor it is.

Best of all, you’ll notice a shift in how much good you achieve, because you follow up more. You ho‘ohiki: Keep your promises. You simply do. It’s that analog magic, ‘by means of hands’ — yours.

I’m one who has been bitten by the iphoneography bug (and the Instagram bug… ping me if you’re there too :)

It’s mostly been the result of mere convenience, for my iPhone is always with me, and my ‘dedicated’ camera isn’t. It was also the result of a forced upgrade to an iPhone 4s when the screen on my old phone shattered, and I discovered just how great the newer iPhone camera is. In those early days of being a newbie user, I’d often be surprised at the photo quality which would result, even if cropped close as a macro zoom.

Pretty thrilling, especially for an amateur photographer like me!

Yet I’ll often wonder: What am I missing in neglecting my Canon? This blog for instance, is a constant prompting of that question, for with few exceptions, the photos I publish here aren’t from my iPhone. (This particular post however, is one of those exceptions: All of these photos were pulled from my Instagram account.)

So I recently did something that would get me to use my Canon again, a simple action that would evoke that convenience factor, at least when I’m working from my home office: I gave my camera a new parking spot, placing it on the easy-grab corner of my desk right next to my iPhone.

It’s only been a week, and I’ll be honest: The results have been frustrating. I’m using the Canon more, but with mixed results. My photo hits are way fewer than my misses. If I don’t have time to fiddle and want a good, quick shot, I reach for my iPhone because between the 2 options, the iPhone photo will be better.

It’s not the Canon, it’s me. This has not been a ‘like riding a bike’ episode for me: I have to relearn how to adjust and select the Canon’s settings all over again. I have to study, I have to practice, and I have to remember. So this morning I got smarter about it, and got the Camera User Guide out of my filing cabinet. I placed it on my desk corner too, sitting the camera on top of it, so ‘look it up!’ can replace trial and error.

Work is full of options and choices too.

There are a whole bunch of situations like this in the work we do, isn’t there. We do certain tasks every single day, and repeat our actions instinctively, but chances are we could, and should, newly study those tasks and actions so we can improve upon them.

Convenience and availability are valid factors, but they aren’t everything. We usually don’t have to improve upon our work for any academic or scientific credentialing purpose, but for highly practical ones that feel satisfying — we want to be power users, smart about what we do.

The workshops I teach are one of my examples: I have a ‘set curriculum’ for the teaching points I know will best convey what Managing with Aloha is all about in workplace culture building, or for grooming a life aligned with values-based choices, but all my sets are works in progress. They have had to qualify themselves in proven case studies to be my standards, yet they are still studied, reassessed, and tweaked for specific customer objectives on an ongoing basis.

Another current example of a personal task, was prepping my income tax returns. It’s something I’ve done annually for decades now, yet each year I know I have to study my m.o. and update my process, or I’ll probably miss something. It can be a costly mistake.

My most expensive mistakes however, have all been connected to work. True that I have this ‘thing’ about HO‘OHANA. But know what? Most people do, even if they don’t phrase it as Ho‘ohana as I do. Work is personal. It just is.

Alaka‘i Managers are workplace students. We study the work.

Alaka‘i Managers shine when they become workplace students. We study the work which is being done by our people, and we help them become power users, smart, confident, and happy about what they do. We want them to shine in what they achieve because they actually do it perceptively, and they do it well. We intercept work in progress so people don’t settle for shortcuts, or get overly frustrated with hit-or-miss fiddling as opposed to smarter learning. We make the right tools available, and we eliminate obstacles. We give our people opportunities to apply what they’ve learned and practiced, so they can reap true usefulness from devoting their best energies to work and workplace mission, and so they become wealthy, continuing to grow within that work.

Conversely, so much of daily work can get stuck in ‘the old way’ where people sense they don’t do it the best possible way, but they plug in and plow through it anyway, simply so they can say it got done. It’s a kind of ‘done’ which feels like a cheat though, and it isn’t very satisfying. If their work is part of a larger chain reaction in workplace accomplishment, they become painfully aware of how their cheat can negate the whole, or keep it from being as exceptional as it could be. Kūlia i ka nu‘u eludes them.

Alaka‘i Managers create the study. We make work better.

We managers must believe in the possibility of good work, and we must believe in people who struggle to believe in themselves: Ka lā hiki ola and the ‘Can do’ attitude of Ho‘ohiki.

Managers are those who will CREATE workplace study, making it enjoyable and rewarding to pursue mission and vision. We’re the dreamers of drill downs, experiments, and pilot projects. We’re the best next-steppers, and we batch. If we’re Alaka‘i Managers, we go for value alignment in worthwhile work as that sweet spot (a person’s Ho‘ohana), building a healthy workplace culture at the same time.

If I’m to be successful with my Canon again, for I was at one time, before the iPhone 4s clouded over my learning memories of it, I have to make time for the study again, and I have to create my enjoyment of that study. I’ll have to set up some ‘artist dates’ where I go on new photo-walks and leave my iPhone in the car. I’ll have to take dozens of photos using different camera settings until my usage memory returns and my practice improves, and I’m again getting those photos I sense I’ve been missing. That done, I’ll then have to get into a new rhythm, where Canon and iPhone coexist in my happy life in the most pleasing way.

I’m highly motivated to accomplish this. I will be posting to Flickr from my Canon again. The photos on this blog will be new again, and not pulled from my archives as much.

Lean in. Look closely. Nudge the possibility.

We cannot assume that a similar self-motivation, determination and commitment is happening in our workplaces. The possibility is always there, but it may be asleep, needing a gentle nudge to awaken it. That nudge is one of those best reasons why managers MATTER; they check in. They step in to question and listen, to suggest, to facilitate, to teach and coach, and to support. They are the nudge. They sense it whenever readiness happens, and they zoom in to capitalize on it.

Then, they become the most eager and sincere cheerleaders on the planet.

And so dear manager, this is what I ask you to do in your practice of Managing with Aloha, self-motivated, determined, and committed to being the Alaka‘i Manager I know you can be.

At the end of your work day today, read this paragraph again, and assess: Is this what you did today?

Alaka‘i Managers shine when they become workplace students. We study the work which is being done by our people, and we help them become power users, smart, confident, and happy about what they do. We want them to shine in what they achieve because they actually do it perceptively, and they do it well. We intercept work in progress so people don’t settle for shortcuts, or get overly frustrated with hit-or-miss fiddling as opposed to smarter learning. We make the right tools available, and we eliminate obstacles. We give our people opportunities to apply what they’ve learned and practiced, so they can reap true usefulness from devoting their best energies to work and workplace mission, and continuing to grow within that work.

Then tomorrow, be more proactive: Read the paragraph first thing in the morning, and go find your opportunities. Be a student, and study the work. Be more curious, and succumb to that curiosity completely, so the workplace intrigues, and fascinates you again. Nudge all possibility.

Do this for yourself, and do it for others. Lead by example as you create opportunities where satisfying work plays out in that sweet spot we call HO‘OHANA.

He suggested the 4th sin was ‘insensitivity.’ After hearing his story, I have a stronger word for it: Stupidity. Stupidity we, as Alaka‘i Managers, must refuse to tolerate.

His story is a downer for me; it’s one of those all-too-common reasons the profession of management gets such a bad reputation, and deservedly so in these instances. We’re better than this!

“You have to fill out this form.”

This gentleman is an employee of a large corporation, and he has been dealing with what he considers to be a manager’s incompetency and lack of communicative skill for over a year now. After several conversations with his direct supervisor and the manager concerned, all which have been fruitless (see quote below) he went to the HR Director for help in a state of pretty extreme frustration and stress due to the ripple effect this year-long situation has had on his entire work team.

“There aren’t even short-term results Rosa, just constant excuses and half-cooked justifications. What he does now, is avoid me altogether.”

I could not believe the response he got in that visit to the HR office.

He was given a Complaint Form to fill out, one that would document the most recent single ‘event’ of the manager’s transgression, and require that manager to have a meeting with him within 6 days time. (This must be required in writing?) After the meeting, they each are to complete another section of the form which will report their degree of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction). If both are dissatisfied, the form triggers his union’s grievance procedure (which will do what, I do not know. At this point, it is not even relevant).

He was told, “You have to fill out this form.”
Not asked if he would like to, or would be willing to.
Not asked how he felt HR could otherwise help him, at least in the meantime.
Not asked, “Would you like me to have a conversation with all of you together?” especially since he has already had several frustrating meetings with the manager concerned.
Not given any impression an investigation or less formal conversation would ensue otherwise.

He was not given any coaching on how to fill out the form, nor was he told why it was important or necessary that he do so.

Are you kidding me? This, from a HR Director? I could barely contain the shock, indignation and rage bubbling up inside me.

Dear Manager,

Thou Shalt Investigate.

You are not expected to have all the answers. You are, however, expected to look for them, intent on finding them.

Anything quicker, or more impulsive, will usually be wrong.

So… Speak up, I’m listening.

I had to ask him several questions beforehand, to get the entire story which triggered his visit to HR, and his relevant job performance over recent months. Along the way, I learned that his direct supervisor shared in his frustration, and had encouraged him to take this next step, feeling something had to be done, and that his own hands were tied. As for the form, he sat down that same evening to fill it out at home, asking his wife to proofread it for him. He turned it in the following day.

“Did your HR Director have similar questions for you, asking about these details as I have?”

“No, not as much as you have. But she may already have known some of it. It was a very quick meeting.”

Seriously?!?

A Reputation of Ineffectiveness …and what it means

Okay. Well, it’s not okay, but moving on… I can guarantee you that 90 to 99% of most employees will not see it through in a situation like this: They won’t take the risk of becoming a whistle blower (you know those stories) and putting their pain in writing. Most fear their pain will just be seen as an attitude problem, and that retribution will follow in some sort from the manager(s) involved. Most don’t even want to get their own union involved.

I asked him, “I commend you for seeing this through. Tell me, why are you willing to fill out the form and go through the process?”

“I’ve had enough. It’s the only way something will get done.”

Yeah. Apparently so.

I fear it may also be the only way the manager concerned gets the help he needs too. Pain like this is rarely contained in the workplace. It spreads like the cancer it is.

This is a locally situated story for me, and it took every ounce of self-restraint I have to not get in my car and barrel into this HR office myself. For now, I respect my gentleman reader’s intentions, for he said, “Don’t worry Rosa, I will see this through. I have a good union rep, but this is my problem to handle, not his.”

Let’s get the ‘Yeah, but…’s out of the way:

I know this form is the result of this company’s partnership forced association with the union in place. My problem with it, is that an ‘insensitive’ form is forcing a dysfunction in management that only deals with worst case scenario or chronic, yet long-unsolved problem avoidance (the villain of our 3 Sins of Management). Stupid.

I know the HR Director has her side of the story to tell, but whatever it is, a form or no resolution for this situation? Really? What happens if the form is refused or rejected? Surely that wouldn’t be permission to look away!

I know the manager involved has his side of the story to tell, but more than that, I sense that he needs some help.

Not to mention, again, but I will, that this workplace unhappiness has been playing out for over a year before this HR office visit ever happened.

This entire situation makes me wild.

Before you “Yeah, but…” me with, ‘Rosa is being overly dramatic about this, and making a point as a management coach,’ consider this: I’m incensed as an outside observer. Imagine how helpless and frustrated the employees are, who as company insiders and stakeholders, must put up with this kind of dysfunction, shortcut-taking, and complete lack of ALOHA, MĀLAMA and HO‘OHANOHANO.

Imagine how many employees (most) will never bother going to the HR office at all: The Acid Test of a Healthy Workplace Culture.

Imagine the effect on product and service delivery at the hands and disheartened spirits of those employees.

Imagine the mediocrity, complacency and apathy that is SURELY passed on to the customer in some way.

We’re better than this. Let’s BE better.

Often, competence is not the real issue: Dysfunction is.

Dysfunction can be fixed: People Who Do Good Work.

If you are putting up with dysfunctional managers in your workplace, offer them your help — even if especially if they’re in HR!

Ignore departmental or divisional boundaries, and be a workplace partner. Offer to be a mentor.

If they refuse your help, and do not commit to improving, root them out. I mean it.

They are not bad people, and they deserve your help. At worst, they are in the wrong job.

Communicative effectiveness is the result of communication skills which CAN be learned. The prerequisite, is that a manager WANTS to learn these skills, and WILL use them — daily, and with consistency.

All managers need help. I was in some way ‘incompetent’ as a manager, by my staff definitions of that competency, for a good 2/3 of my own management career, at least — competency resets to zero each time you go through a job change, position reassignment, or team shift, whereas incompetency skyrockets. What saved me, and what saves all managers, is when we create ALOHA relationships and partnerships with our people — they are the ones who will then teach us what we need to know, and help us learn it. With ALOHA in place, their patience with us will be generous, and will seem extremely patient.

ALOHA trumps and overcomes incompetency every time. Every single time.

And those forms? For goodness sake, and for the sake of better, get rid of them. I cannot think of a single instance in which they will be necessary. Lawyers might [think they] need them, but  managers do not.

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.

Don’t wait for the perfect role, and perfect placement to be handed to you, for it probably won’t! Ho‘o — make it happen:
Role Reconstruction: Design your Sweet Spot as Manager

Site category for Key 4: The Role of the Manager

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

My short list of 3 has stood the test of time: I wouldn’t write it with any different culprits. I worked with a management team on the first sin just this past week, and I ask you to join our fight against its evil villain of avoidance, flushing it out of every one of its hiding places. Being wimpy about confronting our ills doesn’t suit us or serve us: We managers can do better, and be better.

Each of these sins is a heavy hitter, and it’s possible that each will cover a lot of ground once you assign them to your own workplace examples of occurrence: It takes a focused and committed manager to overcome them once and for all, but calling them out this way, and naming them as the sinful villains they are, is likely to be half the battle.

I also think there is one character trait all managers can groom, a trait I would call the all-inclusive cure of these 3 Sins, and I share it as the new addition to my article.

The 3 Sins of Management

In the coaching I do with workplace culture-building, I’ve found that there are three different pitfalls that constantly rear their ugly heads for struggling managers. I’ve come to call them the 3 Mortal Sins of Management in our Managing with Aloha lexicon. I want Alaka‘i Managers to consider them evil and mortal — they’re killers of workplace spirit.

The first sin has to do with tripping yourself up in basic good supervision. The villain here is avoidance.

The second sin has to do with the way we revere and dignify the truth, keeping it PONO. The sin is the lie.

The third sin is complacency. Will we allow our working environment to wither in mediocrity, or keep it fresh and dynamic?

Let’s talk about them one at a time.

Sin 1. Tacit Approval

As a manager, you give someone your “tacit approval” when you fail to take action on some transgression they know you are aware of. Inaction on a wrong, allowing it to exist and play out, approves that wrong, or gives it credibility it should not have. Confronting the staff involved, and following up when correction and disciplinary action are necessary, is critical within your role as Keeper of High Performance Expectations — for everyone, fair and square.

As unpleasant as it may be to deal with these things, eliminating any trace of tacit approval in the workplace is arguably the primary reason managers are needed: It’s one of the key reasons why self-directed work teams have not been able to exist totally on their own in most businesses. Managers are the ones who treat those playing foul tactfully but consistently, conducting themselves with distinction as they treat others with dignity and respect (HO‘OHANOHANO). They firmly, assuredly correct ills, and guide people toward the choices found within better behavior.

Great managers groom talent: They do not ignore the opportunities they have to do so.
Sometimes, that opportunity is a transgression – a coachable, teachable moment, wherein behavior can shift toward the better.

Managers must learn when it’s best to take care of staff issues individually versus collectively, and they must be the ones to discover all root causes, investigating them fully. Then they must, must, MUST take action and not look away. If you don’t deal with things as they happen, the message you silently give is that it’s okay as long as you don’t get caught, or that mediocrity is okay until it gets chronic. Then you end up doing crisis management because situations have festered and gotten far worse: A cancer has spread. At the very least, you allow the onset of apathy.

Sin 2. Lies of Omission

This is one of those coaching lessons you get a lot of aha! moments in when you are a parent as well as a manager. With both my children and my employees I took care to teach them that a lie not spoken aloud is still a lie, and it still hurts someone or something in some way.

I would much rather deal with a big ugly truth than a small white lie, and I did my very best to cultivate a safe atmosphere wherein my children and my employees would give it to me straight no matter how awful a situation may be. I want to know what I must deal with — or what we must deal with — as soon as possible. No matter what it is, it is always far easier to deal with something that is out in the open and exposed in all its ugliness. Lies are never totally hidden and tucked away: in some way they affect someone’s health and spirit. Living with lies will kill a person’s ability to completely share their own ALOHA with others.

The positive flip side of this is that knowledge — any knowledge — is empowering and transformational. I’ve come to think of knowledge as food; food for mind, heart and soul. Learning inspires us, and when we “come to know” something and we seek better solutions, we can give birth to creativity. At the very least, we create new energy.

Learn to recognize the half-truths which currently exist in your workplace. A very common example is the Annual Appraisal which is perfunctorily done, and skirts around a real issue with an employee’s performance instead of addressing it honestly, and detailing a plan of action in solving it.

Openly talk about lies of omission with your staff. Introduce the phrase as newly known vocabulary (same with tacit approval, for many do not use that phrase either) and inculcate it into the language of your company. Second, seize personal responsibility for creating a safe atmosphere where anyone can talk to you about anything without fear of repercussion. Third, lead by example, and admit when you’re wrong and need a better truth yourself. Apologize when you should.

Sin 3. Automatic Pilot

A car left on cruise control unchecked will ultimately run off the road or out of gas. Same thing happens to any process in a business that is left on automatic pilot: It will crash and burn, or lose steam.

We know that “Times change.” So why is it that we fail to accept the fact that our accompanying systems and processes, policies and procedures will have to change as well?

Great managers learn to love this question: “Tell me again – why is it that we do it this way?”

You can fill in these blanks with a whole myriad of systems and processes in your company:
Why is this paperwork so necessary when we __________ ?
Are we absolutely sure that this is the best solution for __________ ?
Have we ever tried to __________ when we do this?
How long have we been __________ this way?
When was the last time we put __________ back out to bid?
Why are we replacing __________ instead of reinventing __________ in the company?
Word association: red tape and bureaucracy for us, equals __________ ?

Why does it have to be this way?

It probably doesn’t. It probably shouldn’t. Create, innovate, change: just try something new and surprise yourself. Surprise everyone. Pull the plug and turn off the phony life support: Actively heal instead.

Tom Asacker refers to automatic pilot as “functional stupidity”…

It’s a new management theory (great name, huh?).
It says that the absence of critical thinking in organizations creates unity.
And this consensus mindset helps improve productivity.
Instead of questioning things, people focus intently on the task at hand.
We are a nation overflowing with “functionally stupid” organizations.
We’re on autopilot.
We enthusiastically believe in the actions we take every day.
Whether or not they’re improving people’s lives and adding distinctive value.
It’s a delusion. A happy trance.
And we need to be knocked out of it.

The Cure is Courage

If you get a tangible example in mind for each of these sins, I think you’ll agree: All 3 Sins can be often be characterized as taking the easy way out, or succumbing to that sneaky villain of avoidance. If you are a manager, they’re screw-ups.

The foil to wimpy or fearful behavior, avoidance, and often, laziness, is courage — so let’s define it more explicitly, as the bravery to push through our own hesitation and take better action.

All 3 Sins are triggered by hesitation, and we face a decision: Will we give in to that hesitation and stop, dwelling in some pocket of avoidance, or will we push through our hesitation, opting for a far better result? Thus, the Alaka‘i Manager must be willing to recognize that hesitation in themselves, and then ask themselves, “What’s holding me back?”

Name the culprit, call it out like you’re now doing with these sins, and solve it.

Bathurst titled her essay “How to Listen” and it’s mostly about how the hearing impaired will compensate for their hearing loss with better listening. For example,

For those with more serious loss, the decline of one sense often strengthens others. Watch anyone who has had hearing problems for a while and it’s obvious that they are listening differently. They listen with the whole of themselves, bodies turned towards the speaker, drinking in cues. They don’t hear so much as inhale, taking in everything from the expression in the other person’s eyes to the story told by their hands.

Shift that one paragraph to the workplace, where managers can struggle to read between the lines when their people close off, and become less than forthright with them (or the other way around.)

The “managing with Aloha way” is to listen for their values in what they will say, and to work on creating a culture where this happens: Speak up, I’m listening.

However, wanting to hear them must be there, steeped in our ALOHA intentions. As Bathurst describes, we must listen in a visibly different way, so that people feel our intention, and believe we want to hear them for all the right reasons. We “listen with the whole of [our]selves, bodies turned towards the speaker, drinking in cues. [We] don’t hear so much as inhale, taking in everything from the expression in the other person’s eyes to the story told by their hands.”

And then, most important of all, we respond in a way that will validate and reward the other person’s belief and trust in us.

You can read the entire article here: Bella Bathurst for Aeon Magazine.

These were other passages I made note of for my own deeper learning (‘IKE LOA) and notebook of workplace reflections (my HO‘OHANA):

1. Learn to Listen Visually.

To understand listening, it helps to understand hearing. Physically, the process is broken up in three ways. Firstly, in mechanical form through the ear, the nervous system, and the brain. Secondly, in the form of high-, mid- and low-frequency sound-waves. And, finally, there are two different sorts of hearing: conductive (the vibrations made by sound travelling through the body, the clearest example being what you feel when you hear a cathedral organ) and sensorineural — the messages fed through and processed by the inner ear and cochlea.

To appreciate fully the impeccable splendour of the human auditory system, the best thing is to go deaf for a while.

We, the hearing fortunate, CAN learn to listen visually:

I do read facial expressions a lot. I remember being in a taxi with a friend, and when we got out she said, “Wow! Could you hear the driver?” I said, “Not a word.” She said, “But you were following the conversation.” I wasn’t — I was just watching his face in the mirror, and when he said something serious, I’d go “Oh dear,” and when he said something a bit more animated, I’d go, “Oh right!” I could catch the tone of his voice and if he was moving his hands, and I was using that. It’s like people speaking in a foreign language — you don’t know what they’re saying but you can follow the mood of it, whether it’s a good conversation or they’re having a fight, and you can pick up on the body language.

2. Don’t Dumb Down your Sense of Place.

The concept of “dumbing down” our hearing really got me thinking about several workplaces I’ve visited recently. Bathurst relates the concept to music, and what she learned from noise consultant Rupert Taylor, who has been writing, lecturing and advising on acoustics since the 1960s:

And, perversely, it is often those who love music most who are most inclined to obliterate their sensitivities at festivals or gigs. Hidden behind the problem of volume is the issue of amplified music. Most people are so used to hearing boosted or electronically remastered music that they’ve rarely heard it in its natural state. ‘It’s like the difference between instant coffee and coffee made with beans,’ says Taylor, ‘It’s a spatial difference. The experience of listening to acoustic music in a hall is a three-dimensional thing and there’s virtually no 3D in electronically reinforced music. It’s an unfortunate metaphor, but our hearing is being dumbed down.’

What are the long-term consequences of that dumbing? ‘You lose a dimension from one of our senses. Or two dimensions.’ Everyone ends up with an unspecified sense that something’s missing, but they can’t work out what it is…

There are several ways we dumb down our workplaces physically (in the environmental atmosphere of our places), and we fail to correct them because there are other “more pressing matters” to deal with. A faulty, and sometimes damaging Sense of Place remains a much lower priority than it should be, and over time we settle — we accept physical limitations. Revisit the importance of MWA Key 8, Sense of Place here: A Sense of Place Delivers True Wealth.

The other biggie example of dumbing down a workplace which came to me? The assumptions we make, and then will accept as a sweeping generalization of “just the way things are” which is very rarely so! Banish your Possibility Robbers. See, and hear, The ‘But’s Which Work to Favor

3. Be a Musician. Play better, to Listen Better.

When I read this next passage, my immediate thought was: Every Alaka‘i Manager can be a workplace musician! We can be this perceptive if only we set our Aloha intentions toward being so:

Audiences might not be fully conscious of the change in their listening, but musicians certainly are. So how does the way musicians listen differ from the way non-musicians do? Alex South, a member of the Scottish Clarinet Quintet and a research partner at the Science and Music Research Group at Glasgow University, put it like this: ‘There’s listening to yourself and listening to others, listening for tuning and your place in the harmony, feeling the beat and feeling your rhythms and how they synch with others. Listening to the beginnings and ends of notes within your section in the orchestra, listening to accents, degree of separation of notes, listening to dynamics and phrase shapes. Listening to tone colour and attempting to match your sound to it, listening to the intake of breath of your section principal or the French horn player sitting next to you, listening to any or all of these things holistically or “atomistically”.

‘As you learn to play your instrument better, you learn to listen better. Your ability to produce distinct kinds of articulation goes hand in hand with the ability to distinguish them by ear. But more than this — your ability to distinguish by ear is felt in your body as a set of kinaesthetic responses, memories and anticipations.’ As a form of listening, ‘it’s probably more active, detailed, precise [than that of a non-musician]. You listen for cues, you’re aware (consciously or unconsciously) of tiny fluctuations in tempo and tuning. You might be more aware of the structural aspects of the piece. Perhaps the flip side is that it’s harder to lose yourself in the music, to be swept away by it.’

True music, South suggested, occurs when the individual listening of each player harmonises with the whole, and all the other elements — the players’ skill, their familiarity with the piece, the condition of their instruments, the gap between what they’re feeling and what the music is trying to express — reach a point of perfect synchronicity.

Relate that passage to our MWA values of KĀKOU and LŌKAHI as you think about the orchestra or merry band which is your own team.

4. Devote the Energy Listening Requires.

We managers do need to make room for our practice of better, and more intentional listening — we need to understand the energy we will need to devote to it:

Listening can sometimes be hard. It doesn’t matter what degree of hearing loss people have, or how long they’ve had it, every single one of them says the same thing: it’s tiring. When your ears and your brain are having to work much harder both to get the sounds in and then to turn them into a comfortable and comprehensible form, then you’re using up a lot of energy. If your listening is as skilled and nuanced as a musician’s, it can be exhausting.

6. Listen better to get comfortable with Silence.

Yet there’s another very valuable reward for our efforts: We newly understand why “Silence is golden.”

In fact, those who have trouble hearing are often highly skilled listeners, fluent in acoustic variation and the power of sound in a way that few fully hearing people ever are. Most of them also have a different relationship to silence. All silences have their own personalities — contented or meditative, empty or replete. If there’s a whole force-field of difference between a couple unspeaking in anger and a couple unspeaking in love, then there’s also a huge variation in the silence generated both by lots of people silent in a space such as a Quaker meeting or a Buddhist meditation practice, and the silence of space itself.

True silence outdoors is as rare as it is inside, especially in a place like Britain, fizzing with people and movement. Even if there is no road or aircraft noise, then there are the susurrations of trees, leaves, grasses, birds, insects — the sounds of life in the process of living. These are the sounds that are probably most endangered and least listened to. It isn’t that we can’t hear them; it’s just that, so often, they’re hidden by the white noise of our own thoughts. More than anything, more than planes or drills, it is that soft blanketing snowfall of our own intelligence that blocks our ears. Go for a walk in the country and what you hear is not the clank of geese or the cows on their way to milking; it’s your own head.

And in the end:

Almost everyone has things they don’t want to hear: their son’s fights, their partner’s rants, the high-stakes stuff about debt or divorce or mortality. But there’s a difference between offering someone a better connection and knowingly taking another man’s poison. And sometimes it takes a lot more energy not to listen to someone than it does to hear them out. If you completely listen, then you completely open yourself. And that, in the end, is probably the scariest and the most exhilarating thing you’ll ever hear.

Archive Aloha:

Related Reading in addition to the links offered above:

• Getting the Old to Become New Again
• Listening Alone Does Not Humility Make
• All Conversations Are Not Created Equal
• Managing: Learn how to ask “Why?”
• Trusting Your Intuition

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