Aloha, thank you for visiting my blog! You are welcome to stay, and become part of our community. Move in by subscribing ~ you need not set up any profile and you don’t need a password: Just read when you can, and talk story when you want to participate.
Updated at least twice a week, once daily at the most (unless I’m focused on a book-writing project), Talking Story features the most current writing of business author, sense of place ecosystem researcher, Ho‘ohana culture-builder, and manager’s advocate Rosa Say ~ that’s me.
This page shares a more comprehensive introduction than what you see atop the right hand column, including some links to help you better sample the archives. Return any time you want to read more or get reacquainted: I will keep it updated with any fresh focus links you may have missed. And take it slow as you click through for more: I don’t expect you to read them all in one sitting.
Values, Managing, and Leading ~ as Verbs
I publish Talking Story to support and champion the Alaka‘i Managers who practice the values-based Managing with Aloha workplace movement. What you do is so important. I deeply appreciate you, I greatly admire you, and I want to support you best I can. So I spend most of each day as a business coach working to make organizational culture healthier, and my intention with writing Talking Story is to provide you with timely, easy to use workplace resources that are the result of our day-to-day lessons learned.
You may be an Alaka‘i Manager and not yet know you are” stick around, talk story with us and find out! It’s not a job, a position, or a title: It’s a choice, and it’s your decision to make. I consider management a calling and a profound responsibility, and have strong feelings about it: Heeding the Calling of Management ~ The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers.
My personal philosophy can be summed up in the word Ho‘ohana (so I use it a lot), which is the Hawaiian value of worthwhile work — work is a verb you can intentionally make happen, and it is a value, one of self-expression. We all must work to make a decent living: Why not make it the living of a good life, where interesting and healthy work fortifies our spirit? Spirit-spilling is what Aloha is really all about, and the work you do is your life’s signature.
The first book I’d written, Managing with Aloha is my career story about Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business as a better sensibility for work: It covers 19 values which can guide us in reinventing our workplaces — all 19 are listed and linked in the right column of Talking Story as an index for readers which adds to the study started in my book, for values easily frame a lifelong learning curriculum for us. The big deal about values, is that they drive our behavior reliably and automatically. You may not always be aware of it, but it’s your values which bring your beliefs and convictions to life in destiny-defining ways. Your values make you a real life action hero!
Thus I mostly write about values as verbs here on Talking Story and in my books, with managing and leading as the disciplines which can give our values focus both personally and professionally. I work within businesses large and small as the founder of Say Leadership Coaching — my coaching business is my laboratory and our community workshop. I find the business world to be educational, enabling, highly resourceful and inventive, flexible and nimble, and liberating.
We cannot be too quick to judge all of business by what we hear in the mainstream news, where sadly, we tend to hear more about its dysfunction. I wrote Business Thinking with Aloha in the hope business would be less intimidating, and ‘business thinking’ more attractive to you for what it can teach and help us value-align, even if you never decide to be an entrepreneur. I’m an optimist, and my goals today still include business modeling initiatives which play to the dynamic strengths in the art of business: Challenging the conventions of organizational business structure is one of my passions. Here’s a sample: A Noble Consumer’s Manifesto.
We get very individually directed and personal here on Talking Story, because work is personal, and all great teams rely on self-motivated, energetic people. We actively apply management theory and leadership lessons to our self-management and self-leadership practices, looking for our daily opportunities within the energies of fresh (or newly freshened) ideas. We get real with the stuff we learn, and take action. We own up to our responsibility to be a bit better every day, improving our world by merit of our good example.
To “Talk Story” in your life, have more Conversations
I believe conversation is important, and so easy to benefit from with daily relationship-building practice, thus conversation rules supreme in all of Managing with Aloha: We can’t function well at the work we choose if we don’t communicate well, and as human beings, not techno-savvy digital typists. Values lend themselves to our universal understanding, for they are as timeless for humanity as the laws of nature, thus they give us a Language of Intention. This language, borne of our values and prompted by our motivations, can enliven our vocabulary when we speak up, speaking into what is important to us. Conversations furnish us with a daily practice of communication which celebrate us as the amazing creatures we are, for they welcome in our personal character and emotional intelligence, and enable us to share it.
So converse to celebrate who you are, and who you are meant to be. When we seek more conversations and talk story, we are pressed to be approachable, to listen well so we can collaborate with others, and to honor our good word by walking our talk:
- So you want a MWA jumpstart… Do the Daily Five Minutes. Do it today if you can, and no later than tomorrow. Then do another one the day after that, and another the day after that.
- Conversation “is a pain.” Even the greatest managers on earth find themselves in really tough conversations at times, for it comes with the territory. But when they end up in a good place in dealing with that situation, well, management doesn’t get any sweeter, and more rewarding than that.
- Be the Best Communicator. My favorite coaching assignment for Alaka‘i Managers, second to the Daily Five Minutes requirement, is this one, reserved for the last 15 minutes of their workday (and this is one of the shortest posts I have ever written :)
Our future is ‘Imi ola, a best possible life of our own creation
Talking Story began in 2004 and there is a lot here. I refer to Talking Story as my “mothership” for it serves as an experimental playground for me as well, and any other forays I’ve explored in my online publishing have started here in some form. So expect the off-topic stuff and feel free to jump into it with me: In addition to values, learning together is always our theme, the guiding light at the source of our energies.
I hope the blog post samples linked above will help with a better introduction for you, however don’t feel you have to do much archive-dipping: Start from right here and where you are. I’ve begun to publish more eBooks as a better way to showcase the best bits in our past history as we update and co-evolve them with our present-day conversations — so be a part of that process! Here is an example of how it happens: Value Your Month to Value Your Life.
Grab an email subscription: Try it to get a feel for how things happen here, for you can opt-out or cancel at any time you change your mind or your reading habits. Have more conversations in the workplace, with your families, and within any team you happen to be a part of, and you’ll find the subscription copies delivered straight to your inbox make it very easy to share ideas, talk story with others, and bring them into the conversation too. Trust me, that is how easy it can be to use the resources you will find here.
Are you ready? Let’s talk story!
One last thing: Please don’t let my use of Hawaiian keywords cause you to hesitate! They are part of an intentional learning strategy where new vocabulary is introduced to you to help with reframing, not hinder. The 19 Hawaiian value names of the Managing with Aloha chapters are indexed as tags, and those links are kept in the right hand column for easy access as you read my blog postings. You can read more on these special pages exclusively designed for Talking Story readers:
- About our Hawaiian Glossary and Language of Intention
- Learning Managing with Aloha with the 9 Key Concepts: These nine concepts were covered in Business Thinking with Aloha, are used as the primary post categories here on Talking Story as well.
- Are you thinking about purchasing Managing with Aloha and wishing you knew a bit more? Here’s a preview: The Core 21 Beliefs of Managing with Aloha
If you have another question I have not yet answered for you, please write me at any time. I welcome any suggestions you have on how Talking Story can be improved.
Me ke aloha,
Rosa
For more about me and my other projects, I invite you to visit RosaSay.com
Coaching Postscript:
Our next Ruzuku Challenge (my virtual coaching) will be scheduled in the Fall: Watch this space for the announcement!
Lessons we learned last time…
For an email alert:
Write me to let me know you’re interested, and to reserve a spot: Class size is limited.