The Basics: What is it?

The Daily 5 Minutes (D5M) is a conversation you give to another person, as a gift of your full attention and good intentions. It is a new conversation: When you invite them to “Take 5” with you, they know the conversational agenda is of their choosing, and you are giving them your all-in listening time so they will feel completely heard and valued.

The D5M has been a workplace practice taught by me, organizational culture coach Rosa Say, for nearly two decades now, and it continues to deliver stellar results. It is core to the Managing with Aloha philosophy, a values-based curriculum brought to workplaces so they can be as healthy as possible.

I shared more about the D5M history in a recent posting on Joyful Jubilant Learning this past summer if you are interested in reading the full story: Learning to Listen with The Daily Five Minutes. The D5M was put into practice long before I was an author, consultant and coach teaching workshops: It was created within my work as a manager leading other managers as well, to fill a need and communications void, one which we encountered daily.

Our workplaces are only as healthy as the people within them, and what the D5M does is help us shape the relationships which matter most to us in our day-to-day living. We in the  Ho‘ohana Community of Talking Story practice, teach and coach the Daily 5 Minutes freely (i.e. free of charge; this is not a sales page) because

1. It’s simple (to learn).
2. It’s easy to do (as a useful practice)
3. Once it’s your daily habit, you can’t fail at it.
   (This post elaborates on each of these three things.)

The Daily 5 Minutes helps you be more effective in communicating with the people who surround you. Day by day, 5 short minutes at a time, you build up your confidence —and significantly enhance a relationship you have with another person.

Listening better, so you can respond better (the basics of what you do when D5M-ing) turns into the 5-minute building blocks of greater managerial self-esteem, whether you adopt the practice

• to improve your approachability (think you’re approachable?)
• to learn self-management and self-leadership through better conversations, or
• to manage and lead others as well with better communication established in conversational agreements.

Think the D5M is just for managers? Think again.

If you can use help with improving the circle of comfort between you and other human beings, you owe it to yourself to give the Daily 5 Minutes another look:
D5M-ing your Decisions. Can you see with your ears?

Why wouldn’t you choose to invest just 5 minutes a day in yourself? (And you read the part saying this is free, right?)

Latest D5M News: Our first-ever Ruzuku alpha!

Rick Cecil and Abe Crystal are two of the smart and very generous people within our Ho‘ohana Community. They are the principals of More Better Labs and the brains behind the alpha we are testing for Ruzuku.com with a D5M habit-building project. Their specialty?

“We are an user experience consultancy. We work with you to understand the problems you and your customers face in order to design engaging and powerful experiences that your users will love.”

Who better to do an alpha for us?

The D5M remains a person-to-person practice, and what I anticipate the alpha can do is add a layer of virtual coaching and camaraderie for those who choose to be the givers of the D5M. And yep, “All in five minutes a day!” for the D5M itself which is the fuel of the program. It is up to you how much time you want to spend with the community of other D5Mers who will participate in the alpha — it will take you way less than another few minutes time for the journal entry the alpha habit-builder requires.

The Ruzuku alpha: What you can expect

When the challenge begins on November 2nd (Update: Our next challenge begins Nov.30th!)  the sign-up will be closed, and those taking the challenge will find they are in a private peer-to-peer coaching group. No observers or lookie-loos; everyone there will be just like you: Committed to giving the Daily 5 Minutes to another person as a listening gift at least once each day for the next 15 days.

You will be able to log your Daily 5 Minutes in a once-per-day posting, and you can briefly journal your experience, sharing as much or as little as you wish.

And that’s where Ruzuku comes in. Ruzuku provides us with a virtual learning environment built around support and encouragement. You commit to a challenge and then report periodically on your progress all the while supporting and being supported by the community going through the same thing you are:
Update: Ruzuku is here. We’ve launched the Ruzuku alpha.

As your coach, I have a D5M tip-a-day planned for you. I’ve drafted my tips for the first 5-7 days, anticipating that my tips thereafter will be custom crafted for the experience of the group.

Update: We learned a lot doing our first D5M challenge, and are now poised for Round 2 as follows:

1. Starting Monday, November 30th, a 5-day challenge you can take on its own merit, or as a D5M warm-up:

The “Take 5” Listening Challenge: Daily 5-minute Conversations focused on Becoming a Better Listener. Sign up here.

You will improve your listening skills in a daily self-coaching focus, seeking to fully value others and learn from them every day for 5 days: 1 new listening conversation each day is required to participate. The challenge will end on Friday, December 4th.

2. Starting Monday, December 7th, a 15-day D5M Habit-builder. This time, we will stick to the playing field we know best, and will be focusing on our efforts exclusively on you as a manager and emerging leader in the workplace setting:

The Daily 5 Minutes Habit-Building Challenge: 15 Days to Build the Manager”²s D5M Conversation Practice in Workplace Communications. Sign up here.

You will practice the Daily 5 Minutes as a giver in your workplace, creating and building your D5M conversation habit as a better manager, and fully valuing another person within your learning process: 1 D5M is required to participate, every day for 15 days. The challenge will end on Monday, December 21st.

Both are still free during this time we remain in the alpha stages of our Ruzuku offering. We will begin to charge for these programs shortly after we enter beta testing, so sign up now and give yourself the Christmas presents of peer-to-peer coaching in a terrific virtual learning environment.

Please participate, and share the news with every manager you know!

The Daily 5 Minutes remains one of the very best ways to introduce Managing with Aloha to your workplace in a very valuable, foundational way – or kick it into high gear. We are 6 short weeks away from a brand new year, and if you want to be ready for it with a newfound confidence these challenges will get you there.

If you are newly arriving at Talking Story,
everything is on this Resource page

However if you are an orderly person and want to read through all the extras, here is what we have done this celebratory week dedicated to The Daily 5 Minutes so far (you could also take a short-cut by going straight to the red UPDATE below first):

1. The Daily 5 Minutes: An exciting alpha test! Also a brief D5M primer, the one explaining more of those three points above:
   — It’s simple (to learn).
   — It’s easy to do (as a useful practice)
   — Once it’s your daily habit, you can’t fail at it.
2. So, you think you’re approachable huh? About our Intimidation Factor. We all have one. Problem is, if you are unapproachable, people are not telling you what you need to know. Not all of it.
3. D5M-ing your Decisions: See with your ears. In our language of intention, D5M-ing is a listening verb. D5M-ing your Decisions means to blend the Daily 5 Minutes practice of better listening with your decision-making. Can you see with your ears?
4. The Daily 5 Minutes: How to Get Started The Daily 5 Minutes will be optimally effective for you if you use the first one you do with someone as a time to set the stage, letting them know what it’s all about. For remember: You have read my articles about it, but chances are they haven’t! Two invitations are covered:
   — Within a workplace team
   — Within a personal network
5. Learning the Daily 5 Minutes: Our Weekly Review. Those who know our Talking Story habits know that we dedicate Saturday mornings to our Weekly Review, for I would be quite the lost soul without them, so let’s review.
6. 5 Minutes/ 3 Values/ 9 MWA Questions Redux.  This one is a fresh update brought over from ManagingwithAloha.com: The Daily 5 Minutes / 9 Questions

UPDATE:

Our 1st Ruzuku alpha is now complete! Read about our results, and get up to date with the news about our next two challenges:
The D5M Ruzuku Report (and 2 New Challenges!)

Thank you so much to all of you who are participating: We Ho‘ohana and learn together, kākou.