Talking Story

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  • Rosa’s Books
  • ManagingWithAloha.com
  • RosaSay.com

Your Aloha Spirit, Tightly Curled and Regal

May 24, 2010 by Rosa Say

It’s been years since I had written the first edition of Managing with Aloha, and I’m not the same person. Neither are you. Yet I sincerely feel what the book proposes remains relevant, and working with it is rewarding.

Our continued practice can help us both, keeping us grounded in universal values as we continue to grow, learning more together in other shared experiences. These have been six years of working with MWA intensely in one type of coaching that has proved very fruitful, yet is changing for me in response to the way the workplace is changing. Exploring those possibilities (and others) is what Talking Story is all about.

There’s another way of tackling change that I call the judo approach: absorbing the force of the blow and flipping it to your advantage.
—Sara Davidson, Leap! What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?

So you’ve read the book” Now what?

It’s a question you should ask yourself about every book you read, and not just Managing with Aloha. Even the answer, “Now nothing. This one entertained, but I choose to not have it influence me” is self-expressive; the decision was made for a reason you have validated.

When you read a book, you open yourself up. You take stuff in. Thing is, your reading will either flow straight through you and not matter much as you return to the real world of your life, or it will stick, lining the walls of your insides with a new kind of self-captured texturing you can continue to draw from.

I love that you can drink of such an emotional connection to what you read in a way that comes from inside you. Think about it: someone else wrote the words, and they aren’t reading them to you. You can’t hear the emotion in their voice, or see it in their expression. You have only the words to draw it from: their words, but your meaning for them regardless of the writer’s intent. The emotional connection comes from inside you, and your own personal truth (Nānā I ke kumu: You look to your source.) , not from whoever wrote them.

It’s the same thing that your Aloha Spirit does for you. Perhaps that’s a good way to start our Managing with Aloha Mondays, reviewing Aloha, our foundational value in MWA. Over the years, this has remained the single most reprinted quote from the book, something I am very grateful for, as it should be our focus:

“Every single day, somewhere in the world, Aloha comes to life. As it lives and breathes within us, it defines the epitome of sincere, gracious, and intuitively perfect customer service given from one person to another.”

The Breath of A Life

Aloha is the combination of two smaller Hawaiian words, ‘alo’ and ‘ha.’

Like your Aloha Spirit, Tightly Curled and Regal— and ready to uncoil its promise.

Ha is the breath of your life, a concept which is like DNA to the Hawaiian way of thinking.

When you breathe in, and collect your breath, you are collecting a type of human intelligence from three centers of being, which is DNA-like in that it is unique to you. It comes from your gut, where your ancestral wisdom resides, your genitals, as your intention for continuing all life in future generations, and your head as mindfulness which is as close as you can come to being graced with divine intervention. Those three things (ancestral wisdom, forward-looking intention, and divinity), combine in each and every breath you take, the breath which will propel you toward living the rest of the following moments. This propulsion is what we mean by someone’s Aloha spirit. It is fueled by ha, the breath of your life, and the engine of your body.

Whereas ha is inside you, ‘alo’ is on the outside. Your ‘alo’ is the face you present to the rest of the world, and much different from DNA, your alo is of your choosing. Your demeanor, your presence, your blending into the world and opening up to what each and every day offers up to you —and to what each and every person you encounter offers up to you —you choose to make those encounters happen well, or you don’t. Alo is sort of like personality and mood, whereas ha is more like the character you have when no one is looking, character you will always have, and only borne of ancestral good.

Unconditional Acceptance, and the Expectation of Good

One of the most beautifully compelling beliefs about the Hawaiian culture, is that there is no such thing as a bad person from the standpoint of ha: People are born good. There is only bad behavior, chosen in the manipulation of your alo for some mis-directed reason, but a reason which can always be redirected toward good when you manage to purposely connect to your ha.

This is a belief a person can choose to have: You need not be of Hawaiian blood or ancestry to believe in the goodness inherent in humanity.
(…and you do choose to be the company you keep!)

So put them together, your alo and ha, and Aloha is living your life from the inside out, where both inside and outside are a harmonious and healthy match, perfectly aligned, and willingly shared with the rest of the world.

Thus Aloha is referred to by most in Hawai‘i as the value of unconditional love. Love for self and others. Loving yourself enough to share who you are in complete authenticity and vulnerability. “What you see is what you get, and it’s me, and it’s good!” It is a greeting hello, as in “I offer myself to you completely.” It is the Aloha of goodbye, as in “when we part our Aloha remains ever shared between us, helping us remain healthy and connected” for life is not meant to be a solo proposition.

What stayed inside?

So I ask you again. You’ve read the book” Now what?

What stayed inside as part of that emotional connection you made to keep it close? What has “lined the walls of your insides with a new kind of self-captured texturing you can continue to draw from” so it will be a part of your ha forevermore?

Savor it. Imagine it there, within every breath you take in the week to come. You decision to knowingly identify it (as your given ha) or choose it in some way (as your chosen alo) is a great way to start this every-Monday MWA journey with me.

Footnote: There is more backstory to MWA Mondays here if you are interested, including an index of relevant resource pages: Monday is for Managing with Aloha. My Book Page is here.

Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts

March 13, 2010 by Rosa Say

If we used our insider’s Ho‘ohana Community language of intention for this posting, I would list this post title as:

Our MWA ‘Ike loa SCL Learning m.o: 9 Key Concepts for 9 TS Categories

  • Ours. Definitely.
  • MWA = Managing with Aloha
  • ‘Ike loa SCL = the Sequential and Consequential Learning of ‘Ike loa, the Hawaiian value of learning (covered on page 136 in the book, and covered in this Talking Story tag: ‘Ike loa SCL. I’ll save you the click and reprint it below.)
  • Our Learning m.o. = m.o. is Modus operandi, operating method. In this case, our method of continuing with our MWA learning after book publication. We ho‘omau; persist.
  • 9 Key Concepts = A second way we learn about Managing with Aloha, to fortify and better retain the first time we learned it, while we simultaneous reframe MWA within our workplace context. We adapt MWA to our present work using these 9 key concepts, to make the philosophy timely and optimally useful.
    (The first framing we’d used for MWA was values-based management, and the 19 chapters and values listed in the book’s Table of Contents, giving the MWA “sensibility for worthwhile work” its bone structure.)
  • 9 TS Categories = A duplication of the MWA 9 Key Concepts here on Talking Story as a selection of post categories. They are our buckets for the continual learning we explore about Managing with Aloha here within this blog’s format.

All to say… I am bringing a MWA page we use all the time here to its own home on Talking Story, so I need not link you off this blog and to another site anymore… Here it is:

Learning Managing with Aloha on Talking Story:
The 9 Key Concept Categories

Call it the goodness of the grid

I do hope that you are taking advantage of the 9-Key framework we use in our learning. If you’re a new reader, you cannot take advantage of something you’ve not yet noticed here on the blog, and thus my prompting for you: Please take a look!

Learning Managing with Aloha on Talking Story:
The 9 Key Concept Categories

Knowing how I categorize posts beyond (and within) our current Take 5 strategies can prove to be very useful. Besides telling you a bit more about how I organize things here, you’ll quickly become the Alaka‘i Manager who is a Managing with Aloha guru :-)

And here you thought Talking Story was all fun and games, huh.

Learn what we mean by “the MWA value alignment of the 9 Key grid” this weekend. You’ll be glad you did.

Learning Managing with Aloha on Talking Story:
The 9 Key Concept Categories

I promised you an excerpt…

“”someone who calls themselves a manager of people must be a learner, and they must dedicate themselves to non-stop, sequential and consequential learning.

Sequential in that it builds upon previous lessons learned, and it takes you through a process where you question instruction and do not always accept what you are taught at face value; you polish it like a gem in your mind until something about it rings true for you.

Consequential in that it is worthwhile stuff; it makes a difference for you, and you aren’t simply collecting lessons on some scorecard. There’s some personal take-away in it for you. Now that you know it, you’re going to use it.”

—‘Ike loa; to seek knowledge and wisdom.
Managing with Aloha (page 136)

Now go check out the new page, pretty please?

Learning Managing with Aloha on Talking Story:
The 9 Key Concept Categories

Photo Credit: Back on the Grid by NatalieJ on Flickr

Red-tipped Rightness

August 7, 2009 by Rosa Say

Red-tipped Rightness

This jade plant on our lanai is the oldest and largest potted plant I have, one I had bought at a neighbor’s garage sale many, many years ago just to give her a sale.

I have looked at it (and loved it) thousands of times yet I never paid much attention to those red tips until I saw another one lately in another yard without the red edging, that one looking so sad and unhealthy to me. Sometimes the most random happenings do give you new appreciation for things.

On this Aloha Friday, what “red tips” will you notice, and newly appreciate today?

Mahalo

Thank you, as a way of living

Live in thankfulness for the richness that makes life so precious

— Managing with Aloha, Chapter 16

The Daily Five Minutes

December 14, 2004 by Rosa Say

I’d promised to prepare another book excerpt from Managing with Aloha for you, one on the Daily 5 Minutes. Ho‘omaka: Let’s begin on page 145.

D5Mdiscover

A short preface: The excerpt which follows is from the Chapter on ‘Ike loa, the Hawaiian value of learning, defined as to seek knowledge and wisdom. Since the time I first published this on both Talking Story and Managing with Aloha Coaching, thousands of you have reprinted these pages to introduce the practice to your workplaces without asking people to read my whole book. I’m fine with that ”“ in fact, I’m thrilled! I was sure this page was published copy-able so you could do just that.

Don’t spring the D5M on people, for they have to understand they have a role to play! This is a new conversation, and they are the designers: You are giving them a 5-minute invitation which says “If you can take five minutes with me, I am ready to listen with all of me, embracing all of you.” For you to listen well, and hear better, someone else has to be willing to do the talking.

The Daily Five Minutes

Perhaps my most valuable lesson in ‘Ike loa was the one born at Hualalai out of our desire to know our employees well. We instinctively knew we could manage better the more intimately we knew those we managed. ‘Ike loa became the birthplace of a core standard we initiated with all managers called “The Daily Five Minutes.” It started as an experiment, and it was so effective that it became non-negotiable as a habit my managers were required to cultivate and practice daily.

It is a simple habit: Each day, without fail, managers are to give five minutes of no-agenda time to at least one of their employees. They’d log the event in a simple checklist of names to ensure they didn’t miss anyone, and they’d speak to each employee in turn on a regular basis.

To be honest, my initial goal was actually to give the managers daily practice in the art of listening well, for I was trying to come up with a solution for the common complaint that “my manager doesn’t ask for my input and feedback, and if I do give it, he/she doesn’t really listen well to what I’m trying to explain to them.” I reasoned that if they had no agenda themselves with this Daily Five Minutes, they wouldn’t “half-listen” as they mentally prepared what they’d say when they could get a word in.

Now this was key: Employees were brought into the plan and openly told about the program: they were asked to prepare something, and be ready to fill the silence when a manager approached them and said, “How about a break from the action here, let’s step away and Take 5.”

In the beginning, the managers were cautioned to give themselves a good 15 to 30-minute window, for there’d likely be some pent-up stuff that had to come out. However, over time, the managers who kept up the habit discovered their Daily Five Minutes rarely stretched over 10.

This is what happened: In the process of developing this habit, they greatly improved their own approachability. They had nurtured a circle of comfort for their employees to step into and talk to them——whenever time presented itself. The Daily Five Minutes itself soon became a more personal thing. Employees started to share their lives with them——what they did over the weekend, how their kids were doing in school, how they felt about a local news story. Managers began to know their employees very well, and their employees began to relate to them more as people and not just as managers. They were practicing the art of ‘Ike loa together.

Knowing well enhances relationships

Benefits from the Daily Five Minutes piled up: Managers ceased to judge employee situations prematurely, for they had built up a relationship that demanded all be allowed to speak first——and they wanted to speak with their employees, sure they’d receive more clarity. The Daily Five Minutes became a “safe zone” where employees felt they could talk story with their manager “off the record,” and managers learned to ask, “Are you venting, or asking for help? Do I keep this in confidence, or do you expect me to take action?” It became clearer who was responsible for following up on things. Managers had less and less of those “if only I had known about this sooner” surprises.

Employees began to initiate the Daily Five Minutes themselves, both with their managers and with other employees they wanted to know better. Everyone learned to say “no” and to be more respectful of time issues, saying scripted sentences that were non-emotional: “Now is not the best time, but I promise to Take 5 with you later.” Everyone became much better at reading expressions and body language, a skill that had added benefits when they were dealing with the customers. Cultural barriers started to break down, because managers started to learn the “communication language” they needed to use to relate to each employee as an individual, and they gained better understanding of the “sense of place” of each one.

So you can see that ‘Ike loa promotes all types of knowledge. ‘Ike loa is just knowing, and knowing well. When programs like the Daily Five Minutes give it form, even spontaneous unrehearsed conversation can erase confusion, and replace wrong assumptions with the right information. Personally, I have an ongoing and passionate love affair with books and the written word, yet some of my best knowledge has simply come from talking story with my staff: They are exceptionally patient teachers.

Excerpt pau, finished.

Now you can begin!
The results of the Daily Five Minutes are amazingly quick.

Managing with Aloha was published in 2004, a year after I had left my position at the Hualalai Resort as VP of Resort Operations, and thus it was written to be recent then with more Hualalai stories. In July of 2009 I published another essay about the D5M for Joyful Jubilant Learning, sharing a bit more of the story that dates back to the earlier origins of the practice at The Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani, starting in 1989: Learning to Listen with The Daily Five Minutes.

We’ve had a lot of practice with D5M and it’s been a beautiful thing: We’ve celebrated a lot of people feeling they’ve grown through better listening, and others who’ve felt liberated because they learned to speak up more.

Please, if you are already a Daily Five Minutes practitioner, tell us your story too. Stories help us all learn. Mahalo.

2009 Update: A recent posting shared by Rich Griffith: Fireside Chats

Recommended Reading:

  • We Learn Best from Other People
  • So, you think you’re approachable huh?
  • D5M-ing your Decisions: See with your ears
  • The Daily 5 Minutes: How to Get Started
  • 5 Minutes/ 3 Values/ 9 MWA Questions Redux

Search Talking Story your way

RSS Current Articles at Managing with Aloha:

  • Do it—Experiment!
  • Hō‘imi to Curate Your Life’s Experience
  • Kaʻana i kāu aloha: Share your Aloha
  • Managing Basics: The Good Receiver
  • What do executives do, anyway? They do values.
  • Managing Basics: On Finishing Well
  • Wellness—the kind that actually works

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