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Managing with Aloha and Our Community Learning

July 12, 2010 by Rosa Say

You may have noticed a slow down in my blog posting here. My family likes to tease me about my silences, happy to share their past experiences in living through them with me, for they knowingly point out that, “When mom goes quiet we all begin to lay in wait. She’s thinking too much… something has to give, and will bust through at some point of no return. So wait for it, but expect it and be ready!”

Maiapilo Hawaiian Caper

In your case, dear readers, I prefer to think of this, my current quieting, as Ho‘ohiki, keeping my promises, for I have been investing my time in the work it will take to do so.

To the right, in our Talking Story sidebar, I’ve had a statement posted, one which says, “Our next Ruzuku Challenge (my virtual coaching) will be scheduled in summer 2010: Watch this space for the announcement!” — that’s the promise I’m working on.

The Ho‘ohana game changing I’ve personally done in 2010 has been liberating for me, and I’ve relished having this time newly available as its consequence; time I can devote to this new project within my SLC curriculum with a highly intentional ‘Imi ola focus. My Ruzuku Challenge for you will be directly connected to Managing with Aloha, and I believe it will serve you well whether you have read the book yet or not. If you have been working with my Smashword’s books, you will find the course to be a good parallel and complement. My intent is to have all of our Talking Story and Managing with Aloha connections blend well, and this Ruzuku Challenge will also be a great starter course for those brand new to our Ho‘ohana Community.

And community is a key: We are so good together! The basic expectation to have with a Ruzuku Challenge from me, is that you receive MWA coaching within a group learning environment that is virtual, private to the sign-up group, and limited to the number of people I am confident I can be highly responsive to as your teacher and coach. Ruzuku is our web-based venue: Those who participated in our past Ruzuku alpha tests will tell you that their interaction with each other was just as enjoyable and rewarding as any new learning they received from me.

I don’t have an exact launch date yet, and am still working on a few things, such as course duration and pricing, however here is what I can tell you about my next Ruzuku Challenge so far:

Peaks and Values

1. The course will be called Peaks and Values and will help you “Verb-activate your life with the Aloha energies that come from your values.”

2. As the book reads, Managing with Aloha focuses on the workplace environment, and the responsibility of the managers within the working culture they create and foster. In comparison, Peaks and Values will have an individual, and personal focus.

3. You need not be a manager to participate: This will be a course aimed at your personal MWA journey of value alignment. If you have struggled to articulate your own Ho‘ohana (intentional work) in a balanced way, this is the course you’ve waited for!

4. By “balanced way” I mean a realistic, whole life way. Life isn’t only about work, is it. Our metaphor and visual for this course is KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u, the Hawaiian value of excellence and achievement, and the course will be structured to cover the 4 Peaks mentioned in that chapter of my book: Living, Working, Managing and Leading — all with Aloha.

5. I am still calling the course a Ruzuku ‘Challenge’ because we will challenge each other to up our game, and pursue KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u excellence. Our focus will be on the 4 Peaks as these specific verbs and whole-life activities:

  • Living — Live Life to the fullest: Feel complete
  • Working — Work to be Engaged and Accomplished: Feel strong
  • Managing — Manage to feel you’re “all together” sane, and happy: Feel contentment
  • Leading — Lead to Learn, initiate and invent, grow or create your Legacy: Strive to thrive

6. This is essentially a course about better goal-setting. Goals are important because they drive us to be purposeful (as opposed to feeling aimless or confused). When the course ends, you will not have fully achieved the 4 Peak summits (of feeling complete, feeling strong, feeling contentment, and striving to thrive as above), but you will be on your way: You will feel a greater confidence with the goals you have set because you are aiming in the right direction; ‘right’ in that it is value-aligned for you.

7. From what I’ve been hearing, I think the timing will be good for many of us. This mid-year point heralded by the ‘lazy days’ of summer bring two things: A necessary break, where we give ourselves permission to breathe, and relax a bit, but also a bracing for the rest of the year to come. We take stock, ask ourselves where we are with those New Year resolutions we’d set (even if silently to our inner critic of one) and then propel ourselves forward. With this next Ruzuku challenge we can propel ourselves forward together, and within the support of our Ho‘ohana Community.

Maiapilo Hawaiian Caper

So I hope this intrigues you. I am pushing for the beginning of August, so save some project time for me, would you?

One more important point:

8. I am designing this course to be completely self-contained: What that means, is that you need not have read Managing with Aloha as a prerequisite to accepting this challenge. This will be a time we can invite others to be our partners in learning without asking them to read a single blog post, or my 266-page book first as introduction. So start to think about who you would invite. Who would be an excellent goal-setting accountability partner for you?

July is fairly young. You can still influence my planning and preparation for the course, so let me hear from you:

How does this sound so far?

Let’s talk story, shall we?

Become a Better Listener with these 5 Skills

November 29, 2009 by Rosa Say

And even better?

Become a better listener with your Ho‘ohana Community…

“[This] makes me think of my husband who is training to be a therapist. I can see when he is tuned into his listening mode and it changes everything about the way we communicate. It makes me get to the kernel of what is bothering me sooner; without the exchanging of ideas, my own are allowed to emerge.”
—Emma Newman, responding to a posting at Joyful Jubilant Learning called Listen More to Communicate Better, written by Phil Gerbyshak

Hmm. Do you have a listening mode you fall in and out of, like Emma’s husband does? Has it become recognizable to others you have conversations with frequently, so they can easily tell when you will be a better receiver than usual, or even a different receiver? As for Emma, I would bet that “it changes everything” about the way others communicate with you too.

Im listening... cant you tell?
I'm listening... can't you tell? You trying to tell me these ears might not be enough? Really?

I propose to you, that grooming a listening mode is akin to grooming any other skill: It is something you can proactively cultivate, something which could prove exceptionally useful to you (like learning to see with your ears). Your listening mode enhances your approachability, so you can more skillfully attract and handle insightful conversations. In fact, a skillful listener is one who turns every conversation they have into one of interesting new insights.

“A receptive ear gains more love and respect than a silver tongue ”“ don’t you think?”
—Brad Shorr, within the same Joyful Jubilant Learning conversation

How about if we work on cultivating our listening skills together?

It is November 30th in some places of the world already, and thus as our Challenge Day 1, your November 30th will be the final day you can sign up for the 5-day challenge I am coaching within the Ruzuku alpha (when you sign up, you will be asked to note your time zone).

Are you in?

Still thinking about it and hoping for more of a preview? Okay… keep reading….

What are the skills we could be working on as we improve our listening?

I think there are several. Listening ranks way up there as a skill we can each work on our entire lives through, for every time communication shifts and changes, the way we listen must respond, shifting and changing as well. Just think about how this has happened in recent years with social media — there is definitely a smart way to listen on Twitter (5 Twitter Tips for Leading), on LinkedIn and other social networking platforms.

A few of the listening skills which immediately come to mind are patience, reading body language, and learning the art of interruption. Then there is that healthy respect for silence, for you can listen to silence just as you can listen to sound; noise is just one kind of signal transmitted in communications.

A skill a day to keep the noise at bay…

As your Ruzuku Guide for the alpha, I have picked 5 specific listening skills for us to work on, one per day. I have chosen these 5 in light of the favorable peer-to-peer coaching environment Ruzuku offers: We will take advantage of the Ruzuku alpha while we optimize our learning. In contrast, you can enhance skills like increasing your patience, or taking better notice of body language in other self-taught or localized team environments.

“Take 5” means what, exactly?

“Take 5” is a language cue carried over to this challenge from The Daily 5 Minutes. It is a known invitation in the workplace environments practicing Managing with Aloha organizational culture norms. When you ask someone if they will “Take 5?” with you, you are asking for a 5-minute conversation ending in a win-win agreement, a conversation you are ready to give them as a gift of listening.

Therefore, our Become a Better Listener challenge can really give managers who wish to learn the D5M a significant edge!

As I explained, we will not impose the D5M conversation on this challenge specifically, however we will frame it within your existing conversations. Since we only have 5 days to work with, we will also keep our focus on the learning to be gained within one-on-one conversations. This particular challenge will not address group discussions and passive listening (getting the most out of podcasts, audio books, that sort of thing.)

Here is a preview of the 5 Skills I have chosen:

Skill 1: Monday/ Learn to broadcast the signals of your Listening Mode.
Skill 2: Tuesday/ Converse to write a Relationship Story.
Skill 3: Wednesday/ Use well-placed Questions to Eliminate the Vague.
Skill 4: Thursday/ Teach Your Speakers to help you listen better.
Skill 5: Friday/ Make Conversation the Subject Matter.

Here’s how our Ruzuku Listening Challenge will work

When you click in to the Ruzuku alpha each morning I will have posted more about the day’s skill, explaining it more fully. Your challenge is to apply the skill via the conversations you have that day with others; you take the skill for a test drive. You then return to the alpha to post about your results, so you can gain feedback from me and from others there: We will all be working on the same thing so we can compare notes. Thus you learn exponentially — from your experience, and from the experience of others seeking to apply the same skill in the same window of time.

For any who may have been in our first Ruzuku alpha, this will differ from the Daily 5 Minutes challenge in that you will not be asked to frame a certain kind of conversation. The skills we will work on are anticipated to be those you can apply to the conversations you normally have within the course of your day as usual. You may need to initiate more conversations in the week to come (and hopefully you will have fun with this and you will want to), particularly if you are one who normally does a great deal of solo work or you work from home. However you will not be teaching others any defined conversation parameters — any conversations will do, and the more variety the better. For instance I have already heard from a few participants who are interested in comparing their virtual listening skills with their habits when speaking with others in person.

Are you ready to get started?

Just click on the badge below to be whisked to Ruzuku.

Remember: We all start together on your Monday, November 30th, and end together this Friday, December 4th. This sign-up will close for you by midnight of your own time zone on November 30th.

I know the learning will be rich, but I fully intend to have a lot of fun with this too!

See you there,
Rosa

Take 5 to Learn 5 Skills and Gain (at least) 5 Benefits:

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

This challenge is 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 web-based learning environment. You will:

  1. Learn 5 Listening Skills, one each day
  2. Simultaneously improve the quality of your conversations within the process of this learning.
  3. Test your self-discipline as a lifelong learner within a self-coaching expectation.
  4. Be audience and peer-coach for others who are taking on the challenge in the same window of time.
  5. End the challenge with a sequential learning intention focused on the additional listening skills you wish to now pursue having this foundation.

Photo Credit: African Fennec Fox by Yvonne in Willowick Ohio on Flickr

Black Friday our Talking Story way

November 27, 2009 by Rosa Say

Did you enjoy your Thanksgiving Day? It is a good holiday, isn’t it. I think one of the best things about Thanksgiving is that there is no expectation of gift-giving. We don’t expect to get more, and are simply reminded to appreciate what we already have.

Today, I am one who chooses not to partake in the Black Friday craziness, and have decided my own holiday shopping can wait a few more days. I will contribute my share of dollars to our economy soon, just not today. I am thinking about a gift we can give ourselves and each other, to share in learning virtually instead (our Talking Story way), and I am gearing up for the two challenges we have coming up on Ruzuku. If you missed it, I had posted about them in full detail here (back story, lessons learned from those who participated, plans going forward etc.):
The D5M Ruzuku Report (and 2 New Challenges!)

“True innovators have a mantra: The enemy of the best is the good.
They are constantly daring to make things better.”

—Robin Sharma, The Greatness Guide

Do we dare? Yes we do…

Thus I took some time in the quiet of my early Thanksgiving yesterday morning to update the Daily 5 Minutes resource page we now have here since it serves as our Ruzuku bridge, with a mantra continually scrolling through my brain as coaching: Keep it simple… keep it simple… keep it simple… for it really is:

Ho‘ohana CommunityYou don’t need a bunch of links from me… you just need the desire to learn (the desire being your value-driver of ‘Ike loa, the value of lifelong learning), for you can experience it as we learn it together.

Being part of our Talking Story Ho‘ohana Community is a constant invitation to you, to learn with company, the company of a like-minded community sharing many common goals. Chief among them, is another constant: Our goal to learn behaviors and new habits which align with our personal values.

Today’s message is an encouragement to you. If you have not yet signed up for one or both of the Ruzuku challenges to come, please reconsider. We learned so much in our first round, and this second one seeks to weave in our lessons learned and make it even better. Those who have already participated in a Ruzuku challenge will eagerly tell you how valuable they have been, and how they have helped forge some great peer-to-peer self-coaching relationships.

Here is a reminder on what is coming: I do hope you decide to jump into the learning with us! Another way to look at these two challenges, is stated within another constant goal we share here, to build a powerful Language of Intention:

  1. In the first challenge, “Take 5” will become a natural part of your better-listening vocabulary
  2. In the second challenge, The Daily 5 Minutes will become “D5M-ing” your management style

Thank you for reading today,
Rosa

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

Take 5 Listening ChallengeThe “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:

D5M Habit-BuilderThe 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 web-based learning environment.

D5Mdiscover

The D5M Ruzuku Report (and 2 New Challenges!)

November 23, 2009 by Rosa Say

“True innovators have a mantra: The enemy of the best is the good.
They are constantly daring to make things better.”

—Robin Sharma, The Greatness Guide

Do we dare? Yes we do…
We dedicated a good amount of time during November to a rediscovery of one of our bests: The Daily 5 Minutes. I claim it to be the single best tool offered to you within the pages of Managing with Aloha, and I still believe that to be true, yet that does not give the D5M any immunity: We can still work on it, and continually make it a better practice.

D5Mdiscover

Working on it within this effort to make it better launched us into an experiment within our virtual playground this past month. My series of D5M rediscovery posts here culminated in bringing the D5M to a brand new coaching challenge on Ruzuku, a new software app presently in alpha testing:

Ruzuku is a learning community 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.
—Rick Cecil, Ruzuku is here.

I created a free, 15-day habit-building challenge on Ruzuku aimed at helping people begin the D5M habit (or solidify it) and we had 30 people sign up. Here is what happened, and what we will be doing next having learned from the experience.

What happened?

The Daily 5 Minutes is about having a new conversation, one you give to another person as a gift. We asked each challenge participant to simply give one D5M conversation to someone else each and every day of the 15-days within the program, and to post about their experience with it. Here are some of the things they shared:

“We continued our conversation on a project that he is interested in pursuing that is outside of his responsibility area. I appreciated the fact that he wanted my advice. I think it will be a good thing for him and motivate him in his responsibilities here at work.” —TM

“We took 5 over sandwiches, and she asked if we still could do it sometimes because she liked how it had a time limit to it. I asked why that was important to her and she said that it wasn’t just gossiping or chattering away. It was focused, meaningful talking and it helped her organize her thoughts.” —RG

“[He now knows] that it will be available whenever he asks or I ask for it. The reflection on this has been powerful. Internally I am progressing a lot. I will put this [new learning from our conversation] into action throughout the week.” —MK

Even the set-backs were encouraging in what they helped us take stock of!

“Yesterday was filled with meeting after meeting – frankly none of which produced more value than the D5M conversations I have been conducting lately. Missed my D5M opportunity.” —AO

The participants received a coaching tip each day from me, but I do think that the peer-to-peer coaching they gave to each other made the challenge much richer. As we had anticipated and hoped for, the Ruzuku alpha gave our D5M learning challenge the addition of co-learning camaraderie so that the one-on-one D5M conversations everyone had personally became exponentially revealing as other experiences were shared as well and they could compare notes. Take another look at those quotes I have shared, and imagine reading more like them for each of those 15 days running!

There is absolutely no doubt about it, we learn best from other people, and the alpha proved that once again.

Was it all rosy?

No, there were stumbling blocks, however those were expected, for we know that we basically learn in two ways:

  1. We celebrate our successes when we have them, and then we seek to duplicate them.
  2. We get to the root causes of our non-successes, and then we brush ourselves off and try again, continually improving our efforts.

There was also a number 3: Adding habit-building to the challenge meant we needed to get into a rhythm of continual success.

What the alpha attempted to do, was create a forum in which all 3 of those things could happen.

In watching the challenge unfold, and participating in it as both coach and participant (I continued doing my own D5M practice, sharing my experiences as well) I learned several things. So much so, that I am very eager to roll our learning into developing a set of new challenges at Ruzuku, and they will begin in each of the 2 Mondays coming up. Let me frame them for you before I share the new Ruzuku challenge links.

The playing field matters

My biggest learning was that we attempted to do too much in the challenge. While it called for just one Daily 5 Minute conversation per day, the playing field was much too large: People gave their D5M gifts in a number of diverse relationships including the workplace, friendships, family and marriage, and community volunteer work. Wonderful applications all of them, but too diverse to build a D5M habit in the way that habits are repetitiously created. It also had the effect of our trying to watch several games happening in different corners of the same field at the same time: There is no way you will see everything, and in trying to keep up with all the action you are going to miss a lot of important detail.

What I have learned from practicing the D5M for many years now, is that managers do extend their D5M practice outside the workplace and into their other relationships quite naturally and successfully. The alpha taught me that this is not as easily done the other way around, starting in relationships which are much more personal. We, as the givers of the D5M, need more practice first: It seems that the workplace (itself with a number of diverse reporting and peer relationships) is a good first base to start from, with other relationships then leading to optimal success eventually grand-slammed toward home plate.

We all want to be Better Listeners

There were also several people who seemed to sign up because they wanted to better their listening skills, but they were unsure about the other added 5-minute framing we purposely impose in the workplace. The daily and the 5 minute framing of the practice are critical in the way we apply them within the workplace for optimal effectiveness: They are not as important in other relationship contexts, and in fact, they may be too restrictive.

What we discovered was that everyone started with a focus on better listening, but once that was achieved, several people dropped out of the challenge choosing not to push forward with the habit building that would be predicated by the constancy of pushing their new conversations into previously uncharted territory. Within the workplace these opportunities can present themselves readily. They too are uncharted (again, the D5M will be a new kind of conversation), but there are more compelling reasons to pursue them. To use our metaphor, the game is already in motion, you are suited up in uniform and at the ready in position, and you are looking for a strategic way to make your next play.

New Game: We value those Base Hits

In trying to keep this post as short as possible I have not shared that much about Ruzuku itself, and let’s just say this: It is FABULOUS. You will meet new people there and you will love the way it works. It is simple and highly effective. Yes, it is an alpha, but Rick, Abe and crew are wonderfully responsive, and they jump into the learning with us and for us.

To all of you reading who did participate in the first one, thank you so very much for your participation. Because of you, and what you taught us, and learned with us, I am so very pleased to offer our next two Ruzuku challenges:

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

Take 5 Listening ChallengeThe “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.

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.

Update: This challenge is being rescheduled for sometime after the holidays: I will keep you posted.

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.

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