self-awareness

Value Verbing: Theme 2012 with your Aloha Spirit

January 2, 2012 by Rosa Say

In my Makahiki letter, I’d said that I love this time of year because it is Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day) at its most pervasive moment: We human beings collaborate in self-care, and in our Ho‘ohana intentions. The whole world seems to be in sync, as we collectively look back to assess what we’ve come to know. We corral our confidences and our strengths, and then we look forward, expectantly, and with hopeful optimism knowing those confidences and strengths are packable and adjustable: They’ll remain with us, and they’ll remain useful.

What’s not to love?

Well, in a word, the overwhelm, especially in January’s looking-forward progression. There is a lot to sort through and make decisions about, especially if you try to mix new learning into the batch — it’ll be new learning, and so you’re essentially mixing in batches of unknowns. You’re taking some chances, and turning your resolve into another experiment.

There are two trends I’m seeing, where people are trying to self-manage, get better organized, and habit-create more effectively: Word themes and inputs.

Inputs over Outputs

I’m liking the focus on inputs (your activities: what you actually do) over outputs (the end-result outcomes, like goals and objectives).

We have more control with inputs — as the value of ‘Imi ola reminds us, we create our own destiny with each action we personally take. There are several more variables which will contribute to the success or failure of outputs, and they often have to do with other people, whose decisions (and thus actions) are ultimately out of our control. If the only inputs we can effectively direct and control well are our own, we are wise to concentrate our efforts wherever ‘me, myself, and I’ comes into play.

We may want to include others, so corroboration is a good thing. Thus wouldn’t we be wiser to focus on it as an input? How do we collaborate with others? What are the confidences and strengths of our own behavior, and how will we remain humble and open-minded (Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility) so we become even better, and continue to grow?

Word themes

There’s no doubt about it, words are powerful. To state your choices deliberately, and then commit to them can be highly effective — as long as you actually follow through.

The potential problem I am seeing people run into, is in the choice of words they begin with. Many are outputs: health, happiness, wealth. Others are quite broad and need more description: creativity, freedom, organization. Even a word like ‘focus’ is probably too general: What are you going to focus on, and why?

You may say, “It’s a theme, and I know what I mean.” As a coach I’d challenge you on that: Wring out the details and take a good look at them. Are you giving yourself too much wishy-washy wiggle room? Will it be easy for you to abort, and shift your focus day by day? There’s a lot of noise in our world to get distracted by”

You can probably guess where I’m going with this! We all need help with our follow-through, so get your values to help you. That’s actually what they do best.

**Choose Values and Verbs as your Inputs and your Words**

Roll credits: As we’ve learned from Managing with Aloha, the big deal about values is that they drive our behavior by taking good direction from our self-aware sources.

Your values are the pilot lights of your human goodness, and they start the best fire (energy!) in the actions you choose to take. They are the easiest actions to follow-through with, because they are about you. Your values will reveal you, they fit you, and they celebrate you.

Knowing your personal value-drivers is self-affirming in the most extraordinary way: You learn about yourself, and what’s important to you, and why. You expose your vitality.

Why do you want this learning about you? The more you know about the wonder you are, the closer you get to knowing what you’re meant to do or create: Your Ho‘ohana (intentional work and purpose-driving) will get naturally connected to the work of your legacy.

Reading tip: If MWA has sat on your shelf for a while, open it up to chapter 17 on Nānā i ke kumu for a good review — “Look to your source” for it’s a wonderful place to be.

So do Choose your Words. Speak them often.

Be decisive so you can begin well. Seize January with both hands and with your soul.

Do choose the inputs which are the actions and activities you’ll commit to practicing daily, and allow them to gain traction, and strengthen you with more confidence.

Just be sure your words (or clarifying phrases) are active verbs, and know which of your personal values they are connected to. Beware the wiggle room, and go for that best fit your values will give you.

Fortify your own life, and begin the day-by-day work on the legacy you are meant to give to our world.

We ho‘ohana kākou, and with aloha,
Rosa

Learn more about value-alignment and value-mapping here: Value Your Month to Value Your Life

Workplace Culture balances Change and Constants

August 28, 2011 by Rosa Say

I received a couple of emails following my last posting (Managers Create Culture), and taken altogether the gist of them was this:

“If I don’t have a comprehensive philosophy yet, like you have in Managing with Aloha, how do I start to define the workplace culture I want to foster as an Alaka‘i Manager? The variables can be so overwhelming, and I struggle to focus, and set my priorities.”

Do you know when those variables get overwhelming? When they aren’t actually yours. We managers have a way of inheriting and collecting periphery.

Here’s what I recommend instead. It’s still about articulating an all-you packaging of your values (which is Managing with Aloha at its core), but arriving at them in another way, one which concentrates on action connected to desired change and valued constants.

To paraphrase and add to a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

Be the Change you wish to see in your world, while remaining devoted to your Constants.

We talk about change a lot, equating it with initiative, innovation and creativity, however we tend to forget those constants we have already invested in, constants which keep us grounded, confident, steady and sure.

So try this: Sit with a blank sheet of paper, and make a simple list of your purely instinctive, gut-check WANTS, writing them down under one of two sub-headings:

MY CONSTANTS
(your keepers: You have these, still want them, and will devotedly hold on to them)
GOOD CHANGE
(your goals: Assume you want these for good reason, so work on getting them!)

Your list should describe your future. Identify what you want it to be, so those wants can guide you forward. Be as specific as possible, for specific detail is more conducive to revealing action steps you can take.

Your values will provide the ‘why.’ When you can tap into it, ‘purely instinctive, gut-check’ wanting gives voice to your values — you’ll be able to read between the lines, and get clarity on what your values are all about, and not theoretically or historically, but right now, for today, and for ‘Imi ola— a creation of your best-possible future.

This might help you start your list… Fill in the blanks, remembering to then choose which column they go in, valued CONSTANTS, or desired CHANGE:
I want to work on ______, and not on _______.
I want to forge a partnership with _______, so we can work on __________.
I’d love to see the day that we _____________ all day long!
I want to keep learning about _____________, so we’ll be able to _________.

Bet you can take it from there!

The first step in articulating the workplace culture you want is usually to be more selfish — yes, selfish, as in self-aware. Focus is all about energy management: Self-manage (channel your energy) and self-lead (create fresh energy) before you presume to create workplace culture for anyone else. It evokes the oxygen mask theory: You can’t save anyone else when you can’t breathe either.

In clarifying your change and your constants, you define your stretch while holding on to your keepers. You also couple your form and function without interruption (i.e. your on-going productivity and business of life), for balancing Change and Constants is simply a way you sort through the clutter of life, and focus on what’s important to you.

For instance, here on Talking Story you often read postings where I seem to question, dabble, and experiment: I especially love 90-day projects as a gift-boxing of my still-tentative change. When I wrap up those projects, I weave them into my Ho‘ohana Story somehow, for my constants are about Aloha (defined here), Ho‘ohana (worthwhile work), and ‘Ike loa (intentional learning). Over time, my keepers in the MWA culture became the 19 values in my book, and the 9 Key Concepts. The early sentences on my List of Wants moved into statements like the 10 Beliefs and Core 21.

If you pull out your list every time you do a Weekly Review, you can revise it with constantly freshened relevance. When something no longer sounds like a Burning Yes, just cross it off the list and add what does.

Trust me: If you can make this simple process your new habit, your desired workplace culture will be steadily revealed to you. And remember… You are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!

Your Change + Your Constants = Your Culture:

Write it down: Gut-check list your wants as either Constants or Change.
Create your future: Allow that list to set your priorities, and be your values-based focus.
Make it happen: Review weekly to self-manage and self-lead, and
Feel good about it: You’ll get a good grip on your best energies.
Share it: The Workplace Culture you champion will be the great result.

So turn this affirmation into a poster you look at daily:

I’ll be Change, and I’ll be Constant. I’ll be the Culture of my Future.

Write it on a post-it and tape it on the mirror where you brush your teeth each morning, then Ho‘ohana — make it happen.

The identity of Who you Are and What you Do

April 14, 2011 by Rosa Say

All of those things are up to you. The question is, are you willing to take them on as your life’s true work?

Articulating who you are and what you do is powerful magic in getting you closer to the self-expression of unconditional Aloha and Nānā i ke kumu (sources-fed sense of self) you are most comfortable with, and hence, will be most willing to share with others.

Taken together, they become an identity you create for yourself, rather than accepting what others might think you should be.

I was gently reminded of this in the reading I chose lately (yesterday’s post), by this terrific visual image:

It’s good coaching. Accept your gifts first (Nānā i ke kumu), to then work with your gifts (Ho‘ohana), to then give your gifts to others (Mālama).

Author Carol Eikleberry says, “it takes courage to be yourself” and I agree, however I think it’s much harder to be someone else, someone you’re not. Harder and way less satisfying, possibly painful.

So what I mean by “articulating them is powerful magic” is this encouragement: Get more verbal about who you are as who you want to be. Say it in the words which will move you, and evoke your own, very personal, Language of Intention. For instance, I always remind myself that “I want to be the manager’s advocate when that manager has a true Alaka‘i calling rooted in his or her Aloha Spirit: I want to create great resources for them, readily available, practical and useful ones.”

It keeps me more focused, and less uncertain.

Begin with “I want__”

Even if you only say who you want to be to yourself in a quiet room, it will ground you in a personal courage that begins to grow larger, swelling with each time you say it.

You will continually edit your sentence, reshaping it in self-talking self-determination until that golden day you don’t hesitate to say it clearly for others to hear too, so that they in turn, begin to relate to you in that new way, replacing whatever ‘should’ they may have previously held for you, and becoming a better supporter for you — and possibly a partner too.

Don’t say, “I want to be a manager” or “I want to be a leader” and leave it at that, because those words aren’t specific enough, or descriptive enough; they don’t have enough emotion attached to them. To say, “I want to be an Alaka‘i Manager” probably isn’t descriptive enough either, because that’s my label more than yours — make it yours by adding a why to it: “I want to be an Alaka‘i Managers because_____________.”

Once you have your self-coaching statement of who you are intent on being, you can more easily work on articulating what you do, whether it is for you (accept your gifts), for your Ho‘ohana (work with your gifts) or for your ‘Ohana receivers (give your gifts).

Postscript: The graphic from Eikleberry shows a continuous circle because this is a process she says “creative and unconventional people” will constantly go through each time they identify a new talent or skill — one which excites them enough to go on a full career-shaping adventure with it. Here is the full paragraph which accompanies her image:

“A career adventure focuses on problems to which the answers are never final. As you embody conflicts and grow through them, you realize more of your potential; then, from a more mature perspective, you are again faced with the inevitable tensions that are part of being human. Creators often find themselves circling back, revisiting themes they have already explored, but with a greater perspective. (Small wonder that psychological growth is so often described as helical in shape!) There are always new gifts and new problems that emerge and need to be integrated, no matter how much development has already taken place.” — Carol Eikleberry

However please do not let that scare you! Embrace the adventure, and thrill to it. Look too, at the tulip above, and imagine yourself in the same way, rising above a sea of sameness to bloom in your own unique way.

And then be circular: Do it over, and over again with each new talent you decide to more fully express. I think this may be one of today’s greatest gifts to all of us, this chance we have to explore all our gifts, and not waste our full potential by dedicating all our work to just one career.

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.