should-ing

Be unencumbered

October 12, 2011 by Rosa Say

This is the advice I find I’m giving to my own children these days, as two young adults forging their way in a world where a lot of the rules have changed, or are still in flux. It’s advice I’m newly taking for myself too.

This is a day and time where the actions within free will, and the nimble mobility of easy movement, are abilities we must keep positioned to serve us, unrestricted and unburdened.

Be unencumbered

For to “be encumbered is to be restricted or burdened (by someone or something) in such a way that free action or movement is difficult.” (from my MacBook dictionary)

The root word itself is heavy, which is good, for it gets you to pause, and better understand.

Try saying it out loud; “Unencumbered.” It’s weighty too, as opposed to saying something like, “lighten up” which has other connotations anyway, or “protect your freedoms” which is presumptive and doesn’t capture everything which can be a possible culprit. For instance, on my current list of encumbrance culprits are:

Stuff — because I want lightness instead, both physical and mental. I don’t want to bother with maintaining stuff I don’t use often enough to really matter
Debt — because I want freedom from liability, and hate paying interest that just makes things cost more
Jobs — because I prefer to think about work and Ho‘ohana. Work is necessary, and where the rewards are to be found, whereas ‘job’ is too small a container, often with other restrictions
Dogma — because the only label I’m okay with is Thinker. I have gotten very wary about polarity, and how ideology and even branding can cause us to erect walls. I want to be more open-minded instead, and push myself to explore more in the learning I pursue
Should-ing — I tend to separate this from dogma, in that should-ing usually hits us closer to home, coming from people we know more intimately, spending personal time with them. And they are another variable, one we will not dismiss, for they are important to us, and we want them to be proud of us [I defined should-ing in this post: A Good Ruthlessness x3.]
Negativity — because Lord knows there is enough of it in the world, and I don’t want to be another contributor. From a practical standpoint, negativity is also highly ineffective
Bad habits — there can be several encumbrances here [the world of auto-pilot], and the caution I always start with is in regard to physical health. When you get sick, everything else gets to be a moot point
Sloth — because it’s such an energy killer. Look up sloth in a Thesaurus for the list of yuckiness it can include. No life can afford any of that stuff. Sloth kills creativity too
Envy — because it doesn’t make much sense (it’s about someone else’s choices, not yours), yet is easy to fall prey to. To me, the opposite of envy is the virtue of Ma‘alahi, that peaceful persuasion of calming contentment — so much better!

You get the idea. The list can go on and your list might be different. I usually stop with 9 of anything in working through my own listings of things (case in point: Our 9 key Concepts for MWA). 9 is quite enough, for each one of these can be expanded on, and the whole self-coaching of “Be unencumbered” is to keep each of them self-managed well enough so they aren’t unwieldy, and I can fold them into my trusted system with good results.

To be unencumbered, make it relevant to your life

Going back to my children, we mostly have these kinds of conversations these days: To set the stage a bit, they are done with college, and now support themselves. Yet they are still young, unmarried, and haven’t become parents. I want them to take full advantage of their youthful energies, for as the saying goes, the world is their oyster:

Be unencumbered of a mortgage, for owning a home isn’t what it used to be, and you have time; wait until the industry heals itself.

For that matter, be unencumbered by all ownership — question what maintenance every owned thing might come with, and see it as possible baggage. Better to use-with-immediacy, whether rented, borrowed, or bartered for, and then move on.

Be unencumbered of middlemen, and brokers of any kind. Do for yourself to start with, to learn completely and understand well: Define what “in your best interest” is for yourself, before you hire or otherwise allow anyone else to do something for you.

Be unencumbered of what anyone else believes, including me and your dad. Trust in your values, think for yourself, and make your own rules to live/work/play by. Then be prepared to eloquently explain the why of your choices (you know we’ll still be asking you about them, and won’t hold back our opinions, so be ready to take an educated stand).

Be unencumbered of convention, all of it, and especially in learning. The world around us is a little broken right now, but that’s opportunity for you in forging a better way. Learn from everything, and everyone around you, for the world itself must be your teacher right now if you’re to navigate it successfully.

We will be here to help, but not too much.

So “Be unencumbered” really helps as the catch-all of our Language of Intention as our family conversations continue. It becomes our insider-speak, and a shortcut about, then past why-we’re-talking-about-this, which helps us get into the meat of the matter quicker.

Then, make it relevant to your work

As you can imagine, “be unencumbered” is now part of my Managing with Aloha vocabulary too, in regard to the work of my businesses, for there are so many new conversations to be had, and had often. Vocabulary has always been tool-extraordinaire for us: The Best, Yet Most Underutilized Tool for Communication There Is.

This is a time to defy convention, and seize the opportunity to create better: Trump those Old Rules with Your Values.

As an Alaka‘i Manager, how can “Be unencumbered” help in your workplace huddles? What are the hot spots which come to mind for you, and can you discern what their encumbrances are?

Money, budgeting strategy, and financial literacy comes to mind relatively quickly (as with my last post, in regard to current affairs), but there are so many other encumbrances to consider.

What would be your first target?

Here is some help in the archives, one for each of the encumbrances on my list:

Stuff: Spring Cleaning at Work: Junk is not the Stuff of Legacy. How much junk is costing you money, and worse, cluttering up those spaces where good work, important and creative work, should be getting done instead?
Debt: What does ‘financial literacy’ mean to you? An oldie, from 2005: One of the first posts I published here on Talking Story, about The Managers’ Kuleana we revisited a few days ago.
Jobs: A Job of any Merit: Your 3 Options in Worthwhile Work. In case you missed it, this was the “we can do this!” post within a string of others this month.
Dogma: Imagine having a Thought Kit: The story behind Business Thinking with Aloha.
Should-ing: Have you caught the curve ball? A new initiative has come down from the top (corporate, your boss etc.): What do you do now?
Negativity: Staying Positive in a Negative Workplace: When the downer isn’t the job itself, but the workplace culture.
Bad habits: The 3 Sins of Management: About the bad habits of tacit approval, automatic pilot, and lies of omission.
Sloth: Distract, Interrupt, Intercept, Disrupt: A simple way to focus, and deal with distractions.
Envy: Downsizing gets cool: Today you have to pause a bit when you hear the word. Can we downsize to warm up to change?

A How-to Postscript: Are you using the tags here on Talking Story, listed at the bottom of each post? That’s how I came up with this list for you. For instance, try energy and/or creativity for sloth (the link I chose above was to help you with distraction.)

So much lies beyond that chain link fence… Be unencumbered so you can reach it.

Sunday Mālama: What Sunday should be

May 29, 2011 by Rosa Say

I’ve learned not to use the word ‘should’ that often, for the word has taken on a presumptuous and judgmental air to me (blame strengths coach Marcus Buckingham and his definition of should-ing). Yet there are still a few times, increasingly rare though they may be, that I’m willing to shoulder that risk — is it ironic or fitting that ‘shoulder’ has ‘should’ within it?

Well, I shall willingly stand tall to shoulder this as well as I have been taught to. This is one of those times for testament to what we ‘should’ do, for denying the rightness of Sunday Mālama would seem like borderline blasphemy.

I welcome you to take a stroll with me along three paths, each with different experiences to share:

Path One: Living With The Pope

When I was growing up, ours was a family that went to church every Sunday without fail. My dad was the one we thought of as “the holy one” and we’d all call him “the Pope” when we were sure he couldn’t hear us (my mom was the one who started it).

As early as I can remember, my mom was the one who did the flowers for the church every Saturday afternoon, and I honestly think that Sunday mornings were more of a vanity fix for her as the entire congregation “ooh”d and “aah”d over them. She deserved the accolades; Mom also had (still has) an extraordinary talent for fashioning any kind of flower a bride would choose into bouquets for weddings, and all was done in her volunteer time as a lush and fragrant hobby.

That’s me and my dad at my wedding, and yes, my mom did the bouquet.

Mom made it so the church was always beautiful, and feeling community-fresh to us instead of reverent-old. The greens and flowers she used came from others in the congregation, but they needed my mom to figure out what to do with them, and as bravely as she did: Her exuberant arrangements would never be described as ‘modest.’ We had a good-sized yard of our own, but gardening was not in my parents’ life-crafting regimen; they simply didn’t have the time for it (though I never sensed they had the desire either.)

Dad was the one who made Sundays sacred as fitting complement to my mom’s crafty and decorative talents freely given to the church. Where my mom’s clever resourcefulness would shine in a tangible way — she never knew what the congregation would arrive with Saturday afternoons, freshly cut from their yards — my dad’s would radiate from an inner wellspring, a gardening inside him that Sunday framed equally well. And by extension, we were his ‘crops.’

We wouldn’t describe our Sundays as a reflective “day of rest” though; he kept us all busy, and it always felt like we were working on something. Dad kept it all too real, and very down-to-earth: He was not a touchy-feely kind of guy, and having a good work ethic regardless of the day of the week was the way you worked on living a worthy life. As we followed his lead, Sundays were sacred in that they were about our faith, our place in the world, and about ‘ohana, our family, and about generally being as good as we could possibly be for the entire day. In point of fact, we worked harder: Sunday was the day that you made up for any slip-ups or indiscretions in the week before, with my dad giving us a wealth of physical possibilities in doing so. In working through it all, with Dad affirming our contribution to the family’s well-being, you fortified your character for the week ahead.

We also thought of Sunday as a kind of neighborhood and community day, for that was when ho‘omāka‘ika‘i; we went visiting when the chosen work was light and quickly accomplished. It was the day we’d get lectures on things like citizenship, civic duty and social responsibility, or charity, patriotism and history as explanations on what we could learn from our neighbors and parents’ friends, and should. Back then, children were seen and not heard, but expected to listen, and anything another adult would say to us was gospel, as surely as what the priest had said in his sermon earlier that morning. A visit on Sunday seemed to be a kind of guarantee of an adult’s truthfulness.

Sunday then, was the day that we learned values from our parents, just as they had learned them from their parents. We had modest scoops of value-learning every day, but Sunday was the day it came in droves, and you better be able to take it all in.

Looking back, I also realize that Sunday was our entertainment day, with other people playing a starring role in what would amuse us. Technology hadn’t yet intruded in the way it does today, getting us to be more interested in a small screen over a person’s face or voice. It was a good way to grow up, within those early Sundays devoted to Mālama, caring for and about each other, and having our faith.

Path Two: ‘Ohana Mālama

In the last two years I worked at the Hualalai Resort at Ka‘Å«pÅ«lehu as their v.p. of operations, we were acutely aware of a shift in the preferences of our customers. We had been the darling of Kona’s Gold Coast in the five years since the resort had opened, and had enjoyed some global fame, however we couldn’t rest on our laurels; everyone we thought of as any competition was stepping it up because the customer demanded it, and frankly, it was getting really tough to please them.

I pulled my department heads together in a halawai (meeting) one afternoon, hoping we could achieve a meeting of the minds, a breakthrough of some kind, and about three hours later we felt we had, best we knew how. We came up with a campaign we’d use as our “language of leadership” as we rallied our staff together for the challenge, calling it exactly what it was and had to be, a Focus on the Customer; our focus as a newly caring signature on the work performance we delivered.

We laid out a strategy on the specifics we had to work on in the campaign, from service execution to problem solving, from new hire orientations to Ho‘ohana Reviews (commonly referred to as performance appraisals), and from pricing to new product evolutions we would explore. Ho‘okipa (exceptional hospitality) became our mantra for the campaign, and while we felt confident in the abilities of our staff as Mea Ho‘okipa (our hospitality givers) we still knew we had considerable work to do simply in making the shift happen; we had gotten too comfortable, and comfort was no longer a luxury we could afford.

There were a lot of details to be covered; our campaign was ambitious. Writer that I enjoy being (luckily in this case, for I had a big operation to cover), my ‘Ohana in Business was very accustomed to getting email coaching from me, and I soon started a daily message that every manager could read first thing each morning, and then print to cover with everyone in their shift line-ups. My message was more organizational than inspirational at first. It took our Focus on the Customer initiatives and strategies and broke them into bite-sized, action-for-today pieces, just enough to fill the preview pane in Outlook.

My message was called the Daily ‘Ohana Mālama. I would now describe it as an early version of the internal blog, using all we had at the time: The infancy of email, and the wonderful fact that we still talked to each other about it as ‘mail’ and little more. We were still a bit naive about how communication would change, and we deferred to conversations with each other as we always had done to actually effect the work of change: My email was simply a daily trigger. ‘Ohana because we were all in it together; we had to be as tightly connected and committed as family if it was to work. Mālama because caring about the program enough to follow through consistently would be critical to our success — and our persistent, day-by-day determination.

Mālama is the value of caring, empathy, and stewardship, and thus it was a wonderful director. The goal of the Daily ‘Ohana Mālama was twofold; strategy execution comprehensively throughout the entire organization, and an intention to take the utmost of care that no one was neglected in the responsibility we felt with Mālama. We were going to ask much more of our ‘Ohana in Business than we had been, and there could be no asking without equal doses of giving — or more. We weren’t paying more, but we were giving more, in our attention, in our leadership, and in our commitment to the values of ‘Ohana and Mālama.

Sunday was the only day I did not send out the Daily ‘Ohana Mālama email in the morning. It wasn’t a day of rest in our 24/7 operation though. It was a day to be sure.

Path Three: Sunday Mālama for each of us today

It is the combination of all these past experiences, these repeated efforts with worthwhile work and its ethics, which have affected my own personal values, helping me to both define and choose them. It never was about church, or about business, though those two things were there as framing and packaging. It was about human spirit and values-driven actions which felt like very meaningful work, in that it made a contribution of some kind. That’s what your work experiences do for you too.

Sunday was to be the day we sourced all our values, plugging into them so we could better practice them all week long. We would open ourselves up Palena ‘ole (to abundance, and limitless capacity) paying attention to whichever value may be calling us to it at the time, and we would fortify ourselves for the week to come. Nānā i ke kumu: We would look to our source of well being, and we would Mālama to refresh, recharge, and rejuvenate. My parents were right about those practices, for they do work!

Nevermind that technology and other factors have changed our world; we can still draw from within to feel healthier today, and build on our past lessons learned.

Ho‘omāka‘ika‘i; it may be that we’ll go visiting, meeting others and divining their truth as my dad had taught us. It may be that we get more resourceful no matter our surroundings, using whatever we are given as my mom had taught us, and seeing a kind of beauty in everything — brave, exuberantly showy beauty.

It may be that we ignore the email, ignore the social media and just have more in-person conversations, relying on them to do the good work of collaborative synergy they have always achieved for us.

If we revisit these kind of practices, the ones that good experiences have deposited with us for safekeeping, within the kind of work that improves the basic quality of our lives, I am sure that Sunday will be a day for Mahalo, the value of appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness for all of the elements which make life so precious to us. Contentment comes from counting those blessings we should not be taking for granted, so we can continue to work on them.

We can make a difference in our world by taking care of our own well being first, living the value of Mālama so that we have more to give. I wish that for you on this Sunday and every Sunday to come.

Footnote:

This post, its intention intact but content substantially edited for new publication today, had originally appeared within another blog I loved dearly at the time, called Managing with Aloha Coaching (circa August 2007 through December 2008). The blog was dedicated to a more in-depth, Hawai‘i-connected study of the 18 values presented in my book, Managing with Aloha, and was written during the pre-recession height of my then-consulting business, an almost frenetic time where my coaching laboratory was flush with activity and new learning both for me and my clients, most of whom remain great friends. As I should have expected from that effort, integrally woven with my own Hawai‘i Sense of Place as it was, MWAC became more personal than I had intended it to be, but in my mana‘o, it was also an immensely pleasing Ho‘ohana blend. I plan to eventually retire the site, and so I am slowly bringing its content here for a co-evolution with Talking Story, where its honored spirit can continue to teach, and be added to, for Ka lā hiki ola, it will always be the dawning of a new day in some regard!

What gainful employment ‘should’ do for you

April 21, 2011 by Rosa Say

I love good questions. Received this one yesterday:

“What is ‘gainful employment’ — how should we be defining it?”

Well, the word ‘should’ sends up red flags for me, and I prefer to answer with another question, not to dodge the issue, but to better frame it: How do you want to define it? What can our gainful employment be about?

Focus on what you truly want

‘Want’ reckons with a more personal and individual desire so we can narrow things down, and better focus on a more helpful answer, because ‘gainful employment’ is pretty big, with options possible in both the employment part of it (the differences between job, occupation, career, vocation is just a start) and in what ‘gainful’ means to us. What do we want to gain?

“This is the true joy in life ” being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ” being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy ” I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing on to future generations.”
— George Bernard Shaw

This “true joy in life” Shaw describes is inspiring to me, and I’m impatient — it’s something I want now, and not later. Thus, my answer is that I want to gain the feelings of well-being possible in Ho‘ohana work versus a job. I work on that first as my driver, simultaneously working to have it pay off (with income that will sustain my lifestyle: Prepping for Ho‘ohana with Financial Literacy).

But that’s my answer. It’s great for me, and hopefully Ho‘ohana can become great for you (it’s my core how-to theme here on Talking Story), but it’s not what everyone looks for at any given time, or feels they need. And it’s okay to look for other things — it’s your work, after all is said and done, and not mine. You know what it will take to help you feel good about the work you do.

So again, how do you want to define it? What is your relevance in defining what gainful must mean for you?

Have reasonable expectations

What you have to be aware of however, is that when you work for someone else, they pay you to work with, and for them, and the question becomes “How do we want to define it?” with the answer up to them more than up to you. When you accept a job with them, you agree. That’s just the way it is.

You still do have a choice of course. Choose the right job (yes, even in the current economy — don’t be a willing victim; a lesser job fit now should be temporary as you keep looking). It’s right enough for you, because you largely do agree with the definition of gainful employment your employer offers you in his or her company.

We usually talk about that choice as a choice of values you’ll subscribe to, because deeply held values drive the m.o. of a company; they can be a kind of guarantee of predictable behavior in the workplace.

But if that gets confusing for you — you aren’t sure what their values are, or they aren’t as apparent as they could be — the focus on what you want to gain can help you. Make your search for gainful employment personal. It will be the work you do.

If you can be specific (and honest with yourself) about what ‘gainful’ means to you, the employment options available are likely to become increasingly clear. You can then ask yourself, “Will this employment prospect deliver what I want to gain?” about each prospect coming your way.

When the right options become clearer for you (in this mirror of what you truly want), your choices get much easier along the journey.

Whatever your answers, work on what feels right for you personally. Trust in your gut feelings and intuition about it. Keep in mind the fact that gainful employment connects to your energy, like a battery pack, for your own energy is the most important resource you have (it helps you gain everything else).

Then, when you want to work within Ho‘ohana, I’ll be here to help.

~ ~ ~ MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~

In Hawai‘i, many kÅ«puna (elders) will say there is a reason our gut is at our physical center.

Our heads and hearts must come lower; one must get out of the clouds and the other out of the clutches of others.

Second, the elemental feeling we get from the land under our feet must rise up and be held in higher esteem, for there is divine power in the ‘āina (the earth), and it is our sense of place, and our home.

Third, we must care about others, but we must care about ourselves first, and enough to connect to our own source, our Aloha.

So it is only natural that our gut (na‘au) is the true seat of our wisdom (na‘auao), for it is where all these things come together to center us with good balance. Trusting in our intuition, is a form of listening as we should, to tap into that balance (which is pono).

This makes a lot of sense to me, because I experience it so much, and very gratefully so.

Have you caught the curve ball?

June 3, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

I threw it to you this past Tuesday: The State of our Learning and the Demand for Curation

In throwing that curve ball, I did it to you just as your boss does. I did it to you just as many who lead will do, to many who manage with them: I threw a new initiative at you, launching into a new theme whether or not you’re ready for it, and now, you just have to deal with it.

Dealing with Decisions

Such is life, isn’t it. Some of us catch well, and some of us don’t. There are some who will just walk off the field, hoping that the coach or a teammate will notice and call them back: They haven’t the resilience, tenacity and fortitude to keep trying on their own.

So am I back-pedaling to give you a breather, and let you catch up in your own way? Not a chance. (Does your boss?) You may recall that I recently wrote of a new tough-love resolve I have (it was called “Helping Without Hurting”).

Let’s just talk about catching curve balls today, on this, our “managing Thursday.” A new initiative has come down from the top: What do you do now?

First, you Catch Well

Catching well (‘well’ meaning that the next play you make is the best possible one) is a hard thing to learn for all managers. You think —you hope —that it will get easier the higher up the ranks you move, but take it from me (been there) it doesn’t. It gets harder, because you have fewer places to hide: The higher up you go, the more visibility you have, and the more people throw their ‘should-ing’ expectations at you. Others assume you have more information at your fingertips and you’re in-the-know of some inner circle.

What you know to be the raw truth of the matter, is that unless you reach that pinnacle of being Numero Uno, you answer to someone — ask any CEO how it goes with his shareholders or Board of Directors. In fact even then, up there in godlike status you’ll answer to someone: You’ve begun to understand that everyone in your organization is a volunteer no matter what you pay them. Org charts are, and always have been, irrelevant.

I don’t write this to depress you, but to save you from an unrealistic expectation. In the same way we speak of Alaka‘i, the value of managing and leading well, “catching well” has nothing to do with title or position of perceived influence. Catching well has everything to do with you, and how you decide you’ll react. And as with much in life, practice helps make perfect — or at least easier, and progressive, in that mistakes don’t get repeated. Your objective is not rank, it’s effectiveness. Or better, mastery.

Within organizational politics, you’re advised to react with ownership, and with the “buck stops with me” attitude, and it’s good advice. The more of something you own, the more you can control or better influence all the variables associated with it. The trick to ownership is not to be a victim about it, and truly catch the ball and run with it.

That last one is a loaded sentence, I know, and some will look for coaching, to get the help they need in navigating the political landscape peculiar to their own organizational variables. Indeed, it is one of the things I get hired for. Here on Talking Story, let’s bring the focus back to our work here as a “for example” we can apply to the balls thrown your way, for the strategies are very similiar to what you need to do in your own workplace as well.

So first you catch well…

Then, you make your Next Play

Your ownership starts the moment that ball is in your hands.

One sec, I take that back: Your reaction starts the moment that ball is in your hands. Every coach will tell you that your best ownership prospects happen before that: You’re one of those players who is watching the earlier plays thinking, “I’m ready: Bat that ball this way.” or “Come on! Throw it to me!” or you’re one of those players feeling you’re not ready, and hoping that the coming play doesn’t happen on your patch of grass in the field.

One is leaping ahead to the future, creating their best destiny in true ‘Imi ola fashion (they are visionary). The other is content right where they are, and a bit too comfortable, maybe even scared (they are complacent).

(Big clue there Alaka‘i Managers-who-coach, about your players: Which are thinking, for they already feel strong, and which are still feeling out the different emotions of their play/no play options?)

So which are you? It’s something you need to understand before you make your next play, because the next play causes the next outcome. In those two scenarios there are different outcomes, aren’t there.

There’s a third and fourth scenario too. They are happening with the players who are currently bench-warming. In the third scenario they are watching the game intently, imagining they are on the field in a certain position, and the ball is definitely coming their way. They’re ready to catch well and they aren’t even on the field yet!

Fourth scenario they’ve been on that bench a while, and they became the ones who bring all those sunflower seeds to the dugout. All that spit… yuck.

At this point, you may be thinking, “I thought we were talking about how I catch well here at Talking Story?”

We are.

An added word about our Value Themes

I touched on this when introducing our “learning curation” theme this past Tuesday, but it’s worth tying into this discussion again, for I packed a lot into that posting.

Let’s use our metaphor. Think of themes this way: Are you playing the game in full sun or in rain? Is it a home game, or are you on the road?

We managers, and managers-who-coach love themes because they help us focus on a certain set of options instead of all of them. You don’t apply most rainy day playbooks to anything but a rainy day. When you’re on the road, you know that your team will require more from you than they do when you play at home, and that they’ll also have to rely on each other more (or differently).

So Managing with Aloha, the game I ask you to play with me, is like a collection of playbooks for our Ho‘ohana Community. I like to think of the current theme we work with as our sunny day. Talking Story is when we play at home. Definitely.

Let’s Ho‘ohana, and play ball.

Postscript: I had this post in mind as a necessary follow-up back when I was drafting The State of our Learning and the Demand for Curation as the theme which would take us into this mid-year period. This “curve ball” metaphor was then inspired by what Sports Columnist Ferd Lewis called a “Sparkling day on diamonds for UH.” In part, he wrote:

For the University of Hawai’i, [May 30, 2010] will be remembered as the day that Cinderella danced twice. Some 1,500 remarkable miles apart.

First, in dramatic fashion before a stunned-to-silence overflow crowd in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where the Rainbow Wahine softball team punched its historic ticket to the Women’s College World Series with Jenna Rodriguez’s two-run, seventh-inning, walk-off home run that beat Alabama, 5-4.

And, then, hours later, when the Rainbow baseball team tenaciously held on in Mesa, Ariz., to beat nemesis Fresno State, 9-6, for the Western Athletic Conference Tournament title and an NCAA Regional berth.

In one pinch-me day of hope, persistence and triumph, the Rainbow Wahine earned the school’s inaugural trip to Oklahoma City, site of the World Series, and the Rainbows got their first WAC tourney title in 18 years and first regional spot since 2006.

As an Alaka‘i Manager, you can coach your own team to this kind of feeling: I know you have it in you, and that they have it in them. (Another suggested read from the archives, if you have the reading time: Feeling Good Isn’t the Same as Feeling Strong.)

Hawai‘i’s Jenna Rodriguez, right, is greeted at home plate after her second homer of the game beat Alabama.

Photo Credits, in the order in which they appear: Vintage Baseball by AdWriter and Softball by Dave Elmore, both on Flickr, and Jenna Rodriguez by Marion R. Walding, Special to The Honolulu Advertiser