accountability

This is what scares me about current struggles in our world today:
It was posted on We are the 99%:

“My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else. My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%.”

The up side, is that when I get scared I just work harder, but with better focus on why I bother in the first place.

The Managers’ Kuleana

Those who have heard me speak know I make this point as often as I can about Kuleana, our profound responsibility as managers:

If the children of your employees believe that working imprisons their parents and makes them grumpy people, it’s your fault. Hold yourself accountable for that, and fix it. Those children are going to grow up, and be our workforce one day: What attitude do we want them to bring to the workplace with them?

I do what I do, and with the passion I have for it, because I was an exception to the rule and I know it. I was one of the truly lucky ones, not just lucky in the way Allison describes it above. What my parents illustrated for me, was that work was what they made it, and making it great was entirely possible. They did this in spite of the bosses they had, and they partnered with my teachers in demonstrating it for me.

Well, I wanted to be a boss; I wanted to be a manager. I knew we could do better, and be better, and support parents like mine. This, is essentially how Managing with Aloha came to be: My dream, is that all managers become the teaching boss my dad never had, but taught me was possible.

Here’s the drill in life:

Everyone has to work.
We work our way up what Maslow called our hierarchy of needs: We work for our basic sustenance to start, but hopefully we will progress, reach higher, and work our way through the other levels; through a sense of belonging, through self-esteem, and toward the stuff of self-actualization which makes legacy possible.

Jobs are what we have to do in the economic machine of society.
Work can be what we get to do in an inspired life (what we call the value of Ho‘ohana).

We managers shape working culture.
Managing with Aloha is a way we do that, and do it well. I believe it’s the best way, because to manage with the values rooted in Aloha, is to manage with your own humanity.
For what’s a culture? It’s a group of people with a common set of values and beliefs.

To “shape working culture” is to create an environment in the workplace which is ‘good’ in every definition of the word.
Good is healthy, and good begets more good.

The workplace environment is a contagion. It infects and thereby affects everything connected to it through the people within it: It affects their homes and their families, it affects the quality of their play and the rest in their sleep. It affects people individually and on a very personal level, and it thereby affects entire communities and their attitudes, whether that be their despair, or their sense of hope.

Understand “the drill” and understand it well.
Then, understand this:

Alaka‘i Managers help the human race

You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless that is who you choose to be.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you work on it intentionally every single day.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you accept personal accountability for The Manager’s Kuleana, and can look into a child’s face and feel Pono, your rightness in our world.

On that pyramid, that hierarchy of human needs, I see rightness above Sense of Belonging and before you get to Self-Actualization: Rightness is personal, and it’s right there where Maslow put Self-Esteem.

We may have a long way to go before we get to Sense of Belonging for everyone.
We continue to work our way there, knowing we have to: Quitting, or opting out, are not included in our viable options.

However Sense of Belonging doesn’t cut it; it’s not enough.
Just ask Allison.

Leading is an energy-creating “verb x30” which Alaka‘i Managers commit to:
How are you leading today?

‘Leadership’ is supposed to be a good thing, right?
So why is it such a formidable hurdle for us so often?

Or maybe a better question is, why must we wait for their permission, or their problem-solving, whomever “they” happen to be?

I’ve been thinking about how utterly dependent many of us can be on those in “leadership positions.” We wait for others to make decisions for us, or move to game-changing actions instead of seizing that action ourselves.

I am thinking about this dependence a lot lately, for unfortunately, there are a ton of examples to watch and I can’t not think about it.

For example, think about our Friday Furloughs here in Hawai‘i education. Why is it that so many schools (and parents) wait for the governor, the legislature, or the teacher’s union to solve the problem of getting our keiki back in school, instead of demanding more at-the-school changes by principals and at-each-location administrators? Seems to me our academic business models have been broken for a while now, begging some kind of reinvention… Why was a prolonged recession draining state and county coffers necessary for us to see it? Did school administrators actually think it was not their job to run as lean as possible all the time? In years past, did they channel any extra money in good times toward the competitive edges of learning, instead of fattening foundational basics (from which we now bleed)?

Lead is a verb we ALL can take action with

At the core of most “not my Kuleana [reponsibility]” issues associated with leadership, is the faulty thinking that only those in so-called “leadership positions” can make the big decisions or major changes which are necessary to make a real difference.

That is simply not true, and the rest of us cannot give away our power so submissively. It’s downright foolish to do so. Sticking with the Friday Furlough example, we are all discovering that waiting for our perceived leaders is very inefficient – if it works at all (and in this case, it isn’t working” our legislators and school administrators are not getting our children back in school, are they.)

If you are a perceived ‘Leader’ don’t be a martyr

In other words, get us to solve our own problems, and don’t do it for us, for you aren’t helping. You are not making us stronger or better, you are enabling our weaknesses.

Please, take our Alaka‘i definition of ‘leading’ to heart, and get the rest of us to share in it with you: Do your part with boosting us over this hurdle of not forging our own destiny by means of solving our own problems. Hold the right people accountable: It makes them stronger and better. Lead to help create the energy they can continually tap into and flourish with.

Sharing your leadership permission with others could be the best Christmas gift you give them.

What is true leading all about? From the archives:

3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

Our Say “Alaka‘i” vocabulary is worth repeating:

LEADERSHIP is the workplace discipline of creating energy connected to a meaningful vision.
MANAGEMENT is the workplace discipline of channeling that mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.

Great managers cannot channel good energies they are unaware of, or energy which doesn’t exist. And remember ”“ you can’t shift this responsibility to someone else within our discussions here: Alaka‘i managers are those who both manage and lead. We refer to management and leadership as disciplines, not as separate roles, titles, or positions on an org. chart. If a designated leader is not creating energy, then the buck stops with you. Make it your Alaka‘i Kuleana.

Photo credit: Cardinal Health picnic by Lisa Brewster on Flickr

My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Tuesday I write a leadership posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at Hawai‘i’s newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser. Here is the link to the original article there: Let’s Leap over the Leadership Hurdle.