As the years of my life have marched by, one of the lessons I have always been challenged by, is asking for what I want. I have to push myself to practice asking for just about everything, and I’ll bet you do too.
Even though I know nearly everyone else in the human race has the same challenge with asking, it doesn’t make it any easier for me.
We have to be brave, stick our necks out, and ask for all sorts of things. Asking invites nourishment. As a mother, I taught my children to ask, and ask assertively and without apology, as a survival skill they’d need when speaking with intimidating adults. Choosing the right words, and articulating our asking helps us be clearer about what we think we want, or might need.
Fact it, people don’t always know what we want, and they can’t read our minds. (Believe me, your boss really, really struggles with this… happen to watch Undercover Boss on CBS last night?)
More often than not, people will surprise you by simply saying “Okay, sure, I can do that.”
Ask, and it shall be given to you;
seek, and ye shall find;
knock and it shall be opened unto you.
For every one that asketh, receiveth;
and he that seeketh, findeth;
and to him that knocketh
it shall be opened.
—Matthew 7:7-8
So here goes… an asking which concerns the care and feeding of Talking Story.
Your RSS reading of the blog (via something like BlogLines or Google Reader, or the Alltop Leadership aggregator) is a wonderful start, and I thank you for deciding to subscribe at all, with the number of choices which are available to you. However in today’s offering of a gazillion blogs and websites, the care and feeding of Talking Story requires even more.
Please consider switching to an email subscription
As a writer who blogs, I feel so acknowledged and appreciated by you who subscribe to Talking Story via email: It tells me you don’t want to miss anything, affirming the effort which goes into publishing the blog, and encouraging me to continue.
Email subscriptions (Click here to get yours) also help you share Talking Story posts with others more easily, so that we can spread the Managing with Aloha mission here, and invite more voices into our conversation. You can print the emails you receive, to talk about workplace concerns in your huddles and meetings. You can forward the emails to whomever you feel the subject matter will be of interest to that particular day: Doing so lets them know you are aware of their challenges or opportunities, that you were thinking about them, and that you care enough to reach out and make the effort. It’s a win-win!
Please click in!
Even better? It is so great when you have an email subscription, yet click directly to the blog to read my post here, immersing yourself in the full “online experience” that email programs and workplaces can firewall out. Even if you choose to silently read and not comment for some reason, your clicks will tell me you were here, and I will know.
Do you know what really sets my heart on fire, and encourages me even more? When we talk story in the way the blog platform makes it possible for us to do so, setting an example for managers in the brave conversations we will engage within here. As you know, I feel we don’t talk story enough in our workplaces; it’s another challenge we need more practice with.
Clicks are the care, and comments are the feeding.
Another thing to remember, is that as the author of Talking Story I start conversations, but I am not always the one to finish them. The email alert you received will never reveal the comments which have been added by others in our Ho‘ohana Community (like this particularly generous one yesterday from Rich). When you are interested in an on-going conversation you can also subscribe to it individually, making it easy to follow along as things progress.
Come talk story here on the blog, won’t you?
That wasn’t so bad! You can practice this too. Use the comments of this posting today to ask me, or others in our Managing with Aloha Ho‘ohana Community, for what you want.
Mahalo nui loa, thank you so much. Good people that you are, you made this pretty easy for me!
