emotion

Star Advertiser, it’s all about the people

June 12, 2010 by Rosa Say

A few weeks back I wrote a short posting called “We buy, and work, with our hearts.” Those thoughts have often come back to mind in recent days as newspaper journalism turned a page within our island history.

It has been interesting to follow Hawai‘i community reactions to the new Star Advertiser, which just published its inaugural edition this past Monday, proclaiming “Welcome to the future” as its first editorial. When you study and teach value alignment as I do, certain current affairs pique interest because they so plainly illustrate what values are actually in play versus those we will say ring true. This has been one of those times.

For those who may not be aware of our current turn of events, Honolulu became a one-newspaper town this past week, when The Honolulu Advertiser said goodbye with a final edition to a 154-year history of daily morning dominance, and its long-suffering second (in total readership) became the Star Advertiser. There are other newspapers printed on the neighbor islands, but Honolulu is noteworthy as our capital city, dwarfing all others in population density. Neighbor islanders will read the Honolulu daily pretty religiously, whereas the vast majority of Honolulu residents have never picked up a neighbor island paper, or bothered to look for it online.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (that Honolulu “second” to the Advertiser) was founded in 1882 as the Evening Bulletin, publishing its first edition on February 1 of that year. The name would play out as a self-fulfilling prophecy, for Hawai‘i residents have mostly thought of the Advertiser as the daily morning paper, and the Bulletin as the evening edition; older news of the day, even when untrue and they’d broken a story first. The Bulletin was a paper you read when you had extra time to spare and it happened to be easily at hand, and it didn’t even dominate the evening: The six o’clock evening news on television did. If you didn’t get around to reading the Bulletin you didn’t feel the loss, a hard hurdle for any business to overcome, much less one hawking the news.

From an outsider’s and customer’s viewpoint, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin was all but throwing in the towel in recent years even though the floundering and radical cost-cutting at its rival was plainly apparent. Prior to the merger, the Advertiser published in the more dignified broadsheet format while the Star-Bulletin published in tabloid format. In some fast-food establishments the Star-Bulletin was given away for free, which is rarely a good sign. So in the emergence of the new Star Advertiser, you could say the underdog somehow prevailed. Might the true story be that the Bulletin was actually run better for long-term business survival? Even if true, it is not the story we bother to hear, or pay attention to.

“The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin have a long and tangled history together, but in the end, each paper was better for having the other as a sparring partner.”
— from the About Page now up at www.StarBulletin.com

Maybe so, and the oft-quoted reason many still hope our run as a one-newspaper town will be short-lived, but for now, we are focused on how that sparring is causing some pain.

Now a single paper, the publishing team has wanted Hawai‘i residents to think of the new Star Advertiser as a merger between the two journalism institutions, and a stronger reinvention. Burl Burlingame recaps the business deal which occurred here: Honolulu Star-Advertiser – About Us, where he truthfully, and matter-of-factly starts with,

“The histories of Honolulu’s two primary newspapers do not run on separate tracks. Like a maile lei, the branches are woven together in a flowing tangle, with events happening over the years due simply to circumstance, coincidence and — often — bad blood and raw emotion.”

And there’s the rub: People are remembering the “bad blood and raw emotion” of the past while they simultaneously magnify any aloha-less actions within this merger of the present. Community focus has been on just about every action taken or not taken in the transition with a notable exception: Actions taken with the actual quality of the journalism.

The biggies have been jobs, workplace aloha and gainful employment:

“The deal [the sale of the Advertiser to the Star-Bulletin owner, and subsequent merger] will result in the loss of more than 400 jobs, making it one of the largest mass layoffs in Hawai‘i in recent years.”
— final edition of The Honolulu Advertiser

While the merger now stands at 54 more ex-Advertiser employees on payroll (265 as compared to the 209 Star-Bulletin staffers retained), that final edition of the Advertiser made a point of illustrating the layoff numbers: 315 were laid off from the Advertiser’s Goliath, and 91 from the Bulletin’s David. Local media coverage and much blogging has collaborated in the commiseration, and I’m not surprised.

Much as we logically understand that businesses have other survival needs to care for as their nonnegotiable basics, we hate that they have those instincts. We hate having our feelings about its people minimized, ignored, or relegated to reasons smacking of “we had no choice.” We never believe it, always feeling there must be a choice deferring to human decency. We want to love only those businesses we feel truly care for us on a basic human level, and we see ourselves in the faces of that business’s people. If you don’t care for your own people, how can you possibly care for us?

Quality journalism alone will not cut it for the Star Advertiser no matter how much we might yearn for it, especially since “quality journalism” is subject to so much opinion. We don’t much want to hear from the ‘business’ at all: We want the word-of-mouth assurances from our colleagues, neighbors, friends, and community watchdogs that the staffers are okay. When they’re okay we’ll be ready to be accepting customers, but not until then.

It has amazed me that the leadership teams involved in all three newspaper entities have largely ignored this when it is so obvious to everyone else. In their ‘journalism’ of this ‘news event’ they have all three written of the business deal facts with a more eager show of transparency, when they should have shared much more of what they have done to care for their people: We don’t care about the business deal, that’s your problem. On the other hand, your people, whether laid off or retained with survivor guilt, can become our problem too. We care about them a great deal more than we care about your reporting of the news.

As a result of not knowing more about any care taken with staffers, the public is left to conclude that each business simply has not done enough. We’ve listened to the more vocal complainers, and we’ve believed them, because they’ve been brave enough to share their emotions, whether right or wrong. Worse, business deal done and put to bed, we fear the Star Advertiser will simply wait out our memory of fresher pain. Ask go! Airlines how well that has worked for them, for they are still blamed for Aloha Airlines demise despite all we now know.

A business is usually faceless; it’s a ‘thing.’ As it gets to be a bigger thing, it becomes even less human, a monster we fear lurks in our bedroom closet. No matter what we know about any business entity and its strategic objectives or innovation, what we feel about that business is all about the people involved, and how we feel about them. That’s just the way it is, and will always be.

Star Advertiser, I wish you well, I sincerely do. Far as the news reporting goes, I have been impressed with your first few issues. However you must know that your monopoly isn’t going to help much in this day and age where technology makes ‘news’ pretty easy to come by. Any early support you are receiving is support for the people you still employ, for we, their neighbors, understand that they need you as an employer way more than we need you as a newspaper. I didn’t have a ringside seat, but as a blogger formerly writing Say “Alaka‘i” for the Honolulu Advertiser I wasn’t in the nosebleed section either, and it’s time for you to manage with way more aloha. Please call me if I can help.

Ho‘ohana Community, what are you learning from this case study? What do you think your community feels about how you treat your staffers, and how does it affect your business?

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

Turn up the Volume and Manage Loudly

May 27, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

This is a communication follow-up to this: The Real Problem with Leadership

Dear Alaka‘i Manager,

You’re practicing the Daily 5 Minutes, and working on your listening skills, and on being more approachable, right?

I’m sure you do tell your people that you want them to speak up, that you sincerely value their initiative, and that you are completely willing to support them whenever they feel their own stirrings of self-leadership bloom.

Thank you, for doing all those things.

Question: Are you getting better results because of those efforts?

If not, do you understand what might be missing? So many good messages… why might they not be getting through?

Repeat, repeat, repeat

I don’t want you to give up too soon, or get frustrated when results don’t happen as quickly as you hope they will.

People need prodding; we all do. Whether we admit it or not, we like repeated attention, especially encouragement. A manager’s constant reassurance is a kind of refueling in the workplace, keeping progress humming along. You can’t allow your voicing of support to falter or stop: Constancy and repetition is important in fulfilling some basic needs of our human nature.

So be a broken record. You know you mean what you say the first time, or you wouldn’t have said it at all. However you can say that too, and still be doubted. People need to hear things from you over and over again so they believe them. We all ‘hear’ sincerity in those statements that our managers repeat constantly because then we’re convinced you really mean it, and aren’t just saying it because you think you should, or because it’s the company line. We believe it when we feel you do.

So you repeat what’s most important, and you get people to believe you. Now if you want them to take action, turn up the volume and be more lively.

Animation invigorates everyone

It’s become crystal clear to me that of all the presentations I do, the ones people pay attention to most are the ones in which I’m the most animated, and seem to have taken a theatrical pill of some kind: I become the message of Managing with Aloha on steroids. These are the talks people will learn something from, allowing my message to impact them positively, and be a source of energy for them.

It’s not acting, and it’s easy for me to do because I’m passionate about it, for Managing with Aloha does evoke definite emotion in me. The same thing has to happen with the messages you convey to your people as a manager: If you want results, you have to connect what you believe in, to some very visible emotional volume.

We hear emotion. Messages accompanied by emotion are the ones we take to heart. Everything else, if it captures our attention at all, is merely interesting. The Ho‘ohana work managers want to inspire is beyond “merely interesting” — it moves people.

Whatever it may be about, it’s not enough for your message to be accurate, insightful, and oh-so-right. If it’s to inspire, and spark another person’s motivations, it has to be ‘emotionally loud.’ It must create an energy that reverberates in the workplace.

For “it” to achieve those things, YOU have to. You have the message, now BE the messenger. If you want others to be passionate about their work, you have to be passionate about yours as their manager.

Results will trump any embarrassment

Where this post comes from, is that I’ve watched you in your meetings, and frankly, you have to be less boring. You’re smart and you’re talented (or you wouldn’t be the manager or the boss) but you need to become more passionate and intense about the work you lead, for intensity is hard to ignore. You’ve got to be willing to speak repeatedly, and with more pizzazz.

I’ll give this coaching to managers I’ve observed in action, and they will say, (“yeah, but”” alert!) “That’s not me; I’m a calmer person, and more animation doesn’t come naturally to me.”

Well guess what? It doesn’t come naturally to me either. I learned to get animated because it works. If your message doesn’t wake up the troops, all your other efforts to equip them won’t be worth much, no matter how detailed or involved they are, and you’ll continue to wonder why not.

Chances are, your people want you to be different: Normal is unexciting. This next link goes to a resource article which illuminates what “being unnatural” can do for you. It’s written by voice coach Janet Dowd. In part…

To become a natural presenter you must behave unnaturally

Activities such as giving presentations, delivering conference papers, facilitating seminars, running workshops, passing on information to others in any communal way are not natural. They are contrivances devised since time immemorial as the means by which the information that one person owns can best be disseminated to as many and as varied listeners as possible.

The discomfort of trial and error is part of the deal you must make with yourself to get to a position where other people attending your sessions are not made uncomfortable by your ineptness as you put across the knowledge you own.

We presenters must be prepared to put ourselves through the pain and discomfort of feeling extra-ordinary and silly in order to gain access to the comfort zone in which elements of stance, rhythm, flow, tune, pitch and vocal volume can express ideas openly and clearly. Our tongues must learn a multiplicity of percussive tricks and manipulate the space behind the face to produce the varied tonal qualities that will entice or command other people’s comprehension. Our memories must incorporate unusual words with specific meaning into our vocabularies and our bodies know how best to support us as we perform to inform.

Start small, and then Go Big!

I know that speaking in front of groups can be scary, yet great managers learn to do it, and learn to do it well. They have to.

Start small. Start to turn up the emotional volume in your one-on-one conversations, for in those situations the other person feels a responsibility with making you feel more comfortable, and with responding to you immediately: You will be creating a positive feedback loop. Follow-up conversations are great times to convey more emotion because your follow-up is so welcomed.

Then you can progress to team huddles, and to those meetings with larger groups: Bring Back the Staff Meeting!

You’ll be speaking one day without being to help yourself, because your Ho‘ohana passion has taken over and there’s no turning back. You don’t want to!

Photo Credit: Another volume by MikeLao26 on Flickr

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My mana‘o [The Backstory of this posting]
Each Thursday I write a management posting for Say “Alaka‘i” at Hawai‘i’s newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser. If this is the first you have caught sight of my Say “Alaka‘i” tagline, you can learn more on this Talking Story page: About Say “Alaka‘i”. There are some differences in this Talking Story version, most notably that all links will keep you here on this blog.

We buy, and work, with our hearts

March 18, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

“Human beings move when their emotions are moved.”
—Robin Sharma

As we’ve said, that simple act of MOVING can be powerful:

Our big ideas don’t have to change the world.
They just have to move it along.
—What Your Big Ideas Do Best: Read more there, on why that is both reasonable and empowering.

That Sharma quote continues with:

“The competition in today’s marketplace is not for customers’ money. Not at all. The only real competition is for their emotions. Touch the hearts of the people you serve and they’ll be back for more. Engage their emotions and they’ll become your raving fans. Miss this insight and you just might lose your business.”

We don’t talk about this experience of engaging emotions as much as we should, both the customer’s experience and our own experience in serving them well. When we achieve it there’s a sigh of relief. There might even be an expression of hau‘oli‘oli (joy and delight). But we don’t ho‘omau with it, causing it to be long lasting. (Ho‘omau is the value of persistence.)

I wonder if we don’t talk more about that experience because we feel it is emotional, and we feel a loss at dealing with emotions. Ho‘ohana job creation MUST include an increased workplace comfort with emotional experience: It’s natural to human expression, and a win-win for the business.

Laughter is an emotion. It’s a good one to start a workplace study with, for you won’t get any objections when you look for more of it!

Where to start —immediately

Skill in experience design must be a huge component in assessing the quality of our renewed efforts at Ho‘ohana job creation. I’d go so far as to call it one of your new core job competencies.

Here are three quick thoughts: Start with where you are, for I am sure you presently have this capacity.

You can start with workplace readiness, and look for those ways you may be putting a damper on emotions unintentionally. Before you look at the people component, warm up your efforts with taking a fresh look at the environment, i.e. your workplace atmosphere and sense of place.
In your language of intention, you have to choose a phrase you are comfortable with which articulates that emotional experience as a clearly defined expectation. Emotional experience must be a more tangible deliverable. Give it to each other, and give it to your customers. Give it to all the people within every partnership you have.
When that emotional experience happens, you have to celebrate wildly, shouting your highly value-articulate phrase from the rooftops, arm pumping and all. No formality is needed: Showing your excitement and saying “thank you!” a lot counts significantly.

You buy, and work with your heart too

This is one of those areas where we Alaka‘i Managers have to set an example bravely and confidently. Our own emotions have to be in play when we create heart-tugging experiences in others; I don’t think there’s any other way to achieve that. Not for us, not for our people.

The good news? Aloha is very, very helpful: For 2010, with Aloha. Displays of emotion become much more comfortable when you consider them the pure, authentic way that we “live from the inside out” ha-in and alo-out, Aloha-rightness.

Photo Credit: Laughter by Puck90 on Flickr