employees

What are your employees to you?

In Sunday’s post I’d promised this Hana hou (follow-up):

This “work is personal” mana‘o (attitude) is not a one-way street in an organization managed and run with aloha. Employees have responsibilities that are professional and personal too, and they work best when they consider themselves partners in your business.

In other words, savvy business leaders get everyone to have a vested interest in the success of their business. Savvy business leaders work Kākou, inclusively, encouraging staff to work on the business they share, not just in it.

When your staff feels they are your business partners, they act that way; they rise to the expectation with an eagerness that may surprise you. Their professionalism rises to the top like the cream in butter, because you have made them feel like it is their rightful place.

We won’t go into the operational details of this (at least not right now); we’ll start at the beginning. For employees to consider themselves a certain way, the owner and visionary of that business must think that way first.

You can’t fake this; you have to genuinely believe in it. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. I have found that the successful business owners are those who consider their staff to be their partners: they know them, they trust them and they count on them. These things have been made possible by the vision and values they share. For remember, your values drive your behavior.

I chose the word partners deliberately: in a successful business, all employees are treated as your business partners. They are treated as the stake-holders they are.

This is the epigraph you’ll find across the dedication page of Managing with Aloha:

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I chose Goethe’s quote because I feel that this is what great managers who choose to manage with aloha do. They accept the responsibility they have to engage with their staff in a way that creates business-based partnerships. They take immense pleasure in seeing the involvement of those they manage grow. They count their successes by counting the number of people who have “become what they are capable of being.”

If you share these beliefs, you believe in your people: The Calling of Management: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers.

That’s the headline of a story Dan Nakaso wrote for the Honolulu Advertiser this morning. It’s about his experiences on the job in the last two years he’s been assigned to cover business in Hawaii, and the gist of it is that you could change one word in the headline and reach the same conclusion: covering life proves challenging, rewarding.

Nakaso says, “beyond the numbers and press releases, business stories are often about dreams realized and lost, power plays and miracle turnarounds.” He then shares a few stories of how people have been affected by their lives in business.

And guess what? If you look for the article in the paper’s print edition (I’m afraid it’s not in the online edition), it’s not in section “F,” the day’s Business Section; it’s in “B” the day’s Focus section. Focus. Hmmm.

Nakaso’s article brought more affirmation for me with one of my core beliefs, one you will find in the background of most things I discuss when we talk story here on business: work is personal.

This part of Nakaso’s story really struck a chord with me, and probably with most who will read it today:

“A few business leaders have used the tired line that their ‘greatest asset (the employees) walks out the door every night’ — then refused to let me interview any of them. Others run their operations on a shoestring but treat their workers with the heart of a poet.”

Here’s the thing: which do you think is ultimately the better approach for the success of their business? And by that I mean, “better” for their bottom line.

In the coaching I do with executives, our breakthrough to truly managing with aloha comes when this light comes on in their own understanding: you cannot separate a person’s life and their job, so stop trying to do so. We then ho‘ohana, intentionally work, toward improving business processes that take care of both things, both needs, simultaneously.

If you are a manager, think about this right now for a moment: You know your job affects just about every part of your life, doesn’t it. That’s just the way it is. So ” why would you think it’s any different for those you manage? If an employee has some kind of drama going on at home, you cannot say things like this to them, “I know this is a hard time for you, and I’m sorry it weighs on your mind, but you have to leave those things at home when you come to work.” Get real; it’s just not gonna happen.

Hey, I said things like that to my employees at one time too: Guilty as charged. But now I know better.

What’s good for you is usually good for all your employees. Some call it the Golden Rule. I call it managing with aloha. If we all do it, work is also the most “challenging and rewarding” thing you can turn your attentions to and devote your time to. It will end up being your most productive time. And isn’t that what you want from your employees?

And in our month’s Ho‘ohana theme of Courage, here’s another thought. It’s easy to treat employees as subordinates you manage. However, it takes courage to manage them as people who have personal needs equal to your own.

Hana hou: Next time we’ll talk more about this from another angle. This “work is personal” mana‘o (attitude) is not a one way street in an organization managed and run with aloha. Employees have responsibilities that are professional and personal too, and they work best when they consider themselves partners in your business. More courage required.
A hui hou.

*If you have a copy of Managing with Aloha (mahalo!) you may want to read these related pages of the book, on how “work is personal” relates to:

Ho‘ohana — Chapter 2, page 33

‘Ohana — Chapter 7, page 96

Employees or Business Partners?

Covering business proves challenging, rewarding.