identity

Matchmaker, matchmaker, find me some Skills

February 20, 2012 by Rosa Say

Something we often hear in these challenging times, is that jobs are becoming available, but they’re ‘new’ jobs, out of reach for the unemployed who possess skill sets that have lost their previous worth.

Sounds to me like a presumption riddled with faulty wiring.

One values-based solution seems pretty obvious: “Matchmaker, matchmaker find me a match.”

And who will be the matchmaker?

In my mind, it must be you, who are the Alaka‘i Managers who live, work, manage and lead with Aloha.

Let’s revisit the foundational, belief-fed basics of what this means.

Aloha is the value of unconditional love and acceptance. Aloha elevates the human condition, exploring and celebrating every nook and cranny of a person’s knowledge, strength, talent, capacity and intentions, and thus, their human worth.

‘Unconditional’ means that if this is the value you possess as a manager, you cannot accept that there are conditions to the love and acceptance you give; you are a steward, advocate, and mentor of the unconditional workplace.

Now this doesn’t mean you have blinders on to the challenges you must work with. It means you do whatever you can to overcome those challenges. It means you create a workplace culture which is both healthy and productive.

More often than not, it means you groom people and help them grow, and not that you pick and choose among them, laying down your conditions. (You know this: Conditions and expectations are NOT the same thing.)

Do you recall the epigraph 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 (1749-1832), German writer, scientist and philosopher

The mismatch of job and skillset is a challenge, but it’s a temporary one. It’s fixable. It has fixes that are completely within the realm of possibility for you — if you doubt that, we have to revisit your calling as a manager, for again, managers are supposed to elevate the human condition.

People who want to work, and who hear that their skills have become irrelevant, are being deeply hurt hearing this, for no one — no one! — wants to feel irrelevant. We managers are the people who can help them identify their own gifts.

To make a good match, identify your best ingredients: What are you matching?

What I’m discovering in my coaching, and in several deeper conversations about this topic of “skills relevancy” is this:

What we often need BEFORE new skills training, is better vocabulary. We need a for-today language that surrounds the skill sets we value most in our current business environment. We need to articulate what we want, doing so more clearly and more consistently, and in the way that is strength-relevant over skills-conditional.

“They did not have to create a new gig for me. All they had to do was not hold me back, and support me in figuring it out for myself, so I could find my own answers.”
— Managing Strengths and not Standards

Our requirements may not be that ‘new’ after all… because “the times, they are a-changing,” our requirements have gotten freshened up in some way. Thus our “Language of We” needs freshening up as well. This always happens when we grow!

When we speak with the Language of We, we often find that people do have the skills, or at least an at-the-ready foundation for cultivating them quickly, and all they needed was this aha moment, one you, their manager, have arrived at too: “Ah! We are a match, aren’t we!”

Let’s work together, in the way of Aloha.

Let’s expect that we will be unconditionally matched up, and we simply need to Ho‘o, and make it happen.

Alaka‘i Managers, we need you; get busy as the matchmakers, advocates, and mentors of the human condition that I know you are.

**From the Managing with Aloha Archives:**

What do the truly great managers of our world believe in? (See the whole list of 10 Beliefs)

1. Great managers believe that people are innately good; they must. Without this core belief and faith in people, great management is not possible.
For more: Unconditional Acceptance, Nature and Nurture

4. Great managers believe that all people have strengths which can be made stronger, and that their weaknesses can be compensated for, so they become unimportant to the work at hand.
For more: Job Creation Employs Strengths, Then People

9. Great managers believe it is their job to remove barriers and obstacles so people can attain the level of greatness they are destined for. They believe that “can’t” is a temporary state of affairs, and that everything is only impossible until the first person does it.
For more: When Learning Gets Overwhelming

Write an About Page, even if for a Readership of 1

July 8, 2011 by Rosa Say

You need not be a webmaster or blogger to have an About Page: Write one which is just for you.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and of how it’s such a fabulous exercise of self-attuned and value-aligned thinking, because of three reasons:

My online reading habits. Whenever I click somewhere new to me, an About Page is the first thing I look for. I want to know what people believe in, and what they happen to be working on currently as their Ho‘ohana. That information can be tough to find, and it shouldn’t be if the site or platform is the work of genuinely authentic people.
It was time to update my own About Page here on Talking Story, and writing as a physical activity always delivers in some way. Thinking about something, and forcing yourself to write it down as you flesh it out, even if just to explain it to yourself, are two distinctly different activities, and they build on each other quite well.
Writing my D5M Playbook has reminded me of how small jobs are, and how abundant ‘work’ is in comparison.

To sum it all up, you can write an About Page too (or elevator speech, or Ho‘ohana Statement), to grab hold of your own abundance, and get it into more focus — “it” being the work you find you gravitate toward most of all. That physical activity of writing about it, will often turn on another tap, releasing very attractive thoughts about what you GET to do, and still WANT to do, and probably can. The work you enjoy is what bubbles to the top, just like buttercream does in milk — and like spirit-spilling does, when we treat Aloha as a value.

Write a simple page about your Ho‘ohana work that’s more like a letter to your Aloha Spirit, saying “I know you’re there, and I still hear you guide me!” in wonderful self-affirmation.

Writing about the work you love doing is value-mapping Nānā i ke kumu (Managing with Aloha chapter/value 17): You “look to your source” to thereby know your own truth — that whole, beautiful truth about who you really are… sense of place, sense of work, sense of liberating life design for best well-being.

There’s never been a better time to reinvent ourselves.

We all know that the recessionary economy we’re still in has made earning a living a whole new ballgame. There are several struggles to overcome still, but let’s hō‘imi, and focus on the good ways we’ve been forced to make a change. We get to creatively reinvent ourselves in more liberating and individually-customized ways as we work within our means.

People are too big for jobs and always have been. We don’t fit into them completely enough, especially people like you, who have decided to explore being an Alaka‘i Manager.

‘Job’ will often pigeonhole us into somebody else’s preconceived notion about it, as documented on a ‘job description,’ a construct written for a business objective, and not for you individually as the unique packaging of the Aloha Spirit you are. So ignore the word, and any title you may have which is attached to it, because job is a too-small container for the wealth of working capacity you have — ignore the thought if you can, and focus on all the work activity you do instead.

Job is scarcity thinking — it’s a restrictive definition of sameness and uniformity.
Work is abundance thinking — it’s an activity-packed definition of individuality and possibility.

In my case for example, jobs like author, coach, business owner just don’t cut it; they’re far too general. I’m always trying to laser in to greater detail, and the marvelous result is that being more specific and descriptive doesn’t restrict me. My quirky qualifications actually help me see more possibility that I might have missed before, and I better understand my own niche and place in the world.

We can’t be the life of every party, but we sure can rock the party we’re at.

I’ll be tweaking my Ho‘ohana descriptions forever, always exploring and experimenting, always revising and refining. I fall in and out of love with the words I choose to describe myself, and I love that talk story opportunity I get when people say, “You do what? Tell me what that means.” It’s part of the fun of it all. Work can lighten up, that’s for sure, and be more playful and inventive.

Wikipedia is a great place to discover how some of the people you may admire most had actually defied the conventions of traditional jobs and forged their own destiny. Here are a couple of examples:

Martin Luther King Jr. “was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.”

George Bernard Shaw “was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings address prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy which makes their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.

Shaw was most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrote many brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplished orator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rights for men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding private ownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. ”

So tell us, what are you all about today?

Always remember that motivation is an inside job. When we honestly reflect on it, we often realize that self-motivation is the only kind that counts in the best work we do. That’s great news when you think of all that energetic, pure-talent possibility inside you, just waiting to come out to play.

I’d be honored to be your Reader #2 if you draft an About Page for the first time” I know many of you reading this, and you’re a very interesting bunch. If I wrote your About Page, it would be absolutely impossible for me to describe you in a single job title, or even in a single paragraph! So for heavens sake, don’t do that to yourself.

Stand tall, and stake your claim with what you believe in, and thus, what you work on (another way to describe Ho‘ohana in English :) In fact, do feel free to use the comment boxes to have others in our Ho‘ohana Community meet you. How would you describe your Ho‘ohana these days, your intention with the worthwhile work which makes your heart sing?

Here is the “About the Author” write-up now in the latest draft of my D5M Playbook in progress:

Rosa Say is a workplace culture coach who is determined to reinvent our workplaces value by value, and conversation by conversation, making our working communities healthier and more rewarding for us all. As founder of Say Leadership Coaching, Ho‘ohana Publishing, and Writing with Aloha, Rosa is hired as a speaker, teacher, and coach for her expertise in values-based business management, and as a change agent leading organizational culture design.

Rosa is known for her work leading the Managing with Aloha movement within Hawai‘i and internationally, a philosophy which draws from her 30-year career in the resort hospitality industry and her current business laboratories in writing and coaching for a variety of fields, including education, medicine, governance, and land development due to her specialty of Sense of Place acculturation. Her ‘Ohana in Business modeling initiatives are focused on enabling people to achieve self-sustenance as the shared Kuleana of thriving communities — in her most passionate vision, ‘public welfare systems’ become relics of the past because people no longer need the crutches.

Published in 2004 as the first of her books, Managing with Aloha is considered a classic values essay which describes how Hawaii’s Language of Intention and Sense of Place perception delivers a sensibility in work ethic which can be brought to the art of business universally. The book is widely used as an indispensable resource for managers, for Rosa is their most vocal advocate and champion when management is courageously redefined for developing people and their human-powered energies. Rosa publishes the popular Talking Story blog, and the ebooks she writes “on managing and leading as accessible verbs” are published to encourage the constant curiosity, questioning, and creative energies of her Ho‘ohana Community’s learning conversations there — please join us!

Rosa lives on the Big Island of Hawai‘i and travels frequently in her passion for speaking with audiences of managers seeking to bring the values of Aloha into their work practice. Learn more about her current projects at www.RosaSay.com.

A D5M Listening Goal: Identify Partner Gifts

April 15, 2011 by Rosa Say

Let’s take another look at the circular “Career Adventure” graphic shared yesterday from another perspective, one within the Alaka‘i Manager’s gifting of The Daily Five Minutes.

If you’re already doing the D5M, yet suspect you could recharge your practice with it, this post is for you!

The core purpose of The Daily Five Minutes is this: Managers seek to know those on their team better, by gifting them with 5 minutes of their full attention (one person, one day at a time) so each person can feel they are fully heard — and thus, fully valued.

How better can you value someone, than by giving them a forum in which to explore their creative gifts?

SIDEBAR: Learn more about The Daily Five Minutes HERE if you are new to Talking Story and hearing about it for the first time. Know too, that in Managing with Aloha we call our teammates ‘partners’ instead of ‘employees.’

The agenda of the D5M conversation is up to the partner, (in their gracious receiving) and not the manager (in their generous giving), and managers are encouraged to take what they hear at face value, so both people can speak into it directly, and honestly.

Our D5M goal to LISTEN does not change

A manager’s patience is required in the beginning of a D5M giver/receiver relationship, for the manager-as-giver has no say in the agenda; you have to listen to, and acknowledge whatever is said. And in the beginning, that simple, pure purpose is vitally important, for the depth of your attention is another kind of gauge — one by which your receiver assesses the degree of your listening sincerity, and your Ho‘ohanohano respect for them.

As a manager, you must resist any urges you have to overly influence your partner/receiver’s agendas — you’re supposed to be taking a break from ‘managing’ in the D5M (and from talking too much at all) and just listen and respond to what they want. Their agendas are important to them, and you must demonstrate that they are therefore important to you.

So if you are starting brand new D5M relationships, I want you to read the rest of this posting as what you can anticipate doing over time. To use the wise coaching of Stephen R. Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a book highly recommended by Carol Eikleberry (and me!) for character-building, you can “Begin with the End in Mind.”

‘The End’ I propose to you, is that you are listening as deeply as you can, no matter what is said in a D5M, to better understand what your partner/receiver’s gifts are. You are simply listening deeper, and framing what is actually said (and what you must respond to directly), so you can hear talent talking.

After knowing them ‘better’ seek to know them ‘thoroughly’

Once a person begins to identify their own gifts, they can’t help but talk about them. However most of us don’t have someone we can talk to about our gifts, where we don’t feel like we’re bragging or wallowing in selfish, arrogant ho‘okano pride, but are supposed to talk about them, and can do so in the context of work that everyone would love to have us magnificently perform each day.

Another note on this, is that few people will call their potential a gift: You are the one who has to listen that way.

You are listening for clues to their talents, their strengths, and for ways they feel they can overcome any weaknesses. You are listening for what fills them with energy versus what saps it away. You are listening for what they want to learn about, or grow into, and why, trying to zero in on what they will then do with their new knowledge and/or skills.

For instance, if nearly all Claire talks to you about in her D5M opportunities are about conflicts between other people on the team, is she gossiping, or is she highly empathetic, and sensitive to person-to-person conflicts that affect overall work productivity? Can she be equally sensitive in watching for more solutions too, having the benefit of your coaching to groom her empathy more proactively?

This might sound tricky to you at first, but trust me on this, it actually isn’t difficult at all once you have intentionally set out to practice it, much in the same way that if I tell you to “Look around for the color blue,” you begin to see it everywhere, and even when I say, “Enough already!”

Plus when someone feels that talking about their own gifts is expected and welcomed, the floodgates will open, and managers needn’t be good investigative detectives — they just have to listen with the intention of receiving the information well.

So what is “receiving it well?” It’s helping your partners find more ways that they can move to the next step in the Career Adventure circle, from accepting their gifts, to working with their gifts with your full support and blessing — and your coaching and mentorship.

In short, the D5M gives you a way where no one need to take a more creative career adventure alone.

Begin to carry a brand new D5M coaching notebook!

Take another look at this graphic. Write the name of your next D5M partner/receiver in the middle of the circle, and ask yourself: What do I already know about their gifts (strengths, skills, ability, capacity), and what must I still learn about them?

The reality of so many workplaces is that people may know their gifts, but not feel they have the permission and liberty to use them in more creative ways. So dear manager, give them that permission and liberty, along with your blessing and willingness to help them.

If you click directly on this post’s version of the graphic above, you’ll be taken to my Flickr page, where you can download it in different sizes. Make a bunch of copies, one for each person on your team you’re giving The Daily Five Minutes to, and use it for another 2 or 3 minutes of note-taking when your next D5M with them is over: What gifts did you hear about, and where is your partnership on the circle?

Then, next time you have some project assignments to make, pull out your notebook and flip through it: Which of your D5M partners are ready for a new, and very relevant connection?

The identity of Who you Are and What you Do

April 14, 2011 by Rosa Say

All of those things are up to you. The question is, are you willing to take them on as your life’s true work?

Articulating who you are and what you do is powerful magic in getting you closer to the self-expression of unconditional Aloha and Nānā i ke kumu (sources-fed sense of self) you are most comfortable with, and hence, will be most willing to share with others.

Taken together, they become an identity you create for yourself, rather than accepting what others might think you should be.

I was gently reminded of this in the reading I chose lately (yesterday’s post), by this terrific visual image:

It’s good coaching. Accept your gifts first (Nānā i ke kumu), to then work with your gifts (Ho‘ohana), to then give your gifts to others (Mālama).

Author Carol Eikleberry says, “it takes courage to be yourself” and I agree, however I think it’s much harder to be someone else, someone you’re not. Harder and way less satisfying, possibly painful.

So what I mean by “articulating them is powerful magic” is this encouragement: Get more verbal about who you are as who you want to be. Say it in the words which will move you, and evoke your own, very personal, Language of Intention. For instance, I always remind myself that “I want to be the manager’s advocate when that manager has a true Alaka‘i calling rooted in his or her Aloha Spirit: I want to create great resources for them, readily available, practical and useful ones.”

It keeps me more focused, and less uncertain.

Begin with “I want__”

Even if you only say who you want to be to yourself in a quiet room, it will ground you in a personal courage that begins to grow larger, swelling with each time you say it.

You will continually edit your sentence, reshaping it in self-talking self-determination until that golden day you don’t hesitate to say it clearly for others to hear too, so that they in turn, begin to relate to you in that new way, replacing whatever ‘should’ they may have previously held for you, and becoming a better supporter for you — and possibly a partner too.

Don’t say, “I want to be a manager” or “I want to be a leader” and leave it at that, because those words aren’t specific enough, or descriptive enough; they don’t have enough emotion attached to them. To say, “I want to be an Alaka‘i Manager” probably isn’t descriptive enough either, because that’s my label more than yours — make it yours by adding a why to it: “I want to be an Alaka‘i Managers because_____________.”

Once you have your self-coaching statement of who you are intent on being, you can more easily work on articulating what you do, whether it is for you (accept your gifts), for your Ho‘ohana (work with your gifts) or for your ‘Ohana receivers (give your gifts).

Postscript: The graphic from Eikleberry shows a continuous circle because this is a process she says “creative and unconventional people” will constantly go through each time they identify a new talent or skill — one which excites them enough to go on a full career-shaping adventure with it. Here is the full paragraph which accompanies her image:

“A career adventure focuses on problems to which the answers are never final. As you embody conflicts and grow through them, you realize more of your potential; then, from a more mature perspective, you are again faced with the inevitable tensions that are part of being human. Creators often find themselves circling back, revisiting themes they have already explored, but with a greater perspective. (Small wonder that psychological growth is so often described as helical in shape!) There are always new gifts and new problems that emerge and need to be integrated, no matter how much development has already taken place.” — Carol Eikleberry

However please do not let that scare you! Embrace the adventure, and thrill to it. Look too, at the tulip above, and imagine yourself in the same way, rising above a sea of sameness to bloom in your own unique way.

And then be circular: Do it over, and over again with each new talent you decide to more fully express. I think this may be one of today’s greatest gifts to all of us, this chance we have to explore all our gifts, and not waste our full potential by dedicating all our work to just one career.