leadership

Alaka‘i Leadership, Chiefs and Indians

October 18, 2011 by Rosa Say

I find myself thinking about leadership an awful lot lately.

I’m craving it.

Our upcoming state and federal elections have a lot to do with my craving, though I personally don’t think of any elections as “upcoming” as our current crop of politicians do… wouldn’t it be nice if they actually did the work we thought we were electing them for, instead of turning their job into a 9-5 of thinly disguised campaigning and ideology soap-boxing? And wouldn’t it be great having broadcast media return to true journalism, and investigative reporting on worthy issues instead of publishing political polls, and hedging their bets on polarized races? (Okay, that was more rant than craving.)

My cravings with leadership are heavily influenced by the less-than-healthy economy too (as my recent postings here illustrate), and significantly, that what may be the biggest movement of our time is a leaderless one. There’s still global warming and our La NiÃ±a year weather challenges, the harshness of the coming winter on those who are poverty-stricken, and our energy crisis to think about as our public sector continues to get tapped out, or opts for austerity measures.

Often, I think about the quality of education our youth are getting (or not getting) as 21st century teachers struggle to reinvent their curriculum and their methods, while the “elder statesmen” in the ivory towers of academia obsess over their own tenure and broken budget models. I think about the skills training which must get better defined vocationally, given our “Great Reset” and I wonder where more leadership will emerge there.

These are just the biggies that we all hear about and grapple with daily, and we could pick on the private sector too; they are not immune from today’s recessionary and climactic adjustments. However there’s a myriad of smaller reasons I crave leadership as well. They are ‘smaller’ in that they don’t make the headline news as frequently (if at all), but they are not small in their importance.

These “smaller reasons” is the stuff of leadership as a value. They are catalysts and triggers, because they are behaviors, and when we concentrate on them, they have a significant domino affect, where they affect all these things we consider to be such big issues.

Leadership delivers the affirmation of our values

For instance, there is the need for ethical behavior, where leaders set a good example with “the right thing to do” versus the politically correct strategic advantage.

There is the need for bravery with innovation in a plethora of business models, and the need for new advancements in science.

There is the need for societal coping with increased aging, with more support for new family structures as we all live longer and with increasingly varied interests.

There is the need for more individualism and less conformity, more youth-infused change, and more senior-respected knowledge brokering, honoring time-tested experience.

There are the needs which can be addressed by exponential growth in social entrepreneurship and non-profiteering. On the other side of the coin, our behavior as consumers could use some nobility too.

There is the opportunity for healthy, collaborative competition, where those competing to unveil the next big idea are working on the greater good of our populace and our planet.

Values do fulfill these needs, and in particular, the opportunity for caring and courageous leadership is spreading like wildfire. When opportunity beckons, self-leadership can become most critical of all:

“Example has more followers than reason.”
~ Christian Nevell Bovee

What do we do, when leadership fails us?

I think about leadership all the time simply by merit of what I do in my work, and because I KNOW that values drive good behaviors, both in self-managing, and in self-leading.

I find that I am thinking about leadership an awful lot more than usual, because to be perfectly blunt, it’s missing in action where we’re supposed to be assured of finding it. Those positioned for leadership by merit of their title aren’t performing well, and they continue to flounder, or worse, retreat in buck-passing.

It is incredulous to me – appalling really – that no single leader on Wall Street has emerged to say, “We hear you America, we do! This is what we will do about your pain.” in response to the growing Occupy movement. It saddens me terribly to think the President of the United States feels he must “resort to” taking his message to the people because his workplace team, the U.S. Congress, isn’t actually on his team (or he on theirs, as Thomas Friedman had pointed out).

Remarkable leadership would make me wildly jubilant (buzzwords are fascinating, aren’t they?) however I must say I’d do cartwheels and sing out loud for more basically sound leadership too. I crave new heroes for our modern, right-now world, heroes who inspire the rest of us to be better than we now are. I crave for heroes everywhere, and I want lots of them.

When I have cravings like this, cravings which cause me to yearn for better answers to my frustrations, there is a place I know to look deeper into. That place is this sweet spot where my personal values match up to the most touch points with the values of Managing with Aloha.

This is a good time to talk story about SELF-LEADERSHIP and make things more personal.

Sure, we need to elect the best leaders we can, and I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the platforms of each leader you select in any forum, and each politician you will vote for: Be part of an enlightened, well-informed electorate wherever you may live. Be articulate and vocal: Voice your opinion so that those you support will clearly understand they are elected to represent you and the constituency you share residency within.

For that matter, don’t be content with sitting back and watching others in any team you are a part of: Get involved in a substantive way. Be active in how you participate.

However if you crave exciting new leadership too, you know that good participation is not enough, don’t you. We need generously large doses of self-leadership, and we need it everywhere and in everyone, for when we work together, we get pretty profound results. We are unstoppable.

I want unstoppable.

Alaka‘i Leadership is a concept of abundance

I want to be a new hero of our time, and I want you to be one too. There is a lot of opportunity to go around, and I’ve never been one who subscribes to the belief that there can be too many Chiefs and not enough Indians, at least not when both Chiefs and Indians are working with great values, and leading with Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola-generated intention and passion. Good leadership has very little (if anything) to do with titles, positions, or power; both Chiefs and Indians can have it. The only question is if they call upon their values and use it.

So call yourself Chief, call yourself Indian- BE the leader you want to be. Be Alaka‘i:

“As a person who is Alaka‘i, you build the strength of character found in initiative and independence… Those who are Alaka‘i possess a strong belief in their own capacity and in the power of possibility: They are confident optimists, filled with hope.”
— Alaka‘i, the value of leadership, in Managing with Aloha

And in case you missed it: Calling all Managers: We need you.

For the practical and pragmatic: Lead with Compassion, then Manage for Competence, andHow Alaka‘i Managers get work to Make Sense.

War paint in 2011: Greek "indignants" cover their ears, mouths, or eyes in Athens' Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament during the global day of action on October 15, 2011. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images for The Big Picture)

Footnote:

This post, its intention intact but content substantially edited for new publication today, had originally appeared within another blog I loved dearly at the time, called Managing with Aloha Coaching (circa August 2007 through December 2008). The blog was dedicated to a more in-depth, Hawai‘i-connected study of the 18 values presented in my book, Managing with Aloha, and was written during the pre-recession height of my then-consulting business, an almost frenetic time where my coaching laboratory was flush with activity and new learning both for me and my clients, most of whom remain great friends. As I should have expected from that effort, integrally woven with my own Hawai‘i Sense of Place as it was, MWAC became more personal than I had intended it to be, but in my mana‘o, it was also an immensely pleasing Ho‘ohana blend. I plan to eventually retire the site, and so I am slowly bringing its content here for a co-evolution with Talking Story, where its honored spirit can continue to teach, and be added to, for Ka lā hiki ola, it will always be the dawning of a new day in some regard!

Write your story of leadership

January 11, 2011 by Rosa Say

I’m thrilled to have a new blog in my feed reader, and I want to share it with you: Chris DeWeese has decided to share his leadership journey with Managing with Aloha and Getting Things Done —which long-time readers know I’ve read and invested time in as a productivity exploration.

Please click over, read his first post, and support him with your comments and a subscription.

I love that Chris starts with his own story, and his intention to keep writing his story as it continues to play out, for that’s what management and leadership becomes for all of us who choose them: A self-directed story of what we learn, and how we intentionally choose to use it in working with others. As Chris writes:

The one lesson I remember best and has always helped me as a leader was simple, “take care of your people and they will take care of you.”

I’ve always privately thought of Managing with Aloha as ‘my Pono story’ and do explain that in my book’s prologue and ending. I don’t think of it as a memoir exactly, for my goal writing it was to urge managers to treat management and leadership as a calling, and my desire was to share the goodness of the Hawaiian values to help. However the story is there, and it can’t really be separated from the whole, for it’s a story about how I sought Pono (the value of rightness) working within an industry which wasn’t embraced or admired very much in Hawai‘i at the time. The sense of balance we can pull from the value of Pono is important because you can’t do good work when you don’t feel completely good doing it.

Good begets good, and all people can start from their inherent goodness. It’s one of my favorite coachings and I believe it with all of me: Mind (mana‘o), body (kino), soul and spirit (‘uhane).

When will you write your story? I know you have one, and as David Zinger likes to say,

“Your story is more important than mine because it is, after all, your story.”

As I commented for Chris, I believe that blogging one’s personal story publicly is a profound expression of lokomaika‘i ~ generosity. He certainly gave me a great gift in doing so with this first step! However I realize how much bravery it takes to be that open and vulnerable, and to ask strangers you haven’t met yet for their feedback. But you know what happens? They can become a strong support system for you, strengthening you in several ways. All of you who read Talking Story certainly do that for me.

We’ve talked about journaling often, as the way to write things down, and write to think. Incorporate journaling into your 2011 Year of Better Habits. Maybe you’re not ready to do so publicly like Chris is doing, and that’s okay. Do it for yourself. Capture your story so you can truly appreciate what a gem it is.

A bit more from Chris:

A few months ago I was selected to a leadership position and moved from being an individual contributor back to leading a group of people. Most people know that there is a big difference when you make this change. I went from thinking how I would complete my projects, to how I will take care of my employees and help them complete their projects. I guess if you look at it in a way I took on an exponential amount of work and responsibility, but I also gained the chance to influence my employees lives in a positive way and guide us in a direction of continued success.

Sure sounds like answering a calling to me.

I’m eager to read more, aren’t you?

The Next Truman

July 21, 2010 by Rosa Say

A hard job, the presidency. Of this, our country, and of this time. It is difficult to lead in any country in this time.

Harder still, it seems, when so much attention is paid to your efforts (and your non-efforts). So I wonder what we are doing about nurturing and fostering leadership that still grows somewhere within our chaotic system of governing, waiting for its own time to bloom in the sunshine of attention.

Thought about this when reading a short summary of the “late blooming” of Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972). This was written by Brendan Gill:

“It is a commonplace to say of Harry S. Truman that few men have ever been less prepared to assume the duties of president of the United States. No vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have been encouraged to share official responsibilities with him, but Truman had a further disadvantage: He was a comparative stranger to FDR, who had discarded Truman’s immediate predecessor in office, Henry A. Wallace, because his political advisers had said Wallace was too radical and would prove a handicap when FDR ran for an unprecedented fourth term.”

“Senator Truman of Missouri was the product of the Democratic party machine in Kansas City, and his early life had been marked by a series of failures, from farming to selling haberdashery. Little was expected of him when, at the age of sixty, he succeeded FDR. To the general surprise, Truman proved to be a tough-minded executive, who quickly made his weight felt in foreign affairs: He approved the dropping of the atmoic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; he sponsored the Marshall Plan in Europe; and he dismissed General MacArthur at the height of the Korean War. He ran for president in his own right in 1948, against the seemingly more popular Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, and defeated him. Two of his favorite remarks were ‘The buck stops here’ and ‘If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.’ He declined to run in 1952, retiring to his home in Independence, Missouri, and becoming in his seventies and eighties one of the most respected and best-loved public figures of his time.”

When you consider your own workplace, or even your own family, or the community of public service closest to your home, who might the next Harry S. Truman be? What is he or she doing now?

Might our next Truman be you?

The Real Problem with Leadership

May 25, 2010 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

One problem with leadership, is simply that we don’t have enough of it.

The bigger problem with leadership is that it isn’t attractive to us. We, as individuals, aren’t accepting it as our Kuleana, and personal responsibility. We keep looking for someone else to lead, for the truth of the matter is that we prefer being followers (and sadly, armchair quarterbacks ready to complain.)

Here’s the catch: The best leaders are the ones who expect more leadership from you, not ‘good’ following.

Jacob LOST — In Lost, Jacob was on a quest to find another leader, and someone who could do what he could not. Photo courtesy ABC.

Are we looking in all the wrong places?

If you do a search on Amazon.com for leadership books, over 61,306 results come up, and those are only the ones with the word ‘leadership’ in the product description’s keywords. (If you’re curious about the comparison, as I was, 603,208 results come up for ‘management.’)

My theory is that so many people write about leadership because we’re still yearning for it: We seek it by trying to articulate it better, so we’ll know exactly what we’re looking for, especially in a world which is anything but static and stable. As with most things, we can better grab onto something we can tangibly identify.

I’ll often remind myself of this longstanding leadership quest so that I focus better in my own writing about it. What I’m trying to do, is to help you see leadership as the visible evidence of self-leadership behaviors: Leading is for you, and not just “the other guy.” If you look for leadership in someone else, you will always be looking, and you’ll always feel frustrated.

So there’s three ways I’ll break leadership down when writing about it:

I’ll connect it to the creation of energy as our most important resource (my way of defining leadership), for hopefully, that’s very desireable to you: Gathering your own energy is where you must start. You fuel up.
I’ll write about the opportunities we have to lead, and state them as your calls to action (recent examples have been Sense of Workplace and Job Creation).
I’ll write about that action as activities that are not larger than your life, but highly possible: They are tangible bits which squarely sit in your own circle of influence.

However what’s very frustrating for me, is that I constantly hear back: “It needs to start at the top, right?” and the finger-pointing at the boss will begin immediately. Maybe so; maybe improvement does need to happen with your boss too, but what if it never happens? Will you really be content with playing the victim forever? Why not start any necessary improvement with you?

We have to stop this blame game where we constantly look at someone else as the reason we do not take action and behave better, or with greater bravery. Please stop focusing on what the other guy is doing about it, and look within. Leadership is scarce when there’s a scarcity of initiative — yours.

Be honest: We’re looking for saviors

Leadership is open to everyone, and opportunity abounds, but we don’t see it that way. We refuse to, and shield ourselves in self-righteousness instead. Pure yuck. It’s a cop-out to say that the problem with leadership is the way someone else does it (or doesn’t).

This is something that really bugs me about election seasons, such as we’re in right now: They proliferate the misconception that leadership is about title, position and placement. We get stuck in believing that “winner takes all” and he or she will now be the only one who is “the leader” when that simply isn’t true. The smartest thing the so-called winner can do is tap into the leadership desires of his or her previous opponents to channel them, such as President Obama did when he asked Hillary Rodham Clinton to work with him as our U.S. Secretary of State.

However if he hadn’t done so, would Clinton have stopped her practice of self-leadership, neglecting to renew her initiative? I sincerely doubt it. She would have looked for another opportunity, and so can you.

Be your own savior. Solve the leadership problem by always asking, “What about me? What can I do?” or if it’s more comfortable for you, ask, “How can I help?” and “Where can I start?”

The way we solve “the problem with leadership” is to solve our problem with self-leadership being missing from our personal practice. Your small wins can create big domino effects.

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Archive Aloha: Here’s a Take 5 of related postings:

Initiative, Humility and the Local Way
Who leads? You do. In the Sweet Spot Quote: “The trouble with all or nothing is that it is often too intimidating to choose all, making it much too easy to choose nothing.”
Guilt-Free Self-Leadership: 12 Possibilities
“What’s in it for me?” is a Self-Leadership Question
Leadership is Why and When and Management is What and How

Check out the post tags for more.

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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 and will add copies to Talking Story when they blend nicely with our conversations here. 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 most of my hyperlinks will keep you here on this blog.