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Managing Strengths and not Standards

April 27, 2011 by Rosa Say

I hate job descriptions. What we need instead, are strength descriptions.

Here’s what I mean, using my own story as an example.

One way I’ll surprise people, is with my honest self-assessment in regard to customer service; I’m strong as a customer service trainer, particularly in Ho‘okipa (the value of generous hospitality), but I’m not skilled in serving customers myself. I can teach those skills, and even coach people in using them, far, far better than I can do them myself. Yet I was able to forge a very successful career in the ‘Hawai‘i hospitality business’ where the expectation is that “first and foremost: we serve customers.”

That’s not to say I have a different philosophy personally, or that I’m being hypocritical or duplicitous in any other way. I knew the actual delivery of good customer service was a personal weakness for me, so I compensated for that, by working in other areas of service where my strengths were actively in play.

Translucent Strength

My strengths were in working with employees, peers, and other managers, and not in serving customers. The personal service I excel with as Mea Ho‘okipa, a customer service provider, is given to others in contextual relationships specific to co-working — to internal customers rather than external ones. I will never, ever be a sales person, unless I’m ‘selling’ someone on the fit of a good job for them within my Ho‘ohana coaching.

My story is not an unusual one. In his book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, Marcus Buckingham tells us about Christine, a trainer in southern California:

“Like each of us, Christine has a number of distinct strengths. One of them is that she is invigorated by training trainers to be better. She loves nearly every aspect of the teaching process. She loves seeing the satisfaction a trainer feels when his students excel and the growth in his own confidence as he becomes more comfortable with his material. She has a third eye for fine distinctions, for the subtleties in how a trainer presents information and why those nuances make a big difference in turning students’ confusion into understanding.”

“Interestingly, she’s not particularly adept at doing what she’s training her trainers to do. Sit her down in a room with five senior trainers who want to dive into the details of program design, and she excels. But increase those numbers to twenty-five, turn the trainers into students, and tell Christine to hold their attention for a full day’s training, and she’s mediocre.”

“She’s not invariably a great teacher, yet she’s a great teacher of teachers. It may seem a bit strange, but most of us, when you look closely, have a combination of strengths and weaknesses that is not entirely predictable.”

“Strange or not, the challenge for Christine and her manager, is to figure out how to exploit this great strength for the benefit of the company. They have a lot to talk about.”

Those are the kinds of conversations we don’t have often enough in the workplace. One problem is the on-going challenge of making time for them — it’s the problem we try to solve in part, with the Daily Five Minutes, converting found opportunities into more productive ones.

However there’s a deeper problem in play; and that’s the expectation of managers. It’s an expectation which puts blinders on us. We’ll often expect employees to conform to standardized expectations (i.e. Job Descriptions) instead of personalized ones — the Ho‘ohana work which suits their spirit, innate talents, and strengths.

The expectation of conformity is as foolish as watering a seed and expecting it to bloom into an animal or piece of machinery.

Red Stems

We fail to have conversations about what people are strong at, and about the proficiencies they’ll truly shine at when we figure out how to stage them, because we spend way too much time talking about OUR standards for their performance instead. We work at fitting employees into our molds for them, and into our preconceived views of what the world of work should look like — even when we’ve begun to realize how dysfunctional that picture has become.

I was far happier, and far more productive for my employer, when my manager didn’t force me into the customer service roles I wasn’t suited for, whether to pay my dues, prove to the rest of the team that I could do it, or some other misguided reason. It wasn’t that I didn’t like customers, or felt that the work was below me. I wasn’t intimidated by it, and didn’t need to learn more. It just didn’t motivate me or reward me as much as other work did. I could go through the motions, choosing the all the right motions, but calling upon deeper passions with them was like trying to squeeze water from a sponge that is completely dry.

Customers could tell too. They never had a complaint about my customer service, but I didn’t routinely knock their socks off with it either. Not good enough for them, and not good enough for me.

However here is where I was extremely lucky: My bosses were not stubborn and unreasonable. When I showed them what I could do, doing it better, and in a way that filled another need of the business, they turned me loose and let me go for it.

And this is an important point: 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.

Peeling Petals

So, Mr. and Ms. Manager, what are the expectations you honestly have of your own staff? How can you honor their strengths, and share your savvy with workplace design by compensating for their weaknesses in smarter, and more respectful ways?

Here’s more from the story in Buckingham’s book: As he explains, Christine actually IS director of program development at a training company. Her job is to design the training programs, and then, once they have been sold to a company, to deliver them:

“They have a lot to talk about. Together, Christine and her manager have to figure out how to design a train-the-trainer product based on her strengths, how to market it, price it, and select a specific group of clients on which to focus it. They have to decide what kinds of materials are necessary and whether Christine is the right person to create them. They have to decide the optimal number of trainees Christine is capable of working with and how frequently she should check back in with them to assess their competence.”

“These are the kind of details that will determine just how productive Christine’s strengths are at work. Given how critical her performance is to the entire company, she and her manager should be talking about them all the time.”

You have heard my story, and Christine’s. Now think of someone you are managing. What are the strengths they bring to the job, and what are the specific details your conversations can address? What are their needs, in having you coach and support them?

Do this assessment for each and every one of the direct reports you have, and do it consistently. Don’t you dare give them a performance appraisal on the wrong expectations.

These are not difficult questions. Managers know the answers in the context of their workplace. The bigger question is if they are focused on them, and on the right expectations to begin with.

~ Some Archive Aloha which might help ~
But please; do answer the question before you move on to more reading.
Make this coaching relevant to you!

  • A D5M Listening Goal: Identify Partner Gifts
  • “I feel strong when I talk to you.”
  • TED Talk: Barry Schwartz on our Loss of Wisdom
  • Along with your talent, bring me Fresh You
  • Beautiful Confidence

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Why I blog, circa 2011 (and about ‘real books’)

April 18, 2011 by Rosa Say

Fellow blogger Becky Robinson writes, “Clicking the publish button on a new post always requires me to muster both faith and courage.” She also shares, “Here’s another confession: apart from the fun of blogging, I am not clear about why I am doing it.”

I’m with Becky; writing a blog is fun. And I can relate to doing something because you sense it’s good for you, without being completely clear on how or why, and having trust in the process — even when it takes faith and courage.

However Becky got to me wonder if it’s time that I share more of my present day reasons with you as well, especially since I never hesitate to encourage others to blog too. Case in point: Write your story of leadership. I haven’t done a meta-blogging article like this for quite a while (a post about blogging), feeling I’ve adequately covered it in the past — there’s a bunch of them in the archives, from the earlier years of Talking Story. But I suppose that’s a little naive. Things change. The world changes, and with it the ecosystem on the internet changes, as does my purpose, and yours.

This isn’t what all the “how to blog” coaches out there are likely to agree with, for their common teaching is that a blog should be written for the reader, and not for the writer. But that’s them, this is me, I’m not looking to monetize my blog, and though I took a lot of their advice early on, this is my truth about blogging today — it’s the pono background you deserve as my generous readers, gifting me with your attention as you do.

My blog is for me, my books are for you

Though it hasn’t always been like this, and you may get a different feeling when you dig into the archives, my blogging now is for me, even in welcoming conversation with you as it does, so that my books can be for you. I went through a number of years blogging, here at Talking Story and elsewhere as guest and columnist, with Managing with Aloha all the book I felt I needed, because I worked with it so actively in my coaching business (and still do). But I’ve continued to learn more as the years go by, as we all do, and now that Managing with Aloha is seven years published for me personally, I feel it’s time for me to get back to book writing.

Book publishing has changed dramatically, and in the past year I’ve stuck with ebook publishing as my learning process about what that entails, however I plan to do both with the manuscript I’m working on now, releasing it in both ebook and printed book form. For me, as a publisher of managerial business writing, there is a good, better, best continuum that goes like this:
Blog posts ~ good. Ebooks ~ better. Books ~ best.

And not just for me as a publisher, but as a reader too. That’s why you’ve seen me get back to sharing more book reviews here with you lately, with as-they-happen updates shared on Goodreads. I’m working at improving the inputs I take in with reading, feeling that:

Blog posts (and most ‘online journalism’ today) ~ good reading, good sharing.
Ebooks ~ better reading, better exploring.
Print Books ~ best of all for true learning.

Tab it and mark it up!

A ‘real book’ is more substantial. It’s something we want printed, because it represents this very tangible filing cabinet of learning which started out as the author’s learning, but became ours too. Both author and reader will invest substantially more energy in a book, and that investment pays off with far greater rewards.

Managing with Aloha represents over three decades of work experience for me, back to the first job I ever had. The book I am working on now, will cover some specific workplace experiences I have had between 1989 and today.

Work should be relevant and useful for you

Even the ‘work’ it takes for you to read, or write. Mine certainly is. It’s all part of Ho‘ohana (chapter 2 in Managing with Aloha: here’s the free book excerpt).

As my blog, Talking Story circa 2011 is a combination of current commentary on our world of work, what I read and learn about, and a drafting of the way I write to make sense of it all. Said another way, it’s a book germinating laboratory for me today. I blog to draft publicly because I enjoy inviting you into the early part of the process, so your feedback, our conversations, can be incorporated into my thoughts too; it’s a kind of rudimentary collaboration. But I know that my blogging will not give most blog-reading managers the complete “how-to” they might be looking for help with, and that’s why I want to write more books.

I feel there is a void out there for managers today, especially in an economic climate where good professional training has been cut from business budgets, and unfortunately, is still considered a luxury, as short-sighted and naive as that is. Books can help as an affordable option; they certainly help me learn! Substantial books as I’ve described them, books that are more relevant, practical and useful, aren’t easy to find for the Alaka‘i manager, and I want to help in the best way I’m able to.

Offering book reviews, of books I have read and can recommend, is one way. Writing books myself is another.

You know how I feel: In my view, there is no good leadership without great management, at least not in today’s prevalent organizational business models (though that can change in our future, a change I’d welcome). Management is a profound responsibility, and it’s not for everyone. It’s a calling when done in the with Aloha way, not a place-holder on an org chart designed for business efficiency over and above talent development. I’m honest and vocal about telling people who manage for reasons of career climbing to get out of management as their temporary occupation as soon as they can, because they’re probably creating too many casualties along the way, instead of developing other people like managers are supposed to.

It all gets back to Kuleana, the personal responsibility we accept

I feel pretty blessed in knowing where my stronger activities lie as a writer, with ‘managing with aloha’ now more than book, and the threading theme coursing through the various business topics I’ll write about. It’s the heart of everything. I know how writing connects to my thinking, and my accomplishments, with the values-based philosophy of MWA grounding me as my Nānā i ke kumu (spirit source, wellspring, and sense of place).

I never get writer’s block, and more than anything else, my literary life is a constant search for more time to simply sit and write, versus coaching and speaking for hire, and the rest of day-to-day living. I’m rarely looking for blog topics to share with you, in fact, what usually happens is that I hold myself back or add finds to my Tumblr, fearing that I’m flooding your sensibilities with way too much early thinking on my part. I often feel I need to be more selective about when I hit that publish button here on the blog. Along the way, there is stuff that drops out of the queue, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I stop thinking about it, and it may come back in a book when its time has arrived.

Talking Story is now 7 years old, amazing really, and I’ve gotten past the newbie blogger’s anxiousness to hit publish too quickly. I do sleep on posts, queue them up in better order, revising and editing several times along the way, however I eventually let it go as a blog post, knowing full well it’s a draft of thought in process. Hopefully, you accept my invitation, and step into the laboratory because it’s enough to get you thinking about a comment you can share at times too, allowing me to be Mea Ho‘okipa in hosting this conversation platform for you.

I resist publishing blog posts until they feel ‘good’ to me in that continuum I mentioned. I want my book manuscripts to move through better and onto best. I have a much higher expectation with them, and I’m sure you do too.

The more you read, the greater the context

Read back over the last few paragraphs in the previous section, and it’s fairly obvious — I this, I that. I, I, I, and my Ho‘ohana responsibility in a blog post written about me in this blogging purpose. However please know I am very sincere about writing my books for you.

I had some hesitation in writing this post at all, for I hope you’ll stick around, and stay with me through this part of the collaborative process too. But I know that my books are better written, and better for you when reading time is at a premium, as it is for us all. This expectation has actually been a change for me over the course of my blog years too; I love when you read Talking Story and participate here, but I no longer expect it as unreasonably as I once did.

I shared a draft of this post with someone who I know reads Talking Story faithfully, and she disagreed with me completely as to the absence of more how-to’s here. However, I suspect she disagreed with me because she has already read my ebooks, and actively uses MWA with her workplace team in the value mapping process. For that’s when your blog reading changes here: You have the context of more backstory, more learning curation you’ve already journeyed through. You’ve connected reading to personally experimenting, and to gaining your experience through chosen action. As one of my haumana (students), you can easily get more of the how-to that actually is here, how-to that other people will miss.

Reading choices, with more help in the choosing

So I’ll end this post with an honest pitch for the 1 book and 3 ebooks I have written so far. 3 need to be purchased, and 1 is free, but free is subjective, isn’t it… the how-to within it is extensive, and you have to do the work it proposes to get the most out of it.

My intention with ebooks going forward, is that they fall into the $4.99 or less price point, to package one concept at a time — just as Value Your Month to Value Your Life did for the MWA m.o. of value alignment, with value-mapping the how-to. I’m quite proud of Business Thinking with Aloha, and had released it as a more robust ebook to get the distribution started in expanding the collaborative laboratory possible in exploring it more fully, suspecting it could be ‘real book’ one day in the league of MWA. It’s somewhat of an ebook experiment unto itself for now, for the big advantage to ebooks as essays, are that they can be so easily revised and updated as their ideas are further developed.

So on to the suggested reading… Those were my intentions, and what follows is what I published them as for YOU. (see all the dust jackets on my book page. I keep the link up in the blog banner.)

  • Please start with MWA ~ Managing with Aloha. You can get it in hardcover, or on Kindle.
  • Then, if MWA resonates, and you share these beliefs, deciding to answer your calling for managing others well, download Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks from Smashwords. It’s the free one, and I wrote it for people who opt for self-coaching; hiring me for personal coaching and attending my workshops are not options for them. Thus reading annotation to learn and retain is a key part of that self-coaching process (as you are starting to see me do more visibly here on the blog with my own book reviews for others).
  • If you’re looking for a more immediate start with your MWA practice, buy Value Your Month to Value Your Life. The how-to within it is value-mapping within the workplace, and it will help you see more how-to relevance in the rest of the OIB business model as it is discussed both within MWA and here on the blog. If blog posts are all you have read from me so far, this is also your shortest ebook choice. I think it’s a very good companion to the 5-week program too, helping you create an atmosphere conducive to your Ho‘ohana. Choose from Smashwords or Kindle.
  • The Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks program is an in depth study. If you decide it’s a bit much for you, consider warming up with Business Thinking with Aloha, for I wrote that ebook visualizing college graduates and other early job seekers as my audience, as a ‘business of life Thought Kit’ they can consider framing their job experience with, as they learn on the job. The framing how-to within it is based on the 9 Key Concepts (linked below). Choose from Smashwords or Kindle.

BTWA features the 9 Key Learning Concepts of MWA.
Blog page: Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts

The next book

So that book I mentioned writing right now” I hope to have it out soon, very soon. My first draft of the full manuscript is complete, and I’m in edit process, hoping to make it shorter and not longer. I’ve been writing it since January, having started it the day after I published Value Your Month to Value Your Life, and in my Ha‘aha‘a humble yet Aloha biased view, it will be the ultimate how-to for managing people in an extremely generous way — even if the manager who reads it decides that the full workplace bench press of the Managing with Aloha OIB (‘Ohana in Business model) isn’t for them.

The book will also launch a new coaching program I hope to have in place this summer with Ruzuku.

Stay tuned, and know that as a Talking Story reader, you’ve already been an important part of it, a very important part. Thank you.

Variables of the Monday or Friday Decision

March 18, 2006 by Rosa Say

This is where we left off:

From Monday or Friday? Choose Wisely


…. Like any decision you make, you have to do your due diligence in making sure all the variables for that decision are at your disposal.

We’ll talk about that with my next post.

This is that “next post.” To title it differently,

Monday or Friday? Choose Wisely Part II

Tell you what. We’re having this conversation because there is a difficult conversation to be had about an employee’s less than desirable behavior. Values drive behavior. In scanning all our variables to make the Monday or Friday decision, let’s look at this from the standpoint of value alignment.

‘Ike Loa

Choosing wisely between Monday and Friday [for difficult conversations] is quite easy for you if you have been diligent in your gifting of the Daily Five Minutes (D5M).

Ultimately, when you are managing with aloha, with the D5M in your practice you would have nurtured a circle of comfort between you and your employee for conversations at virtually all levels of complexity and emotional difficulty.

You will know them quite well: In Managing with Aloha, the D5M appears in the chapter on ‘Ike loa because it means “to know well,” and your employees represent a wealth of valuable knowledge for you.

Continue Reading

Monday or Friday? Choose Wisely

March 16, 2006 by Rosa Say

As a VP in a large resort operation, I was normally involved in those unfortunate situations when an employee was in the escalating stages of progressive discipline. This was the  progression of how we handled not-good employee performance situations:

Stage 1 – coaching

Stage 2 – verbal counseling

Stage 3 – verbal counseling round 2 is documented

Stage 4 – verbal warning

Stage 5 – written warning

Stage 6 – suspension

Stage 7 – termination

Of course the goal was that you never needed to advance past Stage 1, but the reality of worklife is that it happens.

The suspension part never sat well with me, for if things had gotten that bad, I couldn’t see the value in sending someone into exile to stew on things and get more distressed about it without active coaching from us: My goal was always to return to Stage 1 with elevated levels of coaching, not to do my due diligence (legally correct and all that) to arrive safely as possible at Stage 7.

My HR director was my active partner in all these situations, for throughout them we were usually coaching two people: the employee, and their manager. We held the manager responsible for having the situation escalate so we had to get involved at all, and we approached it as a coaching opportunity for them– with some, it may have been that they themselves were in Stage 1, 2 or 3 at the same time. However this was a great learning partnership in the dynamics of human behavior, for along the way, and in the crucible of some very volatile and emotional employee dramas, we three managers and leaders coached each other.

One of the things we learned to carefully consider in the course of progressive discipline was Monday versus Friday. When we had to have a very difficult conversation with an employee (or with the manager) was it better to hold it at the end of their workweek, or at the beginning of their next one?

The decision we were making recognized that the conversation would take an emotional toll on them; again, this is progressive discipline, and you have the VP of Operations and HR Director talking to you. So the Monday or Friday decision, on when to hold the difficult conversation was this:

Is it better for

a) this particular person,
b) in this particular situation, and
c) for the desired outcome we wish to arrive at,

that we hold this difficult conversation Monday
(i.e. when they return from two days off)
so they are in our workplace environment as they work through their reactions,

or Friday
(i.e. when they are departing the workplace just prior to their days off)
so they can work through it with their family and outside work instead?

The answer is not always the same. We had to discuss the pros and cons, and arrive at a decision on when to hold the conversation before we had it.

And we had to act more responsibly knowing what they potentially were taking home with them.
—Was this going to be a burden on their family, or did we have to acknowledge they would need their support? Or, could their family be more effective at getting through to them than we were?
—Was the situation one where it was beyond our accepting of a work-related burden at work. Realistically, they’d be better equipped to wade through it and emerge successful within the work environment, and their family could not give them the options and answers which we could?

This was a lesson I have learned well over the course of time with virtually any tougher conversation I may have with people. Essentially, within my own responsibility I have to hold myself accountable for owning the reaction time of that conversation too. And frankly, it’s not just about having a sense of aloha and being a good, responsible person. It’s about being a great manager versus just a good one.

So Monday or Friday: how do you arrive at the right decision in each situation?

Like any decision you make, you have to do your due diligence in making sure all the variables for that decision are at your disposal.

We’ll talk about that with my next post.

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