Maslow Pyramid

“My parents don’t know that I know”

October 7, 2011 by Rosa Say

This is what scares me about current struggles in our world today:
It was posted on We are the 99%:

“My name is Allison, I’m a 13 year old 8th grader. I only get a few hours of sleep at night, but I don’t tell my parents because they don’t need to know that I need sleeping pills. I’ve been showing symptoms of Schizophrenia but we can’t afford for me to go see a doctor about it. My parents get really scared when they have to pay the morage because it really cuts down on our money. I’ve stopped eating alot so there’s more food for everyone else. My parents don’t know that I know we’re the 99%.”

The up side, is that when I get scared I just work harder, but with better focus on why I bother in the first place.

The Managers’ Kuleana

Those who have heard me speak know I make this point as often as I can about Kuleana, our profound responsibility as managers:

If the children of your employees believe that working imprisons their parents and makes them grumpy people, it’s your fault. Hold yourself accountable for that, and fix it. Those children are going to grow up, and be our workforce one day: What attitude do we want them to bring to the workplace with them?

I do what I do, and with the passion I have for it, because I was an exception to the rule and I know it. I was one of the truly lucky ones, not just lucky in the way Allison describes it above. What my parents illustrated for me, was that work was what they made it, and making it great was entirely possible. They did this in spite of the bosses they had, and they partnered with my teachers in demonstrating it for me.

Well, I wanted to be a boss; I wanted to be a manager. I knew we could do better, and be better, and support parents like mine. This, is essentially how Managing with Aloha came to be: My dream, is that all managers become the teaching boss my dad never had, but taught me was possible.

Here’s the drill in life:

Everyone has to work.
We work our way up what Maslow called our hierarchy of needs: We work for our basic sustenance to start, but hopefully we will progress, reach higher, and work our way through the other levels; through a sense of belonging, through self-esteem, and toward the stuff of self-actualization which makes legacy possible.

Jobs are what we have to do in the economic machine of society.
Work can be what we get to do in an inspired life (what we call the value of Ho‘ohana).

We managers shape working culture.
Managing with Aloha is a way we do that, and do it well. I believe it’s the best way, because to manage with the values rooted in Aloha, is to manage with your own humanity.
For what’s a culture? It’s a group of people with a common set of values and beliefs.

To “shape working culture” is to create an environment in the workplace which is ‘good’ in every definition of the word.
Good is healthy, and good begets more good.

The workplace environment is a contagion. It infects and thereby affects everything connected to it through the people within it: It affects their homes and their families, it affects the quality of their play and the rest in their sleep. It affects people individually and on a very personal level, and it thereby affects entire communities and their attitudes, whether that be their despair, or their sense of hope.

Understand “the drill” and understand it well.
Then, understand this:

Alaka‘i Managers help the human race

You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless that is who you choose to be.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you work on it intentionally every single day.
You don’t get to be a manager, and a truly great person, unless you accept personal accountability for The Manager’s Kuleana, and can look into a child’s face and feel Pono, your rightness in our world.

On that pyramid, that hierarchy of human needs, I see rightness above Sense of Belonging and before you get to Self-Actualization: Rightness is personal, and it’s right there where Maslow put Self-Esteem.

We may have a long way to go before we get to Sense of Belonging for everyone.
We continue to work our way there, knowing we have to: Quitting, or opting out, are not included in our viable options.

However Sense of Belonging doesn’t cut it; it’s not enough.
Just ask Allison.

Working in today’s ‘Knowledge Economy’

October 4, 2011 by Rosa Say

In “A Job of Any Merit: Your 3 Options” I asked you to get personally involved in job creation. I asked you to share my essay, and talk about it, so with this post, we continue the conversation.

The options we have now may not be that pretty, and they may not be easy to navigate, but giving up on them doesn’t make any sense. Let’s improve them.

My purpose in outlining them as I did, was to whittle away the overwhelm, and laser-focus current affairs to an individual’s path of action, starting from the situation you may currently be in:

Option 1 is for those who still seek a job with an ‘employer’
Option 2 is for those who prefer to create their own job, or collection of jobs as their work: They want to be their own employer
Option 3 is for those who already have a job of any kind: Now past the primary ‘get a job, any job’ hurdle of options 1 and 2, they have an advantage they can further leverage

It is totally possible for a person to feel all 3 options apply to them, maybe now, maybe later.

Let’s hō‘imi, and consider how a person may move through all 3 options a bit more purposefully.

1, 2, 3: Do all apply to you?

Those who pick option 1 prefer to get employed for the obvious advantages, like a predictable paycheck (you can’t call it a ‘steady’ paycheck anymore). They may be looking for other benefits beyond compensation, even if they’re partial benefits, such as with medical insurance or 401k matching. They thrive in the social and cultural environment of a workplace you physically go to, and they want the opportunity to learn from their employer, and from an industry’s disciplines and network of partnerships. Being employed is still a great option, and it’s not going away totally — nor do we want it to. We want to improve jobs in movements like my own, with Managing with Aloha, and Business Thinking with Aloha.

[On the chance you’re newly visiting my blog, our regular programming here on Talking Story, is for the person who wants a job as a manager: This is the person I wrote Managing with Aloha for, asking that they aspire to being Alaka‘i Managers. My books are listed on this page.]

The current challenge people have in economies globally, is simply that the good jobs which represent worthwhile work are hard to find, and then secure.

Thus, the person who prefers to get employed, may feel they’re forced into newly reckoning with option 2 as well; creating a job of their own. Compensation levels have been decreasing in new job vacancies, and securing employment, even full-time employment, may not be paying the bills. People find they need to earn more. Existing jobs (if they can get them) may pay them sustenance wise, but not so people can get out of debt, hone new skills, and grow toward developing additional income streams or championing other worthwhile causes.

The point I hoped to make with option 2 in writing “A Job of Any Merit: Your 3 Options,” was that there is more possibility within that option beyond entrepreneurship: “Building my own business” is something which can intimidate us in its complexity and risk. We have to expand our vocabulary with this option, and thus, expand our opportunity. Who knows? You may move from feeling forced into this option, to actually starting to want it — in exploring this option, you’ve made the shift from the half-empty to half-full viewpoint. There are benefits here too; they’re just different ones.

Option 3 presented a challenge: If you have a job of any kind at all, you have some degree of leverage, for that job represents an advantage. Now it is time to capitalize on what you have, build on it, and optimize it fully. Turn job into the work of your heart’s desire.

Then pay it forward: Option 3 reminds us of the Golden Rule, and asks you to do for others as you would have them do for you. Don’t make any assumptions in prejudging others who are unemployed; just help them however you can (Did you read this post? “They know how to lead — and be led.”]. Prosperity is a concept of abundance, and we can share the wealth of work dignity freely, knowing that good begets more good. In doing so, we will never negate our own standing; we’ll strengthen it.

Merit and the Ladder of Learning

So if two, or all three job options apply to you, choose your best stance, the one where you will start to concentrate your efforts. My coaching for you, is to focus on that context of merit within your available choices.

Merit is the quality of being particularly good or worthy of your efforts. Taking action where the merit is, becomes the best way we leave the overwhelm, hand-wringing, and frustration of having no agenda behind us.

Those who are starting to emerge as leaders within the Occupy Wall Street movement have recognized this: Public protest is largely a complaint, albeit one which has gotten chronic and cries to be better heard. But complaining only goes so far, and it irritates others along the way, diluting the message. To achieve any resolution we look to its root word, solution, and the leaders emerging have clearer voices: They are starting to articulate courses of definitive action beyond mere protest.

Realistically, you can only do your best work in one option at a time. [In Managing with Aloha we define ‘best work’ as the work of Ho‘ohana intention.]

When we speak of moving forward, and making progress from where you are to where you can be, I see the “Job of Any Merit” options as a kind of ladder you climb, where you can eventually skim the cream of Maslow’s Pyramid up at the top (achieving self-actualization; see the pyramid graphic below).

[In the archives: Consider reviewing Strengths, Values, and that Pyramid. I think Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” is a helpful way of looking at this too, further framing the conversation with your specific strengths and values.]

Let’s say you have an idea. You want to develop that idea in your near future, for it could be the idea that will generate a new income stream for you:

Option 1 is included in your plan because you want an insider’s view of the industry your idea relates to. You want the ‘real job/real work’ learning which exists there now in the present day, versus the academic learning you’ve done in school, or via books and such. In other words, why reinvent the wheel when it’s a perfectly decent, good wheel now? — start with it as savvy foundation, then improve upon it. Make it relevant to your idea, and tap into the advantages of workplace culture, and the leverage of industry networks while you’re there. I wrote Business Thinking with Aloha for this person in particular, to give them a framework for putting their learning into, versus taking the scattershot/happenstance approach.

Intentional learning like this, whether from an industry-related job or by another means, helps you make important decisions about your future. You make those decisions based on a purpose which evolves (that purpose was probably driving your idea in the first place) but mostly because you have a steadily increasing bank of knowledge about it — you have more clarity. As we prefer saying in Managing with Aloha’s Alaka‘i style of managing, we don’t make decisions impulsively, we go about finding them: Can you see with your ears?

Turn intentional learning into a deliberate habit, and it becomes a skill of acquired wisdom: It is skills mastery at its finest.

You bring this skill with you as you proceed up the learning ladder toward options 2 or 3. As a reminder, option 2 was creating your own job – no employer or other middleman is necessary. Option 3 was creating better jobs and more jobs. Let’s slightly re-phrase those two options in terms of your idea:

Ideas are what will push you up the learning ladder, and up the pyramid of your own needs.

There might be several paths you can take while you evaluate the merits of option 2, which was creating your own jobs, or collection of jobs, via entrepreneurship, freelancing, novel partnerships or other means.

You sort out option 2 to develop additional income streams for yourself, each of which starts with another one of your ideas. “This one relates to outsourcing a service I can provide… this one relates to selling a product I’ve created” this one relates to a new relationship I’ve been cultivating with a possible partner”” etc. You begin to think about doing more creative work beyond anyone else’s definition of ‘job’ and in effect, you begin to break away from anyone else having to do it for you (that ‘middleman‘ I’ve referred to). In Managing with Aloha, this ongoing, lifetime sensibility with work creation, and with lifelong learning, is the value immersion of Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola.

As I’ve explained, you may be in the Option 3 effort for yourself at first — for your own job improvement, or to help your own team, department, division or company: You’ll radiate your efforts by building on your successes and increasing both your advantages and your leverage — much like the ripples in a pond, you widen your embrace of partnerships, because now you can. In Managing with Aloha this is the “Language of we” in Kākou, the teaming synergies of Lōkahi, and the community outreach of ‘Ohana and Mālama.

[If you are new to Talking Story, all those Hawaiian value indexes are listed in the right column of the blog.]

This learning ladder is our real Knowledge Economy

This ‘ladder of learning’ connected to the work we actively produce for income, is how I see the practical how-to sensibility of what many scholars, economists, anthropologists and assorted authors have called ‘the knowledge economy.’

YOUR knowledge leverages YOUR ideas too.

From Wikipedia:
The knowledge economy is a term that refers either to an economy of knowledge focused on the production and management of knowledge in the frame of economic constraints, or to a knowledge-based economy. In the second meaning, more frequently used, it refers to the use of knowledge technologies (such as knowledge engineering and knowledge management) to produce economic benefits as well as job creation. The essential difference is that in a knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, while in a knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool.

As a coach and a manager, I instinctively get drawn to that last phrase, that knowledge is a tool. Further, it’s a tool we all can have if only we choose to learn actively and not passively.

I’ve mentioned Richard Florida (as author of The Great Reset, my review is here), because I’ve been studying his economic views connected to the urban movement, wherein we work toward applying more ‘metro benefits’ to the suburban sprawl created before the housing crisis imploded, as we’re now realizing it would inevitably do — this study is currently on my own ladder of learning, relevant to an idea I have, which is connected to the work I do.

Florida is best known however, for his writing and speaking on the “creative class.” (Overview on his website.) He says that “this creative class is found in a variety of fields, from engineering to theater, biotech to education, architecture to small business” yet in his current writing he is expanding this more broadly. I think he runs into the same challenge I’d mentioned in regard to entrepreneurship: It’s far too easy for people to quickly say, “I’m not creative, that’s not me.”

As I see it, we’ve all got to dig deeper, give ourselves more credit, and understand just how creative we are, and can always be. Creativity plays out one idea at a time, and you do have ideas, I know you do.

Use the context of merit in worthwhile work to take your idea up the learning ladder. I hope this posting has helped you see your way forward.

Our big ideas don’t have to change the world.
They just have to move it along.
Expect more from your own energies.
— KÄ“ia lā ~ What Your Big Ideas Do Best

Sense of Workplace: It’s Milk, Maslow and You

October 22, 2009 by Rosa Say for Say “Alaka‘i”

We’ve spoken about “sense of workplace” quite a bit in the last week: What do we consider the basic sensibility of this Sense of Workplace concept to include? What are the nuts and bolts we can add to our management toolbox?

That well-known ad campaign “got milk?” can give us some clues to start, and it’s a fun analogy we can all relate to. Let’s go for the sweetness of milk and Ho‘ohana honey instead of the grittiness of nuts and bolts.

SparksMilk

Surely, you’ve got milk!

Just in case you need a reminder” think about the last time you saw a white mustache on a celebrity, and thought about your own basic nutrition, or simply about having a nice cold glass of milk for yourself. “got milk?” is one of the most recognizable and effective ad campaigns in the world. This is from the www.gotmilk.com website, (I include their history as introduction given our ever-present intrigue with developing smarter business models):

“In 1993 fluid milk processors in California agreed to allocate 3-cents of each gallon sold to fund efforts to promote the consumption of milk through marketing, advertising, promotion and public relations. Thus the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB) was born” The CMPB created and controls the beloved “got milk?” brand, which is also licensed to national dairy boards for their use in marketing efforts, as well as to a number of manufacturers who created “got milk?” merchandise.”

Paraphrasing Wikipedia, many credit the “got milk?” campaign with greatly increasing milk sales nationwide after a 20-year slump. In September of last year the campaign capitalized on the poor economic conditions within America and signed up financial adviser Suze Orman, who said in a press release,

“In today’s economy it’s vital to put family first. Though food costs are up, there still are ways to feed your family well for less. One thing you can’t afford to be without is milk because it’s packed with nutrients to help make you strong and healthy. Milk is one of the most nutritious investments you can make for your family in the grocery store.”

We listened, and many of us will answer, “yeah, we’ve got milk” with no argument on the nutritional goodness milk gives us. What I’d like to see next, is for us to say,

Now we’ve got our sense of workplace!

The benefits are similarly healthy: With milk it’s nutrition. With sense of workplace it’s our shot at a decent livelihood and our emotional well-being.

Sense of Workplace includes” what?

Again, what do we consider the basic sensibility of that concept to include?

I have encouraged you to think of Ho‘ohana and these three things:
1. work as bigger and better than just job
2. engagement in worthwhile work as embracing more possibility than employment
3. compensation as never underestimating monetary currency, but considering way more than simply wages.

My feeling is that a healthy sense of workplace in our changing world must understand these three distinctions, with Ho‘ohana our guiding light:

Hana ~ work
Ho‘o ~ make something happen
Ho‘ohana ~ make work happen as a Hawaiian value of living well within our sense of place
Labor Day Aloha

We are adding the dimension of work, yet we cannot forget the underlying concept we piggy-back on: Sense of Place. Sense of place is very much about creature comforts, and we are the creatures. Further, we all need to belong somewhere, and feel we are in a place (filled with people) which values us.

got Maslow?

We all need to feel we belong. To families, to working tribes, to civil and social communities. Do you remember learning about Maslow’s pyramid?

Sense of belonging is right in the middle of what Abraham Maslow called our “hierarchy of needs,” as a need which must be satisfied before we get to the goodies of self-esteem and self-actualization. Here is a great picture of the pyramid from Wikipedia:

My Managing with Aloha coaching is built upon my belief that in a thriving workplace, everyone needs to feel they can reach the top of the pyramid if they choose to reach for it. EVERYONE. Managers, employees, vendors and suppliers, customers —everyone associated with a business needs to feel that the business “lives” in those upper levels, and by association, they do (or can) too.

However here’s the deal: Maslow’s pyramid works like a ladder or staircase. You can’t reach those sections at the top until you have the wider ones beneath them to stand on as your solid ground —collectively as as your Sense of Place.

However before you get too ambitious or overwhelmed about this, start to understand your Sense of Place connection right where you live, wherever that may be.

Fall in love with your place. Discover its magic. Ask yourself why you are there, and why you stay there, and not to justify it, but to celebrate it. Here is a sample you can look at where I explored my own Nānā i ke kumu connected with my home, my Hawai‘i nei: Looking to the Source of our Hawaiian Values.

Figure out why you belong to your place, and figure out why you thrive there. Figure out why that place, as wonderfully magical as you may discover it to be, would not be the same without you, for you are the wellspring. Next, articulate the work you do best —your Ho‘ohana.

As for Sense of Workplace, we need not struggle to satisfy our pyramid of needs alone. We can do so within a better organization of our humanity and love for each other —within our Aloha.

As Karl Nitsch so wisely pointed out in our blog conversations over the last week;

“What we can do first of all is recognize that no organization ”“ governmental, business, religious, or other is going to act in our best interest. The organization acts to preserve itself ”“ to maintain its own integrity. When crunch time comes, the individuals inside and outside of it are expendable, replaceable and invisible. We are responsible for our own fate.”

If that is not a calling that managers everywhere can answer, I don’t know what else is.

Be our Alaka‘i celebrities

Celebrities have eagerly jumped on the “got milk?” bandwagon, happy to be part of the Milk Mustache Brigade. This fall, Jordin Sparks (photo above), Ryan Sheckler and Chauncey Billups are those gracing posters distributed to elementary, middle, and high schools across the U.S.

Celebrities are great attention-getters, and they’re welcome to join our Sense of Workplace Campaign too, but the champions and cheerleaders we really need are you who are managers in business. You are the ones who most immediately can open your arms and hearts and enlist more players into your workplace. As we’ve said in our previous discussions, hiring them as employees are but one option, and you are the ones to enable others.

I have gone on a sense of workplace campaign which has included four different blogs this past week, and we have talked about several connections to The Lost Generation issue which has been our focus. Thank you so very much for the comment conversation you have shared here on Talking Story! I’d like to end by repeating the part that is about you, the Alaka‘i manager.

Why is this a management post?

Regular readers know that I post on management issues each Thursday. I feel this is a perfect fit and not an exception. Our need for a healthier sense of workplace in society today, is both a leadership and management issue: We have said that leadership creates energy, and management channels it. However it is something that great management needs to make a breakthrough with, particularly in larger organizations where there is a titular distinction between the managers and the leaders.

Preferring to look at them as action verbs (as you know I do): Management makes room in existing systems and processes within a business for leadership ideas to find fertile ground in which they can seed, take root, and flourish.

Cultivating a healthier sense of workplace is an issue with which great managing must lead, opening doors to possibility, and being willing to toss out the old way in favor of the new. Many times, leaders hesitate to rock the hold management has on the boat, and that is especially true today, when many businesses have become more streamlined than they ever imagined they could be.

Come on Alaka‘i managers: Let’s do this, and rock our own boat. We’ve got milk, Maslow and our Ho‘ohana honey, with Aloha.

If you are just now getting wind of this, get up to date here:
I can’t let this one go: A Sense of Workplace Call to Action

Strengths, Values, and that Pyramid

May 11, 2005 by Rosa Say

Longer article coming up.

Update for October 2011:
I have been referring to this post, and to Maslow’s pyramid quite a bit in my current writing. Use this tag to see them listed.

The people I coach are so smart. They constantly question me in ways that force me to reinvestigate what I have taught them and take my own refresher courses. As Adrian Trenholm says, “teaching is a virtuous cycle.” Indeed it is.

After reading my last two D5M articles (on The Daily 5 Minutes), a work team I am coaching as a group asked me for more clarity on strengths and values, because if you look at my own references to the Gallup StrengthsFinder strengths and then at my MWA values, there are duplicates. For example these show up on the same lists:

Gallup Strength – and – MWA Value
Responsibility and Kuleana
Achievement and Kulia i ka nu‘u
Command can be thought of as Alaka‘i
Harmony and Lōkahi

Clearly, there are more parallels (and yes, there are differences).

So how can something like “Responsibility” be both a strength and a value? Well, let’s break this down and talk it through.

Strengths

Strengths were redefined for me forever forward after I had read FBATR- First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, and if I now understand it correctly, the late Donald O. Clifton was the mentoring genius of the Gallup “strengths revolution” — my own deduction after reading Clifton’s Soar with your Strengths, written before FBATR. I start with that statement to give credit where credit is due, for I now define strengths the way MB and CC defined talent:

“Great managers define a talent as a recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied. The emphasis here is on the word “recurring.” Your talents, they say, are the behaviors you find yourself doing often. You have a mental filter that sifts through your world, forcing you to pay attention to some stimuli, while others slip past you, unnoticed. Your instinctive ability to remember names, rather than just faces, is a talent. Your need to alphabetize your spice rack and color-code your wardrobe is a talent. So is your love of crossword puzzles, or your fascination with risk, or your impatience. Any recurring patterns of behavior that can be productively applied are talents. The key to excellent performance, of course, is finding the match between your talents and your role.”

Don’t you just love thinking of impatience as a talent versus a weakness?

In the book (FBATR) MB and CC explain that you are hard-wired with your strengths; character-building is done as that unique “filter” you have was created. In the chapter titled “The Decade of the Brain” they explain how that happened for you in your first fifteen years of life through your “carving of synaptic connections” between brain cells.

Well, at the time I read FBATR I suppose MB and CC fortified one of my already strong synaptic connections. Their scientific evidence and extensive workplace research were enough for me, for today that’s how I think of strengths, as your predominant talents: They are pretty much set in stone and not going away although you can make the conscious decision to build on them and make them stronger.

You cannot teach talent. As a manager, you have to select people for the talents they already have. Why? Because,
The combination of a person’s talents will prove to be the driving force behind their job performance.
Your strengths are defined by how your unique filtering of talents forge the strongest predictable patterns of behavior for you. They create your character.

Neuroscience tells us that beyond your mid teens there is a limit to how much of your character you can change. Now in contrast to this, you can change your values.

Values

Values are more intentional, more intellectually emotional if you will. I believe that over time you can change them, consciously discarding older values you had when you were younger for newer ones that are more important to you now as a calling — they connect with the personal mission you have harnessed as your guiding star. Where? On your way to self-actualization and making meaning in your life.

I’m reading Keith Ferrazzi’s new book right now, Never Eat Alone, and there’s a chapter in it he’s titled “Health, Wealth, and Children.” In that chapter he relates how he came to realize that those three things will engender deep emotional bonds between people when they somehow have come into play as part of the relationships they build together. He refers back to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory outlining our hierarchy of needs as human beings.

“We all have the same needs, Maslow believed, and our more basic needs must be satisfied before our higher needs can be addressed. The highest human need, said Maslow, is for self-actualization — the desire to become the best you can be. Dale Carnegie astutely recognized this. But Maslow argues we can’t attend to our highest needs until we attend to those at the bottom of the pyramid, like the necessities of subsistence, security, and sex. It is within this lower group [that] health, wealth, and children reside.”

Ferrazzi further offers that when you help others fulfill the needs they most need met, the relationship they have with you is one they will be very interested in remaining invested in, for “you allow them the opportunity to move up the pyramid of needs to tackle some of their higher desires.”

Now this is pretty profound for me: I’m really getting drawn into a connection I am sensing between Ferrazzi’s relationship evangelism and the RORI (Return on Relationship Investment) Don Clifton had talked about in Soar with Your Strengths. Related post is here ” don’t be surprised if I go off on that tangent at some point of my own continuous learning with this stuff. (But don’t worry, not in this post :-)

For me, based on my own years of managing and coaching, the Maslow Pyramid also explains much about our strengths and values. (Who knew you would actually use this stuff after that psych class you had in school???)

Maslow's Pyramid We move up the pyramid with the passage of time. Early in our lives we rely heavily on the strengths we’ve become wired with (i.e. those talents, filters and synaptic connections) and on the values our parents taught us, to make choices on our early job and career paths. These choices are highly influenced by others who have imposed their values upon us, such as family, teachers, sports coaches, and peer groups. At this stage of our lives, influencers still get to us fairly easily.

Midway up Maslow’s pyramid is Sense of Belonging: Think of how that need to belong can influence the next progression in life. (Memories coming back to you, are they?) During our college and early working years we start to move in different circles, and suddenly we understand why concepts like ethics, truth, and integrity are such a big deal. We realize that learning must be a lifelong pursuit because we have to filter all the messages better, and there are a whole bunch of messages out there we are starting to get bombarded with.

We move closer to Self-Esteem when that filtering of messages feels good and right to us, and we don’t hesitate to own our decisions based on the values we have consciously claimed as our true values. (In the language of MWA we have arrived at Pono.) We also will own the consequences of our behavior — even if it means getting arrested at a protest, or being snubbed for a promotion when we challenged the boss’s ethics — because our values have determined that behavior. Our values have become our mana‘o (our deeply held beliefs and convictions). Being true to our values equates to keeping our integrity and being truthful with ourselves. These values will continue to build on our strengths, and they will also make us feel okay with our perceived weaknesses: Chances are those weaknesses weren’t part of our calling anyway.

Within Managing with Aloha, great managers are those who are constantly seeking that Self-Actualization at the top of Maslow’s pyramid for themselves and for those they manage. They love the process of mentorship along the way. They talk a lot about Ho‘ohana (purposeful work) as connected to ‘Imi ola (mission and making meaning): Ho‘ohana and ‘Imi ola are the values of their mana‘o (deeply held beliefs and convictions).

Mahalo Zach for drawing the pyramid for us!

Together, Strengths and Values become a match made in heaven

So let’s go back to those duplicates of strengths and values in the very beginning of this post. Let me see if I can now bring this all together with one example.

Responsibility and Kuleana
Responsibility is your strength. It was one of your talents and predictable patterns of behavior early in your life, for you’ve always taken ownership of anything you promised to do. To not keep your word and deliver on something is unthinkable. You’ve always had a reputation for being utterly dependable and thorough. With this as your talent, it’s no wonder that you’ve normally been assigned those projects that have critical deadlines — whereas stressful for others, those same deadlines actually help you thrive.

In Hawaii, Kuleana is most often spoken as a question or a personal statement in regard to one’s personal sense of responsibility: “What is your Kuleana?” Or, “This is my Kuleana.”

As a value, Kuleana, responsibility, drives self-motivation and self-reliance, for the desire to act comes from accepting your responsibility with deliberate intent and with diligence. Your sense of responsibility to do _________ (fill in the blank with your personal mission) seeks opportunity. When that opportunity comes for you, it creates energy and excitement. Your Kuleana, your sense of responsibility, weaves empowerment and ownership into the opportunity that has been captured, and yes, you will be held accountable. There has been a transformation for you in Kuleana, a change, one that comes from ho‘ohiki, keeping promises. This promise is one you have made to yourself.

If you haven’t guessed by now, responsibility is one of my predominant strengths and talents. If you have read Managing with Aloha, you know that the mission of my book is to get all managers universally to understand the responsibility they have for the profound effect they can have on the people they manage. I hold them accountable.

I do what I do, and Ho‘ohana is my personal mantra, because I have accepted the responsibility I feel I have to get better management consistently practiced in our workplaces.

Strengths and Values. I love this stuff.