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Culture-Building: First, understand what Management can be

March 6, 2012 by Rosa Say

When are you expected to work with your manager?

Where does individual ownership give way to partnership, and to the team dynamic?

Over and above the day-to-day focus within the work which is done, what are the visionary, mission-driven possibilities elevated in the near future?

How do mavericks grow in your company? How do your best ideas gain support, and then attain traction and velocity there?

These are the kinds of questions which every healthy workplace culture should have definitive answers for, answers which are aligned with the values that company stands for.

Management can then be managemeant.

Culture building needs a solid foundation that serves as fertile ground. We know values are critical. So are their champions.

Those champions should be your managers.

When organizations choose to adopt Managing with Aloha as part of their culture, they’ve done their homework; they usually know about the Core 21, the 19 Values listed on the blog sidebar, the 10 Beliefs, and the 9 Key Concepts. It’s a lot to take in at first, and it’s highly weaveable, but usually 1 Question trumps them all in the eager minds of those anxious to begin:

Where do we start?

My answer is always the same: Reconstruct the role of your managers.
(article, and coaching category) Understand the true cultural work your managers can perform for you when they are liberated and motivated to do so.

Work With Your GiftsThe evidence is clear: Managers create culture. Ignore them (i.e. devalue them), and they can destroy it. My core purpose in writing MWA was to help prevent that sad, damaging downslide from happening, because I know what a positive force great managemeant can be.

In most of the organizations I visit, there is quite a distance to bridge between managers and their staff; they’re operating in totally separate orbits and worse, they’re content to “leave well enough alone.”

Problem is, “well enough” for them isn’t delivering much well being to the workplace culture.

To Do: Today

Help your people understand what a partnership with an Alaka‘i Manager can be about. Help them see why that partnership is so useful, and how enjoyable it can be.

If you do nothing else, get your own perspective in check, and create a healthier relationship with your own manager; set a good example as you flourish in that new partnership.

Go back to the questions at the beginning of my posting: Answering them, and engineering the change which is necessary (with value-alignment) will get you much closer to the well being which will vastly improve the health of your culture.

Comfort Station, Hughes Company 1915, via Baltimore City Life Museum Collection, Maryland Historical Society

Postscript/Weaving: Role versus Practice

If you are a long-time Talking Story reader, you know that I am very insistent on having Alaka‘i Managers adopt and practice D5M, the Daily 5 Minutes, writing things like this:

“I need to be crystal clear about something:
If you’re not giving your staff the gift of the Daily Five Minutes ®
you’re not Managing with Aloha „¢”

~ So you want a MWA jumpstart. Do the Daily Five Minutes.

Adopting D5M gives Alaka‘i Managers a great tool for making everything else happen (‘everything’ being the full spirit-spilling, work-sensible philosophy of Managing with Aloha).

What the D5M does, is collect timely inputs (the talk story) from an ongoing partnership, so the two people involved will always agree on what they should be working on next, working on it Kākou, together.

Before that actually happens, D5M concentrates on the foundational stuff of getting a good partnership in place, so it can be a functioning partnership. There must be comfort between people first: Then, and only then, can they work together to achieve greater things.

This is why there must be Managing with Aloha champions within a culture; they are the braver, more vocal ones who foster better health, and push through any obstacles, just like Ricky does in her workplace culture as a teacher.

Bottom line here, is that I write Talking Story to help you make your way toward being one of those champions. Write me when you have questions; you’re not alone.

D5MBetterMgr

Be unencumbered

October 12, 2011 by Rosa Say

This is the advice I find I’m giving to my own children these days, as two young adults forging their way in a world where a lot of the rules have changed, or are still in flux. It’s advice I’m newly taking for myself too.

This is a day and time where the actions within free will, and the nimble mobility of easy movement, are abilities we must keep positioned to serve us, unrestricted and unburdened.

Green Chainlink

Be unencumbered

For to “be encumbered is to be restricted or burdened (by someone or something) in such a way that free action or movement is difficult.” (from my MacBook dictionary)

The root word itself is heavy, which is good, for it gets you to pause, and better understand.

Try saying it out loud; “Unencumbered.” It’s weighty too, as opposed to saying something like, “lighten up” which has other connotations anyway, or “protect your freedoms” which is presumptive and doesn’t capture everything which can be a possible culprit. For instance, on my current list of encumbrance culprits are:

  1. Stuff — because I want lightness instead, both physical and mental. I don’t want to bother with maintaining stuff I don’t use often enough to really matter
  2. Debt — because I want freedom from liability, and hate paying interest that just makes things cost more
  3. Jobs — because I prefer to think about work and Ho‘ohana. Work is necessary, and where the rewards are to be found, whereas ‘job’ is too small a container, often with other restrictions
  4. Dogma — because the only label I’m okay with is Thinker. I have gotten very wary about polarity, and how ideology and even branding can cause us to erect walls. I want to be more open-minded instead, and push myself to explore more in the learning I pursue
  5. Should-ing — I tend to separate this from dogma, in that should-ing usually hits us closer to home, coming from people we know more intimately, spending personal time with them. And they are another variable, one we will not dismiss, for they are important to us, and we want them to be proud of us [I defined should-ing in this post: A Good Ruthlessness x3.]
  6. Negativity — because Lord knows there is enough of it in the world, and I don’t want to be another contributor. From a practical standpoint, negativity is also highly ineffective
  7. Bad habits — there can be several encumbrances here [the world of auto-pilot], and the caution I always start with is in regard to physical health. When you get sick, everything else gets to be a moot point
  8. Sloth — because it’s such an energy killer. Look up sloth in a Thesaurus for the list of yuckiness it can include. No life can afford any of that stuff. Sloth kills creativity too
  9. Envy — because it doesn’t make much sense (it’s about someone else’s choices, not yours), yet is easy to fall prey to. To me, the opposite of envy is the virtue of Ma‘alahi, that peaceful persuasion of calming contentment — so much better!

You get the idea. The list can go on and your list might be different. I usually stop with 9 of anything in working through my own listings of things (case in point: Our 9 key Concepts for MWA). 9 is quite enough, for each one of these can be expanded on, and the whole self-coaching of “Be unencumbered” is to keep each of them self-managed well enough so they aren’t unwieldy, and I can fold them into my trusted system with good results.

To be unencumbered, make it relevant to your life

Going back to my children, we mostly have these kinds of conversations these days: To set the stage a bit, they are done with college, and now support themselves. Yet they are still young, unmarried, and haven’t become parents. I want them to take full advantage of their youthful energies, for as the saying goes, the world is their oyster:

  • Be unencumbered of a mortgage, for owning a home isn’t what it used to be, and you have time; wait until the industry heals itself.
  • For that matter, be unencumbered by all ownership — question what maintenance every owned thing might come with, and see it as possible baggage. Better to use-with-immediacy, whether rented, borrowed, or bartered for, and then move on.
  • Be unencumbered of middlemen, and brokers of any kind. Do for yourself to start with, to learn completely and understand well: Define what “in your best interest” is for yourself, before you hire or otherwise allow anyone else to do something for you.
  • Be unencumbered of what anyone else believes, including me and your dad. Trust in your values, think for yourself, and make your own rules to live/work/play by. Then be prepared to eloquently explain the why of your choices (you know we’ll still be asking you about them, and won’t hold back our opinions, so be ready to take an educated stand).
  • Be unencumbered of convention, all of it, and especially in learning. The world around us is a little broken right now, but that’s opportunity for you in forging a better way. Learn from everything, and everyone around you, for the world itself must be your teacher right now if you’re to navigate it successfully.
  • We will be here to help, but not too much.

So “Be unencumbered” really helps as the catch-all of our Language of Intention as our family conversations continue. It becomes our insider-speak, and a shortcut about, then past why-we’re-talking-about-this, which helps us get into the meat of the matter quicker.

Then, make it relevant to your work

As you can imagine, “be unencumbered” is now part of my Managing with Aloha vocabulary too, in regard to the work of my businesses, for there are so many new conversations to be had, and had often. Vocabulary has always been tool-extraordinaire for us: The Best, Yet Most Underutilized Tool for Communication There Is.

This is a time to defy convention, and seize the opportunity to create better: Trump those Old Rules with Your Values.

As an Alaka‘i Manager, how can “Be unencumbered” help in your workplace huddles? What are the hot spots which come to mind for you, and can you discern what their encumbrances are?

Money, budgeting strategy, and financial literacy comes to mind relatively quickly (as with my last post, in regard to current affairs), but there are so many other encumbrances to consider.

What would be your first target?

Yellow Poppies

Here is some help in the archives, one for each of the encumbrances on my list:

  1. Stuff: Spring Cleaning at Work: Junk is not the Stuff of Legacy. How much junk is costing you money, and worse, cluttering up those spaces where good work, important and creative work, should be getting done instead?
  2. Debt: What does ‘financial literacy’ mean to you? An oldie, from 2005: One of the first posts I published here on Talking Story, about The Managers’ Kuleana we revisited a few days ago.
  3. Jobs: A Job of any Merit: Your 3 Options in Worthwhile Work. In case you missed it, this was the “we can do this!” post within a string of others this month.
  4. Dogma: Imagine having a Thought Kit: The story behind Business Thinking with Aloha.
  5. Should-ing: Have you caught the curve ball? A new initiative has come down from the top (corporate, your boss etc.): What do you do now?
  6. Negativity: Staying Positive in a Negative Workplace: When the downer isn’t the job itself, but the workplace culture.
  7. Bad habits: The 3 Sins of Management: About the bad habits of tacit approval, automatic pilot, and lies of omission.
  8. Sloth: Distract, Interrupt, Intercept, Disrupt: A simple way to focus, and deal with distractions.
  9. Envy: Downsizing gets cool: Today you have to pause a bit when you hear the word. Can we downsize to warm up to change?

A How-to Postscript: Are you using the tags here on Talking Story, listed at the bottom of each post? That’s how I came up with this list for you. For instance, try energy and/or creativity for sloth (the link I chose above was to help you with distraction.)

So much lies beyond that chain link fence… Be unencumbered so you can reach it.

Peach Profusion

January Coaching: What are you really managing?

January 5, 2011 by Rosa Say

I’ve a January, year-prepping exercise in journaling for you, one of my favorites in the executive coaching I’ve done for people. We’re still in the 1st week of the new year: Do this before the coming weekend is over and you’ll feel the Ka lā hiki ola goodness, I promise.
[MWA Ref: Ka lā hiki ola means “the dawning of a new day.” It’s the value of newness with hope.]

It’s a favorite exercise because it’s so useful. Writing this down will serve as a great point of reference for you in the coming months, for you can look back at it, remember your better intentions, and screw your head back on correctly if need be. When you’re done, keep it where you normally would review it during your quarterly, monthly, or weekly reviews.

If you don’t like writing and journaling, please keep reading” I’ll address that momentarily. And as a MWA vocabulary reminder: Managing is a verb. You needn’t be a manager-in-title to do this.

Write out your answers to these 3 questions:

1. What are you really managing? — as in right now, as a managing creature of habit. Journal your way to truthful clarity, and notice that I didn’t ask you who you’re managing, for that would simply be writing a list (“myself and my own behavior” goes on the top of that list, but you already knew that, right?) Write about WHAT you are managing, and why you feel you need to be involved in the process. The more detail the better (this project, that assignment, a nagging recurrence with” etc.), for the more you’ll learn about your current habits, and the productivity and accomplishment (versus busywork) you’ve been getting because of those habits.

2. What do you want to be managing instead? — again, not who, but what, just like with the first question, but in the spirit of exploring how you can light a fire under your own energies with more exciting work — work that fascinates and intrigues you. The key word in the question is WANT. Don’t limit yourself; ALL work can morph to being more worthwhile for somebody: Just because a certain job isn’t within your workplace isn’t reason enough that it can’t be. Maybe you’re the person who needs to author it there.

If you suspect these are Ho‘ohana questions, you’re right.

Not enthused about Writing?

I admit that I’ll continually try to convert you — start by simply carrying a small notebook with you and writing stuff down when you’re bored, or when you’re waiting in line somewhere. You’ll be amazed by the ideas you start to capture once your whining is over. I don’t mean to be negative; that’s just the way it usually happens, and private whining can be useful to you too, within reason. Better to be on paper than out loud.

That said (that I’m very stubborn about writing stuff down), very smart guy and Business Strategist Mike Wagner recently reminded me that not everyone is like me” a good half of the world prefers to talk their way to clarity (like Mike) instead of writing their way there. So if that’s you too, go for it. Self-talk is powerful stuff: Muses, Mentors and Self-Talk.

Better yet, do the exercise out loud in a conversation with someone you like and trust — you go first, and then you be a listener and sounding board for them. You know how much I believe in talking story!

The Third Question

Last, and only when you feel the first two answers are info-packed with clues for you… (sleeping on this is a great idea. Go back and read about Wayfinding for your Best Clues if you’re getting impatient).

3. What will you be managing in the near future? — Said another way, What will it take to make your wants happen? I don’t care what your boss, spouse, or anyone else may have planned for you, or even if you already said yes to it (you can change your mind and say no if you have to. Burn your boat.) What do YOU have to do to move from what you described in your answers to the first question, to what you described in the second one?

For me, this is definitely a wayfinding exercise, because in starting with that first question you are confronting your existing habits and being truthful about them. I guess you could say that your answers to the second question are your goals, but in my experience it’s been much more effective for those I’ve coached to think of them as wants; they’re more basic that way, visceral even. Wants are Aloha-instinctive, and more emotion-charged compared to how pragmatic and strategic goal-setting is, and so energies ramp up quicker that way (I hate the SMART acronym. There, I’ve said it. I hate it because it’s boring.)

Where I’ve usually been able to help my execs as their coach is simply to give them permission, and get them to believe their wants are okay. More than okay. Listening to, and acting on those wants is what’s really smart, and you have a brand new year ahead of you… take the leap.

Postscript: If this post title sounds familiar to you, I have written on this “What are you managing?” theme before, but it was a little different, and employed the 5 Whys… use those instead of SMART!

  • Here’s that post: What are you managing?
  • And here’s its companion: What are you leading?

The 1-2-3 journey of Alaka‘i Managers

April 16, 2010 by Rosa Say

I’m not going to be shy about this, for I’m hearing wonderful early reports from others who were among the first to download my new ebook for you, and Hau‘oli‘oli Kākou ~ I am jumping for joy!

Download your free copy on Smashwords:
You have 10 different formats to choose from there, including a printable PDF

It’s only been a week since the ebook’s release, and I’ve been delighted to hear that many people who had already read Managing with Aloha are doing so a second time, but differently — they are using the annotation method described in the first week of the program:

Take 1: You will first read the book cover to cover, taking notes in a learning method and self-coaching framework I will describe to you. Everything begins with Aloha, and we’ll get comfortable with this value in an actionable way, allowing its goodness to inspire us! Know that you have everything it takes, for in short, Aloha is you living from the inside out, and “Living with Aloha” is dwelling in the self-awareness of your own ability and capacity.

Best of all, you need not do this alone, even if you are the only manager in your company who is aware of this choice you have, to manage and lead with the incredible abundance of Aloha. You can learn with us, the your Ho‘ohana Community.

Now that we have this new ebook coaching format to help us, the 1-2-3 journey for emerging Alaka‘i Managers has become:

  1. Read Managing with Aloha (Buy it in print on Amazon.com ~ It’s now on Kindle too) and commit to applying it in the workplace.
  2. If you feel you have a calling for management, get started with reconstructing the Role of the Manager with us via the self-coaching program in the how-to ebook: Become an Alaka‘i Managers in 5 weeks!
  3. Continue to be a lifelong learner with the rest of us right here on Talking Story, using the learning construct of the 9 Key Concepts. Speak up as this blogging format allows you to!

Be a manager who is part of a movement, and be heard.

Hana hou! I am so excited with the progress we are making, and I hope you are too.

Mahalo nui loa to those who have been emailing me of their impressions as they work through the beginning of the ebook: Your feedback is helping me tremendously as I evaluate some ideas for our next project together, so please keep it coming!

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