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 „¢
Never fails. January has become the month where people get much braver about telling me things like, “Now I’m ready. This will be my year for a no holds barred Managing with Aloha makeover on my management style.”
I guess it’s the whole new year’s resolution thing. Even people who say “I don’t do them” (meaning resolutions) are making fresh commitments, or trying a new self-coaching. Or like me, they call them better habits.
Once that statement is out of the way, that they’re ready for MWA (and will someone please explain to me how you can not be ready for Aloha?) they’ll usually follow up with the same question: “So how would you recommend I start?”
If I was insistent on the core coaching of MWA, namely, “manage true to your values, and the values of your team; let those values be your road map,” that’s what I’d say, but I don’t. I agree that value-mapping can take more prep time and seem overwhelming. So my answer has always been,
Start doing the Daily Five Minutes.
Do it today if you can, and no later than tomorrow.
Then do another one the day after that, and another the day after that.
Give someone your Daily Five Minutes every day for the rest of your life.
That will always be my answer, because that’s what works best.
That’s what gets you your quickest results, and that’s what helps you stick with it, so you go the distance.
When people fail with Managing with Aloha (I don’t like to say that, but it’s the truth; you can fail at MWA. Luckily, no failure is a forever failure) I’ll always discover they skipped the Daily Five Minutes, and had chickened out with it. They were trying to learn MWA intellectually, and it wasn’t enough. It was mental gymnastics without an actual workout. Managing without mentoring people does not work.
If you do the D5M as your jumpstart, all the values-based management stuff you learn in the rest of Managing with Aloha will fall into place, because you’ll have conversations in which you can use what you’ve learned. Instantly, and in small manageable bites. Tasty, timely, relevant and personal.
Practice makes possible.
5-minute conversations, just 1 every day.
Very little time, very little risk.
It’s really as simple as that.
Conversations where you’ll both be talking about values whether or not you actually realize it.
Conversations where you’ll be valuing others, for the D5M is a gift you give.
In fact, you don’t even have to read my book yet. Read this and get started. Just like Chris did, and just like Rich does.
