Preface: Though the 2007 connections remain the same in the history of this posting (to keep links and trackbacks intact and unbroken), this article has been updated for our current 2008 Managing with Aloha Coaching (MWAC) learning journey.
|
Aloha and Welcome to everyone arriving from Slacker Manager! ~ ~ ~  I am thrilled to be inducted into the Order of the Golden Slacker, and we all welcome you to our Ho‘ohana Community.
This posting that Phil so kindly pulled from my archives gets updated via new trackback each month: I like the Slacker-style GEMO approach to taking our LearnING to LearnED and USED in the most practical way possible, and hence, the 5-Beat Rhythm is the way we do it. For the whole-picture of what we do on this site, this page tells more of the connection to Managing with Aloha, my management and leadership philosophy: The How-To of Managing with Aloha Coaching. Mahalo ~ thank you for clicking in. Get comfortable and look around, and if you like what you see, grab your own subscription. |
How do 21st Century Learners keep up and achieve success?
No matter your age, no matter your home, no matter the education you have had up to now, if you are reading these words we all have something in common: We are 21st century learners.
To survive best, and to thrive, we have to be GOOD 21st century learners, able to well discern between the bombardment of ideas and new subject matter thrown our way daily.
In one way it is a blessing, for we human beings are insatiable gluttons for all we can learn, curious and fascinated by the wealth of positive possibility we are so confident we can manifest (and most probably can!). In another way it is daunting and very overwhelming, for there is just so, so much. However here is the great balancer: We have the power of discernment, the ability to choose what we pay attention to, and what we don’t.
Here on MWAC, the basic idea is this: We take the full Managing with Aloha curriculum and explore it together in a more focused, bite-at-a-time way via a Value of the Month Program. In total, the MWA text covers 19 different values designed for a workplace reinvention.
We think Managing with Aloha is wonderful. Practitioners know it works, and works fabulously well.
Managing with Aloha celebrates us
However even if you agree with me and want to adopt our MWA sensibility for worthwhile work, I know that you have the same challenge with MWA as you have with all other learning; remaining connected with it regularly enough so that it doesn’t get doomed to your flavor-of-the-month training graveyard.
You have likely heard the Manager-as-Coach Mantra in some form before. It goes something like this:
“For the learning of desirable workplace behaviors to stick, repeat, repeat, repeat, and then repeat again.”
It’s good advice: Our choices with learning “new and better ways” increase daily, and once you learn of them, you have to selectively choose what you will weave into the habits which are your keepers. Only then can you truly claim to have learned them. Whether or not you consciously realize you are doing it, you separate what you newly learn about into two camps:
One is, “That was interesting, however since I have not committed to actively and regularly using it, I’ll eventually forget about it, and then discard it.”
The second is, “This has positive possibility for me. I will commit to a plan of follow-up and habit creation I will repeatedly execute until I am on automatic pilot with it.”
Out of all we teach them, our employees “selectively choose” what we managers consider to be “desirable workplace behaviors” when a) they buy-in to the vision of how that behavior creates a great future for them, and b) we make it easy for them to get started with sequential action steps that will begin the “repeat, repeat, repeat” repetition that gets the new behavior to stick as a new habit-keeper. Then, as great managers, we coach them through that process.
We who are managers are no different
We go through this same process with what WE learn too. The only difference may be that we get less and less coaching on this by our own bosses unless we have a great mentor we can reliably turn to. Even then, there likely will not be active workplace coaching done with us side by side: Instead, we have to rely more on our own rigorous self-discipline.
The 5-Beat Rhythm of MWA Coaching is designed to give you a tool for that self-discipline within and aligned with our Value of the Month Program. Here is your call to better action:
Allow me to be your virtual coach
Connect your weekly planning habits to MWAC, and click in often for encouragement, and for ideas that are aligned all month long instead of randomly scattered.
We have established a monthly rhythm here, designed to repeat each and every month in a predictable and habit-forming way which will help you move learnING to learnED and usefully retained. These are our constant beats to that rhythm.
BEAT 1. We start with an essay on the value of the month. That first time you read it, take some time to write down two things:
1) Your questions - add them to the comments or email them to me if you want me to address them! and
2) Your intention in learning more about the value - understand that your intention creates a kind of intuitive magic for you the rest of the month; when you capture your early thoughts, connections will get made in the days to follow. You wake up your self-attuned attentions.
BEAT 2. During the month I will continue to write about that value. I will write anywhere from 15 to 22 articles on average, designed to trigger you into making decisions on how you can apply what you are learning as immediately and as repetitively as possible so you can replace old habits with newer, more useful ones.
BEAT 3. Sundays will always take a slight departure, and we use the practice of Sunday Mālama. Traffic counts are proving Sunday to be the busiest day here, and I suspect it has become visiting day for those who don’t consider themselves “practicing managers” as much as “aloha learners” in the different roles they have. Love the thought!
BEAT 4. Capture your learning. For example, this was a gift for all of us with the value of ‘Ohana: Joanna Young shared her connections to ‘Ohana in her role as a writing coach: Create a connection at work: writing with 'Ohana.
Like Joanna did, connect your value learning to a set of specific actions that are most relevant to your own situation. I require my executive coaching clients to do this on a weekly basis as part of their Weekly Reviews, for I find that the 7-day week has its own timeless, universal rhythm, and syncopation is the way to go! During their Weekly Reviews their past week is evaluated, and the next one is proactively planned for, so they can make progress which is coupled with new lessons-learned.
BEAT 5. Manage well! Great managers create their future, and they don’t settle, or wait for things to just happen to them. Self-coach going forward by making note of your future follow-through.
To help you with this, use my index pages as an additional way to navigate my article paths here as current postings slip into the archives. You will find them to the far right, under the heading titled Key Concept Indexes and Categories.
Now here is a bonus: A free write-in template you can use every month. Click the red download button below for your MWAC 5-Beat Rhythm Worksheet. It’s in pdf form, however you can select and copy it to a Word doc or upload as a Google doc etc. if you prefer to write and save your notes electronically.
|
MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~
“I am your habits” is the answer to this riddle: “I am your constant companion. I will push you forward to success or I will drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. 80% of what you do, you might as well hand over to me and I will do it promptly and I will do it correctly. I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me. Show me what you’d like to have done, and after a couple of lessons, I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great people. Alas, I am the servant of all failures as well. All who are great, I have made great. All who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine; but I do work with the precision of a machine and the intellect of a human. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I’ll lay the world at your feet. Be easy with me, and I will destroy you!” “Who am I?” |
You turn your new actions into new habits with repetition
Behaviorists will tell you that doing virtually anything every day (or every same-type of situation, such as clicking to the same site first every time you turn on your computer) for anywhere from two weeks to 21 days will create a new habit for you.
21 days is less than a month.
That means that by starting today, investing in our self-coaching here on MWAC, you could create at least 12 new, good, value-aligned, aloha-filled and ho‘ohana connected habits for yourself by this time a year from now. Let’s do so together.
Thank you so much for being part of our learning here on Managing with Aloha Coaching! With every visit you make here, you fuel my energy in continuing our good work! Together, we WILL bring the spirit of aloha to the workplace.
Related Rhythm Reading:
- The MWA.Coaching Blog's Companion Coaching Program. This is a coaching program offered at a modest, affordable fee if you want personal coaching. It was specifically designed exclusively for the readers of this site.
Comments