Preface: If you are newly joining us here at Managing with Aloha Coaching, get your download of our 5 Beat Rhythm worksheet here, read the Habit Riddle, and then come back. Your timing is perfect, for we are just getting started!
Got your worksheet? Let's do this together.
First however, some coaching, as I work with Kuleana a lot in the work I do:
With most values, Beat 1 is a five minute exercise or less. As familiar as it is to us, responsibility can take people longer because we take it so darn seriously. My coaching for you is this: Resist the urge to think too deeply about this. Just do it to get it done, for you know these answers intuitively, and this is a capture exercise: You don't want to get trapped in should-ing. Write down what your responsibilities are now when I ask the questions which follow, not what some finger-wagging, eyebrow-raising inner voice tells you they should be.
Beat 1 is a capture exercise where we are marking our starting line: Don't feel you have to start running the race! We are going to enjoy this weekend... this is not a chore either.
Managing with Aloha Coaching in a Monthly 5 Beat Rhythm
Ho‘ohana: Get the MWAC Value Your Life coaching to work for you
From your worksheet:
BEAT 1.
We start with an essay on the value of the month [That was yesterday's Day One Essay, Kuleana, the Value of Personal Responsibility]. That first time you read it, take five minutes to write down two things:
1) Your questions - add them to the blog comments here (others may be wondering the same thing!) or email them to me if you want me to address them within my writing the rest of this month.
This may give you pause this month: Responsibility is one of those values that we all feel we have, and it is likely that you don't have questions about "it." However you may have questions about yours. What are they? (your questions, not your responsibilities - we'll get to that in a minute.) Write down your questions whatever they are...
I also suggest a slight twist here this month before we move on. In my Day One Essay, I had these questions for you: Are you a manager? Are you meant to be one? (and Joanna Young bravely shared her answer with us). How do you answer those questions?
Then I wrote, "I am going to focus on You: the Manager We Need this month. My postings for MWAC (this site) will not be as life-in-general as Pono was in January." Therefore, I suggest you do this as well:
a) List all the responsibilities you feel you now have. ("feel" is the operative word here, not just the ones you believe to be on your job description)
b) Then, highlight those which you feel are indeed part of the Role of the Manager. We'll be able to compare notes as the month proceeds.
c) Any which didn't get highlighted are important too, for they will begin to illustrate for you how one set affects the other in the degree of accountability you feel you can handle.
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.
One thing you may want to think about here is balance. As I had shared, responsibility is a value which "takes over my entire life quite easily, suppressing all my other values if I allow it to," and I know I am not unusual in this regard. In my case, when I learned more about Kuleana, the Hawaiian interpretation of responsibility (as you will this month), this suppression got worse for me: I wanted even more responsibility than I already had! I had to learn how giving some of it away to others could be a kind of gift to them, very much in contrast to how most of us are brought up, that responsibility is more of a burden we should carry on our own, and the more we do, the more grown up (and responsible) we are. Kuleana teaches us how that is not necessarily so.
Think about the shift you might want to engineer: Go back to that list you made for number 1) above, and pull out a different color highlighter. Which responsibility would you love to give away, making room in your life to handle some newer responsibilities? Again, turn off any inner voice that may be saying "You can't do that!" and understand you are prioritizing to find Ho‘ohana clues: You are choosing that gift I talked about in the last paragraph for someone else, and making room to receive one for you.
Then, draw a colored stripe under the first list, and add to it: What responsibility might you be aiming to take on next? In other words, what are you hoping you may have just made room for?
A possible 3) Say ‘intention,’ and the first word that comes to mind for me is Ho‘ohana, my intention for worthwhile work. When you look back on your learning intentions in step 2) is there a connection with what you have just written to your Ho‘ohana?
For this part of our Rhythm, I want you to answer this for me:
What responsibility do you feel you will never, ever relinquish? Fulfilling it, and being held completely accountable for it satisfies something in you that just feels right. You may have taken this particular responsibility on as an assignment at first, but now, the way you have come to handle it puts this signature on your work that is uniquely yours. You know it, everyone knows it, and for this responsibility to be taken from you and given to someone else... well, that just wouldn't be right to you. That would be taking away something that gives your life a kind of self-expression now. It would deplete you.
Articulating the responsibility this describes for you, is a strong, strong clue to your Ho‘ohana. It may be your make-meaning catalyst.
This happened by chance that we got the beginning of the weekend for our Beat 1 Rhythm, and it works out great: You can do this next part really quickly:
Skip to page 3 of your worksheet (Beat 3) and just read it over for now to keep your A and B Options in mind. Tomorrow will be our first Sunday Mālama and you can decide then, or in the evening when most of Sunday is already pau (pau, pronounced pow, means finished) :)
You did great! Look up at that picture again: Do you feel the beat of your rhythm now? Enjoy the weekend,
~ Rosa
Photo on Flickr by miyukiutada
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