Managing with Aloha Coaching: What I have learned from the People we collectively call “our employees”

I have this delicious problem lately, in that I cannot write fast enough to write what needs to be written.

Not really a problem, and admittedly “what needs to be written” is highly subjective and personally relative more than it is truly needed. However most who write would agree with my choice of “delicious” as an adjective as compared to the scourge of writer's block.

Anyway, that is why I am starting this at the late hour of Robert's deadline...

This is a contribution to the writing project at Middle Zone Musings championed by Robert Hruzek for February: What I Learned from ...People. Click in to Robert's place on February 11, when he will have a full listing of contributions, for he always manages to get some extraordinary entries! This will be contribution number two for me. My first was on Chinese New Year for JJL: Kung Hee Fat Choy! What I Learned from Clara.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I can enter two articles for Robert, however he offers me an opportunity to say something that should be written for Managing with Aloha Coaching on my mana‘o (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ so entry accepted or not, I am very grateful for this opportunity to say this one more time:

Simply said, what I have learned from the People we collectively call “our employees” was, and still is, everything I know about managing with Aloha —and more.


MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ This is my Mahalo Managing with Aloha represents a career in management that has been touched in very meaningful ways by others for more than 30 years. I have been greatly blessed to explore my own belief and conviction, my mana‘o, within the beauty of so many personal relationships in Hawaii’s hospitality industry, and I will forever be grateful to the employees who were the bountiful gifts of my management assignments, awakening within me my passion for the art of management. I cannot name all of you here, however you know who you are, and I am deeply grateful to you, Mahalo nui loa.

Over the years, my employees willingly became my living laboratory for the evolution of Managing with Aloha. They gave me their complete trust in times I had not even earned it yet. My book and my unshakable belief that we CAN turn work into a labor of joy simply would not have taken shape without all they had taught me, and without their faith in me. They brought me to Pono and MY Why of Right.

I do not think that I just had these very foundational beliefs that now construct the MWA movement intuitively or innately: I think I learned to align them with my personal values and with my Ho‘ohana because of what I learned while managing employees who put their faith in me (and in the aloha they represented to me) as I figured it out.

They were my Kuleana, and I was not going to let them down.

That's how it feels to learn from the from the People we collectively call “our employees” when you feel the calling to be a manager, when you are confident enough to relax and reframe your self-esteem as Self-Mastery, and when you believe that you can do it, whatever “it” happens to be because you believe in the Aloha that lives and breathes in your people.

You will stage a revolution for employees if you have to, and that is how it should be.

As the link-happy paragraph just above shows you, today I am learning from the people I collectively call HCers, those of the MWA Ho‘ohana Community. People like Terry, Rich G., Dave, Sandy, Rocky, Julie, Flo, Wendy, Sean and Collin, Reg, John, Robert and all the JJL authors —the list goes on and on, and you know who you are. We learn from each other, and I so, so love that we do.
~ Rosa

The photo above are of those who truly tested me, telling me outright, “Come on, how tough are you? We can do this, so let's do it.” They do not all appear in the picture, however the names that must be recognized here for the ultimate in their generosity, as I have told of in their stories, are those of my Alaka‘i Nalu and Ho‘okele. Aaron, Daniel, Ed, Ekolu, Ikaika, Janelle, Jerome, Lily, Mahea, Matt, Puaita, Rick, and Sam, you have my Aloha and you will be my ‘Ohana—always.

Related articles:
The Ho‘ohana Community is also teaching me to connect with the writing of poetry:
Meet Poet Laureate Billy Collins and learn poetry with me?

When you really think about it, Joanna is completely right about this: We learn just about everything important there is to learn from people, don't you think?