Ho‘ohanohano in our 5-Beat Rhythm: Partner with Providence!

I do hope you have enjoyed our Ho‘ohanohano study this month. This is a value that always seems to grow on the people I personally coach; in reading Managing with Aloha they have often chosen other values as their favorites, for at first, Ho‘ohanohano doesn’t have as much as a learning cool factor to it. Yet interestingly enough, the one story that most of them instantly recall in MWA is the one I mentioned yesterday, Neglect is Visible. In some way it cuts too close for comfort. Suddenly, Ho‘ohanohano becomes a very attractive target!

Aw come on now! It says treble, not tremble!
[photo of Blues on Flickr by The Rocketeer]

Admittedly, Ho‘ohanohano requires introspection and hard work; we are working on our own demeanor as managers, and coming to terms with our realizations (and perhaps aha! moments) on just how much the way we are perceived can affect what we are able to accomplish. Working on things like approachability, humility and reciprocity isn’t easy.

It isn’t easy, but it is oh so worth it!, and I hope you haven’t shied away from the effort.

And know this: Our study was likely a beginning for you. Ho‘ohanohano is indeed a value you grow up with, getting comfortable and more confident in your own skin. We can get overwhelmed thinking about how much goes into our ‘presence’ and can go through a period of time where we feel that we are slipping, and taking two steps backwards in our self-assurance, whereas before we felt pretty confident.

That’s normal.

Trust that working with Ho‘ohanohano IS a situation of taking those “two steps backwards” for a much better step forward again, and that moving on will happen pretty quickly. Then, it is about keeping consistent: That is where deliberate, intentional habit-building comes into play again.

We cannot re-visit the habit riddle often enough... (spaced repetition!)

“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?”
“I am your habits”

Thus, we are at Beat 5 of our monthly self-coaching-to-learn rhythm.

Friday is my favorite day for Beat 5; I love when we find ourselves with a weekend stretching out before us. I recommend you spend a few moments with your 5th Beat today, let it sit with you and your subconscious over the weekend, and then revisit it one more time come Monday. April 1 falls on Tuesday, and we launch into a new value.

This is the snippet from the template:

BEAT 5: Manage well! Great managers and those who self-manage 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.* Create a strong, intentional weekly plan with your Calendar and Weekly Review. Integrate specific actions into Dailies and/or other parts of your Trusted System. Create your 2-Column Chart to help you with final decisions and commitments: In Column 1: Actions to Keep In Column 2: How I will Keep Them: NEW HABITS *Good catch! That follow-through link is new, and not on the original template --- from earlier this month: The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With --- perhaps another (or preferred?) tool for you to integrate?

When you think about the habits you want to keep, key in to the simple definition of Ho‘ohanohano, for it is a good place to start:

This was our simple definition: Honor the dignity of others. Conduct yourself with distinction, and cultivate respectfulness.

Review the notes you had taken in using the rest of our 5-Beat Rhythm template, and see if you had answered your self-query of the ‘distinction’ that you wish to cultivate and be known for. Then, set it up as the goal that your habits will be targeting.

I’ll give you an example

Ever since I read Permission Marketing, Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin, (a book a highly recommend) his triad of 3 To-Do’s with respecting people’s time and attention have stuck with me as a great Ho‘ohanohano connection. Godin says that “permission marketing is anticipated, personal, and relevant.”

Over and above the marketing spin on it, in the margin of his book, I had written this: “Ho‘ohanohano-connect: I want to be anticipated, personal, and relevant as someone’s manager too!” At the time (of learning to internalize the book) it became my mantra. It is still something I have written in several places to trigger my memory and recommit my intentions to. It triggers questions for me: Will this be relevant to their interests and concerns? Was there enough of a personal touch in the way we connected? Would I have looked forward to the whole affair if we had switched places? What kind of follow-up would be most sweetly anticipated now?

Remember the coaching we got from W.H. Murray back at Beat 1? Partner with Providence!

...the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would have otherwise never occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
Raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
Which no person could have dreamt would have come their way.

Here is the deal though: You must be the one to pull the trigger!

Until one is committed,
There is hesitancy - the chance to draw back.
Always ineffectiveness.

Mantras can really help you; dare to go public with yours, and allow those who work with you help you too. Whatever you “go public with” should be thought of as the good word you are willing to attach your name and credibility to. You’ll be stating your intentions, and you’ll be making it known that you intend to stand up for them: You’ll be saying, “This is the talk I will walk!”

That is a fantastic Ho‘ohanohano statement to make: Brave, certain, confident, yet knowing that respect and dignity are things we earn.

Here is a full index for our month with the not-relevant-to-Ho‘ohanohano postings trimmed out to help you focus or reconsider within your Beat-5 self-coaching:

1. Ho‘ohanohano: No more jerks for managers
2. Ho‘ohanohano and our 5-Beat Rhythm: Getting Started
3. Ho‘ohanohano and Approachability: A Story.
4. Ho‘€˜€˜ohanohano and the Law of Reciprocity
5. The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With
6. A Ho‘ohanohano St. Patrick’s Day to you!
7. Are you a high maintenance manager?
8. How are those values working for you, hmm?
   A follow-up to Say No to Resolutions: Choose your Values instead this past January.
   Will Ho‘ohanohano become one of your chosen ones?
9. “Inspiration” is ‘in-spirit.’ Thus Inspiration is Aloha.
10. Ho‘ohanohano: Learn to Bask in the Compliments You Get
11. Ho‘ohanohano Helps us Identify and Cure Unintentional Neglect

Whoa... we’ve worked hard this month! Well done :)

---

Mahalo for taking our Ho‘ohanohano study with us this month!

We will keep all the articles indexed here for you, so you can quickly grab more encouragement on your Ho‘ohanohano journey.

You can revisit The 5-Beat Rhythm here: Managing with Aloha Coaching in A 5-Beat Rhythm.

We Ho‘ohana together! ~ Rosa

Comments

[Rocky]

I love the Habit Riddle. I actually have that hanging in my office. I am very big about having many of these mantras posted in and around my office.
Here is one of my all time favorites.

Excellence is never an accident. It is achieved in an organization or institution only as a result of an unrelenting and vigorous insistence on the highest standards of performance. It requires an unswerving expectancy of quality from the staff and volunteers.

Excellence is contagious. It infects and affects everyone in the organization. It charts the direction of a program. It establishes the criteria for planning. It provides zest and vitality to the organization. Once achieved, excellence has a talent for permeating every aspect of the life of the organization.

Excellence demands commitment and a tenacious dedication from the leadership of the organization. Once it is accepted and expected, it must be nourished and continually reviewed and renewed. It is a never ending process of learning and growing. It requires a spirit of motivation and boundless energy. It is always the result of a creatively conceived and precisely planned effort.

Excellence inspires; it electrifies. It potentializes every phase of the organization's life. It unleashes an impact which influences every program, every activity, every committee, and every staff person. To instill it in an organization is difficult, to sustain it, even more so. It demands imagination and vigor. But most of all, it requires from the leadership a constant state of self discovery and discipline.

Excellence is an organizations life line. It is the most compelling answer to apathy and inertia. It energizes a stimulating and pulsating force. Once it becomes the expected standard of performance, it develops a fiercely driving and motivating philosophy of operation. Excellence is a state of mind put into action. It is a roadmap to success. When a climate of excellence exist, all things - staff work, volunteer leadership, finances, and program - come easier.

Excellence in a program is important - because it is everything!

[Rosa Say]

MAHALO Rocky! Thank you so, so much for taking the time to transcribe this for us!
What immediately jumped out at me is your first line, for I used the same words in my book, verbatim, yet I have never seen this before!

The value of excellence in Managing with Aloha is Kūlia i ka nu‘u; literally translated, it means “strive to the summit.”
This is what I had written:

Kūlia i ka nu‘u is the Hawaiian value of achievement, and it promotes personal excellence. Excellence is never an accident: It is always intentional, and it always demands more than the norm. Excellence in the achievements you set your sights on will set you apart, for it will color your character with the destiny of leadership.

It is therefore very special to me to have this expansion on excellence, and the more meaningful because it is coming from you and not something I am reading from an unknown author; mahalo nui loa for sharing your mana‘o with me. An aloha weekend gift :)

[Rosa Say]

Rocky, I just clicked back over to your place because I wanted to grab that link for everyone reading here on your 5 Qualities of a Leader, knowing of the great conversation it has been stirring up for you: http://hillbillyphd.blogspot.com/2008/03/5-qualities-of-leader.html

…And I saw that you had written on habits this past month too: I like what you added there!
http://hillbillyphd.blogspot.com/2008/03/habit.html

“Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.” Anton Chekhov

“I think this is a neat quote. The reason I like it is because I believe that great things are accomplished with persistence. It is the little things that make the difference in life. It is rarely one big event in life that makes us or breaks us. It is our daily habits that make the difference. The philosopher Plutarch said it well when he stated "Character is simply habit long continued." It is what we do everyday that defines who we are.” ~ Rocky Noe

More of why habits are golden. At first hearing, the word ‘habit’ has less than positive associations for most, like smoking, fingernail biting and twirling your hair… yet looked at as a tendency toward consistent, predictable behavior instead – the “half-full” way, as Starbucker would remind us – Good habit cultivation rocks: It delivers an effective, trusted system for us (exactly the intention of our 5-Beat Rhythm each month). I think Stephen R. Covey nailed the concept with his seminal work on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.