Welcome to our Tuesday Coaching:
Our value of the month is Alaka‘i, the Hawaiian value of leadership, and the focus of our study is Self-Leadership.
- Day One Essay for August 2008: Alaka‘i, Chiefs and Indians
- Tuesday Essay #1 on Alaka‘i: Why Self-Leadership?
- Tuesday Essay #2 on Alaka‘i: Self-Leadership in 1 Sentence
- Today: The Self-Leadership of Alaka‘i and Your Connection to Worthwhile Work
From last Tuesday:
“Self-leadership is the growing process of arriving at your own choice, an arrival you will stand up for and articulate exceptionally well, feeling you are prepared to both defend it and inspire with it.”
TO SELF-LEAD:
Think, learn, grow.
Arrive.
Articulate. Stand tall.
What is this growing process of arriving at one’s own choice, and why is it so important to you?
It may be helpful to answer the second question first, for if it isn’t important to you, why bother? Let’s use something that is usually a staple on the manager’s To Do List to help examine the answer: HIRING.
How do you recruit, interview, and hire?
In my early days of being a manager, I would conduct hiring interviews as most rookies do. I’d look over their job application or resume as the candidate sat in front of me, and I’d ask whatever clarifying questions came to mind. It wasn’t until a considerable amount of trial and error, selecting three poor gut-choices for every shot-in-the-dark fortuitous one, that I realized something that would forever change my approach: The fine details of a person’s past experience was not as important to me as the likelihood of what they would DO with the benefit of having retained that experience going forward.
What had they learned, and what would they now do with their most valuable lessons? What would they do for me, and for the job I offered them?
Within my interview process I had been filling in the blanks of a candidate’s past. What I eventually learned to do instead, was fill in the blanks of their most probable future, a future I would have a role in. [For more in that regard, read The Role of the Manager Reconstructed].
When the interview was over, there was really only one question I needed to have an answer for: If I hired this person, what was I getting myself into? Was this person ready for self-leadership in whatever circumstance the world would place them in, or would I as their manager be required to work with them in their self-leadership arrival process —and if so, to what degree?
What about self-management?
Self-management was part of the consideration too, but to me those are the basics that have to do with values lived (a.k.a. walking their talk) and predictable, reputable day-to-day behavior. Adults are able to communicate well, and they honor their word or make a new agreement. Adults are trustworthy, and take full accountability for their responsibilities. Adults have a good work ethic, and those “old-fashioned” basic work-world values like dependability, timeliness, and professionalism. Adults demonstrate decorum, handle their self-care and practice self-discipline, they seek to be productive and earn their keep.
Frankly, I came to expect all of those things as the ‘Givens for Adults,’ at least those who worked for me and the organizations I chose to be involved with. Remember this? It is the epigraph to Managing with Aloha and hard-wired into my belief system:
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist and philosopher
Short term, people would demonstrate they were telling the truth about being a grown-up or not while within their probationary period. What I wanted to dig deeper for, were my long-term prospects, i.e. the self-leadership indicators of a person ready for decision-making (and decision-management) that was future directed; the really interesting (and fun) stuff of ideation and innovation. The stuff that adults continue to grow with, and thrive within.
Same ‘ol, same ‘ol repeated, even when pretty good and reliably effective, isn’t all that fun and exciting. It isn’t about thriving in a bold, exciting way. Do you want routine maintenance, or do you want firing on all cylinders propulsion?
Adults continue to grow when they are devoted to WORTHWHILE WORK
Please understand that I am in no way discounting the value of someone’s past experience. In fact, I think that considering it from the lens of self-leadership helps you sort it and elevate it to continued usefulness within this approach:
You can write down and document the experience, history, and lessons-learned you want to remember. Collectively, those things are called REFERENCE.
Worthwhile work is about present-day effort you devote to brand new ideas about creating a better future. In Managing with Aloha, it is what we call HO‘OHANA.
Worthwhile work is not about remembering; that is why people get annoyed with those who rest on their laurels, worship the status quo, and wax nostalgic about “the good old days.”
On the other hand, people get inspired and energized by those who seem to be idea machines: They are always “thinking of something” and offering brand new solutions to nagging old problems. They create compelling visions of a future that in some way (and in multiple ways both big and small) is far, far better than the present is. If there is anything everyone will agree about when describing a future they wish for, is that it is an improvement; it is BETTER.
People who give us BETTER are those we call leaders. They are leaders we will eagerly follow.
What do you think?
Have we answered the question of why the growing process of self-leadership may be important to you? If not, let’s talk about it this week.
I have focused on the role of the manager here, but it is good to understand it from the personal perspective: Why do you want to self-lead YOU? What is the personal connection you need to (and want to) reap from this? Is it about creating your own sources of self-generated energy? Is it about defining the criteria of those future ideas you want to have in creating your own BETTER?
Next Tuesday we’ll answer that second question we’ve been preparing for: What is this “growing process of arriving at one’s own choice” that I have defined as so critical to self-leadership? I have given you the short version...
TO SELF-LEAD:
Think, learn, grow.
Arrive.
Articulate. Stand tall.
...and we will flesh it out with more detail and concrete suggestions; we’ll call them The Self-improvement Targets of Self-Leadership.
Until then, let’s talk story; we Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.
Hoping to hear from you!
~Rosa
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