Managing with Aloha Coaching

Finalizing your Ho‘ohana Statement into Workable Form

Let’s quickly review what we have accomplished this month:

1. We learned about Ho‘ohana as the value of intentional work. (Day 1 Essay)
2. We answered the question, Why Bother? (Tues. Coaching Essay 1)
3. We equipped ourselves with a new Language of Intention aimed at increasing our learning retention with Ho‘ohana, thereby helping us apply this value to our lives immediately, and with optimal usefulness and relevance. Key within our Language of Intention were new definitions for ‘work’ and for ‘job.’ (Tues. Coaching Essay 2)
4. You have defined your predominant values, so you will always have them top of mind as your ethical-for-me filters with whatever work you aim to accomplish. (Tues. Coaching Essay 3)
5. Last week, we applied your newly designed value-alignment to two areas that likely affect you pervasively; your responsibilities (Kuleana) and your self-care (Mālama). (Tues. Coaching Essay 4)

I had told you that weaving the value of Ho‘ohana into your life may be intense, but it can deliver joy and contentment as well. If you have stayed with me through-out this process, doing the work I have asked of you, you should already be experiencing this!

You also have a few pages of notes from this month’s readiness exercises. Today, we tie them altogether in a final draft that you can call your current Ho‘ohana Statement. The goal is for you to have a workable form that you can consistently refer to and have guide you.

iMobio found on Flickr by podcom.

What does a Ho‘ohana Statement look like?

Have you done different goal or mission statements in the past? The best form for your Ho‘ohana Statement is one you know you will work best with, one you are most likely to keep in front of you like a lump of clay just begging you to give it better shape and form until it becomes the work of art it can be.

When has that happened for you with the best outcome?

Over the years my own Ho‘ohana Statement has been a paragraph, a list, a mind-map taped to my bathroom mirror, a photo collage on my computer desk-top, a monthly calendar of value associations, a train-the-trainer certification curriculum outline, an mp3 on my iPod, and most extensively as an entire book —as Managing with Aloha.

You have seen a form of the Ho‘ohana Statement I had back in 2004; it appears as the last paragraph on page 32 of my book, Managing with Aloha:

“I love to teach, and in particular I love coaching managers. I love the science of business and the democracy of free enterprise, where ultimately the customer rules. I love reading, I love the written word and I love the study of how language can influence relationships between people. I love the new global possibilities of networking. I love the notion that we can choose our own destiny and create it. I get passionate about all these things, and by indulging my passions I gave life to Managing with Aloha.”

In short, it is a statement of less than a hundred words that describes the kind of work I love to do —not ‘like,’ LOVE. This is the work which brings me joy, contentment, and personal fulfillment. This is the work I do with intention. This is the work I devote the vast majority of my attentions to. This is the work I believe can shape a legacy for me at the same time it gives me clarity in my day to day living. This is the work I thrive within and take care of myself with. This is the work I have a ton of fun with. Oh! And this is the work which pays my bills and buys gifts for the people I love.

Reading these words myself now, nearly five full years since I wrote them, they surprise me a bit, in that I wouldn’t change them very much, if at all. The basic WHAT of my Ho‘ohana is the same; my Ho‘ohana in the way I write it today illustrates how the jobs that are within my Ho‘ohana-inspired work differ though; in other words, my HOW has changed. To use the language of intention we’ve had this month, my INTENTION is very much the same, but I find I am aching to deliberately shift where my ATTENTION has been.

In my Day One Essay I had made you a promise:

“I’m going to do it too. I tweak my Ho‘ohana statement on an on-going basis, however this month I am challenging myself with a major BHAG-quality (big hairy audacious goal) Ho‘ohana reinvention.”

I worked through the exercises I asked you to do too. This is what I came up with as my Ho‘ohana Statement for today:

My Ho‘ohana intention remains constant: I love that we can choose our own destiny and create it. I love helping people do so within their work, and with their values. From this moment forward however, I will shift my Ho‘ohana attentions, enlarging them from Managing with Aloha in the workplace to the optimistic expectancy of Living with Aloha in personal, Ho‘ohana-inspired work. I love helping people break free from the “yeah-but” shackles of their day to day living, so they clearly see the freedom they CAN have by immersing themselves in new learning and bigger thinking.

Still less than a hundred words for me, but encompassing some major changes. Among my changes, this is the BHAG: I will say goodbye to Say Leadership Coaching and hello to a major reinvention of Ho‘ohana Publishing. I have grown a great deal over the last five years, and I know I have more growing to do; I am shedding my old self-limiting contexts and ushering in a new one.

I will share more of my specific plans as they unfold over the next few months. For now, let’s get your Ho‘ohana Statement written!

Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 2: Enjoy the How-To of your Values.

Welcome back!

Did you complete last Tuesday’s exercise?

If not, or if you are newly joining us, I encourage you to start there, and then come back for this next part. This entire program is self-paced, and this article will be up for a week before the next one. Go to: Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 1: Your Intention and Your Personal Values.

If so, terrific! Let’s move on. We’re going to tackle your Ho‘ohana draft part 2 with the very specific strategy to have you enjoy the value alignment we are designing for you.

This is what we have accomplished with last Tuesday’s Coaching:

You have defined your predominant values, so you will always have them top of mind as your ethical-for-me filters. When you have a Language of Intention with how you articulate your values, you “walk your talk” and your personal belief system very naturally matches up to your talk. (You have value-alignment.)

Now what shall you apply this newly designed value-alignment to?

We will start with two areas that likely affect you pervasively; if you invest in these exercises and work on them you can achieve pretty dramatic short-term results. They are your responsibilities (Kuleana) and your self-care (Mālama). To start, we’ll set the stage with what I promised you last time; joy.

Where do you find JOY in the work you do right now?

I think that joy and happiness are vastly underrated and underestimated in their importance in our lives. We spend so much time “earning the right” whether in someone else’s eyes or our own, that we don’t get to enjoy the fruits of our labors nearly soon enough. And sadly, for some people, that tomorrow we were working so hard to arrive at never comes. I slugged it out through a good portion of my own life, and if I could do it again I wouldn’t; I’d be a lot more selfish about being joyful, realizing that the happy person is someone everyone else prefers to be associate themselves with too!

So here’s what I want you to do:
With a fresh sheet of paper in front of you and pen in hand, take a moment for this quick mind-sweep: Answer these questions one at a time, writing down your answers.

1. What are the things in life which bring you the most joy?
2. When do you find yourself smiling and laughing the most?
3. Who are the people you are happiest being with?
4. Pull out the values you identified last Tuesday: What values do your “happy people” seem to share with you? Do they invoke their values or their happiness and contentment any differently than you do?
5. During which times do you feel completely stress and worry free?
6. Are there actions you can readily think of to take, so that the stress-free times you just wrote down will happen more often for you?
7. What kind of freedoms do you need? Try to answer the question before you click if you decide to take this next link...
   (Extra-credit reading: In Search of the Ultimate Freedom.)
8. Conversely (to no. 7) what kind of connections or constancy do you need to maintain?

Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 1: Your Intention and Your Personal Values

Welcome back!

Thank you for checking in with me, and with our for our MWA Tuesday Coaching. This is what we have done so far:

1. Day One Essay: Ho‘ohana: Redefine the word “work” and make it yours.
2. Tuesday Coaching/ Week #1: Why Bother with Ho‘ohana, and “Worthwhile Work” at all?
3. Tuesday Coaching/ Week #2: Our Ho‘ohana Language of Intention: Are we talking about the same thing?
4. Mid-month Recap (on Talking Story): Day 15: Value your Month, Value your Life with Ho‘ohana.

Completing our Ho‘ohana Language of Intention

Last time we worked on our Language of Intention with work, job (and jobs), Aloha, and Ho‘ohana.

There is one more definition we should talk about, a word I have used quite a bit up to now: INTENTION. Intention is powerful stuff; and thus intention is a great thing to learn to harness and use.

Your intention moves you in certain directions; it propels you toward action in a very empowering way, because it originates within your wants, needs, and burning desires. Your intention, whether you are aware of it or not, drives your self-motivation, and self-motivation is the only kind of motivation there is.

Think about this for a moment: We only accept total accountability for responsibility we are self-motivated in some way to accept and own completely; quite frankly, we have no interest in sharing it. We are so passionate (and so clear) about that responsibility we want to be in complete control of our own destiny. More brutal honesty: When we are already clear, we are more interested in the cooperation of others as opposed to their collaboration.

When we find ourselves in this place of complete, self-motivated ownership, we will seize the authority we need to make things happen.

The question for most of us is this: Do my intentions control me (and perhaps wreak their havoc on my life in circumstantial, reactionary fashion), or do I deliberately design, and therefore purposely (and proactively) direct my intentions in the most useful and prosperous way I can?

What you intend is what you will do.

What you do repeatedly over time, is who you become.

As we learned last week; language can reinforce what we do.

Your Intention and Your Personal Values

Our intentions have their origins in our values. You become your definition of your values. To repeat something we’ve said before, values are useful in that they drive our behavior somewhat automatically.

• We BEHAVE in ways that are expressions of what we believe: We define this as acting with integrity. 
• We SAY things that are expressions of what we believe: We define this as telling the truth, and speaking with integrity.

Therefore, in designing your Ho‘ohana, let’s put your values to work for you in delivering the kind of integrity you feel you already have.

The values we believe in are those we practice naturally and with feels-right intention, feeling strong and self-fulfilled when we do. They drive the behaviors of our integrity.

We want our work and our personal values to match up (go to the very bottom of this article and reread our new definition for work if it’s helpful). When they do, we get that much closer to Ho‘ohana as our intuitively personal work.

Now here’s some great news!

1. Values are good, and they are universally shared by most of humankind.
2. Identifying our personal values is pretty easy to do.

Values are plentiful though, and we tend to collect them because they are attractive to us (again, they are good!) However the more values you try to juggle, the more they tend to compete with each other, hungrily trying to steal their share of your attentions. In coming up with a Ho‘ohana statement you can work productively with, you want to narrow your values down to no more than five, six at the most (our working within Ho‘ohana will essentially make it seven).

Now trust me, you have way more values than that, I know. We all do, fascinating creatures that we are! I am forcing you to choose both what is manageable, but also those which actually give you the greatest “bang for the buck.” As Pareto’s Principle says will always happen, the five you choose are very likely the 20% of the causes that give you 80% of your results.

In doing the exercise which follows, know this: Whatever answers you come up with, they are right, for they are all about YOU and about the life you lead in your present context. And that last part is important: Present day variables (i.e. ‘context’) affect your present day Ho‘ohana; don’t get caught up in “shoulding” choosing values that you think might be better for you, values that you “should have.”

What follows is an abbreviated listing of the values of Managing with Aloha (excluding Ho‘ohana since we are working with it to begin with), and you will also need a pad of paper.

Our Ho‘ohana Language of Intention: Are we talking about the same thing?

WORK is one of the most commonplace words in use. That means it comes with an awful amount of baggage. There are far too many negative connotations being spoken in connection with the word “work,” and in the design of your Ho‘ohana you need them to be positive and energizing instead.

Therefore, it helps enormously to create a new vocabulary around the concept of work. In doing so, you begin with a clean slate of sorts, a language of intention which is much more useful whether you use it out loud or in your self-talk: Words become triggers which remind you to DO what you say, and BE who you want to be, with both the doing and saying originating in new definitions. You don’t take anything for granted anymore, least of all the words which come out of your mouth. When you say them, you also listen to them, and you self-coach yourself. “Oh yeah, that’s what I was intending to do.” You bring everything back to intention, so intention can trigger attention —your priceless attention, and where you give it.

Best of all, as far as everyone else views this, you honor your good word.

Let’s start the Ho‘ohana Writing Process with this as the Ho‘ohana Language of Intention we agree upon:

WORK —what I intend to do for me, myself and I. When I “work on something” I am working on something useful or important to me in some way.

I work for my purpose, a purpose that is clear to me. I work on-purpose, no more “going through the motions,” no more “paying my dues” or “earning my stripes,” and no more “biding my time.” Even when I work within a job I feel stuck with (for the time being as a transitional time) I am learning as much as I can, learning which is connected with the experience, skills, or knowledge I will use in the future.

JOB —a description of what I am presently paid to deliver, whether via a paycheck from someone else (the company I am employed by), or via profits (that come from me, whether self-employed, or self-financed in some way).

It is helpful to look at jobs in the plural sense more than as one job, with “delivery” figuring more prominently. Each job is a collection of tasks that deliver cash flow for you: That’s life. Money is the transactional currency you need to finance the living of your life. Plural is helpful, for the more revenue streams you have the better (the sage advice to diversify; “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” as they say.)

ALOHA —about me living with authenticity in a world populated with other people. We human beings were not meant to live alone; we thrive in each other’s company. Aloha celebrates everything that makes me who I am (and who I am valued as by others in the world we share).

Aloha is a gift; you are as good as it gets and you need not try to be someone else. Aloha is living with the truth —the good truth— of who you already are, and it works in a phenomenal partnership with the value of Ho‘ohana; let’s expand a bit on the definition we started with.

HO‘OHANA —about me making my living in our world in the way that gives me daily direction and intention and leaves me with a feeling of personal fulfillment every day —not just when I have accomplished large goals. Every day is satisfying to me, for I know how my work every day is connected to my Ho‘ohana.

This is what it now sounds like when we put this language of intention all together:

“Ho‘ohana is not about career, it is about best-possible livelihood. My work is daily, and it has to do with breaking down my Ho‘ohana intentions into daily chunks of accomplishment that are useful and satisfying to me as I get them done. Meanwhile, my jobs (think plural, and both paid to self and by others) aggregate as the income I realistically need. In the spaces in between my job commitments to others, I work on the Ho‘ohana I do strictly for me and my own purposes.”

“I have the best situation possible, when jobs, work, and Ho‘ohana (by these new definitions) are all one and the same for me. It is in this best situation possible that my innately authentic spirit of aloha truly begins to shine and figure prominently into my relationships with other people, and into virtually every single manifestation of how I live my life as the gift it is.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it!

Here’s what I want you to do in the coming week:

1. At the end of your day, see how you can break up the words WORK and JOB within our bigger, plural definitions. What have you done as your WORK? What are the different kinds of JOBs you have been tackling all about achieving? You may surprise yourself within this process; go ahead and pat yourself on the back with how much you are actually handling on a daily basis!

One word of caution with this: Do NOT start with a To Do list and attempt to check things off. This listing should be a stream-of-consciousness exercise you do with a blank sheet of paper or fresh Word doc on your laptop. If you refer to anything at all, it should just be the new definitions of our Ho‘ohana Language of Intention.

2. Next, level a more critical eye on your listing: What did you really enjoy, with definite purpose or intention in your actions, and what is in that category of auto-pilot and going through the motions for you? Can those energies be re-directed? And if so, where would you re-direct them to?

Simply journal your daily results. Next Tuesday we will look at them through the lens of your values.

We Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa

Postscript:
If you are just now joining us, Aloha and welcome!
This is Essay #3 for Ho‘ohana; be sure to read Ho‘ohana: Redefine the word “work” and make it yours.

Essay #2 was Why Bother with Ho‘ohana, and “Worthwhile Work” at all?

NEXT TUESDAY, SEPT. 16: Defining our Personal Values
There is one more definition we should talk about, a word I have used quite a bit up to now: INTENTION. Intention is powerful stuff; and thus intention is a great thing to learn to harness and use. Our intentions have their origins in our values.

Why Bother with Ho‘ohana, and “Worthwhile Work” at all?

The basic definition of Ho‘ohana is this:

Ho‘ohana is the value of worthwhile work. Work can, and should be a time when you are working to bring meaning, fulfillment and fun to the life you lead.

ALOHA ~ ~ ~ Have you newly arrived here at Managing with Aloha Coaching? Each month, we adopt a Hawaiian value to study together in a universal way, thus the tagline you see up top: Value Your Month, Value Your Life. I publish a new essay here every Tuesday. This month we are learning about Ho‘ohana, the value of worthwhile work. Begin here: Day One Essay. Welcome! ~ Rosa Say

Think of Ho‘ohana as both noun and verb. Each case sounds like this;

Verb —“When I Ho‘ohana, I work with intention, and with a purpose in mind.”

Noun —“My Ho‘ohana is my personal expression of work. My Ho‘ohana is a statement of how I articulate my intentions.”

“What if I am perfectly fine with having a 9-5 J.O.B. and that’s it?
What if I don’t want my job to be work that is meant to ‘bring meaning, fulfillment, and fun’ to the life I lead?”

I think that is quite valid. Ho‘ohana is not always passionate, and it is not always directed toward high levels of professional achievement. Ho‘ohana is more about getting personal satisfaction in your life. Every day.

I used to connect passion with Ho‘ohana very consistently (and with profession, all in one fell swoop), and wow, when it happens it’s absolutely fantastic. However I no longer start with asking you to wear your passions on your sleeve (or with gut-wrenching professional decisions); I know that can be too hard because it may be too unrealistic that way. At this very moment, we are intersecting your life-in-progress with new learning.

In coaching (and managing) so many different people over the years, people who call themselves “just your normal working stiff” in their “and I’m A-okay with that” tone of voice and very sincere, genuinely truthful point of view, I have learned that Ho‘ohana serves them magnificently without the emotional delving into passion. Learning about Ho‘ohana helps them appreciate their lives more fully, even when they already feel pretty satisfied. Dots get connected. Things begin to make sense.

Often, passionate intention becomes a goal, a shift they think about taking much more than they had before, and often, their newly articulated intention gets attached to a cause they feel deeply about. When you work within your Ho‘ohana roadmap, passions can more easily get revealed, because again, more dots get connected, more things begin to make sense. You reveal the why behind the things you are ecstatic about, and the why behind the things you rant about too. After all, even rants are things we care about, or they wouldn’t bother us.

Even if you feel that passion is highly overrated, and you are now thinking, “Hey, I don’t need that high-achiever stress in my life,”  Ho‘ohana can still be a value that serves you in that gradual process of dot-connection on your own terms and own timetable. In learning more about it, you will find that Ho‘ohana is very useful to you, and we probably agree that usefulness is highly desirable.

Remember: Ho‘ohana is a PERSONAL value

Values are useful in that they drive our behavior somewhat automatically. We behave in ways that are expressions of what we believe.

Like all values, Ho‘ohana is a value you choose to believe in —or you decide not to choose it. What I do as your coach, is help you learn enough about Ho‘ohana to make the best-informed decision.

To start, I think it helps if we break down that triage of words in my Managing with Aloha phrasing of “meaning, fulfillment, and fun” that is within the definition of Ho‘ohana.

I believe that everyone wants fun in their lives. We need it, for fun is directly tied to our health, our spirit and our energies. I believe that everyone wants some degree of fulfillment in their lives, for if not, we wouldn’t bother getting out of bed every day; we wouldn’t look for things to experience, and life would turn out to be quite boring. For instance, think about fulfillment in terms of having satisfying relationships with other people, whether you work on your relationships within motivations for romance, for family, for camaraderie, or for friendship.

The kicker is that word ‘meaning,’ isn’t it

Yeah, the notion of making everything (or something) meaningful can get to me too.

Sometimes we are ready to pursue it (passion has kicked in), and sometimes we aren’t. Those times we aren’t ready to pursue meaning are those in which we already have our hands (and hearts) full with the trials and tribulations of day-to-day living. That’s normal, and that’s why my approach with Ho‘ohana has always been that we work on the personal first, and then allow the professional to fall in place where (and when) it makes the most sense.

That’s what we’ll be doing this month; making it personal for you. My objective is to coach you through the process of writing a personal Ho‘ohana statement of intention, as a highly useful statement which will serve you well.

This will also be a repeatable process. Your Ho‘ohana is likely to change over time, (mine certainly has! There has been change since Managing with Aloha was published!) and you can use what we will learn about Ho‘ohana over and over again.

From Tuesday to Tuesday

Decide on your personal schedule of Ho‘ohana-devoted study time this month, remembering to check in with me here every Tuesday for a new essay (Review my 5 suggestions in yesterday’s Day One Essay.)

In between, let’s talk story! What are you wondering about in regard to Ho‘ohana? The more I hear from you, the more I will incorporate it into the month’s line up of Ho‘ohana-connected topics I have lined up for you.

Last month our value study on self-leadership was all the richer, directly impacted by your feedback, so hana hou, let’s continue to pursue lōkahi, the collaboration which makes us so much better as the Ho‘ohana Community.

We Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa

Postscript:
If you are just now joining us, Aloha and welcome!
This is Essay #2 for Ho‘ohana; be sure to read Ho‘ohana: Redefine the word “work” and make it yours.

NEXT TUESDAY, SEPT. 9: Our Ho‘ohana Language of Intention
WORK is one of the most commonplace words in use. That means it comes with an awful amount of baggage. There are far too many negative connotations being spoken in connection with the word “work,” and in the design of your Ho‘ohana you need them to be positive and energizing instead.