Managing with Aloha Coaching

Always Find Your Doubting Thomas

“Easy for you to say.”

During my corporate management career, that would be the response I could get from others on my management team at times, whether it was to me directly, with a sigh and doubtful shake of their head, or muttered under their breath as they slumped their shoulders and started to walk away thinking the conversation was over.

It wasn’t. I might give them a bit of a respite, but to be sure, the conversation was not over.

Desiring Shift and Choosing Change

The conversation would have started around our defining an issue —take your pick, virtually any issue will do. It would have then involved brainstorming possible scenarios for resolution, and finally, deciding on the likeliest possibility that would give us a more successful probability: We were looking for some shift, and we were choosing our change.

Hopefully we were doing it early enough in our response to whatever the less-than-optimal scenario was at the time, so that the change we chose was;

• proactive (primarily of our design and our discretion) and

• not reactive (imposed on us by someone else, because we had waited too long to take action ourselves).

The “someone else” is usually a higher-level executive, owner, or board of directors. They say they step in when we take too long to handle the business ourselves, and much as we hate to admit it, nine times out of ten, that’s a fairly accurate assessment.

Sometimes, “Easy for you to say” was not a statement directed at me, but one I would hear people say to each other, or a doubt I could read in their faces.

Doubting Thomas is a term that is used to describe someone who will refuse to believe something without direct, physical, personal evidence; a skeptic.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio.

The term is based on the Biblical account of Thomas the Apostle, who doubted the resurrection of Jesus and demanded to feel Jesus' wounds before being convinced (John 20:24-29) … After seeing Jesus alive and being offered the opportunity to touch his wounds — according to the author of the Gospel of John — Thomas professed his faith in Jesus; on this account he is also called Thomas the Believer.
—From Wikipedia

A large part of my coaching to people when I facilitated these shift sessions, as we called them, was that we had to leave the room Kākou, “all in” and ready to proceed together in our separate areas of operation. We had to be Lōkahi, unified and harmonious in our intentions and in our actions, so that in turn, our staff would trust in us as a well-functioning management team and not only as individual stars (or renegades).

You need a whole lot of trust and belief when you are looking for shift and introducing change. People generally don’t resist change in itself, they resist being changed by others they have little confidence in.

“Get my drift?”

“Easy for you to say” can mean a bunch of different things. Here are just three examples (there are more):

1. It can mean, “This will be a piece of cake for you in your situation and position, but it will be much more challenging for me. Fasten your seat belts, for we’re in for a rough ride.”

2. It can mean, “Yes, I’m agreeing to this because we went through the decision process together and I know that’s the expectation I have to fulfill, but I still don’t buy in completely. Fasten your seat belts, for we’re in for a rough ride.”

3. It can mean, “Others will do this for you (or for your position in the organization), but not for me (and not in mine). Fasten your seat belts, for we’re in for a rough ride.”

The conversation was never over for me, because I knew that second sentence was always part of the kaona (hidden meaning and implication) of each one. Unless we addressed the first part of each possible meaning to “Easy for you to say,” the second part of “Fasten your seat belts, for we’re in for a rough ride” would certainly happen.

“What executives believe are small disconnects between them and their peers actually look like major rifts to people deeper in the organization. And when those people deeper in the organization try to resolve the differences among themselves, they often become engaged in bloody and time-consuming battles, with no possibility for resolution…

When an executive decides not to confront a peer about a potential disagreement, he or she is dooming employees to waste time, money, and emotional energy dealing with unsolvable issues. This causes the best employees to start looking for jobs in less dysfunctional organizations, and it creates an environment of disillusionment, distrust, and exhaustion for those who stay.”
—Patrick Lencioni, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
[See my book review at Talking Story.]

Why else do you suppose it is important that you find the Doubting Thomas where you work, or in any situation where you want to achieve shift, and get them to be a Thomas the Believer?

How would you respond to any or all of those three possibilities above, whether you are managing a team, or willing to engage in peer-to-peer coaching? Might it be different in a situation with your friends, or within your family?

Get Started on Twitter the Value-Based Way: 5 Tips

Preface:
This is part two of two postings on Twitter for the three-day weekend. Part one can be read as the previous posting, Learning Twitter with Hawaiian Values.

Why Twitter?
It has become our newest challenge within our Brex initiative for 2008: Brave Experiments with Digital Learning.

Have I convinced you to give Twitter a go?

If you have already been tweeting, are you clear on what your own value parameters are?

As a practical matter, most of us do jump in and experiment with new learning for a while before we make our final decisions on keeping and integrating the subject of our learning into our lives; we get our hands nice and dirty with it! Identifying our key value drivers, and deciding our “for the sake of what” mentioned in part one can come later, within the analysis of our results thus far, and as will organically reveal itself within our into-our-life blending.

So let’s say you are willing to give Twitter a try as a pilot project for part of your own 2008 Brex agenda (you can always opt out again later). Here are some start-up tips, and they do end with the value piece so you aren’t waiting too long to get there!

Ekahi (One). When you sign up, keep your ‘handle’ short. I lucked out on this by default… including a space at the end, @rosasay for me only takes up 9 of those 140-characters others are limited to in a tweet they send me, and I don’t get too many misspellings that I won’t catch (interesting ones for me have been rosassy and rosary!) Two of the co-founders of Twitter are @biz and @ev …they had an advantage with anticipation that should have clued us all in!

If not your name, remember that obvious (or easy to type) for you may not be that way for the others tweeting you directly, especially if your native language is one where a lot of vowels or consonants run together well locally, but look like Greek to others globally.

When I want to send tweets to someone with a long Twitter name, I rely on those good old keyboard shortcuts for copy (ctrl-c) and paste (ctrl-v), especially when we are conversing and I want them at the ready in my clipboard for the same-person tweeting repetition to follow.

Elua (Two). When you start, go “all in.” I think the best way to learn most digital apps is one at a time and completely going for it, resisting other new-learning distractions until you have nailed a good habit you’d like to keep. That’s right – forget that Twitter has been called a distraction, and think of it as the main deal to which other things are distractions!

Another reason for this is that once you get in your groove with Twitter you can multi-task while webbing it, with Twitter open in a desktop client or another browser tab. However there is a difference between multi-tasking and multi-learning, and what I am recommending here by saying go “all in” is that you resist the urge to multi-learn different digital agendas at first. You will also find that there are a ton of APIs (application programming interfaces) connected to Twitter, and you will end up multi-learning to some degree as it is, though you intended to concentrate on just the one learning.

An example: A recent one I found that I think is great for tracking your @replies when they are not at the beginning of a tweet (and thus, will not show up on your replies tab) is summize.com: You type your user name into the search box there, and this comes up. That is how I found this tweet from Wendee when I otherwise would never have seen it so I could reply. Also a good app to keep in mind when Twitter disables the replies tab in their maintenance fixes.

Ekolu (Three). I would recommend you start with a community you already know personally (you can find a lot of people already there) and it may surprise and delight you to discover who in your existing network are early adopters! Not only that, jumping into Twitter with some friends to learn with is fun, and it will encourage you.

Allow your follow-network to grow organically, versus taking the approach of following a lot of people right off the bat, and finding you cannot keep up with your conversations; why give them a poor (and unfortunately inaccurate) first impression of the star you really are!

Then, throw in a few follows for “thought leaders,” people you may not yet know personally, but want to learn from, and introduce yourself to.

If you still find you’d like to be more ambitious with your follows as you get started, take a look at the follow icons we have @JJLhui, the twitter feed we have set up for Joyful Jubilant Learning, for those are the thought leaders on our JJL Advisory Board.

Eha (Four). Don’t game it. Be authentic and willing to be vulnerable. While it is true that people can get a picture of you having no life at first (especially if you take my “all in” advice), to worry too much about appearances isn’t going to serve you as well as investing in the one-time/first-time learning strategy. The other thing to keep in mind is that if they are following you through-out your learning, you are also easing them into a rhythm of knowing when it is best for them to interact with you too: You’ll both win!

Seek to add value for others from the get-go, and any vulnerability you may initially feel will quickly segue into a sharing of the good stuff! Learn to use www.tinyurl.com or www.snurl.com (less characters, but more downtime than tinyurl) and then tweet urls for your best blog posts, not all of them, and for the great stuff you find online. Be generous, and re-tweet what others have shared. Help people celebrate their special days.

Elima (Five). Compose your own set of value parameters sooner versus later. You can build a habit very quickly on Twitter, true to that 21 to 28 days productivity peeps tell you it takes (yep, I’ve hawked the habbit riddle with you too:-). And remember: Those 21 days build not-so-good habits too, another reason to go “all in” (#2 above) and be authentic (#4)! So much easier to keep up with the truth than with a façade!

Twitter for me is extending my conversations; others want to lurk and listen, same as they silently read blogs. Define what your “for the sake of what” is all about, and then pick your personal values which will help you in your own decision-making process along the way. When and if that day comes that you want to converse, your followers will be the right ones already, eager to follow you back because you have so much in common: You will recognize each other by the values you share.

Now, as promised, Bonus Learning Links you can cruise through if you are so inclined:

To Rock ‘n Roll in Biz is to Fly in the Face of Convention

“I don’t have to do it that way!”

“That is 1000% correct, you don’t.”

This simple exchange was the magic of a lightbulb moment two nights ago: I wish I could have captured it with a camera! The woman who said that first sentence to me (I said the second one) said it as a statement of dawning realization; it was not a question. She was charged up, excited, and ready to Rock ‘n Roll.

This posting is about Flying in the Face of Convention, something that may initially sound brash and un-humility-like to you. Not at all, and I hope you’ll read on!

Managing with Aloha has given me the most incredible gifts

When people ask me, “Should I write a book?” my instinctive answer, the one I want to blurt out immediately, is “Oh yes, do! Absolutely!” simply because I am drawing on my own experience, and deep down, I sincerely do believe anyone can do what I have done. The answer that does get spoken is more cautious (and is usually in the form of me asking them more questions), because there is a lot of work that goes with that decision, and handling the aftermath, both when it is good and not so good, is a big part of it. The answer depends on why you want to write the book and what part it will play in your life; perhaps we’ll look at that in a future Sunday Mālama. (Sidebar: You already know my punch line to it, I am not keeping you in suspense: Would the work of it be Ho‘ohana work for you?)

This all comes to mind for me because of the immediate ‘afterglow effect’ we experienced after the presentation I gave recently, ‘we’ being both me and my audience. I love speaking, and my perfect audience size is one kept under about 60, for with smaller groups I don’t need a mic or to be on a riser, and I can get right in the middle of the group and get them to interact with me and with each other. The group is also small enough not to be intimidated by each other, and they will seize more opportunities to engage. Just as we bloggers can say the goodness is in the comments, the goodness for all of my presentations is often in the audience.

Now I do have to be the one who gets the show rolling, however give me an audience of small business people ready to break some rules and fly unfettered in the face of convention, and I am truly in my element. These are among the special gifts that Managing with Aloha has given me: My book has turned out to be the best business card I could have for getting me invitations to speak, but with the right groups of people; I’m not for everyone, and I realize that. What MWA does, is give me opportunities to meet people who are ready to rock and roll their world.

Rock and roll music gets played by the small and independent

Listening Alone Does Not Equate to the Humility of Ha‘aha‘a

My coaching business generally falls into two distinct areas; consultation (teaching and training in MWA and its business/culture modeling) and coaching (mentoring in response to the specific challenges that managers are having, and coaching them through it).

The most frequent subjects which come up in the second arena, the responsiveness coaching I do, can be summed up as helping managers to work with people they don’t understand, whether that person is an employee, a peer or boss, a vendor or customer. Managers will usually start our conversation with something like, “How do I deal with someone who…” because they feel they have tried everything they can think of, and are still feeling thwarted and are frustrated: They are searching for an answer which eludes them, and not because they aren’t trying hard as they can.

As I listen to the situation they describe to me I am listening for clues that tell me

a) what value drivers the employee brings to the situation or to their day-to-day working relationship

b) what value drivers the manager deems most important, (and prefers to have in their day-to-day working relationship) and then

c) where the disconnect is between those two things, (and between them as proud individuals) so we can reconcile it.

Communication breakdowns often loom large as the probable causes in these disconnects. A sentence I will often hear at some point is “I know they hear me and understand me, but they don’t listen to me.”

We managers revere listening: It has repeatedly been drummed in our heads that listening is the grown-up sage to the stubborn youngster called hearing. However there are good listeners and not-so-good listeners, and how we normally define that difference is this way: To a manager’s way of thinking, A good listener takes the desired action we want. A not-so-good listener doesn’t.

What we define as “good listening” is very relevant to what we personally want to happen, and someone else needs to be the one doing it.

Now here’s something important to understand: We aren’t looking for listening alone. We actually get the listening in both those situations, and something else is missing. What we are hoping for and not getting, is Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility. It’s the whipped cream and cherry on top.

Consider some of these things we have already said this month about humility:

“Humility is exhibiting strength and confidence in the process of adding value to others.” —Tim Milburn

“When I aspire to be humble, I realize I have a lot to learn.”—Stephanie

“Humility is what makes us grow and helps us truly help others.”—Brad Shorr

“Humility is the ability to submit to daily growth and learning and maintaining a healthy sense of humor about it all.” —Karen Swim

There are such gems in the sharing of our Ho‘ohana Community here, aren’t there?

Listening is just the beginning. What humility adds to the process is the acceptance of what we have heard, and the willingness to use our new learning about it.

Once I am able to coach a manager toward asking for those two things (because they cannot force them), and doing that asking when they themselves are aspiring to be humble, accepting of another’s challenges, and willing to work with them in meeting those challenges, those once-difficult, once-frustrating situations become golden opportunities.

Weekend Learning Project

I know that many of you who are managers catch up with me over the weekend when you raise your heads up from the day-to-day. Here is how we can use this coaching reflection:

1. Nānā i ke kumu (look for the source):
Revisit and reconsider any situation at work where you have been frustrated because you felt that listening was present but it fell short somehow.

2. ‘Ike loa (seek new learning):
Think about how you might need to coach another (or self-coach) in a) open-minded acceptance and b) the willingness to take new and different action.

3. Ho‘ohiki (make a promise to yourself):
Resolve and commit to solving your listening or communication by integrating specific actions into the coming week’s Strong Week Plan, i.e. make this process part of your Weekly Review.

4. Ha‘aha‘a (be humble):
Use humility as your value-driver through-out this process.

5. Kākou (be “we-minded”):
When another person is involved, be willing to ask, not just tell with new directions! Enroll them in your goal to improve honestly. Do not inadvertently try to manipulate them by doing this alone: Openly ask them to learn with you.

Let us know how this works for you! For remember, we Ho‘ohana together!
~ Rosa

Yummy photo of “Cookies and cream with a cherry on top” by fd on Flickr.

Mālama in our 5-Beat Rhythm: What can you sustain?

I received an email over the weekend from someone who has a birthday coming up in the next few weeks. They wrote (yes, I am escaping any “he” or “she” hints on purpose!) to let me off the hook, saying, “Rosa, you cannot possibly continue to do these birthday postings on MWAC for everyone in the Ho‘ohana Community; are you really intending to do so?”

They are right, I can’t sustain them in the way I’ve done this month, for the Ho‘ohana Community is too large at this point. I will need to celebrate your birthdays to come in other, manageable and sustainable ways. I didn’t even get everyone in April done!

Since it was our value study for the month, I picked April as an example of what Mālama for birthdays can be: It’s the month of my own birthday (and I don’t shy from celebrating it), and it was a good opportunity to share some thoughts I have on how we adults need and deserve to have our big day celebrated just as much as children do— it’s important.

When I think about our theme of “Mellow Mālama Maintenance” over the past month, the question, “What can you sustain?” is a good one for our wrap up these last three days of April.

Let’s look at the 5th Beat again:

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 *That follow-through link is new, and not on the original template --- from March: The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With --- perhaps another (or preferred?) tool for you to integrate?

The fact that I will have to somehow adjust my birthday celebrations is fairly easy to explain.

However there is something else I have decided is not sustainable here at MWAC: The 5-Beat Rhythm in its present form.

I practice what I preach here each month right along with you, and in short, after several months of trying to, I have realized that I have not been able to arrive at my own Mellow Mālama Maintenance with the MWAC version of the 5-Beat Rhythm.

The 5-Beat Rhythm works wonderfully well in two other contexts

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:

How are those values working for you, hmm?

We are well into the third week of our value study: Ho‘ohanohano can be pretty powerful, don’t you think?

I gave you this gentle coaching back in January as the year started: Say No to Resolutions: Choose your Values instead.

“That is the core belief of Managing with Aloha: Values drive behavior. So get the behaviors you want by keeping the values you revere front and center at all times… You will best get things done through others by incorporating the values you share with them, values that embrace collaboration, and values that also are fundamental good practices… and Aloha is the most universally held value of them all.”

You really can’t go wrong with Aloha; working with Aloha basically comes down to being true to who you are, where ultimate transparency = finely attuned self-mastery. ‘Working with Aloha’ is honoring your own spirit.

However Aloha is the foundation; it is the fertile ground in which all the other values thrive and prosper with ‘root caused’ authenticity too. So which are the others you have kept front and center?

Thus far for 2008, we have studied Pono in January, Kuleana in February, and are currently immersed in Ho‘ohanohano this month. You may have decided that these values work for you too, or you may have used them to draw parallels and connections with other values.

Value Alignment in Practice

Need an example? Well, there is nothing easier to write about than a personal one… Back in January, within that same “Choose your Values instead” posting, I had shared that in my company, Say Leadership Coaching, I would be working with…

Pono, for a newly designed Rightness and Balance as a solo entrepreneur. My “we”s will steadily become “I”s.

As I had shared with my SLC newsletter subscribers this past summer, I am transitioning our 'Ohana in Business where every single person becomes a solo entrepreneur, and April 1 is the transition date where everyone is officially on their own.

Pono will continue to be my year-long self-reckoning, where I can continually ask myself, “Is this action Pono for me, and is my new business model Pono for my customers and all other stakeholders?”

Well, as of this writing, I am twelve days from that April 1 target. I made the “solo” part ahead of schedule, and SLC is down to me, myself, and I, with the partners that I do still have working with me as independent contractors who have started their own businesses: In essence, I am one of their clients in whatever capacity I may still be using their services.

However life is not meant to be a completely solo journey, and as I had anticipated, the “rightness and balance of Pono” will indeed continue to be a self-reckoning for me on the quality of all the relationships I hold with others (including you who read this site!)

Then, in February…

Are you a high maintenance manager?

The easier it is for other people to work with you, the more you will all get done.
Pretty simple, really.

Ho‘ohanohano is a value study that begs perception checks of us. Great managers will ask themselves perception questions which help them assess if the reality they want is the reality they are actually getting by merit of their behavior.

For instance, the postings I have offered you so far this month could be looked at as essay-musings on these Ho‘ohanohano questions:

• First: Is it at all possible people think I’m a jerk? What can, and should I do about that?
  

• Second: Do people feel I am committed? Can they tell what I am committed to? Do my direct reports feel I am committed to them?

• Third: Am I approachable? Do people feel I am there for them whenever they may find they need me most?

• Fourth: Beyond being approachable, am I magnetic? Do people feel they get a high return being in a great working relationship with me?

• Fifth: Do my direct reports feel they learn and grow with me? Under my tutelage, do we use all that we know in the best possible way, thereby creating an atmosphere of positive expectancy?

• Sixth: What kind of reputation do I have with follow-up? How can I improve?

Here is another Ho‘ohanohano question the great manager must consistently ask of him or herself:

Am I easy to work with, or would my staff call me a high maintenance manager?

Now I could give you a laundry list of the ways you could make it easier for people to work with you. However if I do so, I will be robbing you of a golden opportunity in relationship-building with the people you work with (read the fourth question above again, and think about the Law of Reciprocity). This is what you need to do:

Ask them. Be completely open-minded about their answers. Say thank you. Follow-up by creating some new habits. Check back with them about a month from now, and ask them how you are doing. These are The 5 Steps of Peer-to-Peer Coaching. They become a dynamic feedback loop when you schedule the conversation consistently (different subject matter is bound to come up) and take turns starting at number 1. in mutually beneficial relationships invoking the Law of Reciprocity.

Trust me: This is not a threatening exercise and doesn't have to be deeply soul-searching. For our subject at hand, number 1. is a simple conversation you can start this way;

The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With

If I am hard pressed to recommend one and only one tool as THE most essential one in every manager’s tool kit, there is no question for me what it will be.

It is the very first tool I teach new supervisors (and any struggling manager) to use;
No matter the industry they are in.
No matter the country they are in.

Whether they are new to their positions or seasoned pros.
Whether they have just one employee or thousands.

Whenever it is calm, and they are caught up.
Whenever it is frenetic and crazy, and they can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel.

Pretty much no matter what the circumstances are.
And get this – even more than my beloved Daily 5 Minutes®.

The One Tool that every manager must work with, and work with daily, is this:
A simple list kept easily and best with pencil and an 8x10 sheet of paper folded into three columns.

This is not just any list, but a very special one.

It is the list that will endear every manager to every employee, every boss, every supplier or vendor partner, and every customer.

It is the list that can single-handedly reinvent a manager’s reputation, as it simultaneously functions as that manager’s best training and coaching architect.

At the top of this list is its name, and right beneath that, as the headings of its three columns, are all the instructions managers will need.

This magic manager’s list is called, THE FOLLOW-UP I NEED TO COMPLETE.

Those headings of its three columns are,

1. What I must Do to Honor my Word
2. Who I need to Follow-up with, and By When
3. Why it is so Important to Them, and thus, to Me.

When management is a calling (as it should only be) managers work more for other people than they do for themselves. The work they do for others IS the work they do for themselves, for when they elevate the human condition, improving it as it aches to be improved, they are most fulfilled in the work they are most needed for, discovering that being a manager can be the most satisfying and rewarding work that exists.

Sunday Mālama Book Review: Know Can Do! ~ Part One

A Book Review: Know Can Do! Put your Know-How into Action
A parable which teaches us “to close the knowing-doing gap, focusing on the inside as well as the outside,” by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer, and Dick Ruhe

Can you DO all you KNOW about?

Will you reliably draw on all the knowledge you may have gathered,
and use it to perform magnificently when you need to?

For most of us, the answer is likely to be “No, probably not.”

Yet we do wish it were so!

Well, what if I were to tell you that there is a book that offers the “missing link” for this gap we all experience between our learning and our retention and use of our learning?

There is! I LOVE this book, and from now on it will be my perfect thank you gift of “keep this going!” urging I start giving to all my workshop clients. In fact, I have already bought and given away four of them within the last two weeks.

I will be insisting that anyone who takes the train-the-trainer workshops I offer for Managing with Aloha read or listen to Know Can Do! and discuss it with me: Whether you choose to read its quick 104 pages or listen to it for the hour and 48 minutes it takes via audio book, if you are a serious learner, the Know Can Do! parable is one you need to become familiar with.

I knew I wanted to review this book for our first Trackback Sunday within our 2008 A Love Affair With Books at Joyful Jubilant Learning because of its connection to the learning process. However I have been getting so excited about it I haven't been able to wait, and have already mentioned it on my Talking Story site in connection with a tidbit shared within the book on listening: Listening with an Open, Positive Mindset.

Remember that W.H. Murray quote I shared with you a week ago?

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
There is one elementary truth,
The ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would have otherwise never occurred.

Know Can Do! Put your Know-How into Action is one of those books which I am convinced fell onto my radar from somewhere in the heavens because Providence was conspiring in my favor. I have been feeling exactly like the author of the Know Can Do! parable. The book starts this way: