Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Let’s Talk Story: What’s new with you?

Sometimes, and certainly when it comes to talking story, those simple questions we call “small talk” are the best ones for keeping you socially connected to people. They can lead to great conversations. In the very least, they comfort you with the knowledge that life is not a solo proposition; they are warmly connecting.

What’s new with you?
Mahalo for checking in with me today.

For instance, while sitting with my coffee this morning I sent off one of those emails that are family blasts. I have three brothers and one sister, all married and with families of their own, and is the case with my own two in-college kids, I can’t personally visit any of them (or my mom) unless I hop on a plane. So my email simply asked, “What’s new with you?”

It’s nice to let the people you care about know that you are interested in their lives; and the niceness karma comes back to you tenfold… I love getting their responses back.

So, dear readers, send out your own ‘Ohana (family) email blast, and then, if you like, let’s talk story here too: What’s new with you?

New with me? My tweeting on Twitter. I’m not always the earliest adopter, but I eventually find my way… so you can also let me know about what’s new with you there... you’ll find me @rosasay

Initially I didn’t really “get it.” But now, I am finding that Twitter can be a great new way to talk story with people, and I would agree with Tom Landini (whom I learned about in a tweet from Angela Maiers) when he says,

“I’m not sure, though, that the most interesting question is ‘what are you doing?’ Much more useful to me is ‘what’s got your attention right now?’”

So much is about where you give that gift of your attention, isn’t it.

Thank you very much for this gift of yours just now :)
~ Rosa

Are you an Underappreciated Workplace Genius?

I just love the way that Wayne Turmel writes. You smile constantly as you read his words (and asides) and between the lines there are real gems of wisdom. This is an article I will be sending to all the managers I coach: 

A field guide to underappreciated workplace geniuses.
Wayne wrote it for Management-Issues at the Heart of the Changing Workplace

A beginning snippet which is the gist of it:

“At the beginning of my management and training career, I was fascinated with Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Essentially, this argues that there are all kinds of smart in the world (seven to be precise) and the kind they measure in school is only one of them - or two of them depending which test you took.

This was both a huge eye-opener for employers trying to identify quality employees (my stated reason for looking into the theory) and for those of us who tried to get our parents off our backs about low grades (an added bonus and one my own kid will not be able to get away with, true or not).

As I continued to deal with people, though, I realized that not only are there employees out there with unappreciated intelligences, some of these people are downright geniuses in a strange kind of way. Their ability to function at high levels in their areas of expertise and complete inability to work and play well with others is worthy of examination by someone much smarter than me.”

Learn about the “intelligences” Wayne calls,

1. The DNA Identifier
2. The Human Weathervane
3. The Atomic Calipers
4. The Boss Whisperer ... click to the article.

If you identify with these, well, perhaps we should talk. You have some energy that we can channel.

You can visit Wayne at his own place too: Cranky never was this good.

“The Cranky Middle Manager Show is an irreverent but insightful look at the world of middle management. Host Wayne Turmel vents, offers humorous commentary and talks to the smartest people in the field about management techniques, career strategies and just keeping it together day after day. If you ever feel stuck between the idiots that make the decisions and the morons who won't do as they're told, this is the show for you.”

Don’t blame the economy; Show me what you’re made of!

Are those violins I hear?

In talking story with some business people lately, I have had to bite my tongue and take the time to choose my words more diplomatically, but here I'll get to the point:

Whining and commiseration is worthless.

Have a better conversation between your ears and with everyone you work with.

It is getting way too easy for American (and Hawaiian) business people to blame the coming/already-here recession for practically every woe they have right now – and every nonperformance issue. The one bright spot is that we have momentarily stopped blaming Gen'ers X and Y for not sharing Boomer values and all that nonsense.

It may feel slightly self-protective of your personal dignity to do this wound-licking, but you’ll have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get to work for some real healing (and better business prospects) to start.

You can: Be more confident.

You’re smart, good enough and then some.

So get to work and Ho‘ohana – make things happen.

Ho‘omau: Ho‘omau is the Hawaiian value of perseverance and persistence. Those who ho‘omau do not give up, and they certainly do not waste their time (and squander others’ attentions) by moaning and complaining.

Optimists know (not just believe, KNOW) that times of adversity are when winners emerge. Winners leverage what they DO have going for them in the best possible way with an abundance mentality (Palena ‘ole) and positive expectancy.

Be the winner I know you are. These are times ripe for the picking :)

Photo on Flickr by margolove.
She says The balls of paper are actually sheet music...
think of them as the excuses, yeah buts, and I can'ts you can take aim at shooting down!

No, nobody really does this (anymore), right?

Stunning Six Apart Revelations:

Found on Flickr by eekim... See more on the SA company refrigerator:
"If you take a drink, you have to leave a secret."

The identity I have is challenge enough! Can't imagine taking on another one...

Here is some of the writing I've been doing at MWAC and JJL lately;

• “Inspiration” is ‘in-spirit.’ Thus Inspiration is Aloha. My answer to Joanna's question of what inspires us.

• Are you ready to Trade Up? My book review for Joyful Jubilant Learning's A Love Affair with Books

• Know Can Do! ~ Part Two. Yesterday's Sunday Mālama.

Happy Easter 2008! x5

Thanks to the time change, I get to have my morning coffee seeing how the rest of you have been celebrating the day!

Happy Easter Everyone and a big mahalo to those who share on Flickr for these images.


Eggs - yellow, orange, red by Zed.Cat


bug dating by -sel


Chick by sheriffmitchell


The Hunt by josstyk


Happy Easter! - Frohe Ostern! by Gertrud K.

Two more on my Tumblr today...

Have some eggs this weekend

Made my café latte same as I always do, but today it tasted exceptionally wonderful…

With my mug of Kona-brew in one hand, and my mouse resting under the other, I had the most delightful time this morning reading blogs I had never visited before. I followed the bread-crumb links left by these world travelers:

This is where blogging can be such fun: Give yourself a cyber artist date, where you forget about blogs-as-business-portals, SEO and traffic counts and all the oh-dear-me's of your e-commerce and web stats this weekend... have some eggs.

Start here with Anita (a pastrygirl who you are sure to love), smile at the playful photos (believe me, you won't be able to help yourself) and follow the links that are offered, then follow those, and those.

Web communities are singing outside your normal haunts too... are you listening?

The 20 Benefits of Peer to Peer Coaching (and the MWA Way of doing it)

Peer to Peer Coaching the Managing with Aloha way (P2PC for short) is a tool I bring to as many workplaces as I possibly can: As with The Daily Five Minutes® (D5M), I am always looking for a place to insert P2PC into the opportunities we have while working together, whatever their coaching or learning program with Say Leadership Coaching may be.

Here is the short form of Peer to Peer Coaching. 5 Steps you can count on one hand while practicing it:

The 5 Steps of Peer-to-Peer Coaching Ask a question about what you would like to be coached on. Be completely open-minded about the answers you get. Get whatever clarity you need, and then, Say thank you. Follow-up by creating some new habits aimed at improvement. Check back with the person you spoke with in about a month, and ask them how you are doing, and for more coaching if you still need it. P2PC becomes 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.

Writing this article for Talking Story came to mind for me while sharing an example of using P2PC on Managing with Aloha Coaching connected to the value of Ho‘ohanohano, delivering dignity and respect.

You can read it there at Are you a high maintenance manager?

What is the Managing with Aloha 'way" with Peer to Peer Coaching?

Others will build pretty elaborate processes or coaching programs around P2PC (here is an example offered online by Syracuse University with a form and all. Sheesh... wonder if anyone actually fills it out.)

The MWA Way is to think of it as a simple, straightforward conversation, resist specific rules (like with confidentiality and being politically-correct) and just talk story. Jump in as you would to any other conversation you look forward to with a positive expectancy about the outcome, and build better relationships at the same time.

Bridge the Learning it, Knowing it, Doing it Gap

Like the rest of our SLC-MWA Tools, I do encourage you to make P2PC part of the expectations of your organizational culture:

Coaching Your Beginners

HCer* Kevin Eikenberry wrote a good article yesterday on the basics of coaching. His advice is terrific for every new supervisor, and as a reminder to those embattled managers who have been at it for a while, and may need to reconnect with their sense of empathy when they are coaching those who they think of as ‘beginners.’

Kevin offers these suggestions:

1. Don’t assume anything
2. Tell people why
3. Be patient
4. Space feedback out
5. Reduce their risk

I encourage you to click over and read the examples and how Kevin expands on each point: It's Not Easy Being Green: Five Keys to Better Coaching of Beginners.

In regard to number 4., we have recently learned about the great retention value in spaced repetition, remember?

"Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you don't learn something in just one sitting. You're exposed to the information periodically over time, so that it sinks in."

"Some people call spaced repetition behavioral conditioning or internal reinforcement. My good friend John Haggai calls it 'the mother of all skills' and 'the mother of permanent change.' That's because one statement makes little if any permanent impact on someone. It has to be repeated over and over again. Not immediately, but after a period of time for reflection."
~ Phil Murray within Know Can Do! Put your Know-How into Action

Number 2. is another I would emphasize; the sooner someone knows all of the why connected to their work, the sooner you will be able to draw out their initiative and creativity that may be stimulated by that particular task involved - a win/win for everyone. When someone is new at something they will alway have the greatest amount of energy with it: As a coach and manager, you are wise to capitalize on that flavor of freshness before any routine and automatic pilot creeps in.

Here is an article from the MWA Coaching archives about digging deep into those whys:

The power of questioning: Ask “Why?” Five Times
When you read it, you will meet another great coach,  Timothy Johnson, author of two books, and Chief Accomplishment Officer of Carpe Factum, Inc.

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*You may have noticed that I use the acronym “HCer” at times to refer to the Ho‘ohana Community. Make yourself known as an HCer: Stand up and be counted! Join up on this page.

Photo credit for "It's not easy being green" ~ Kermit Looms found on Flickr by Brendan Adkins

Talking Story on St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day has got to rank way up there as one of those holidays within which talking story has triumphed as creative —and beloved— urban legend. I can’t think of another patron Saint that gets as much press for his adopted country and all things Irish, can you?

When you think of St. Patrick’s Day, what associations do you make, and what values does the day give you an opportunity to newly, or differently, align your conversations at work with?

A value opportunity is one where you can use a common world view (March 17th is quite universally regarded as St. Patrick’s Day) to reinforce the value messages you want to herald and make sticky in your company (i.e. come to increased alignment with organizational culture).

For instance, on MWA Coaching today, we are talking about the St. Patrick’s Day connection to Ho‘ohanohano, our value of the month there (Ho‘ohanohano is the Hawaiian value of dignity and respect): A Ho‘ohanohano St. Patrick’s Day to you!

Here are five more suggestions in the spirit of Talking Story at work:

1. Let’s say you want to promote a value of diversity, or one of community sensitivity and integration: St. Patrick’s Day is a wonderful opportunity for a Sense of Place discussion during one of your workplace huddles.

I found this to be a fascinating page on the Irish in America: An excerpt...

- There are 34.7 million U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (4.2 million). Irish is the nation's second most frequently reported ancestry, trailing only those of German ancestry.

- The nation as a whole claims 12% of residents as having Irish ancestry. In Massachusetts this number doubles to 24 percent!

- There are three states in which Irish is the leading ancestry group: Delaware, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Irish is among the top five ancestries in every state but two (Hawaii and New Mexico). 

2. You have terrific choices for an ice-breaker if this happens to be a day you are conducting a seminar or workplace orientation. For instance, the Slainte toast: If you were to print the version on this page and cut it into verses dropped into a hat (a leprechaun’s hat, of course) everyone could pick a verse, read it out loud, and explain how that is so like them —or not!

May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.
May your neighbors respect you,
Troubles neglect you,
The angels protect you,
And Heaven accept you.

3. On St. Patrick’s Day, many of us think of leprechauns, 4-leaved shamrocks and other things associated with the luck of the Irish – great time to have fun (or get serious) with a discussion on how much of your company success has been carefully crafted, or honestly attributed to strokes of pure luck.

4. Then there is green, greening, and going green in every possible way… in your company culture, what would green most represent? Would it be recycling? Stewardship of the environment? Developing eco-friendly products within your R&D labs? Financial literacy and understanding just how much a single dollar can represent? Affordability?

This past October, Blog Action Day gave me the opportunity to think about greening and MWA:

The Environment and Managing with Aloha:
What does the environment have to do with our main themes of aloha, values, work, business, management, and leadership? 

5. Introduce your team to Green Light Thinking:

“‘From now on,’ he told me, ‘every time you and I meet or you’re part of any team meeting, I want you to be in charge of Green Light Thinking… When any new idea or project proposal is presented in a meeting, your job will be to start the discussion about why you think that idea or project is something we should do. In other words, you will be our lead ‘go for it’ person. You will hold off giving any negative response until every positive, creative thought has been received from the group. If you’re meeting with me one-on-one, I want to hear your possibility thinking.’”

—entrepreneur Phil Murray coaches his COO Suzanne Alcott to use Green Light Thinking instead of her tendency toward negative filtering in Know Can Do! Put Your Know-How into Action.

I admit being a little partial to this last one... just love the Know Can Do! coaching for positive expectancy.

What will you talk about on this St. Patrick’s Day, hmmm?

 

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An Aloha connection in the Talking Story archives: St. Patrick and The Menehune (March 2005)

More workplace talking story ideas from our category of Let’s Talk Story:

• Is Forever a good business strategy?
• Being a “Leader” is what managers do too
• When you have a hard time Choosing, do you know Why?
• Talk Story about Stopping: 5 Reasons to Kill Auto-Pilot
• Talk Story about your Values with Pictures

Book Review: The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is a leadership fable by Patrick Lencioni, and though not as savvy a title, it could also have been called The One Focus of a Healthy Organization with a Disciplined CEO: Culture, Culture, Culture, Culture.

I have just begun to get familiar with Patrick Lencioni’s work, and this is the second of his books I have listened to and then read (If you are a Lencioni groupie, my first was The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees). I liked that one too; just never got around to reviewing it.

I am primarily a visual learner, one who has always preferred to read non-fiction books with a sturdy hardcover I can annotate completely. However in the mix of fiction and non-fiction they usually are, business parables are the exception; I always prefer to listen to them first and enjoy the melodic story-telling of the narrator so I can get the whole story before I start to take it apart for the “non-fiction” lesson it tries to tell. In fact, I will usually listen to them while on my daily walk precisely because it’s too much hassle to bring pen and paper with me, and then stop, sit on a curb or rock wall somewhere and write down my thoughts; I have to listen well (and with an Open, Positive Mindset!) and that’s that.

I am finding that whether it is his deliberate intention or not, Lencioni is a brilliant marketer for someone like me (another management and leadership coach who writes and studies business theory) and for all managers looking to get better at what they do. His stories are very well crafted, and though you already know the story, you end up buying the book to keep the non-fiction model he adds in the final pages which suggests how you can begin to actually practice what the story urges you to do. In essence he is painting this picture of a very familiar present circumstance, spinning a story of how it can turn out with a happy ending, and then enticing you to become the real-life protagonist of his fable.

pro·tag·o·nist  Pronunciation: [proh-tag-uh-nist] –noun
1. the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work.
2. a proponent for or advocate of a political cause, social program, etc.
3. the leader or principal person in a movement, cause, etc.

A List to Help with Your Better Conversations

Over the last month, one of my more popular postings here has been Learn to Finish Conversations Well Redux. Therefore, I thought you might be interested in checking in with Managing with Aloha Coaching today for an article I think of as a good companion to it:

The 1 List That Every Manager Must Work With.

If you put these two articles together, learning to practice the coaching within them, you will have better, more effective, powerful conversations in your role as a manager.

Here is how the article starts:

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.

Continue reading at MWAC...

Photo found on Flickr: the pilot p-500 by Mr. Wright.

From Book Yourself Solid: How to Talk About What You Do (a mini review)

Preface: In alignment with the “Less is More” coaching I have been learning from the Know Can Do! philosophy, this is a review of just one chapter of Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid, and a contribution to Joyful Jubilant Learning’s Trackback Sunday.

I was fortunately blessed to receive a review copy of Michael Port’s second book to be released in April, called Beyond Booked Solid: Your Business, Your Life, Your Way—It’s All Inside. Coincidentally, I’d picked up his first book about a week or so earlier and so I’ve been reading them both at the same time; really good stuff.

Michael Port calls himself “the guy to call when you’re tired of thinking small” and accordingly, he called his first book Book Yourself Solid, The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling.

That long sub-title tells you a lot very quickly, doesn’t it.

That’s the point of a chapter within Book Yourself Solid called How to Talk About What You Do. Michael writes,

“We hear the question ‘What do you do for a living?’ all the time. Your professional category is the wrong answer.”

In other words, the typical responses of “I’m a business consultant,” or “I’m a massage therapist,” or “I’m a graphic designer,” are wrong in that they are “static and boring,” and will only get you a polite nod or comment, or worse yet, an awkward silence and a completely blank stare. Michael points out that once you get those kinds of responses anything more you say about yourself or your services is likely to sound pushy. So true.

Even if the person we are speaking with does not feel any pushiness, we do, and we start to shrink in our conversation, with feigned humility doing us —and them— a great disservice.

Michael has done an exceptional job in his writing of this chapter, one where he coaches us in the art of engaging conversation to elicit questions from the person we are speaking with, so they will answer that “what’s in this for me?” question that is likely bouncing around in their heads, even if subconsciously. He posits that “a primary reason that many service professional fail to build thriving businesses is that they struggle to articulate—in a clear and compelling way—exactly what solutions and benefits they offer.”

Well, he certainly nailed a bunch of my without-enough-thought responses to that “What do you do for a living?” question; my conversations have died off prematurely and rather ungracefully more times than I care to remember.