Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

This past Tuesday I stated that the biggest sin in business today is mediocrity. Today’s post is about what I feel the answer is with correcting that sin, so if you missed it, click over to: The Biggest Sin in Business Today and then come back. (Great comments here at the Talking Story issue.) We’ll wait.

Ready?

How do you, the Alaka‘i manager, banish mediocrity in your workplace? I believe your best possible strategy is this:You replace mediocrity with energy.

Energy generates Ho‘o Power

As with Ho‘ohana, [intentional, Aloha-driven work], Ho‘o power makes things happen.

Blast from the past:

My favorite Hawaiian coaching word is a very short one: Ho‘o. We hear it more as a prefix to other Hawaiian words, as it turns nouns into verbs. By itself, ho‘o means to make something happen. Ho‘ohana: Work on purpose, and with intention. Ho‘ohanohano: Bring dignity and respect to your actions. Ho‘okipa: Give unconditional hospitality, and serve. Ho‘oponopono: Make things right, bring them to balance.

Workplace energy functions the same way batteries do for your favorite electronics: You can have the most high tech camera in the world, and it will do absolutely nothing if its battery is dead. It no can Ho‘o.

Our Say “Alaka‘i” vocabulary is worth repeating:

• LEADERSHIP is the workplace discipline of creating energy connected to a meaningful vision.
• MANAGEMENT is the workplace discipline of channeling that mission-critical energy into optimal production and usefulness.

Great managers cannot channel good energies they are unaware of, or energy which doesn’t exist. And remember – you can’t shift this responsibility to someone else within our discussions here: Alaka‘i managers are those who both manage and lead. We refer to management and leadership as disciplines, not as separate roles, titles, or positions on an org. chart. If a designated leader is not creating energy, then the buck stops with you.

Alaka‘i managers are Energy Creators

If you are a manager (and all business owners are managers too) assume the role of energy creator in your company. Change the title on your business card to Energy Creator; come on, I dare you. Whatever you have there now is probably more normal, and normal is boring.

Your greatest resource in any workplace is NOT time (or financing), it IS the energy required to make the time and other resources you have available count for something worthwhile and meaningful.

Your greatest asset in the workplace is NOT your people, it IS those people with the most consistent energy levels; energy to dream, create, evangelize, and perform magnificently.

Energy powers your production capacity.
Energy powers your service capacity.
Energy is what will dazzle and delight your customer.
Energy is what sustains a vital business, and a lack of energy is what will kill it.

Mediocrity is your red flag that energy is missing, however that’s never a situation that a great manager can’t fix, and fix pretty quickly.

To Start, Be Kūlia Contagious

Great management takes great work and there are no magic pills: You aren’t going to get a complete how-to in this one blog post. The over-arching goal of Say “Alaka‘i” is to trigger possibility, help you reach higher, and break things down into week-to-week actions you can work on, continuously recharging your own battery cells of self-motivation.

However what we can do today is remind ourselves of the big picture view, while making that big picture embraceable and achievable: We can set the stage for positive energies to grow and flourish more than they presently are.

Here are three ways you can begin to be the Energy Creator you need to be, starting TODAY.

1. Be Contagious, for Energy begets more Energy

Ho‘ohana: Work on you first, and produce the best work you possibly can. As far as your staff and partnerships will be concerned, self-management must be in residence within the person in charge before they’ll allow any management or leadership technique to step foot in the door. Your reputation for being a self-managed individual will be key to the privilege you earn in your calling for managing and leading others.

Then, get excited: Tap into company vision by remembering why you are in business in the first place, and set your sights on making magic happen. Yep, magic. When you really think about it, the Ho‘okipa I still crave will be great, but you want more than deliriously happy employees and customers don’t you. Of course you do! You want magic in your own life, so go for it. Magic for you doesn’t happen in boring work. Amp it up, take some risks and have some fun while you work, and set the best possible example for others to follow. Make room for them so they can join you, and co-lead with you. There will always be enough followers, but there are never enough leaders.

2. Avoid the Middle and Work on the Edges

Commit to the value of Kūlia i ka nu‘u: Excellence generates enthusiasm and is contagious; everyone loves it and everyone wants it. However excellence isn’t ordinary or normal – when something enters the realm of the normal it’s no longer viewed as excellent. The more something is thought of as normal, the more ho-hum boring, commonplace and mediocre it gets. Even if you copy the best practice of something, it’s still a copy and is no longer as compelling, exclusive, cool or sexy.

Therefore, if you want excellence (and really, why bother with anything else), you’ve got to be willing to push at the edges of virtually everything, and nothing can be sacred – absolutely nothing. In fact, the more unexpected your targets and projects the better. Constantly ask your team “Why not?” about every wild idea which comes up, and be enthusiastic in recognizing and rewarding their creativity. You have to pursue what others think of as impossible, and you must repeatedly insist: Everything we know of was impossible until the first person did it. Let’s be first. “First” is found on the fringes and way up in front. “First” leads and never follows.

3. There can be no Basic Standards, only Extraordinary ones

At this point I can guarantee some of you are getting an attack of the “yeah, but”s and are thinking, “Well Rosa, reality bites. I can’t work on cool, sexy and edgy until I can clear my decks of all the existing normal stuff.” You know what? You’re right.

However it’s also true that the minute you clear your desk something else lands on it – also in that category of the “normal day to day stuff” and you feel like you’re caught in a vortex or vicious circle. While there is a good case for the importance of standards, they really can hold you back and weigh you down unless you are more intentional and deliberate about them.

Sidebar: Dave Navarro recently wrote a good essay about this: Why You Do What You Do (And Why It Should Scare You). I highly recommend you give it a read.

There is really only one answer: As the saying goes, you have to kill two birds with one stone. As you “clear your decks” you need to tackle them with the first two approaches we’ve spoken of: Ho‘o and Kūlia: Be relentless about being the best, and excel. Eliminate or reinvent any process which drains energy instead of generating it.

And don’t you dare wimp out and stop at systems and processes! Be the Best Boss with the highest value standards and develop your people: Not only do people love and want excellence for themselves, they want to be surrounded by it, finding it in their peers. No one wants to be associated with a mediocre workplace which is populated by mediocre people.

Ready to Roll?

If I am missing anything here I would love to hear from you: Let’s make Ho‘okipa energy happen. Is there anything else you feel is critically important in the big picture view of creating energy in your workplace?

If you don’t want to publicly comment here for me, that’s okay – IF you talk about this with your own workplace team. Ho‘okipa, the Aloha-inspired way that we in Hawai‘i should be delivering great customer service – to the visitor, and to each other – is what will keep you in business.

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

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Photo credit: Yellow Orchids by Rosa Say.

For those who prefer them, here are the Talking Story copies of the links embedded in this posting:

• The Biggest Sin in Business Today
• What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana?
• Be a Deskless Manager: Ho‘o!
• If you want to know, ask!
• Can you define your Leadership Greatness?
• Who says you can’t do that?
• How Managers Matter in a Healthy Culture
• You Are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!
• While the Big Cat was Away
• The 2 C’s of Technology and Early Adoption
• Alaka‘i Managers Coach, and they Facilitate

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~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i”
June 2009 ~
3 Ways Managers Create Energetic Workplaces

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Our RFL Recall: Are you Remembering or Learning?

Rapid Fire Learning (RFL) is our monthly stream-of-consciousness exercise at Joyful Jubilant Learning: We do it on the 25th of each month. Very simple thing, and pretty easy for people who think of themselves as lifelong learners (is the value of ‘Ike loa a biggie with you?). To practice RFL: Grab a blank sheet of paper and a pencil, and make a list of 5 things you learned during the current month.

If you get stalled at all, just think of 5 things which happened in the month (paid my income taxes, fooled around with watercolor, planted veggie seedlings in the garden, or whatever you did) and then ask yourself: What did I learn while I did each of those things? or perhaps, “Who was I with, and did they make any difference this time?”

You will soon think of learning as a process, with the subject matter simply being the trigger.

For example:

• Income Taxes: I learned that “old school” Excel spreadsheets work way better for me at this point in time than QuickBooks does. My financial trends “pop up” very apparently versus being hidden in computing formulas done automatically in the software.
• Watercolor: I learned that I might have an instinctual feeling for movement with color, something I was totally unaware of before. When the art seems to move I like it, and when it is stagnant, I am dissatisfied and frustrated.
• Veggies: I learned that cherry tomatoes have very little chance of surviving the wild turkeys in our neighborhood unless I come up with a better caging system protecting them. Green or ripe, they all get eaten by those feathered raiders!

Rapid Fire Learning is one of those “bloggy things” which has fortuitously found its way into my management and leadership coaching too, for we learn much more spontaneously than we think we do: It is a crucial skill that we can all benefit from sharpening our awareness of. Coaching my managers in RFL can reap some fabulous breakthrough moments, whether they participate with the community at Joyful Jubilant Learning or do it within their own work teams. It is also terrific in the coaching of better follow-up habits: Now that you have learned those things, what will you do with them, or about them? Where will continuity and better productivity rhythm happen for you?

At first, we all have the tendency to question our spontaneity with learning recall. As we come up with our lists, the cynic or inner critic in us will ask: “Was this something I learned, or something I already knew and just happened to remember?” And worse, we lessen their gravity, thinking, “This is not such a big deal.”

Oh, but it is a big deal! If we aren’t going to learn, we aren’t going to grow.

My encouragement to you is this: Even if there is some remembering to it, give yourself the credit for learning. Chances are you remembered it, whatever “it” happened to be, because your context is now current and timely: There is learning opportunity in your remembering! You will newly consider, flex, choose between options, shift and adjust as you take action or retain and commit, and all those things require so much which is included in the learning process.

You could say that learning is a juggling act of sorts, and you are the juggler who will perform a certain way given all kinds of circumstances: Your mood and your degree of confidence, your attire or costume, the wind if you are outside, the glaring stage lights if you are inside, an audience you are comfortably laughing with, or one which amps up your nervousness something fierce. Pretty easy to imagine how all those things can affect your juggling ability, isn’t it.

And like juggling, learning certain things can take practice: Lather, rinse, repeat… we do train ourselves in our learning processes, just as we better train our skill with catching those falling balls.

So don’t pooh-pooh your Rapid Fire Learning, okay? So what if it’s remembering something you already knew? Give yourself credit for that recall, and for remembering it when you needed to. Maybe what you’ll learn this time is where you can write it down and move on! Maybe your learning has been with memory, and how you triggered it, and why. Maybe you needed the time and space before you could learn a solution to an old problem, one that had previously seemed so frustrating and mistake-riddled. Continue to ask yourself questions and allow your learning to reveal those cool answers just waiting for you to newly discover them.

If you have not yet tried Rapid Fire Learning, please have April be the month you try it! You can join us at Joyful Jubilant Learning where a new host will be Mea Ho‘okipa each month and encourage us all to RFL within the posting comments there. Half the fun is reading what others have learned, supporting them, and having them encourage and congratulate you in return. And you never know what ideas you’ll hear about… who knows what you might decide to juggle next!

Wondering what my RFLs were for April? Look for me there in the comments!

Phil Gerbyshak is hosting this time: Click over and share your list of 5 right now. We talked about creating good habits a few days ago, and Rapid Fire Learning is an exceptional habit to cultivate.

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Photo Credits: Five Ball and The Stall by Timailius on Flickr.

For more articles similar to this one, subscribe to Talking Story, and join the discussions held by the Ho‘ohana Community of the Managing with Aloha ‘Ohana in Business.
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Stephen’s Day

I have never been a “Black Friday” person, one who camps out in some parking lot on Thanksgiving night comparing coupons and savings stories with frugal-minded line companions, only to be swept into a store’s gleeful midnight opening to their best moneyed day of the year. I always get this picture in my mind of the huge double doors to a store being like this big mouth slurping in the line of people like a wet spaghetti noodle, eyes looking downward with greedy hunger quite transparent.

I feel more victorious when my Christmas shopping is done before Black Friday ever arrives. No, not the case this year; however I still will not be part of the hungry store’s peopled pasta bowl. My email was predictably full this morning of alerts to online specials as well, and I promptly highlighted them all and sent them to the archives. I may look at them later, for buy or not I kinda enjoy the advertising design lessons and such they give me, for cleverness is attractive and compelling, but it won’t be something I do today.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is usually a day I ask myself how creative I can be; it’s a found day with so many different possibilities. It is still somewhat new for me; 6 years/6 times new, for I’ve only enjoyed the freedom of the day since leaving the hotel resort business in 2003. Freedom is an important word here too. For some odd reason I never have planned what I would do on this day – odd in that I am a consummate planner (okay, obsessive). For these last 6years/6 times it’s been a completely spontaneous day for me… I’ll have to let you know later how it ends up!

However this year, I do know how it is starting.

That’s because today’s date is November 28th. It’s Stephen’s Day. I will start by Living Mahalo with my Dailies.

I wrote about it last year on MWAC. Take the link above, and think about joining me.

This may seem a strange picture to add to this post, but for me it is very representative of the character of my past year, and looking at it tells me to be completely open to the way that my Stephen’s Day tradition will turn out. Taking photos and the Flickr community were not part of my practice last year, and thus they did not appear in my Dailies. They certainly do now!

Talking Story: Changes versus Constants

Tuesday Coaching is up on MWAC today, and we're looking at both change and our constants using this Nānā i ke kumu framework:

Let’s look at “both source and capacity to learn” in another way, as constants (source) and as change (capacity to learn). At any given time, and with any given effort, we are working on one or the other: Either we are

• Working to maintain our healthy constants, or

• Working to effect a change we desire.

Further, it is in effecting a desired change that we experience our most elevated experiences with learning.

People will write me after they have read my book, and ask for exercises for the small business or for the single team in a larger organization, saying, "We don't have access to the resources the big guys have." You don't need them! This is precisely the reason I blog here in the first place, to offer you possibilities for discussions ("talk stories" as I call them) that can turn into exercises and mini-studies you can personally apply to your own situation and within your own context.

Changes versus Constants is a beauty.

As I have written at MWAC (and again above) we are working on maintaining a constant or effecting a change within every effort we make - sometimes we work on both simultaneously.

To transfer this lesson plan to your team, just set up a flipchart or whiteboard with two columns:

1. Write "our Constants" atop one, and "Desired Change" atop the other and get a brainstorm and discussion going.
2. End it with a specific action plan for one of the efforts you talk about.
3. End the talking about it (say mahalo!) and get out and do it!
4. When your team has finished tackling it, bring the flipchart out again in another huddle and just ask everyone: "Do we have anything current to add to this, or shall we just move forward with picking our next issue from this list as it stands?"
5. Repeat the process.

You can use the full coaching on MWAC to help you as the facilitator (by "full" I just mean today's Tuesday Essay -- don't get overwhelmed!) or you can print it out and distribute it to your whole team -- read it together, then start with number 1 above.

Here is a snippet of the Change section on MWAC today:

Are you okay with Change? Are there certain proverbs or quotes which became aha! moments for you when you first heard them? This was one of mine: “People do not resist change; people resist being changed.” —organizational change pioneer Richard Beckhard That made so much sense to me! It made sense both in my own experience with when I vigorously resisted change and when I embraced it. It made total sense when I thought about those successes and failures I’ve had in trying to champion changes that others resisted accepting no matter how good I thought the change sounded, for aha! it just didn’t sound that great to them. Said simpler, it wasn’t their idea, and they thought it was a lousy idea.

These are the sub-headings of the MWAC Essay today, How Nānā i ke kumu Helps You Embrace Change and Growth:

• Are you okay with Change?
• The worst possible Change? To your Constants.
• Choosing Embraceable Change.
• You Choose, or I’ll Choose!
• Choose to Learn.

If you turn any of them into a Talk Story within your workplace, come back and share your experience with us!

How about, “What I want conversational good human beings to know”

Okay, this pointer goes under a few categories here: being a coach, better conversations, business strategy, coaching essays, communication, words and language, web/tech, and Let's talk story. And that's without adding in any of the Hawaiian values it covers.

Chris Brogan has a great posting up at his place today that I really like. It's an open letter of sorts: He calls it What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know, and it shares some pretty universal communication messages. I think he could've called it What I want conversational good human beings to know.

He shares his tips in a list of 13, but before I'd even gotten that far I tumbled his opening paragraph:

"Since quite a number of people who swing by my blog are either in marketing or public relations, I wanted to address you specifically for a moment. I’m writing to you as part of this new version of media, one blogger not paid to blog, not working for a newspaper or magazine outlet, not especially beholden to the traditions that have come before. I’m writing to you as a human being who likes people, community, innovation, and business, not to mention art, creativity, play, and many other things. I want to tell you a few things for you to consider."

~ Chris Brogan, What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know

What a great way to start a conversation: Cut to the chase, preview what is to come, and openly, with full vulnerability, lay your motivations on the line.

Photo from Chris’s Flickr account:
Couldn’t resist this one because he titled it “Am I Human.”

Chris got me to

a) stop for a moment and think about my own approach with different conversations,

b) He got me to wonder about the kind of job I do (translation; effectiveness I am having or not having) with the messages that are in my circle of influence to give, and

c) He got me to go back, and read every single line of his post and all 51 comments he got (as of this writing). Pretty easy to separate the excuses and justifications from those willing to understand, be open to change, and learn.

In encouraging us to choose our friends wisely (traditionally a common, and probably a well-advised parental topic) my dad would often tell us kids that whether we agree with the people we listen to is actually not as important as how much they make us think for ourselves. In this case (and often) I agree with what Chris has to say, but I read his blog because he has this frequently deployed skill with making me think.

Is that what your conversational partners (or reading of choice) can do for you?

What do you think of the 13 tips that Chris shares? If you read them as, “What I want conversational good human beings to know” are there any others come to mind for you?

Some other archived connections which come to mind:

1. My parents were a big influence on me (as I just shared with Thadeus earlier). Recently wrote about my dad for JJL: The best boss I ever had, wasn’t mine.
2. This was another time Chris got me thinking out loud: I still refer back to it often ~ Sense of Place on the Internet: A Brand New Community Ecosystem.
3. And about thinking, with this month as a great time to play with makawalu g8ways: Counting Fish, Taro, and Thinking.

July Tuesdays: Learning in the MWA way

I am feeling great about the way that our Tuesday Coaching essays have come together this month on Managing with Aloha Coaching, and I hope you will check them out.

Our value for the month is ‘Ike loa, the Hawaiian value of learning, and given what a huge topic learning is, the month’s essays do concentrate specifically on learning “in the Managing with Aloha way.” The series came to be with questions I had received from different people in the Ho‘ohana Community, which could be summed up as, “how do you frame learning strictly within the workplace philosophies of Managing with Aloha?”

This is the way it came together:

• 7/8 = Tuesday 1
  Learning as a process: Beginning, Middle, and End

• 7/15 = Tuesday 2
  The Learning Process of MWA

• 7/22 = Tuesday 3
  Learning from other People (will include the Daily 5 Minutes)

• 7/29 = Tuesday 4
  Explorations in Tertiary Learning: Developing your ‘Ike loa Habit

In today’s essay, I...

1. define tertiary learning and why it is so important,
2. suggest the role that employers play with tertiary learning in the workplace,
3. talk about the MWA assertion that work is personal (and how that connects to learning),
4. share my feelings on where workplace training generally falters and misses the mark,
5. define the key deliverables of the MWA learning process,
6. offer a note-taking exercise where you can test your next training in the framework of those MWA key deliverables, and finally, as the essay title had promised,
7. give a contextual workplace definition for learning as a process with a beginning, middle, and end.

All in just over 2000 words, and including a homework assignment for those who want to seize the moment, and make that reading count for their learning today, here and now (Kēia Manawa!)

Please comment for me there if you’re one of the Talking Story readers who dig into it, okay? Mahalo nui.

How’s this for some great tertiary learning in the MWA way?
8:30am Paddleboard Calisthenics in Uleweuweu Bay

Your Compensated-for Weakness: Now Look Inside

• What weaknesses do you feel you have?
• How have you learned to compensate for them?
• Is there any chance your compensation has been limiting you?

Choose just one weakness, and see if your experience is at all similar to one of my examples; my eyesight.

Only one with hazel eyes among five siblings… only one who needed glasses

Sometime during my grade school years, a very perceptive nun waited with me for my grandmother: She was the one who came to fetch me and my two brothers after school while my parents were still at work. We went to a Catholic school, and the nun was one of my teachers. She waited with us that day to announce to my grandmother, “Your granddaughter may need to be fitted with a pair of glasses.”

She was right, I did. Teachers and parents (or care-giving grandparents) are both with us in almost equal measure when we are still in grade school, and they notice different things; it’s a great partnership (when they choose to help each other and have it. Not a dig, just an observation…)

My grandmother said something like, “Ah, so that has been the cause of it!” Not sure what the “it” was she referred to, and didn’t bother asking: I was equally floored by the nun’s announcement at the time, fully revealed in my presence, but with no prior warning whatsoever. (In the prevailing attitude of the time, I was merely the child.) I am sure I was also focused on glaring at my two younger brothers, also there, and suddenly seized with fits of teasing, giggling delight at my expense.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled about getting my glasses. Not for vanity’s sake (as somewhat of a ‘brainiac’ I kinda liked the studious look), but because they were a real bother. I was the proverbial tomboy growing up, and my glasses would not stay on that well, especially when I wanted to hang upside down by the crooks of my knees in some mango tree, or slide into a steal for second base. Hawai‘i’s humidity compounded the problem, as outdoors my glasses would usually fog up or slip off, becoming another bent or broken pair I was scolded for not taking care of.

So there were many times I still wouldn’t wear them (contact lenses were a much later option). I dutifully wore them in school (you do not disobey nuns, and the glasses did help me greatly), and I loved having them in the car to see farther out the windows, for I was nearsighted (meaning I was myopic and couldn’t see too far), and I was the peacemaker my parents always told to sit in the middle of the back seat. My glasses were just a lousy playtime companion, and I found that my great peripheral vision picked up enough movement close to me in play, with my gamer’s anticipation picking up the rest (younger brothers are good training for this, an extension of that middle-seat thing.) Sometimes I wonder if this old wiring of my system is why I don’t care for video games and movies all that much; everything is in front of me and whatever happens in my peripheral vision isn’t connected to that screen, but separate.

Anyway, as a consequence of all of this, I convinced myself that my doctor’s myopia diagnosis also inferred something quite comforting to me (though of course he probably never said it): Close-up to “animal, mineral or vegetable” I could see just fine, thank you very much.

Uh, wrong. The comfort was nice at the time, but it covered up the cost of my compensation.

Life would eventually conspire to teach me differently (in retrospect I just wished it conspired sooner. Oh well). My dad was a huge influence, always prompting me to “see with your ears too, Rosa,” first with my brothers, eventually with my employees. I learned that the art of asking questions would help me see inside people’s brains, and that all sorts of things bounced around in there!

In middle school I also learned that ‘myopic’ was quite different from ‘microscopic’ and those wondrous machines called microscopes are brilliantly employed by biology teachers to get you past the slimy yuck of frog dissection to the fascinating ooh and ahh of God’s anatomical genius (yes, God’s genius… still in Catholic school, still a child to be taught). Other than with asking great questions (and understanding those you ask also choose their great reveal) people’s brains are not a dissection option for most of us, but there IS an entire world chock full of other things, “animal, mineral or vegetable” we can look inside of.

These days, my microscope of choice is my digital camera +2. By “+2” I mean that it has this wonderful button called the zoom (+1) when I must be careful not to get into some critter’s peripheral vision, or when something is too high for me to reach (no longer a child... still short :). Second, there is the magic of photo editing, where my computer and some slick software will further zoom into my images (+2). The surprises I will see at times are such fun (I had no idea there were so many ants warring with flower-pollinating bees in my garden).

Here I am, decades after getting my first pair of glasses (with contact lenses and bifocals for aging eyes now further adding to the story), newly realizing that I still need to look inside for the brilliance of God’s true genius, and my own value-based, Ho‘ohana thoughts about it, for after all, in my mana‘o, Aloha is the spirit within you.

The photos I have shared here are the work in progress of my new photography hobby; they are the first three photos I uploaded to a new photo set I have on Flickr called “Look Inside.” There are nineteen photos there as of this writing, mostly where “mineral, animal or vegetable” has segued to “floral + 1 critter” but I fully intend to branch out— pun completely intentional!

About “Look Inside” ~A Set of duets and triplets.

This grouping was inspired by my growing fascination with macros: Follow the photostream for the two or three shots in succession to help you look deeper at what may be inside a photo.

“I never realised how much was going on inside our garden flowers until my camera helped me to look.”— Joanna Young at a photo she called “Swirl.”

Other photographers give you group invitation awards in the Flickr sharing that happens, and I have been delighted to receive three in the last month, my first on Flickr. All three used my “+2” learning; one by my camera zoom, two by my computer zoom. That tells me I shouldn’t lull myself into believing I have compensated well enough for my weakness; I need to look inside even more.

So let’s go back to the questions I started with. Focus on just one weakness, and see if you can make a great reveal of opportunity for yourself with looking inside it:

• What is the weakness you feel you have?
• How have you learned to compensate for it?
• Is there any chance your compensation has been limiting you? How?
• What could you do, similar to my new photography hobby, that will bust open some new possibilities for you?

Talking Story Coaching:

This has been an exercise in writing/ slash/ coaching, where I have tried to apply writing coach Joanna Young’s recent series on asking better questions (Series Introduction), done for her Confident Writing blog. I highly recommend you read her series if you have not yet done so: You may find it adds to my coaching for you, just as it proved to be a catalyst for me in writing this for you!

Part I: How To Ask Purposeful Questions

Part II: Creating The Space To Ask Questions

Part III: The Purpose That's Driving Your Question

Part IV: Asking Questions For A Change

Part V: 7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Ask Your Readers A Question

You can also give yourself a HUGE treat and work with Joanna too.

Joanna, to say mahalo in another way, here is what I saw when I looked inside one of the photos you had taken and generously shared with us on Flickr (Joanna’s original here):

Floral Purpose
from an original photo by Joanna Young

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:

How good (and gracious) a Receiver are you?

Is good and gracious receiving highly regarded, and thoughtfully and deliberately promoted and fostered in your organizational culture? How do you do it?

Some back-story to where I'm coming from on this:

Our Sunday Mālama feature for Managing with Aloha Coaching (MWAC) in February has to do with digital learning, and I have pointed readers there to the YouTube videos about the 21st Century Learner to help stimulate our discussion. The clips started to make the rounds last October and November: There is one focused on K-12 (now over 13,000 views) and one on college students (now over 1,450,660 views).

My MWAC feature is the kick-off to an all-year learning initiative we'll have on the site called Brave Experiments [with] Digital Learning, nicknamed Brex for short. There are 4 parts to the kick-off, one for each Sunday:

Feb. 03: Who is the Digital Learning Coach in your company?
(You DO have one, right?)
Feb. 10: A Kuleana connection:
What is required of the Digital Learner?
Feb. 17: What are the changes Digital Learning requires of your organizational culture?
Feb. 24: What are your Digital Learning goals?
(And how can the Ho‘ohana Community help?)

Today's article starts with a basic assumption I made about communication, and it set off an early-morning email exchange for me with a good friend, a teacher who wrote,

“You know what I noticed most about those videos Rosa? How sullen and apathetic all those kids look as they stare into the camera. That was no acting stretch for them. I’ve seen that look so much in my classrooms, and I do tell myself that it is now my Kuleana [responsibility] to get rid of it, but I must tell you; they arrive in my classes with that look on day one when we haven’t even met each other yet, and it is so disheartening.”

Reading her words, I started to think about the differences I can find at my presentations too. I recently had a customer say, “Can't wait to see you Rosa; we're primed and ready to listen to your message,” and that was a great thing to hear. Great, but unusual.

To save you the click, this is that “basic assumption” I started my article with:

Stress-busting for December: Project Sweet Closure

Are you feeling stressed at work right now?

Think it has something to do with the holidays? Suspect it may be something else?

This is a cross-posting of an article I have written for Managing with Aloha Coaching that offers a way to get yourself some stress relief. It asks that you give yourself the gift of a 45-minute exercise, one that can make a big difference with the pressure you might be feeling. Check it out.

Give yourself an early Christmas gift:
Project: Sweet Closure 2007

It’s interesting to me how many of my workplace conversations in the past week are falling into two different outlooks;

• One, that we are now less than 10 days from Christmas (and how exactly did that happen?!?) and
• Second, let’s get this year over with; I want and need that fresh start in 2008.

Both are connected in a way; they deal with that stress we all feel at varying degrees during December in our workplaces, whether we blame them on the holidays or on that unavoidable (and predictable) march of time, a march that happens with or without us.

So what can we do? Get smart, and get with it.

How do we get with it? One way is to be more cognizant of our Starts and Stops.

I offer you the same coaching that I give all my clients during December: If you are feeling stressed right now, hold off on those New Year Resolutions —workplace translation: “Strategic Objectives for 2008”— until you get your sweet closure to 2007.

If you don’t finish those things needing good finishes first, they do haunt you; seldom will they just go away. Even if you miraculously get excused from them by your boss, they remain. They may remain in your boss’s memory as work not done, they may still be affecting others on your work team, but worse, they can remain in your subconscious. New goal setting with people is a mainstay of my business and my past experience as a manager, and believe me, whether you may be aware of it or not, not finishing those things can befuddle your judgment when you get that fresh start you are craving for January 1st. You end up with carry-over baggage, and not a fresh start at all, but a fresh set of new blinders.

Reality check: The year IS almost over. What can you possibly do now?

You may be unlikely to finish everything, but chances are you can get to closure with a few tasks and a project or two. The trick is to get them back on your radar and out of your subconscious so you can swiftly and decisively deal with them. Working on the right things can dramatically decrease the stress and any unsettled feelings you are experiencing.

Project: Sweet Closure 2007

Turn off the Christmas music and focus for the next 45 minutes to an hour on this exercise:

1. Make a list – what haven’t you finished that you would love to finish before January comes calling? This is a stream of consciousness exercise in which you are pulling weights out of your mind, soul and spirit; count on your brain to do its magic for you, and do not go scrolling through your calendar, lists, inbox, or filing cabinets.

2. Look over that list and decide which you would LOVE to finish if you can. Chances are that whatever you have first written down are your prime candidates for the sweet closure you need. Another indication is any aha! moments that came to you connected with step 1 when you did your mind sweep.

3. Now focus on those 1, 2, or 3 most important things you decided on, by pulling out your calendar (hopefully up to date from your Weekly Review) and setting a few non-negotiable appointments with yourself. Non-negotiable means that they will be held sacred, and you will keep those appointments: No procrastination, no excuses or distractions will sway you. (Read between the lines here folks – you know what is realistic; don’t sabotage your own efforts.)

4. Get them done.

5. Bonus Points: Don’t go it alone. Share this exercise with your team, and buddy up on some projects. Everyone is probably feeling the same stress you are. Adopt a mantra: Plan in plan, make “Project: Sweet Closure 2007” the subject of your daily huddles (D15M) through yearend: For the BEST 15 minutes in the workday, Huddle.

It has been fairly quiet here in Rosa’s Blog Land over these last few days because I am presently doing this with my own business and with my executive coaching customers. Because they have agreed to hold themselves accountable to their coaching, most of my clients are amazed at what they are getting done this week, a week many of us normally write off at work as being pretty useless. Fact of the matter is this: Nearly everyone in the world we work with is leaving us alone right now as they do their own scrambling, and we do have open windows in our calendars – the trick is to be proactive and use them.

I have one determined exec in particular who got a remarkable start with this, and he is now on a second round with the exercise. In step 3 above, he picked tasks he felt the key members of his work team would most appreciate if he finished them, one task for each person. He fully realizes how much his work affects everyone else, and he figures that his sweet closure for their sake will be the best gift he can give them for Christmas.

Now that’s a great boss.

Another quick tip: Don’t go overboard! FINISH what is pending, do NOT get ambitious and create new sub-projects along the way. Capture your thoughts by just writing them down, and we’ll revisit your list in January.

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Additional Reading (after you do the exercise!)

• On Managing with Aloha Coaching: Exercises like this one are part of creating great organizational cultures in the workplace. Review MWA3P: Part Three – How Organizational Culture Happens.

• On Joyful Jubilant Learning: Keep your good habits going with the Weekly Review!
  Learn a 5-Step Weekly Review: You’ll love it.

If you are just now joining us, Welcome! You can jump in instantly with very little catching up! Start your reading + doing right here: This exercise is representative of the tools I offer you on Managing with Aloha Coaching. You will find both RSS and email subscription options here).

If you do not yet have a copy of Managing with Aloha, you can BUY ONE HERE! We have just sent a few more cases to Amazon.com to stock them up for the holidays :)