Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Do you Teach?

So many of us do. School was just the beginning.

We teach at home, we teach at work, we even teach at play.

We discover that often, the best way to learn is to teach what we’ve learned to someone else.

Yes, teaching is a skill the successful will master.

Teaching is a skill those who serve will master.

Imagine learning to teach within the framework of the values of Aloha.

I am so very pleased to offer you that opportunity today!

Click on this beautiful badge
designed for our Ho‘ohana Community by Jesse Petersen,

and take a look...

How to Use Me for Free. Really.

Preface: This is my Blog Action Day post. I need some preamble to get where I want to get with what I want to say, and I hope you will bear with me! Mahalo.

My Preambling about Free

As of this writing, Ho‘ohana Publishing (which is essentially the ‘engine’ running Say Leadership Coaching, and thus running me) has just one product you can purchase if you decide you would like to directly support me: Managing with Aloha, my book. When you read it, Ho‘ohana with it, and then buy more to share as gifts, I am a happy camper because word of my mission spreads; the MWA movement to create worthwhile work flourishes.

Everything else that Ho‘ohana Publishing presently produces online is free (not counting the pocket change we get from assorted affiliate links, which I used to buy more copies of MWA at cost myself so I can give them away to schools: The price of schoolbooks and the cost to reading).

In anticipation of this post slipping into the archives eventually, I do need to say I fully intend to have more products sold one day, fun and useful stuff, but as of this writing my book is it.

‘Free’ is a concept that any blogger or ‘citizen publisher’ needs to come to terms with, for as Kevin Kelly said so well in his widely acclaimed essay, Better than Free, the internet is one big copy machine. You’re gonna get copied if you post something, —assuming that it’s worth copying to begin with. Copyright and Creative Commons distinctions may be present as permissions (or restrictions), but the nature of the beast is that they are as well understood as RSS buttons (meaning they are often not understood, or just ignored.)

Heck, I’ve discovered that even my book gets its share of Xerox-glass face time: I know a little about that book; my name is Rosa. (A story on MWAC.)

However the stuff that is free online is as varied as the life in the ocean from algae to humpback whales, and some is trash, some is treasure. Depending on your perspective and your needs, Ho‘ohana Publishing therefore, is adding to the clutter or to the wealth.

Blog Action Day 2008

I love the idea behind the Blog Action Day movement which was started last year with a blog-world focus on the environment. This year, the issue is poverty.

I am quite awed by Blog Action Day. The central idea I see is world-wide collaboration meshing with Aloha for our fellow human beings —it is the value of Kākou, inclusiveness and togetherness.

Best of all, it is a call to action: Blog Action Day is Kākou-focused on making a positive difference of some kind, versus remaining stagnant and complacent about certain issues. (My wish is that we tackle hatred or racism next year… look no further than our current elections for evidence of the need in so-called ‘civilized’ nations.)

Poverty stops me in my tracks. I have had a blessed life. There are certain discomforts that I’ve lived through, and current economics is certainly no walk in the park, beginning to hit very close to home, however I can’t even pretend to have empathy for true poverty. I believe I am generous with my charitable donations, but I also get very aware of how my donations can be mere bandaids, and are not the medicine needed to truly eradicate most problems they seek to effect.

Poverty is huge, and it begs that ‘yeah, but’ question (which you know I don’t care for), “But what can just one person do?”

Well, turns out that the Blog Action Day folks shared a video that seeks to help us answer that very question.

I have shared this video over at Joyful Jubilant Learning today too, and there is already some terrific discussion going there: Blog Action Day 2008: Our JJL Voice.

So back to Ho‘ohana Publishing…

And back to what I can do. I am a practical person who is fully capable of taking some kind of action, so where shall I start?

I had a small idea which deals with my free. Value versus clutter.

It’s a small thing, but it’s something in my circle of control and I believe in my community of influence. Today is the first day that I am adding a page to Say Leadership Coaching which is all about how you can use me for free. It will live there from now on.

I fully realize that I am not yet getting to the children shown in this video clip, but I believe I am warming up to the time that I will. I don’t know what to do with algae and humpback whales yet, but I can continue to feed the fish in my own saltwater tank, keeping them healthy and thriving well.

I can give my free —my most valuable, and uncluttered free —to those whom I realize may need it, but can’t afford it. It’s a stretching my realization that ‘poverty’ comes in a lot of different forms, and that the poverty I can help with today and right now, is called ‘unaffordable’ by some people when it really isn’t. I can do much better in helping the people who may need Managing with Aloha in its free versions, while being direct and honest about the reading-work, learning-work, and doing-work that goes with it; work that I believe to be good for us. This humble page now living at Say Leadership Coaching is my beginning.

If you have some time today, please do me a favor and read my new page:

How to Use Me. Really.
You can comment there, and I’d love to know what you think.

The invitation explained through-out that page is open to you too. Use me.

I’d also love to hear any way that you are sorting out and cleaning up your own free offerings. You can leave those comments here: Honor system guys, good intentions only. I am not letting up on my zero-tolerance with spammy link parking.

I’d also love hearing about any other Blog Action Day posts you’ve discovered that are your favorites: There are a lot to sort through today!

“Help! I can’t come up with my Ho‘ohana.”

I was in the Honolulu International Airport one evening waiting for my flight back home when a young man walked up to me and said, “Excuse me; aren’t you the one who wrote Managing with Aloha?”

I looked up from the newspaper I was reading and smiled at him, but before I could say anything, he sat down in the chair next to me and said, “I can’t come up with my Ho‘ohana.”

It’s something I get asked about all the time. If you have been trying to come up with your Ho‘ohana too, be sure you check in with MWAC for this week’s Tuesday Coaching installment: Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 2: Enjoy the How-To of your Values.

The draft we are working on this month is a personal one, and that’s usually my first tip: Start with the personal, and the professional will fall into place for you where it should. If you try to articulate your Ho‘ohana only for a particular job or career, you rarely will get the full picture - you are much more complex than that - a good thing! You have more capacity to be explored, and your job is just part of it, even when you have a job you absolutely adore.

I did... and I am not in that job anymore. I love my work now just as much (much more), because exploring my Ho‘ohana personally - selfishly even - helped me discover more of what I could learn to offer others. Those new ‘offerings’ have made my life so much richer, a true win-win proposition.

Conversely, if you now struggle to love, or even like the job you have right now, working on Ho‘ohana personally helps you focus on the elements that are strictly under your own control, opening up windows that frame what you can do about it. 9 times out of 10, frustration in a job can come from factors that are outside your scope of influence - at least that’s what we tend to think. It’s a natural self-protective mechanism to shift blame and fiercely protect our self-worth; in a way, it’s healthy. However focusing on others is not what Ho‘ohana is all about; you have to focus inward and on you.

So if you feel like that young man I met in the airport, please be sure to check in with MWAC today. If you have not visited MWAC before, you may want to start with the mid-month recap I did here on Talking Story first; there is a deliberate Language of Intention I use with the words ‘work’ and ‘job.’

And don't let the whole date thing stop you just because we are in the last two weeks of the month: Everything on MWAC is designed for self-coaching and self-paced progression. You can start it at any time (and go back to it at any time :) Isn’t the internet wonderful?

Here is some extra-credit reading about this bit - “you are much more complex than that - a good thing! You have more capacity to be explored...” -

Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity.

MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ ALOHA is about you living with authenticity in a world populated with other people. We human beings were not meant to live alone, we thrive in each other’s company. Aloha celebrates everything that makes you YOU. HO‘OHANA is about you making your living in our world in the way that gives you daily direction and intention and leaves you with a feeling of personal fulfillment every day —not just when you have accomplished large goals.

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

How ‘bout mixing up in some Voice Stew with me?

Would you like to be part of Managing with Aloha history?

Click over to MWA Coaching, and you will see my first-ever VoiceThread! Other than interviews, it is really the first time I have ever given away any "MWA Audio."

If you’ve been reading Talking Story for a while, or have read my book, but have yet to hear me speak, here is your chance:

MWAC Tuesday Essay #3:
Say Ka lā hiki ola to make it yours.

This is a pilot for me (remember what we've said here before about pilot projects?) and if it is successful, I will add at least one VoiceThread each month to the Tuesday-coaching line-up in the MWAC Value Your Month, Value Your Life program. So if you'd like to see me continue with this - click over, have a listen and comment!

In the spirit of the month... Ka lā hiki ola, it is "the dawning of a new day."

Kēia Manawa: This is it. Right Here, Right Now.

Kēia Manawa (Kay-ee-ah Ma-na-va) is one of my favorite Hawaiian phrases: I mutter it to myself all the time as a kind of self-coaching to get moving, particularly in those instances there is another reticent voice telling me to just curl up and withdraw, for that one is a voice I want to shut up: Life is just too short for bench-warming.

This is what my Ka lā hiki ola (dawning of a new day) looked like this morning, and I am not going to waste it!

Photo Library: Ho‘ohana Publishing ©.
See my Flickr page for other CC-licensed photos.

At MWAC today we get some help from my friend Amy Palko and from Robin Williams on what Kēia Manawa means.

I have already presented Amy’s lesson to you here at TS (did you do her exercise?) and so here is a teaser on Robin William’s coaching via The Dead Poets Society. Even if you’ve seen this before, this is a clip to get you moving today too. It will also shorten your reading time once you click over to MWAC, for I know you’re going there today too, right?

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
[direct link: YouTube video clip of Dead Poets Society if it does not show up in your browser or feed reader.]

So what will TODAY, Right Here, Right Now be about for you? What is your Keia Manawa TODAY? Mine will be dedicated to the exercise I suggest over at MWAC, for I do what I ask you to do ~ it is my Keia Manawa.

So join us at Managing with Aloha Coaching today:

MWAC Tuesday Essay #2:
Ka lā hiki ola and Kēia Manawa

Subscribe to Managing with Aloha Coaching by Email

May Magnificence for MWA Coaching

Couldn’t resist all the M’s:)

If you missed them, these were the top 5 articles on Managing with Aloha Coaching during the month of May:

1. The Not-So-Secret Ambition of Being Indispensable, and 5 Trade-Ups
2. Looking for the Sources of our Hawaiian Values (this one also doubled as a debrief of the NaHHA Conference I had attended on O‘ahu at the beginning of the month)
3. What can a humble wave do for you?
4. “Ah, there you are” said the halo (A short one with five quotes on Ha‘aha‘a, humility)
5. Listening Alone Does Not Equate to the Humility of Ha‘aha‘a

Here is one link to take you to the MWAC Index page where you can find them all:
MWAC Index for May 2008.

Also, I will add the one which came in at #6, for it is a free download!
New MWAC White Paper: The Role of the Manager Reconstructed.

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:

Our MWA value for July 2007 is Ho‘okipa

In retrospect, I often think how lucky I was to have my early career in what Hawai‘i dubs “the hospitality business,” the nickname for the tourism and travel industry management businesses which became the lifeblood of our islands once urbanization started to gobble up our agricultural lands. However back then, I sure didn’t feel lucky, just swept away in a raging ocean swell, doing the best I could to keep my head above water.

It was, and still is a hard business to be in, for being a workaholic comes with the territory, and it is one of those very needy businesses that consume you totally. Your only global consciousness comes from “the tourist with the funny accent.” Most people who start their working lives within the hospitality business will marry and start their families within it (and I was one of the many who did) because they simply don’t get away from it enough to meet the “normal people” in the rest of society.

So despite all that, why do I think I was lucky? People visit Hawai‘i wanting their own dream of aloha to come true, and you cannot be in the “hospitality business” without that core knowledge about your customer. Most visitors have heard the word aloha, and they arrive with the concept of aloha shrouded in a kind of mystique; they know it’s supposed to be a good thing, and they know they have to find it before they leave, for that’s what people who have gone to Hawai‘i experience, right?

Well, lucky for them (usually, we have our gone-wrong stories too) they will be the customers of our biggest industry, and the people in charge will expect everyone who gets a paycheck from them to bring their aloha to work. Managing with Aloha was written in part to correct some of the crookedness of this thinking, however this was my stroke of luck: I learned about hospitality through the lens of the Hawaiian value of Ho‘okipa, and I, someone who knows she is innately introverted and had been sadly lacking in the social graces, was groomed within this business to deliver the hospitality of the Mea Ho‘okipa (the extraordinary host and hostess) to every single person I met.

Yes, I did it for the business, and I learned to be a good employee. However along the way, I eventually came to understand how profoundly true this is:

“One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”

In other words, I learned how to be Mea Ho‘okipa for me.

If we managers in business use aloha to coach our staff as the possible Mea Ho‘okipa they may be, the gift we can give them is this:

They will never feel they are subservient to a customer, boss, owner, or co-worker again.

My value essay of the month is up on www.ManagingWithAloha.com and Ho‘okipa is the star. I do hope you will click over there and take up the challenge I present for the Ho‘ohana Community in July. Here is a snippet;

Ho‘okipa defines the art of true service

Is hospitality a sleeping art?

We all yearn for more hospitality, for we know it to be a strong, very genuine signal of the aloha spirit waiting for us within a new relationship, whether that relationship is with a person, a team, a neighborhood, a business, or an entire society.

When hospitality is present we feel welcomed, we feel wanted, and we are more willing to be fully involved in the human interactions of life.

So what can we do to awaken this sleeping art, doing our part to help hospitality be more vibrant again? How can we savor it more, and crave it less?

For there to be ho‘okipa, hospitality must be unconditional

Unconditional means there are absolutely no strings attached.

Imagine that you are standing in front of this beautiful woman.
... continued at MWA.

This month, we strive for Ho‘okipa, the hospitality of complete giving.

Do join us; let’s Ho‘ohana (work intentionally within our values), and let’s talk story in support of each other’s learning.

Hospitality is one of the most universally appealing values given and thankfully shared; it connects to many others. For me, Aloha and Lokomaika‘i (generosity) are those that first come to mind; how about for you?
~ Rosa

Archive Dipping; closely related to Ho‘okipa Exactly one year ago, I wrote about Lokomaika‘i, the Hawaiian value of Generosity woven into hospitality. It became the starter post for a much fuller Talking Story index on Generosity, with titles such as, The Generosity of Silence, The Generosity of Listening, The Generosity of Delegation and The Generosity of Laughter. Start the Generosity of the Huddle in your company if you do not yet have it. The first time I wrote about the Mea Ho‘okipa online, explaining who they are, was for K.Todd Storch at Business Thoughts, in this January 2005 interview on how we can improve customer service. If you have time, I would encourage you to read through the entire customer service series. Todd has kept in his archives for us to keep learning from. How to Ho‘ohana.

Book an Author and Make Their Day

I had a magnificent day yesterday.

I met Skip and Caroline Andrews of our Ho'ohana Community for the first time. They live on the mainland, and were here for a week, and Skip had sent me an email asking if the timing would be good for us to meet. They would be on the east side of the island (I live on the west side).

The short version of our day is this: We did meet, and we spent most of the day together. Conversation in a coffee place, then lunch, then shopping along Mamo Street and Kamehameha Avenue downtown, then a tour of a remote mountainside retreat that overlooks Hilo Bay. A beautiful, sunny day in normally-rainy Hilo became soul-warming sunshine in my life.

Skip bought my book, Managing with Aloha, while here in Hawaii two years ago. When he took the initiative to email me, and triggered off the correspondence between us that eventually led to yesterday, he started a relationship with me where I didn't even think twice about the fact that making it happen would require one of my rare Saturdays at home and about four hours of driving alone. In fact, it gave me another reason to stock up my iPod with a new audio book and pack a bag for a roadtrip.

This has happened to me before, and no matter how many times it continues to happen it will amaze and delight me. By ‘this’ I mean having the immense good fortune to meet someone who has read and enjoyed my book, studying it enough to feel it somehow speaks to them. It is an experience which is a profoundly moving gift.

I have been a book addict for as long as I can remember. I have fallen in love with certain authors, often thinking about the thrill it would be to meet them. Yet somehow my thinking about this has never been big enough, bold enough, or of-course-you-can! enough.

I've never been the one to send the email.

The closest I've come has been approaching authors after they've spoken at a conference I was at. That was how I'd met Marcus Buckingham and Tim Sanders, two of my favorite business authors. However that was too easy; and a case where easy just wasn't good enough. I didn't work hard enough at it to be satisfied by it, and I certainly didn't expect them to remember me ... I was one of many queued up to speak with them.

And I certainly never dreamed that the day would come, that I'd be author someone else would think about meeting.

Managing with Aloha has changed so much for me, and I couldn't be happier. If I do write another book, it won't be for the sales, for the acclaim, for the prestige or for the credibility. It will probably still be about an 'Imi ola mission, like the managing with aloha movement, and it will definitely be for more days like yesterday, sharing aloha with the Ho'ohana Community.

And since writing Managing with Aloha, I do now contact other authors (like Tom Ehrenfeld), wanting to give them these gifts too.

Thank you Skip and Caroline, and thank you to the many others I have met because you were brave enough, open enough, and confident enough. You have all become pure joy for me in being so lokomaika'i, (one with the generosity of good heart.)

The picture above is of downtown Hilo. This one below is a view through the trees of that mountainside retreat which ended our day's visit.