Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Rapid Fire Learning | June 2007

You have 5 full days left in June to LEARN!

Phil Gerbyshak is sharing Life Lessons in hosting Rapid Fire Learning for us on Joyful Jubilant Learning; if you read his first it might trigger some June memories for you!

I love that we take turns kicking off our monthly shout out for learning on JJL: I always look forward to the way it gets written up there, and it's very inspiring checking back each day to look for a new trackback, seeing where our meme has traveled. So do remember to add yours too!

Here is my June 2007 learning:

1. We started June with our Ho'ohana (work intention) on the value of Kulia i ka nu'u (achievement and excellence), learning that big breakthroughs can be achieved in a single day - it's all in the how you live and work that day. Kūlia! Break thrū!

2. I have long thought of writing in three different ways; writing to write, writing to capture, and writing to learn. This month, I applied my categorization to the clarify-confirm process we learned within the JJL Learn to Lead with Your Strengths project, learning to build upon them further with strengths statements.

For more on this one, see: Writing is a Skill the Successful Master.

3. I learned that the brain is not wired to possess both a positive and a negative at the same time. How fantastic is that! In case you missed it, I wrote more about it here: Believe in your Biology! It's a post I'm tagging to remind myself of often - have already used this new knowledge in my speaking this month.

4. I continue to learn more about the strengths movement, further deepening my understanding of how building upon your strengths is a gift you give yourself and all you wish to impact with your aloha. My most recent writing about this is here, within a JJL posting about my StrengthsFinder 2.0 results. Strengths management is a curriculum I find I never tire of; Gallup would say that it's my Maximizer.

 5. A small breakthrough I suspect may be bigger than I now realize: I have just learned how to plan ahead for any spontaneous travel I may take. Odd as it may sound, I have done this for my business travel for years, with a bag ready-packed to go, but never for a personal trip with my family - and what goes in that bag needs to be much different! This trip was the catalyst: Playing Elsewhere with Family.

What about you? Please share your learning with the rest of us: You never know who you’ll inspire!

Here’s my tracking: January ’07, February ’07, March ’07, April ’07, May ’07. Or choose the category to get them all on one page.

Rapid Fire Learning | May 2007

You have 5 full days left in May to LEARN!

Terry Starbucker is taking his turn at hosting Rapid Fire Learning for us on Joyful Jubilant Learning. He shares what he's learned from butterflies, weddings, a meme, a conference and a movie, proving to us once again that our learning is where we look for it, and open ourselves up to the experience of it.

Here are mine!

1. I learned to better articulate strengths statements and weakness statements for myself in a very powerful way, by associating them with specific activities. If you have not been a strengths movement groupie, you'll probably be thinking, uh okay, and so? But if you are a Marcus Buckingham follower, and you've been participating in our Learn to Lead with Your Strengths project at Joyful Jubilant Learning, you will likely understand how profound this has been. May will be a month to remember: I will now trace this as an annual event within my strengths sustaining habits.

2. Being a businesswoman for all of my working career, I am extremely results-oriented (so much so, that extremely is a pretty tame word for it). With Ho'omau as our value for the month of May, I set my sights on the determination to finish projects well. In doing so, I learned just how important willpower and self-discipline are in my life. I cannot take Ho'omau for granted - ever - if I am to live up to my own expectations.

For more on this one, see: Five Steps Where Determination Equals Finishing.

3. Books and blog posts are stellar, you know I love them, however, We learn best and most from other people. This is something I preach about consistently in Managing with Aloha, for learning from those we manage is the key opportunity behind the Daily Five Minutes, and in my coaching people to reinvent the quality of their workplace conversations by using it. There is one person in particular I learned so much from this month, because I had the good fortune of meeting him on his vacation on Maui, and I want to acknowledge him for it: Greg Balanko-Dickson, mahalo nui! You are a business-planning guru!

Greg talks a little about his Hawaii experience here: Lifestyle Design: The Best Reason To Be Self-Employed.

4. I learned about a few financial issues in my business, that took me from Unconscious Unknowing – I don’t know what I don’t know because I just don’t know, to Conscious Unknowing – I know enough to know what I don’t know. Let's just say I'm now scrambling to fix all of them ... June will be for making my way to Conscious Knowing – I know what I know.

Toni Howard wrote about these stages of learning for us on JJL last October, in a posting she called, The Age of Humble Curiosity. Sure IS humbling... well, ha'aha'a (the Hawaiian value of humility) is good for me.

 5. I learning about should-ing, and that I have to stop it! Within this one a hard decision, but one I feel good about: I learned to let go of something that has been a huge part of my writing life for nearly two years; Lifehack.org. I wrote about it here: Thursdays at home on Talking Story. If you are not trying to carry too much in your hands, you're able to have a better grasp on the fewer things you do hold on to.

What about you? Please share your learning with the rest of us: You never know who you’ll inspire!

Here’s my tracking: January ’07, February ’07, March ’07, April ’07. Or choose the category to get them all on one page.

And remember to visit Terry on Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Rapid Fire Learning | April 2007

It’s that time again; Steve Sherlock is taking his turn at hosting Rapid Fire Learning for us on Joyful Jubilant Learning. Ready? My charge to you this month was ‘Imi ola: Create Your Best Possible Life. How did you learn to do so?

1. I learned to take a new approach with that productivity staple called the To Do List. Mahalo to Tim Milburn for the inspiration!

2. I am currently learning how fortunate I was to earn my career stripes in the private sector, where we rarely will say, “We can’t.” I continue to love the business world of free enterprise when I compare it to the shackles of government and academia; within this month I have been challenged to be more effective in my coaching of those within those worlds. It requires me to be much more persistent, resilient and tenacious without purely being stubborn.

3. Self employment is a great teacher, and every April I learn much more financial literacy (and about how the private sector continues to finance the public sector…)

4. I learned about the phrase, “the banality of heroism” in learning what we’re capable of.

5. I am just beginning to learn how to lead a Learning Project for the growing Joyful Jubilant Learning Community, and I couldn’t be happier about it being in the workplace playground of strengths management. So far, I have learned I must deliberately position myself so that I can give my best where I have the best to give.

What about you? Please share your learning with the rest of us: You never know who you’ll inspire!

Here’s my tracking: January ’07, February ’07, March ’07.

Rapid Fire Learning | March 2007

Tim Milburn is hosting our Rapid Fire Learning on Joyful Jubilant Learning this month! I had one particular favorite from those he shared there; click over to the comments and you’ll discover which it was :-)

I LOVE this new feature we’ve started on JJL. We do this to celebrate the immense capacity we have for learning – we all CAN be lifelong learners, and furthermore, I strongly believe we must. I guarantee you that you have learned more this month than you may think you have; write it down. Track it every month with us, and marvel at the capacity you have for learning. Marvel at the wonder that you are.

Walking writing my talk … here goes … stream of consciousness … real quick … 5 things I learned this month;

1. I learned a new way to comprehend the wisdom of the practice Julia Cameron calls an “artist date.”

There are two tools Cameron talks about in her coaching of writers, calling them, “two bedrock tools essential to any creative recovery.” One involves work, something she calls “Morning Pages” and the second, the “Artist Date” involves play; she says that once weekly, we need to take a solitary, festive expedition targeted at enticing our inner artist into exploring new realms – take in a solo movie, visit an art supply shop, take a jaunt through Chinatown; that sorta thing.

The work is a cinch for me, the play part is much tougher to master. My new learning (not an original thought for me, but newly heard coaching from Cameron) was in thinking of Morning Pages as sending – think Law of Attraction, and how free-form, stream of consciousness writing helps you tell the Universe what you’d like more of. On the other hand, the Artist Date is receiving; “you hear hunches, inspiration, guidance, and as your inner listening improves, you experience increased synchronicity.” Now this concept of sending versus receiving I get; it’s like the giving and receiving of The Daily Five Minutes.

Rapid Fire Learning | February 2007

Blaine Collins is hosting our Rapid Fire Learning at Joyful Jubilant Learning this month!

Stream of consciousness … real quick … 5 things I learned this month;

1. You might think you can prepare for something that is expected to happen, but all you can prepare for are the things which are under your own control. Other people are always wild cards. Still, being prepared yourself helps you deal better with those wild cards.

2. Life is simpler when you can stick to one role with the people who are closest to you. If you’re mom, be mom. If you’re friend, be friend. If you’re boss, be boss. And be the best at that role you’ve chosen.

3. I’ve written more about aloha than I ever thought it possible to write. Yet I’m not even close to covering all that is still to be written about it.

4. The older I get, the less stuff I need to have. Pretty liberating.

5. When more people jump on the bandwagon it doesn’t necessarily mean something is right. It may just mean that more people are wrong. It can help to just be right for you, asking yourself, “Now why am I doing this again?”

However, the RFL at JJL is a great bandwagon to be on! My why is to continually acknowledge and celebrate the richness that being a lifelong learner brings to my life. There are different events this month condensed into these five things for me, and I love knowing that each (or some of them combined) gives me the gift of learning.

This was how we started this last month: Rapid Fire Learning | January 2007. I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee and click through all the trackbacks.

You’ve got five more days in February … what are your five learnings? If your month has been anything like mine, you’ve discovered that a short month doesn’t mean there’s less, just that there’s more intensity.

February is Blaine’s birthday month; blog your own RFL’s and send him a trackback here and here. Hau‘oli la hanau Blaine!

Logged your 5?

February’s at our doorstep …

What impressions have been made on you, thanks to January?

What have you learned?

Share it with us! Andrew did. So did Greg, Blaine, and John. Tim, Steve and Phil too. We heard from Kirsten, Terry, and Chris. Ron weighed in.

We’re waiting to hear from you at Joyful Jubilant Learning:

Rapid Fire Learning!!! Keia manawa - take aim now!