In teaching others about Managing with Aloha, I spend a good amount of time on Ho‘ohana, the value of worthwhile work, explaining how you can still work with intentional focus on certain things which are important you, even though your present job may not be the one you think of as your final career choice. We recently considered this here at Lifehack.org in this article: Create Your Best Life at Work with One Question. The question was, “What’s in this for me?” There are several reasons that people change jobs, restlessly seeking... More »
In the early days of my management career in the hotel industry, there was a standard practice that seems to have fallen by the wayside, and I can’t imagine why. Well, I take that back, I think I know why. It’s a thing called ‘cost’ when the cost of a lost opportunity isn’t factored into it for the over-riding veto power it has. Used to be we didn’t waste the lost opportunity of an empty hotel room. If we didn’t fill it up for the night, we couldn’t save up that lost... More »
On ManagingWithAloha.com we have been talking about the Hawaiian value of ‘Imi ola this month; it means to create your best possible life. Let’s consider this; How do you accomplish ‘Imi ola while you are at work? The biggest bang for the buck strategy is to choose the right work to begin with. There is a lot of basic common sense in the notion that you’ll never toil at a job again if you’ve chosen the right work for you in the first place. The “right” work is the kind you leap... More »
412 Shares I had promised you I would follow up with my Rules for Self-Leadership this week, and they follow. A Preface: Management and Leadership are not interchangeable words for me. We need both of them, for in part, management tends to be more internally focused (within a company, within an industry, within a person) whereas leadership is more externally focused on the future-forward actions you will take in the greater context of industry, community, or society. They have commonality to be sure, for instance, both are about capitalizing on human capacity, however they... More »
327 Shares Management is not just for managers, just as leadership is not just for leaders. We all manage, and we all lead; these are not actions reserved for only those people who happen to hold these “positions” in a company. I personally think of management and leadership as callings, and we all get these callings to manage and lead at different times, and to different degrees. Considered another way, I believe we can all learn to be more self-governing through the disciplines of great management and great leadership; these are concepts that can... More »
Riddle of the day: What do you get when you ask a community of lifelong learners to recommend their current favorite reads? Answer: The 3rd Annual A Love Affair with Books, newly hosted for 2007 on Joyful Jubilant Learning. This recent forum, held throughout the past month delivered some truly terrific recommendations. Although the bookfest officially ended with March, the comment conversation there continues to be lively as readers purchase books and add their own thoughts to the original book reviews. The stack of books on my desk got a whole lot... More »
Every company has a storied past. Are you aware what yours is? More importantly, do you know why your stories are so important? When old timers tell the newbies stories about “the good old days,” or “how it used to be here,” or “the first time we ever did this” what are they so fondly recollecting? Why in the world do they keep talking about past events, often making the retelling far more wonderful sounding than you remember actually living the experience of them? Is there any value in this memorable nostalgia?... More »
Recently an area director for a non-profit asked me if I would do a Malama session for a work team that was struggling to communicate with each other. He valued everyone on the team individually, however he could see that together they were not very effective. Malama is the value of caring, compassion, and stewardship I speak of in Managing with Aloha. In a Malama session, we ‘talk story’ within a defined coaching process, with the goal of clarifying the root cause of workplace issues (Note: Mālama is the correct form of... More »
We managers can get ourselves into far too many situations where we unwittingly set others up for disappointment because we haven’t learned to finish our conversations well. Last week I encouraged you to add The Daily Five Minutes (D5M for short) to your management toolbox because it creates more workplace conversations. The intention of the D5M is to give your staff the gift of your attention, five minutes on a recurring basis where you listen well, truly focusing on getting to know them better, and engaging them in dynamic conversations. This week,... More »
After reading my article here last week, and clicking through some of the related links to find this one, a Lifehack.org reader sent me an email with this request; “I notice you mention the Daily 5 Minutes pretty frequently, and seems you’ve written a lot about it. Can you point me to one how-to kind of post that I can share with the rest of my managers?” I didn’t have something to send him at the time, so I wrote it up, and thought I’d share it with all of you this... More »
I’m a big believer in the self-talking power of the personal mission statement. Over the course of my life I have found it’s so helpful to periodically ask myself, “Who do I want to be, and how am I going to become that person?” The answer can, and invariably has changed over the course of the years. There are times I laugh at my own answers, and there are other times I take them very seriously. Every time I’ll focus better. Because it works so well for me, I’ve tried using this... More »
One of my favorite themes in the MWA coaching curriculum is something we refer to as the ‘selfish mentoring of ‘imi ola.’ ‘Imi ola is the Hawaiian value of personal vision; it literally translates to ‘seek life’ and as a business value, we use it to coach managers on how to seek their best possible lives in business. Don’t get stuck on the normally negative connotation of the word; selfishness in this context is a very good thing. When you have the goal of ‘imi ola, and creating the best possible life... More »
At Say Leadership Coaching (SLC) we concentrate our efforts on just that which our name implies; coaching the leadership in companies to reach their greater potential. Executives are but one group we work with; there are leaders at every level of a company’s official org chart, and we find that titles can be irrelevant when it comes to discovering leadership talent. Once we discover leadership talent, one of our objectives is to get that person more “broadcast air time” in their company, so that they’ll get increasing comfortable with sharing their ideas.... More »
Great Managers cultivate a work environment where lifelong learners thrive. Everyone simply learns for the sake of learning, thrilling to its personal reward. In these workplaces, curiosity is admired and all ideas are prized, and the Great Managers are those who facilitate the learning process in which those ideas incubate until innovation breaks through. People grow magnificently in the process. Among studies of their own, managers will learn how to be a great teacher and coach, and with teaching in the workplace, their “how to be a great teacher” starts with knowing... More »
In this, the alive and well revolution of blogging and print-on-demand publishing, censorship is something we think of as very dark ages; surely it doesn’t happen anymore! That may be true in the freedoms of your personal, unshackled life, but how about at work? The freedom of self-expression is one we say we cherish most of all, for we are sensitive, intelligent, and thoughtful human beings. We know stuff. We represent. We define. We influence. We stand up to be heard, and we should, for we have important opinions which should count.... More »
