Aloha Readers of Lifehack.org! Leon has graciously invited me to be a guest author here, and I am most appreciative of this wonderful opportunity to share the ideas which add richness yet more simplicity to our lives. As a management coach, and the author Managing with Aloha, you’ll find that what I’ll most often offer you will deal with management, leadership and the reinvention of the workplace at the hands of managers who “get it.” That said, there are nineteen universal business values in the MWA philosophy I am best known for, and they give us the opportunity for a whole-life/best-life approach to the lifehacks we can share. Ultimately, everything is personal, and that includes work.
Reminiscent of my own schooldays, the month of September has long meant one thing for me: Engage the brain in something new and LEARN it. You must be a lifelong learner if you are going to do well in today’s world. Why just survive it, when instead you can make it your own, capturing every fabulous moment of it?
If you are a manager you must both learn and teach, and you can expect me to speak to you often about how you can be a great coach and mentor. From day one, there are 5 things an employee needs to learn from you, setting the stage for all the higher-level learning you want them to reach for as your coaching relationship with them deepens:
- Why you hired them. Not as a qualified candidate for a job vacancy, but because of the values you share, in your eyes making them perfectly suited to a great working partnership with you. Elevate both their self-esteem and their sense of belonging. Shared values are your common ground, and a business-partner mentality can be your base camp. When employees clearly understand what they were hired to do, all future job objectives become much more meaningful.
- How to work with you. Employees can’t read your mind any better than you can read theirs: Tell them straight up what your working style is so they needn’t go through the trial-and-error of figuring it out. Tell them which freedoms they have—and do not have—in pushing the envelope of change and newness with you. There should be no eggshells to tiptoe through: Landmines should be in plain sight.
- How to talk to you. Don’t expect they will communicate effectively or completely with you when they haven’t learned enough about you to feel they know you yet, nor have their own “water wings” in the company to feel safe about it. Too many employees feel “put up and shut up” is the wisest strategy, or worse, is expected of them when that’s just not true. (Hot tip: The Daily 5 Minutes is the single best communication tool I can offer you.)
- How you expect the customer to be treated, both external customers and internal ones. As far as you’re concerned, exactly what is great customer service? Is the customer always right? —really? Not only must they learn how to work with you (go back to number 2…) they must learn how to work with —and for—the guest and customer, their peers and associates, your suppliers and professional network of relationships. There are ground-rules in all civilized societies: What are yours?
- Your vision for the company. Not the canned speech and company line, but what it personally means to YOU, and how you strive to put your personal signature on it. Model the behavior you want to see; set the expectation that you’ll soon ask them what their personal signature will be. Bring the vision into sharper focus. Yes, it’s the future picture, but the future needs to get closer every day, and they’ve got to know it’s in their hands.
More on September Learning right here on Lifehack.org with me, every coming Thursday of this month. On every other day, you can visit me on www.ManagingWithAloha.com. Aloha!
Rosa Say
Related posts / references:
The Daily 5 Minutes
The Customer is NOT Always Right
Managing with Aloha
