Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Values and monthly Habit-magic

At Say Leadership Coaching, the first day of each new month is always a day of reckoning of sorts: are we ready for the next push? The flip of the calendar means it's publishing day for the division of my company called Ho'ohana Publishing.

... yes, another use of that Ho'ohana word!
If you're gonna have a mantra, have a mantra...

What gets published that month (kick-off e-letter, blogging themes, lesson plan evolutions, coaching missives for our customers, project e-booklets or pdfs...) depends on what the new value of the month will be, just as Kūlia! Break thrū! comes from Kulia i ka nu'u as our value for June, 2007.

Values and months go together like they were made to.

I have long adopted a value of the month within my personal practice of Managing with Aloha. Before my book was even the remotest of possibilities in my thinking, the manager living inside my skin knew that

a) values drive behavior, and

b) values spoken out loud all the time drive on-purpose behavior, (that is, as opposed to luck-of-the-draw or good-mood behavior) and

c) values deliberately practiced a month at a time with consistent focus (i.e. EVERYONE) made work expectations both crystal clear and more regularly delivered upon.

In other words, I knew that values at work, WORK.

Months seem to frame them so perfectly; not too long, not too short. As Goldilocks said when she found baby bear's bed, a month is "just right."

Months give you enough time to create a new habit around the value you've chosen, for even without your weekends, you'll get those 21 days that people who study habits (like Stephen Covey) say are necessary for the repetition that creates a habit that will stick.

What habit will you be creating this month around Kūlia i ka nu'u (excellence and achievement)?

How will you Kūlia! and Break thrū?

John Keoni had his June Break Thru already!

For our Ho‘ohana (work’s intention) this month, we coach each other to Kūlia, and Break Thrū!

If you are wondering where your own breakthrough could possibly come from this month, you must read this story, just shared with us on the Managing with Aloha blog by Uncle John Keoni.

Click on the picture to get there, then join Uncle John on the swings … June beckons.

Has May’s Ho‘ohana been good for you?

We’ve been ho‘omau-ing, and I do hope so!

We'd started here on May 1st: Ho‘omau and Be Strong ... remember?

Check in with the Managing with Aloha blog for our 2-days from pau (finished) / 2-days to go recap:

3 Ho‘omau Siblings: Will, WillPower, and Willingness

Also there, are keep-the-fire-burning links to Ho‘omau articles you may have missed by Reg Adkins, Dean Boyer, Carolyn Manning and Joanna Young of our Ho‘ohana Community — and they are not to be missed!

The MWA Values Index on Ho‘omau has been updated with my picks too.

Ho‘omau-ing is so much better than Should-ing, dontcha think?

Mahalo nui to all who have commented on our Ho‘ohana this month! You keep our community strong.

[If you are new to Talking Story, click on the fire to learn more about Ho‘ohana and the Ho‘ohana Community.]

Ho‘ohana: Our Value for April is ‘Imi ola

Aloha Ho‘ohana Community,

Starting today, a slight change I have thought about for quite some time now. The essays for our Ho‘ohana value of the month program will be moving to the Managing with Aloha website.

  Really; no April Fool’s Day trickery in this posting!

This seems to be a good time, for our value of the month is ‘Imi ola, the one in which we concentrate on vision, mission, form and function. With ‘Imi ola, we work on the best possible design we’ve purposely engineered for the masterpiece we continually create each and every day; our life (ola).

In fact, it seems to be so logical that a Managing with Aloha value of the month program be on www.managingwithaloha.com that you may wonder why I didn’t do that in the first place. Me too!

No, there was a reason, and it was as simple as this; Talking Story came first and I couldn’t wait for the debut of MWA to share my values for worthwhile work in business with all of you. That’s how ingrained they are into my ho‘ohana and who I am. Then, featuring our monthly Ho‘ohana here became my Talking Story habit.

Now fast-forward two-plus years, and this is the today of my writing:

Ho‘ohana: Love Your Work

If you have read Talking Story for any amount of time at all, clicking in (versus aggregator reading) and scrolling up and down my blog’s columns, you’ve “heard” me use the word Ho‘ohana before. I use it a lot.

Here’s a primer of sorts, for some ‘sorting out’ is probably in order to help us get to the heart and soul of what this word truly is all about.

• Ho‘ohana is a Hawaiian value, and the subject of Chapter Two in Managing with Aloha
• Ho‘ohana is also my personal mantra. Therefore,
• Ho‘ohana became the name of the monthly e-letter I began to publish monthly and distribute back in 2003. It has since grown to a distribution of several thousand subscribers, and it is still sent via email on the first weekday of each month. [Subscribe here if you wish.]
• When I started blogging in 2004, Ho‘ohana became the name by which I’d refer to our community of readers and Managing with Aloha practitioners, because my first readers were my Ho‘ohana e-letter subscribers and those who began the MWA movement with me. [More on the Ho‘ohana Community here.]
  
• My Ho‘ohana e-letter had been born as my monthly “Ho‘ohana essay.” It was sort of a self-coaching essay for me to live my own values and remain centered and focused, as I left the corporate work world and began to build my own business, Say Leadership Coaching. So, I openly shared it with my subscribers. Frankly, putting it “out there” forced me to walk my talk. Still does.

To sum it up as short and sweet as I can, I believe in Ho‘ohana as the joy of work, and so it’s the value which drives me in pretty much all I do. Why work for any other reason?

Work very well may be one of my favorite concepts, for I believe in the rewarding celebration of self that work allows us to express. To “work hard” is to be who you are meant to be, reaching in deep and grabbing hold of all the possibility within you. To work for something you want, is to love being who you are capable of being.

Thing is, you have to choose the right work to begin with, and that is where the value of Ho‘ohana comes into play so beautifully. To ho‘ohana is to work intentionally, purposefully, and passionately and in work that is all about you. To ho‘ohana is to have resolve and determination, and to seek mastery with personal efforts of your own deliberate, thoughtful choice.

Aloha; a Celebration of Who We Are

You may have noticed that I’ve become a fan of Flickr lately for the great photos to be found there. Finding terrific shots of Hawai‘i is pretty easy; whenever I photo-surf, I count my blessings yet again for the beauty which surrounds me in these islands I call home sweet home.

There is fun and playfulness in the images of Hawai‘i which people capture too:

This one in particular caught my eye, for our value for the month of February, 2007 is Aloha. With February as the month known for friendship and love, Aloha suits it so perfectly.

I am calling this month’s Ho‘ohana Aloha, the celebration of who we are. Everything we will learn this year, everything we will accomplish, every sweet victory and satisfying job well done, will start and end with us, the people of feisty, bountiful spirit that we are.

All the kindness and love we share, all the unconditional acceptance, understanding, and forgiveness we give, will come from our Aloha.

Our ALO - our demeanor and presence shared with those we are with

Our HA - the very breath of our life, and our spirit

Our ALOHA - the authentic, transparent, vulnerable, real us

“Aloha is pretty simple; to have aloha is keeping it real.”
—The definition of Aloha shared with Rosa by a very wise 17-year old gentleman at Kamehameha School’s Kea‘au campus on the Big Island of Hawai‘i

This is the gift of aloha: At the core, we are good enough, just the way we are.

Do we choose to express it? Or do we allow others to ask us for something that is different?

Sure, we want to get better, to learn and continually improve. And yes, we want to fill our capacity, so that we are thoroughly used up when we die. I’ve written of those things too.

However, I felt the need for Aloha as our value this month to somewhat temper the unreasonable expectations we can place on ourselves at times, to help us strike more of a balance in being okay with who we already are.

Further, have we fully explored the all of us?

On your mark. Get set, Go! … Ho‘ohana!

Aloha to all of you in 2007 my Ho‘ohana Community!

Ka lā hiki ola is the word for our language of intention; I am thrilled you are here to share this dawning of a new day with me, and with each other.

Our value for the month of January: Ka lā hiki ola

With every sunrise we get another shot, another fresh chance to be all we can possibly be. The sun may rise over some change that has occurred, but it still comes with a fresh new start, and the gift of more time. Therefore for me, Ka lā hiki ola has been a value of incredible promise and hope.

Ka lā hiki ola encourages us to make Pono today. Let go of yesterday. Give yourself hope for tomorrow. Live again, and live better – start a new chapter going forward. However, knowing that tomorrow will always bring a new day, secure in the certainty of it, I encourage you to live in every moment, and have the attitude that today is it. Enjoy your present; relish the now. You will feel more alive. Trust in your instincts, trust in what you know and have learned, and trust in the person you are. Live the day to the fullest, and live it as your day.”

—From Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business.  Begin on page 125 for more.

Mahalo for your patience for this month’s Ho‘ohana as I ease back from Ho‘omaha (my annual hiatus). My wish for you however, is that you haven’t waited for me and you’re up ahead with room to spare for when I catch up!

Goals and resolve, Projects and habits

I’ve got tons of goals for 2007, and thus just one resolution; I resolve to Begin.

I will begin every day, every hour, every conscious moment with my full intention. If I can do that, if I can just Begin, those goals will quickly be designed into my projects. In turn, my projects will begin to shape my work. Because of the pervasiveness with which work fills our days, that project-generated work will shape my habits. My new, good, proactively chosen habits. All starts by beginning with full intention; this is what Ho‘ohana is all about; I can shape work’s routine with the rhythm I want.

Ho‘ohana is work to thrive on. Better yet, you needn’t go it alone.

Our December Ho‘ohana; Nānā i ke kumu, Look to your Source

There were way too many years I dreaded the arrival of December.

The thought of the holidays and what they held in store for me was not at all the “Peace, Joy, and Goodwill to all Men” kind of promise. It was more of a Stress, Frustration, and Avoidance of Unnecessary People period of time because December had come too soon, and I simply wasn’t ready for it.

Photo caption from Flickr: ''I'm ready for all your xmas cards and pressies now!''

The fact that I had young children with the glitter of tinselly tree reflections in their eyes and Santa Claus magic in their dreams was borderline cruel in the mommy pressure it created for me. As horrible as this sounds, I’d find myself wishing they wouldn’t expect so much from Christmas. For I also had the customers and the staff of a 24/7 industry counting on me, and they were nowhere near as understanding and easy-to-please as my children. How we who worked it referred to this so-called “festive season” from the Friday before Christmas to the Friday after New Years was the “15 days of pure hell on earth” for Hawaii’s hotel and resort business.

Not an aloha-filled attitude, not by a long shot, but our all-too-predictable holiday reality. We always survived it, but the holidays were never as happy as I felt I could have made them for me and my family. I would never admit to it out loud, but we came second.

Therefore, in July of 2003, just two weeks into my newly unemployed status, and after thirty-one years working Hawaii’s holiday madness, I decided I would never, ever, work during those 15 days again. My family had waited much too long to become first.

Then, in an act of pure excess, just because I now could, I extended those 15 days of vacation into a four week sabbatical, and my annual Ho‘omaha (time of resting) for holiday joy plus nānā i ke kumu was born. I have my own business now, and during Ho‘omaha I shutter it; no one works. We all belong to our families, and the last coaching everyone associated with Say Leadership Coaching gets from me is “Nānā i ke kumu.”

I think of Nānā i ke kumu as the Hawaiian value of self-respect and dignity of spirit. This is the description of Nānā i ke kumu from the pages of Managing with Aloha; it is found there as Chapter 17.

Our November Ho‘ohana; When Parenting Works

Grand, glorious November, filled with grace and generous abundance; we are so grateful you have arrived!

I am not very original with my Ho‘ohana for November. (Ho‘ohana is our monthly theme, and my work’s intention.) I am not very creative, and feel no need to be. In fact, I will steadfastly resist any urge for newness, and will firmly quiet my muse should she feel particularly rambunctious and defiant.

Yes, my muse is indeed a she, and not given to quiet moments when I need her to be.

“We are very much alike.”

The value I celebrate this month is always the same one. In my mind, it is the right one, and the only one. It belongs to November, and November belongs to it.

I bow my head gratefully and humbly to the wisdom of the season, and throw my arms wide open to welcome in appreciation, gratitude, and living in thankfulness for all the elements which make our lives so precious. This is the month for our Hawaiian value called Mahalo.

Mahalo
Thank you, as a way of living.
Live in thankfulness for the richness that makes life so precious.

With Mahalo, we give thanks for every element that enriches our lives by living in thankfulness for them. We relish them. We celebrate them joyously. Mahalo is the value that gives us an attitude of gratitude, and the pleasure of awe and wonder.

Say “thank you” often; speak of your appreciation and it will soften the tone of your voice, giving it richness, humility and fullness. People need to hear it from you: “Mahalo nui loa” thank you very much.
—Managing with Aloha, Chapter 16

---

However this month,

“However? Did you say ‘however?’”

“Shush, please don’t interrupt Ms. Muse.”

This month, I am willing to focus in a slightly updated way. I would like to suggest that we come together in our community’s thankfulness with something in particular; with stories of how the parenting we may have received has shaped us into the people we are, and why we are grateful. I believe that we are in great need of good parenting today, and I am confident we can share some terrrific examples we can learn from and duplicate.

“Hmmm.”

“Hmmm?”

“Yes, hmmm. Just hmmm.”

“Hmm... I think the phrase wicked smile must have been first used to describe the delightfully calculating expression on the face of a writer’s muse.”

“You’d best continue. Everyone is waiting for you.”

Our Ho‘ohana for October, 2006: Nalu it!

Aloha mai kākou, are you ready for October?

About a week ago, happily swept up within the learning energy of JJL ’06, some of us were not sure we would be:

“Rosa, can we please extend this month a few weeks? Everyone is putting on their best ‘Sunday go to meeting dialogue!’ and looooking gooood!”
—Dave Rothacker

Dave was far from alone in feeling that way. As a result, the JJLNetwork was born at www.joyfuljubilantlearning.com because there was an undeniable excitement and learning momentum happening, and we all knew it.

There was something else which really helped; Several of us had enough capacity that we could “Nalu it.”

Nalu is the Hawaiian word for wave or surging surf, and the hapa-Hawaiian saying, to “Nalu it” means to “go with the flow.” In light of our learning experiences these past few weeks, I felt this was most appropriate as our ho‘ohana for October!

This month, we will ask ourselves:

• As we ho‘ohana, and “work with purpose, passion, and full intention” have we freed up enough capacity in our lives so that we can “Nalu it” when a golden opportunity drops in our laps unexpectedly, just like the Joyful Jubilant Learning Network did?

• Or, are we normally running on fumes? Is there enough fuel in our reserves, so that we can take enticing detours without worrying that we’ll run dry, and will have taken too great a risk?

Evolutionary Blogging: Stories that make the connections

I am extremely honored to take part in this month’s Joyful Jubilant Learning event at Talking Story. Rosa, what a community of passionate folks live and correspond here!

Let me tell you a little about my learning experience. I grew up in Pawtucket, RI. Pawtucket is the name the native Indian’s translated as “place of falling waters”. The Blackstone River ran through the city, down into Narragansett Bay, which in turn emptied into the Atlantic. Walking over the Division Street Bridge headed to the Boy’s Club for swim lessons or ‘free’ swim after our paper route duties, the gang would pick up stones to drop over the railing. The stones would fall a long ways down into the polluted water and break up the suds. The game we played was to create a big space and see how long it would last. Alas, it usually did not last long. The river is cleaner now. No suds cover the surface. You can do some fishing and boating in the river.

After high school, I selected to go to Assumption instead Providence College. Assumption provided enough financial aid that I could live on campus, where as I would have to commute into Providence. It was a choice I have never regretted. Once in Worcester, I learned that the Blackstone River actually began there. Yes, the same Blackstone that I dropped stones in. It made sense then that I had gone to my source, to the head waters of my river to learn how to explore this world.

                        *    *    *    *    *

Pawtucket had been instrumental in the industrialization of America. Samuel Slater opened the Slater Mill in 1793 having come over from England with the blueprints of weaving machines memorized. The English, very protective of their market, refused to allow any blueprints to leave the mainland. Leaving the blueprints physically behind, Samuel came over with them in his head. Obtaining some funding from the Brown family, he was able to build the machines to operate the mill. Slater Mill was the first of many in the textile industry that grew throughout New England. Joseph Jenks, Jr. crafted much of the ironwork used in the mill. Joseph had come over from England to join his father who had established an ironworks in Saugus, MA. Joseph, Jr. ventured further south to Pawtucket where the falling waters would power his mill. He is credited with founding Pawtucket.

‘Imi ola; Form and Function

Preface: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first weekday of each month to our email subscribers (You can learn more, and subscribe here). Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month.

As the days of July came and went, I found myself thinking ahead quite a bit. August and September have become months of special and very specific meaning for me. (This was our Ho‘ohana last August.)

They are character building months;
They are months for questioning and testing foundations.

They are months dedicated to never resting on one’s laurels, while slowing down just enough to truly appreciate how delectably good those laurels have been, and still are meant to be. After all, it is still summer, and summer is for simmering, not for rushing.

Cook to recipe. Simmer. Taste. Add some spice, or some salt. Simmer some more. E komo mai e ‘ai; (come in and eat). Invite your guests to feast with you.

This August marks the 2nd anniversary of Talking Story, and the 3rd anniversary of my business, Say Leadership Coaching. What a glorious three years it has been. We have eaten very well. We feast well in each other’s company.

And then there’s September.

Our May Ho‘ohana: Lōkahi

This time, a short preface first.

I usually write the skeleton of a draft for our monthly Ho‘ohana essay weeks in advance so that I can live with it for a while. Long before my first draft, my plotting on which value would fall on each month happened way back during my Ho‘omaha (my annual year-end sabbatical) for in my pursuit of a more logical mind, I plan them as I write my SLC strategic plan for the coming year. I am that extremely fortunate self-employed writer for whom my work and my writing blend into my life, and when it comes to our monthly Ho‘ohana, there is no need to separate them. Further, it makes more sense for me not to; essentially it’s the “common sense” part of what I do as a coach.

When I pulled out the Ho‘ohana essay draft for May this past weekend to polish it up, I marveled at how perfectly timed it ended up to be. I am constantly filled with gratefulness when I experience the extraordinary synchronicity of how things happen when they are needed most.  The context of life at this moment in time helped me focus pretty sharply; I cut more out of that draft than I put in: There are several dynamics to consider in Lōkahi, however, we need to focus on the most critical one, on the core understanding of it.

As I somewhat hinted to in this recent article, Community, and the Responsibility of Leadership, and as we in the SLC ‘Ohana in Business are experiencing in the coaching projects we have happening right now, if there is any one thing most on our minds these days, it has to do with how teams of people work together. I believe that managers make the difference. Thus, our Ho‘ohana for this month:

Lōkahi: How managers impact teams.

Our April Ho‘ohana: Mālama

What is Caring in business and at work?

As we live our lives in the day-to-day rigor of work, we can greatly underestimate how important it is in business to care, and to be cared for.

That underestimation is not something we can allow to happen in our Ho‘ohana Community. Never would I suggest that we might do so intentionally, however sometimes it is the simplest concepts which slip below our radar, for in a learning community (as we most certainly are), we do not hesitate to reach for more complex concepts; we enjoy the mental gymnastics of learning about new things, or new twists on old things.

Therefore, I am pleased to present Mālama, ‘to care for,’ as our value for the month of April, and as our ‘language of intention’ for the next thirty days.

In the last thirty-one days we have worked so hard on Kūlia i ka nu‘u. Our efforts to banish mediocrity and complacency have been very worthwhile, and very satisfying; it feels magnificent to strive higher and reach for excellence and higher levels of achievement.

However I now find I yearn to change it up, bringing some ‘softer’ concepts, warmth, and the purity of goodness into our April focus and our work days. We will be talking story about things such as caring and empathy, compassion and humanity, protection and stewardship, acts of kindness and goodwill, honor and servant leadership.

Shall we Mālama?

Our March Ho‘ohana: Kūlia i ka nu‘u! The Best We Can Be.

I have great hope, no, let’s say Big Purple Expectations, for 2006 as a year in which we are going to declare war on mediocrity.

I hope highly anticipate you’re with me in this. Are you battle ready?

Our scouts have returned, and the eagerness on their faces is contagious. The rest of the troops are stirring, impatient to begin. They are waiting for the word.

For your word.

You see, this is a war we can win. Not only that, our battles are lining up to be great fun. We all know it.

Deep down, you know it too. Why settle for mediocrity when you can wage war on it instead?

I’m naming our warpath Kūlia i ka nu‘u.

There is no room for mediocrity. Zilch. Nada. None.

I’ll explain how I came to this outlook I have for the year.

Aloha; the Intent of Great Managers

It is time for our February Ho‘ohana, the work we will focus on this month with passion, with purpose, and with full intention. Thank you for being here!

This month, we have the magnificent opportunity to talk about love in business!

Each year, resplendent in Valentine greetings, February arrives as the perfect month for us to revisit Aloha. Aloha is the value of unconditional love and acceptance of both self and others. From Managing with Aloha:

Aloha
Aloha is a value, one of unconditional love.
Aloha is the outpouring and receiving of the spirit.

The arms of Aloha are inclusive, and they seek to serve.

Aloha is an attitude, one that is positive and healthy, for Aloha is the value of unconditional love and acceptance.

To be a great manager is to share the intent of Aloha.

You must give your employees an outpouring of your spirit, and you must receive theirs.

This is Aloha. This is the calling of great managers.

The truly great managers of our world believe in people. They believe in their capacity and in their innate goodness. They believe in their incredible worthiness, and in their ability to create a better future.

The truly great managers of our world believe in love of self too. They believe it is their calling and their role to coach and mentor those they manage, while we are all on the journey to self-actualization. They believe in what German writer, scientist and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) had said so well:

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

There is an Aloha approach to managing that brings the very best of what people have to offer to the forefront, and this sensibility for work (and for life) is what managing with Aloha is all about.

This month, I hope to explore more about Aloha in regard to six different discussions:

Ho‘omau: Cause the good to last

Aloha! Welcome to Talking Story in 2006.

I love January, it has always been one of my favorite months. There is definitely a chill in the air now during our Hawaiian nights, and it lends to the overall feeling of newness and crispness that January brings the New Year in with.

However in Hawaii, without a blanket of snow to bind Christmas and New Years together their mere week apart, the two holidays do remarkably look different. Not willing to see them brown, most people are very eager to take their Christmas trees down as soon as possible, for the pines we import to decorate do not last long at all, and so all the other lights and holiday trimmings come down with them. There is this unspoken agreement that we all will clean, allowing our own authentic Hawaiian sense of place to emerge again— and soon, for we prepare for a diverse mix of ethnically rich ways to begin the year. We jump to value and appreciate those differences that make us the melting pot we are, sharing the aloha which creates our unique identity each and every day.

All that “new” we are sweeping the cobwebs away for, is mostly long-standing traditional practices, whether Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Hawaiian or something else, and not that new at all.

Yet everything seems particularly fresh, most of all the spirit with which we bounce back into our life’s work, whatever that work may be, after we’ve cocooned somewhat in the wintry ending months of the past year. As Troy Worman of Orbit Now! had shared in “Happy Tuesday” a wonderful post about his first working day of 2006, if we are honest with ourselves, and release an  inner voice welling up inside us, we actually are raring to go! Discarding the old and opening our arms and minds to the new is so very appealing. Universally and globally, January always serves to bring the New Year in with a fresh clean slate, and I love that it so effectively challenges us to shape up our own attitude first and foremost so we are worthy.

However I’ve found that I still feel so much gratitude and appreciation for 2005; it was truly a wonderful year for all of us here in the Ho‘ohana Community in a number of different ways. Our theme for the entire year had been to focus on The Reinvention of the Business Community, and we turned that focus on ourselves as a virtual learning community with magnificent results. The connections which were forged between many of us resulted in new friendships which will last for quite some time to come. I’m sure of it.

Therefore, I don’t want to be discarding the old at all. Our old was so, so good! I want to perpetuate it going forward. I want to build on it, strengthen it, and do whatever else I can so it will last. Thus, our Ho‘ohana for the month of January is Ho‘omau: Cause the good to last.

Already nine days into January, my encouragement to you is to spend this shorter Ho‘ohana month thinking about exactly how you will do that. Connect together your purpose, your intention, and your strategy into the actions of your new beginnings.

A brief sidebar here for those who may be new to Talking Story, on Ho‘ohana: For the rest of us, a review on the good we shall cause to last, and Ho‘omau with:

Ho‘ohana is a Hawaiian value which means to work on-purpose, with passion and with full intention. It is also the name of our on-purpose monthly focus here on Talking Story, our theme connected to worthwhile work, a vision we all share. We begin to talk about our Ho‘ohana on the first of every month (January is an exception) with a new coaching essay I write as our fire-starter.

Hopefully, our Ho‘ohana for the month stokes a fire which burns somewhere inside you, kindling whatever passion you may have for the topic, and inspiring you to be more on-purpose and intentional about your own work, and about all your passions. Small, separately burning inner fires, fanned by the breath of aloha within us, then become our community bonfire. Our bonfire gets fueled further the more our work is meaningful for us, and the more we invest in the relationships our varied connections have been forged on. Look carefully, listen perceptively, engage with us, and voila!  You will feel connectivity happen both online and off; I guarantee it.

You are now a member of the Ho‘ohana Community.

Our Ho‘ohana Community has always been defined and identified as a learning community; we are always gathering keawe wood to burn (in Hawaii, keawe is the best kindling you can use for intensely blazing beach bonfires!) Our reputation as those who continually seek to learn as we work, is one we are quite proud of. It is our distinction of both personal and professional growth. Learning energizes us. It helps us gather the best keawe on the beach and across the oceans.

So back to January …

Ho‘omau is the Hawaiian value in Managing with Aloha of persistence and perseverance. When we think of these words in their commonplace usage, we think of never giving up, and being strong, tenacious, disciplined and focused. We embrace our mistakes as we learn. We try, try, and try again. We may fall down, and it’s okay as long as we get up again. We “Fail Forward” as John Maxwell coaches. At times we may take two steps back, but that’s okay too, when it’s just to rev up for those three or even four steps which will then propel us forward with a burst of speed. We take charge and charge in there. We’re confident and we have the right attitude, working on getting it.

Troy was absolutely right when he wrote,

Hurrah! I am excited to go back to work tomorrow. There. Now I have said it twice. 2x. Perhaps I should do it just once more. The third time is a charm, you know.

I am excited about going back to work tomorrow! I really am. (The third time is a charm.)

Now you try it.

It’s the power of positive thinking at work. Persistence. Not working? Keep trying.

Your attitude depends on it.

It is true that Ho‘omau is all these things, however Ho‘omau is a value enriched with so much more meaning. It is also about perpetuating those good things you want to maintain, fortify, and keep your momentum with. At times it is about being selective and picky, and making deliberate decisions on what is worth keeping, and what should be discarded, whether for a better replacement, or just for more breathing room for what was kept. With more room, those cherished keepers will grow and develop more fully.

And that, is how I feel about our Ho‘ohana Community. We’ve discovered how to virtually come together so well in the way we have chosen to learn together. We feed off each other, nourishing and supporting each other. We value the differences among us, and we thrive in the common values we share. We have learned that we are much stronger together; we are better.

We have become a very cherished keeper.

And of this I am sure: There is much more in store for us.

In 2006, as your Mea Ho‘okipa, your hostess here on Talking Story, my intention is to strengthen our Ho‘ohana Community all year long with a monthly Ho‘ohana which returns to further exploration of the values of Managing with Aloha. Watch for more short book excerpts which have been expanded into longer coaching essays, for using them as our water wings, we are going to swim into deeper waters of clarity with new coaching essays which extend our study. Throughout it all, our words will be important, and I will speak often of our Language of Intention, and how we communicate with each other in ways which lead us to positive and proactive actions.

The way in which we communicate, via a shared vocabulary and language of intention, gives us even greater confidence as an ever-strengthened learning community. And let me clarify that my goal is not to teach you more Hawaiian, though you will probably learn more along the way —as most of you now know, I can’t help but use it in explaining my mana‘o (my deeply  held beliefs and convictions) to you.

However in our Language of Intention, the language I am referring to is the language of work, and that language can be as universal as our values. For instance we will clarify our vocabulary between words like management and leadership, values and virtues, objectives and goals. As another great example of the importance of language chosen, consider how Dick Richards has recently taught us to understand the word genius as something we all have; something unique to us and quite extraordinary. Consider how helpful first Bren, and then Dwayne were with bringing mastery into our community vocabulary.

Those are my reflections on Ho‘omau. Now let’s turn back a moment to yours.

You may be among the many who have spent the first few days of this month making New Year’s Resolutions. If so, pull your list out again, and look at it through this lens of Ho‘omau:

What on that list helps you continue your journey with full appreciation of the steps you’ve already taken?

Which things will bring you joy, causing the good things in your life to last, and knowing that in your heart and soul, just the reading of them gives you a burst of energy or flash of inspiration?

What on your list may be new, but you had instinctively written it on your list because it is in fact a way for you to add and build on an innate strength you already have?

How will you Ho‘omau? It is about perpetuating the strengths and good things you want to maintain, fortify, and keep your momentum with.

I had noticed something in the later months of 2005. Despite our best efforts to come to Sweet Closure with our projects in October, many in our community still struggled with overload, bombarded by information we thought we wanted. After all, there is so much out there in cyberspace just free for the taking. We found we were torn between discernment and our natural zeal to learn, learn, learn. Some driftwood with shorter burning lives got mixed in with our keawe.

Yes, I collected some of it too. I was not immune from the overload either. It is definitely time to Ho‘omau.

This year, I will be calling upon our community to help us all focus back on core values and clarifying vision as our directional maps of inner-character discernment. Like this January edition of our Ho‘ohana, you will find my posts in 2006 are fewer but more focused, and they likely will be longer in the style of my coaching essays. I have resolved to not be part of the noise and clutter, and instead, to Ho‘omau in a way which will identify the good and cause it to last.

And remember, Kākou: we are all better and stronger together, and we need not do it alone. Great managers and leaders don’t do everything themselves. The prized gem of a like-minded community is that we can trust in each other. Therefore, to help stem the overwhelm we can divide and conquer effectively in our knowledge quests. Our Ho‘ohana Community forums were very popular in 2005 and for good reason: Synergy. This year I have five different forums planned; The three best are repeats, two are brand new, but they have a definite Ho‘omau connection to other past goods, so they can also go from good to great. Watch out for them and a forthcoming post about how you can participate, and invest in your own learning.

This is going to be a magnificent year of growth for us.

For now, I have one more announcement of a way I intend to help us all Ho‘omau as our cherished Ho‘ohana Community keeper.

This Wednesday, January 11th, I will unveil a new program for www.managingwithaloha.com which synchronizes with our monthly Ho‘ohana in a proactive way; Once the first of the following month arrives, those who have decided to enroll themselves in this new program will already have two weeks momentum to propel them forward. It will be called the MWA Jumpstart.

Like Ho‘ohana for Talking Story, MWA Jumpstart will be a complimentary online coaching program, a new one I write for ManagingWithAloha.com. If you want to participate, be sure to pick up a feed below, for unlike Ho‘ohana, this program will purely be done on the blog and not via email.

And this is just the beginning. Ka lā hiki ola; it is the dawning of a brand new day, and 2006 stretches ahead with bountiful promise, its arms opened wide to welcome us in. We will seize our opportunity, however we will also be selective and deliberate. We will cherish our keepers, Ho‘omau, and cause the good in our lives to last.

Let’s share our aloha and talk story.
Ho‘ohana,
Rosa

Mahalo Bren, for your inspiration on the program name for MWA Jumpstart!

Looking back to find the good: Our Talking Story Recaps of 2005
Looking forward: I predict these things will happen in 2006
Click here to Subscribe for Ho‘ohana™ and to become part of the Ho‘ohana Community.
Click here to Pick up your feed for the new MWA Jumpstart™ coming to ManagingWithAloha.com January 11th.
Click here to Pick up a feed for Talking Story if you don’t have one yet, for you’ll want it in your MWA Jumpstart program if you decide to do it. In 2006 the blogs will synchronize.

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The Book of Virtues; review of an unread book

I have my frugal moments.

They are those periods of time when I will use the remaining blank pages of my kids notebooks at the end of the school year instead of buying a beautifully bound, artistically designed new journal. Or when I’ll pull out, split and flatten the inner bags of emptied cereal boxes; they make the best waxed paper don’t you know … if by the slimmest of chances you’re still one of the rare  people using waxed paper.

However there is a certain time I am never frugal and don’t bother to compare prices; when I have a book in my hands that compels me to buy it after my first few page skims. Yes, they can compel. If I’m broke, I have to steer clear of books and bookstores, because I’ve never been able to resist buying a book that hooks me into it.

I have lost count of the number of books sitting on my shelves and within end table stacks that I have bought but not read yet. But what comfort in knowing they are there! For at some point, maybe years later, those books will call out to me again. Such it was with The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.

A Ho‘ohana of Faith and Family

I think of our December Ho‘ohana as a continuation, therefore a preface first. This was from November 1st:

It is enormously delicious to have November arrive again and welcome my free fall back into what I think of as the normal rhythm of the year ... in my perfect world the year actually ends in October. (Remember Sweet Closure?)

November and December are these extra months where you do your very best to just give in to the holidays and not fight them. You finish those dastardly budgets and forecasts, and you refuse to take on any new projects until January. You let it be okay that there might be a grand design to life which trumps just about everything else. Said another way, you don’t buck the system — nature’s system as it’s been through the ages. You live it fully and enjoy the good in it.

Therefore, if November has Thanksgiving as its focal point, we are simply meant to give thanks, and that is what we should do by living in thankfulness. We’ll feel so much better if we do. To live with an attitude of gratitude is a true blessing. Then, if December has Christmas as its focal point, what better time for faith and for family? … It may sound incredibly simple; too simple. Well, at this time of year, simple is beautiful. Simple is just right. Simple may be perfect.

And now, December has arrived in all its holiday splendor. As promised thirty days ago, it is time for our Ho‘ohana of Faith and Family.

The two words do sound naturally harmonious together, yet I don’t put faith and family in the same phrase because of their cadence; their pleasing sound is just a happy coincidence. I’ve thought of the two words as connected for as long as I can remember.

I was raised Roman Catholic. In our family we’d all say that my dad was “right up there with the Pope” tongue in cheek, but it was true that he impressed upon all of us a reverence for our Christian faith, and for the hope and promise our reverence would eventually deliver to us.

Faith, Hope, and Love are regarded as “theological virtues” in traditional Christian doctrine, and to be sure we wouldn’t question his evangelical fervor as “just how dad feels,” our parents sent me and my siblings to Catholic school to learn our lessons in the basic morality of those virtues. Our deeply ingrained faith was inseparably connected to the first family of Adam and Eve, and in this holiday season to the family of Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus.

As I got older, I realized you needn’t be Christian to recognize the potent effect faith has in the human experience. Faith is a source of discipline, strength and meaning in the lives of the faithful of any major creed, religious or otherwise, and growing up in the melting pot of cultures that was twentieth century Hawaii, the embrace of faith in all its religious variety was the most natural thing in the world for us, a part of our Lōkahi; the unity and harmony of our community.

Faith shapes our values and our virtues, and I’ve come to believe that my dad was right about our need to have reverence for something which will help us be better people. It felt good to have faith and trust in a higher power. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve just shed the God-fearing part of the lecture, and today I’m most accurately described as religiously uncommitted I suppose. I believe in God, and certainly in our spiritual capacity, and I have my faith, perhaps stronger than it’s ever been. I still consider myself a Christian, however I’m no longer a practicing Roman Catholic.

Sealing the deal for me in the faith and family connection was becoming a mother. It was impossible to even think of having children without a profound faith in the future, and that the future would be worthy of them. To be a parent one must have faith in the rest of humanity.

Responsibility is one of my strongest personal values, and without faith I could not have children who in all likelihood would long outlive me, and one day have children of their own. I had to have exceptional faith in our world and in the rest of mankind helping shape that world well outside the boundaries of my own maternal reach, ambitious and zealous as it may be.

I have some trouble with the concept of fate, but I do believe in having faith as something that empowers us to create our own destiny. There is faith in the divine and the spiritual, faith in others and in self, faith that good will always defeat evil — I choose to believe in every variety and aspect of it, and family is what makes the notion of having faith at all so compelling.

So what is our Ho‘ohana for the month? How will we live and work with purpose and full intention? Our Ho‘ohana is simply to celebrate that we have both faith and family. To reflect upon their worth in our lives, and to accept our own stewardship of them.

—Faith requires no proof. In their love for you and faith in you, neither does your family.

—Faith believes that all things can be beautiful. Your family believes there is beauty in you.

—Faith can comfort us and heal us. So can our family. Both faith and family are steadfast and unwavering.

—We don’t find faith all by ourselves, or learn about it on our own. We don’t need to, for we have family.

—Faith teaches us to trust and to believe, and within family we find our greatest teachers.

—Faith requires a love and respect for all living things. In family love is our earliest memory, respect our constant one.

—Of all the virtues, faith best helps us bear uncertainty. Family ensures we are never alone facing our uncertainty.

—Our understanding of our world may never be complete. Faith and family help us fill in the gaps or be okay with them.

As adults, we can be fond of saying that Christmas is for children, and that the magic of the season is best seen through the eyes of a child. I believe that a ho‘ohana of faith and family in this season can be the magic and wonder that we adults can experience. I have faith in our capacity for aloha and for joy in both our work and our play, in our present and in our future.

“Oh come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant.”

Always liked that song.

Ho‘ohana with me. I wish for you and your family, a joyful and triumphant December.
Rosa

Photos found on Flikr.

Postscript: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

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Mahalo and Giving

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone the Christmas bombardment has begun in full force. I’m sure you’ve noticed it too.

Holiday trimmings seemed to have sprung up overnight, and most radio stations have dusted off the jewel cases of their holiday CDs so we can all begin to sing along with the Christmas classics. Current talk on most television news channels has been about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and whether or not retailers have destroyed their previous sales records with the upturn in the economy.

My oh my. Thanksgiving passes much too quickly.

Before the calendar turns to a new month, I ask you to help me keep the spirit of Thanksgiving alive and well all year long. Keep thoughts of Mahalo close to you, and learn to live in thankfulness for all the gifts you have been given. Use your gifts to give to others in this holiday season and every day to come.

The gifts I am referring to don’t come off a store shelf. They aren’t bundled in tissue paper, candy-cane colored wrapping and velvet bows. You needn’t shop around for them, because you already have them in good supply. They are ...

- your Values
- your Strengths
- your Talents, Skills, and Knowledge
- your Mana‘o (your deeply held beliefs and convictions),
- your Source and your Truth (nānā i ke kumu)
- your Genius (mahalo nui Dick for helping us understand this)
- your Purpose (your ho‘ohana)
- your Love for others and the desire you have to share yourself with them (your aloha)
- your Capacity (physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual)
- your Intention. For good, for better, and for the best possible.

Mmmmm. I feel rich; don’t you?

When you wish to give a meaningful gift to others, these are the things unique to you which make up a much more valuable kind of currency. This is the currency of your personal wealth and wellbeing, your abundance.

You have an incredible amount to give.

Mahalo. Thank you, as a way of living.
Live in thankfulness for the richness within you which makes life so precious.
Celebrate your own gifts by giving of them to others.
- Managing with Aloha

Related posts:
Mahalo; We give thanks. Our November Ho‘ohana.
A Mahalo 3by3: Appreciation, Gratitude, Thankfulness.
What it means to “Look to Your Source.”
Strengths, Values, and that Pyramid.

It is a day for Thanksgiving

— I give thanks for Aloha, that the breath of life within me and within everyone exists to share unconditional love.
— I give thanks for Ho‘ohana, that our work is best defined by our passions, our good intentions, and our capacity for meaningful purpose.
— I give thanks for ‘Imi ola, that we have the ability to create our own destiny and shape our best future.
— I give thanks for Ho‘omau, that we may fall repeatedly, but we will always get up, and we will persist, proactively causing the good in life to last.
— I give thanks for Kūlia i ka nu‘u, that we pursue excellence and we test the limits of achievement we are capable of.
— I give thanks for Ho‘okipa, that we learn to be the most gracious and giving people we can be in the service we willingly provide for others.
— I give thanks for ‘Ohana, that the human circle of aloha created by our families of birth and of choice constantly surrounds us.
— I give thanks for Lōkahi, that we can understand the strength of character which is our reward when in collaborative harmony and unity with others.
— I give thanks for Kākou, that we can entrust our weaknesses in the strength of others while together we create a greater whole.
— I give thanks for Kuleana, that we can derive such joy in the satisfaction of accepting our responsibilities, and being held accountable for them.
— I give thanks for ‘Ike loa, that there will always be more knowledge and wisdom available to us, keeping our capacity palena ‘ole, without boundaries.
— I give thanks for Ha‘aha‘a, that humility softens the hard edges of our voices and our demeanor, keeping us the people whom others will enjoy the company of.
— I give thanks for Ho‘ohanohano, that it will not allow us to be disrespectful; on the contrary it will ensure we always elevate the dignity of all we encounter.
— I give thanks for Alaka‘i, that we do not shy from initiative and leadership when we can share clarity of vision with others, helping them see the promise we see in the future.
— I give thanks for Mālama, that we continually seek to honor, to protect, and to care for the people and things in need of our stewardship.
— I give thanks for Mahalo, that we live in thankfulness for all the elements which make life so precious and so joyful.
— I give thanks for Nānā i ke kumu, that we seek honesty and truth in our sense of self and our sense of place, so that we live with integrity.
— I give thanks for Pono, that rightness and balance is always possible; further, it is probable when we live demonstrating the good in the values of aloha.
— I give thanks for Ka la hiki ola, that no matter the occasional setback, tomorrow will always be the dawning of a new day, a day of hope and promise.

I give thanks for Managing with Aloha, and that management — yes, management! — has brought such good into our lives. I give thanks that it can, and will, bring good into the lives of others. I have faith, that managers will continue to learn to manage, to work, and to live with aloha.

From the archives: Thanksgiving 2004.

Gratitude IS Right; Right and Value-Packed

Adrian Savage of our Ho‘ohana Community has written an article for his new Slow Leadership blog today which I must call your attention to, particularly with our November Ho‘ohana focus on Mahalo; We give Thanks. His article is about his 8th principle of Slow Leadership, Right Gratitude.

An excerpt:

How much of what you are today is due solely to your own efforts?  Not your birth, not your clothes, not your food, not your education, or even your ability to speak and write and read your native language.  People taught you how to do your job.  Others helped you win promotion and made your income and standard of living possible.  Still others made the car you drive and the house you live in. Are you "self-made?" Don't be ridiculous. It's not possible.

I encourage you to read the rest of Adrian’s article at Slow Leadership.

I completely agree with Adrian, for the value of Mahalo is all about living in thankfulness, understanding that it has taken so much to make you who you are, and that “much,” that richness in your life should be acknowledged, appreciated, and celebrated. Further, it should be copied in a way, in that you give to others and help enrich their lives too:

Mahalo teaches us that’s what thanks-giving is!
You give of yourself,
using all the gifts that you have been given.

Like Adrian, the concept of being “self-made” is one I have delighted in taking apart on many occasions because it begs qualification, particularly in my own coaching with managers on the right point of view we must have with the calling of leadership. Another value that most immediately comes to mind with this is of Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility. We become more humble, and thus more appreciative, in our own attitude about so many things when we understand that it does indeed “take a village” when it comes to our own personal growth and development — and the growth and development of our leadership ideas. Leaders rarely, if ever, pull off their grand schemes and dreams alone. In managing with aloha, when we seize responsibility for leadership, we assume responsibility for that entire village, and thus the value of ‘ohana, family and community.

It is all so connected. It would be so easy for me to continue this with paragraphs more on how all the values of Managing with Aloha can apply here. Why? Because gratitude IS right.

Mahalo is living in thankfulness. Live in your thankfulness for everyone who has conspired and collaborated to help you become the person you are.

Practice mahalo knowingly and with increased awareness.
Acknowledge everyone else who has made you who you are.
Give thanks for all who create this world as one you can make a difference in.
Appreciate everyone who enables the possibility that your own life has such incredible potential for meaning.
Say thank you to those who enthusiastically give you that opportunity to do so.

Demonstrating your gratitude is the right thing to do. It will help you feel right. It will help you get to Pono.

Our Ho‘ohana posts this month have been:
Mahalo; We give thanks. Our November Ho‘ohana.
A Mahalo 3by3: Appreciation, Gratitude, Thankfulness.
Write Your Joy. Writing thank you notes.
Be Grateful, and Be Happy. About the practice of keeping a Gratitude Journal.

Be Grateful and Be Happy

I don’t recall what it was that got me started with the habit, but I know I’ve got lots of company in quiet personal spaces all over the globe with one of my nightly rituals; ending my day with my gratitude journal.

It’s not an original idea, but when I had heard about the practice it had sounded so compelling and so simple:

Sit down at some quiet moment each and every day, and write down your list of the five things you were most grateful for that day. Relish just knowing that you had good in your life, and that no matter the other complications of the day, you did in fact have things that made it all worthwhile.

Yesterday, I dropped everything in the middle of my day, and jumped in my car to meet a girlfriend for an impromptu lunch that lasted three hours. It was something we both needed I suppose. So last night I happened to be thinking about entrepreneurship, and how I can now have 3-hour lunches pretty much whenever I want, and I wrote:

Write Your Joy

It feels so great to have Mahalo as the ho‘ohana for November. So much so, that I doubt I will ever choose a different value for this month in the years ahead.

The executive retreat I’d mentioned being offline for came to it’s conclusion this morning, and since returning home, I’ve spent my time writing my thank you cards to all those who had contributed in some way to making it the memorable four days it has been. In writing my notes I am reliving the joy I’d felt in the event a second time.

I am remembering the very special things which happened, and all the people who were part of them. I keep smiling to myself thinking about both our work and our learning, and I am grateful for the breakthroughs we achieved, and for the spirit of lōkahi (collaboration) and kākou (togetherness, creative synergy) which kept us constant company. Although I am home alone, occasionally I laugh out loud recalling the laughter which so abundantly uplifted our spirits this past week.

I am so thankful that we were able to work in a place of such beauty, a place inspiring us to be as beautiful in our work and in our outlook, eager to embrace the smallest flicker of optimism whenever it appeared.

I am writing out my mahalo notes feeling that my hand is bathed in all these good feelings so abundantly, my joy is sure to be sealed in the envelopes too; envelopes soon to be opened by another hand, so joy may leap to a smile on another face.

My day has been as blissful as it can get. It is right. It is aloha celebrated in the abundance of mahalo.

What has your ho‘ohana meant for you this month?

Related posts:
Mahalo; We give thanks. Our November Ho‘ohana.
A Mahalo 3by3: Appreciation, Gratitude, Thankfulness.

A Mahalo 3by3: Appreciation, Gratitude, Thankfulness

Differences? Or overflowing abundance of everything good …

4 words, including Mahalo, for when we have thankfulness as a way of living we feel blessedly rich. To have such an outlook is to feel a very sweet kind of contentment, don’t you think?

I took my cues from the dictionary for the definitions I share with you below, however I added to them with what I know of these things as Mahalo, my Hawaiian value of living in thankfulness.

APPRECIATION: Know.

From Webster - To value justly. Recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things.

Within Mahalo - Know how much you have at this very moment. Understand how unique you are, and stand tall. Realize there is no one else who is the person you are. To live in appreciation for the richness that makes your life so precious is to simply live in celebration of your sense of self. Take nothing in this day of your life for granted. Take exceptional care of the aloha within you, for it is the breath of your life.

GRATITUDE: Become.

From Webster - The state of being grateful; thankfulness.

Within Mahalo - Become all you are capable of being, by using all your gifts, each and every one of them. Grow into every crevice of your capacity, filling it with worthiness. Test your limits joyfully, and with confidence palena ‘ole (without boundaries). Seek to complete yourself physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. In doing so, you acknowledge who you are in a manner which appreciates what others have done for you. You create prosperity and abundance so you will have more to give.

THANKFULNESS: Share.

From Webster - Aware and appreciative of a benefit; and expressive of gratitude.

Within Mahalo - Share of who you are with the utmost respect for those who complete your life. Say “mahalo” or “thank you” often. Speak of your appreciation of others, and it will soften the tone of your voice, giving it both humility, and fullness. People need to hear words spoken from your aloha, and in speaking them you offer a generous gift. Use your own gifts to reveal those which exist in others all around you.

Truth be told, it has been a somewhat challenging week. Now that Friday is here I am eager to remember that Mahalo is our Ho‘ohana this month, looking forward to the promise of the weekend with growing pleasure, ready to savor those good things in my life I may not have had complete focus on these past few days.

I wish such a weekend for you too.

Mahalo; We give thanks.

At this time last year, Talking Story was just about 10 weeks old, and Managing with Aloha was 3 weeks away from its publication date. I remember feeling like my brain was ready to explode, for there was so much I wanted to say all at the same time. Here I had just completed an entire book, yet I felt like all I wanted to do was sit and write and write and write some more. Somehow, I had to release everything and let it come out so I would feel normal again.

Most of what I did write during that time didn’t make it to Talking Story, and when I look back at my journals it was a good thing it didn’t, for it wasn’t very good. I think my book did manage to get the best out of me, however I knew Managing with Aloha had an important message, and I needed to make doubly sure it was complete. I somehow wasn’t satisfied that I could simply toss out the rubble that was left over in my brain’s archives without sorting through it just one more time.

Up to now, I do feel that 2005 has been just that for me: rubble sorting. It’s been a process of sorting through, keeping some things and tossing out others, and making room for the newly important — not urgently imposed by my outside world (to use the Covey language of Q1 Urgency), but newly important to me, myself and I. I just can’t help it; I’ve always been this orderly kind of person.

Included in my newly important is this and you; Talking Story and our Ho‘ohana Community. It still leaves me somewhat awestruck to think about what has blossomed and grown here, and I am filled with a deep sense of Mahalo for all of you who read, participate in our community, and bring our best thoughts together in synergistic beauty. Ha‘aha‘a: I am so proud and humbled to know you, and to realize how you strive to help me make our world better both at home and at work with what is newly important to you too. Not only do you think about it and talk about it, you do it.

So now, a year later, it is enormously delicious to have November arrive again and welcome my free fall back into what I think of as the normal rhythm of the year. As I alluded to last month, bringing all of you along with me to Sweet Closure, in my perfect world the year actually ends in October. November and December are these extra months where you do your very best to just give in to the holidays and not fight them. You finish those dastardly budgets and forecasts, and you refuse to take on any new projects until January. You let it be okay that there might be a grand design to life which trumps just about everything else. Said another way, you don’t buck the system — nature’s system as it’s been through the ages. You live it fully and enjoy the good in it.

Therefore, if November has Thanksgiving as its focal point, this month we are simply meant to give thanks, and that is what we should do. We’ll feel so much better if we do. To live with an attitude of gratitude is a true blessing. Then, if December has Christmas as its focal point, what better time for faith and for family? (Yep, you just got your December Ho‘ohana preview :-) It may sound incredibly simple; too simple. Well, at this time of year, simple is beautiful. Simple is just right. Simple may be perfect.

Ironic isn’t it, how we can think complexity is actually easier, how we tend to keep complicating our lives. I do it too: I had another theme prepped for this month initially, for the pure centrifugal force of business momentum kept me striving, pushing forward, and reaching for more. That’s what we do in business! Then just in this past week, while doing my weekly review, I stepped back to look at the big picture of my increasingly complicated world and asked myself, wait up... November is coming, what do you think you’re doing?

The Ho‘ohana theme I had been planning went back into holding for January; you’ll hear about it then, and not a moment before.

So November first. In Hawai‘i the month is called Nowemapa (pronounced No vay ma pa) and this is the month for Mahalo the value of living in thankfulness. It is November 1st and that this wonderful day is here is blessing enough! Let the rest of it go. It’s time to herald in a completely different point of view where we are momentarily (two-monthstarily) letting go of our grander schemes and ambitious striving so we may fully appreciate what we already have. When you understand it in all its splendor, Mahalo is a way of living, and November is the perfect month to reconnect with what this value can teach us.

From Managing with Aloha:

As you read this you will see that the word Mālama is not defined, for it appears in full explanation in the chapter just prior to Mahalo. To Mālama is to serve and to honor, to protect and care for.

Mahalo
Thank you, as a way of living.
Live in thankfulness for the richness that makes life so precious.

When lived to its fuller potential, Mahalo is a value that creates habits of thankful living in us. Appreciation and gratefulness stroke deeper color and richer texture into our character. We give thanks by the acts of living thankfully, not simply by saying the words “thank you.” When we look around us, we are filled with wonder, and we sense the immense richness that already surrounds us. We do not lament that which we may not have. As we count our many blessings we Mālama them and cherish them, we relish the bounty they bring to life, to our life. We celebrate them joyously.
—MWA page 194

As a value in the Hawaiian culture, Mahalo digs deep: It is living within an attitude of gratitude, living each day with a sense of thankfulness for all the elements that make life so precious. It is the fundamental realization of how much you have, simply because you are alive. You begin to relish your present: Both nostalgia for the past and anxiousness for the future lose their grip on your longing. Mahalo is living in a way that demonstrates that you are humbled by this gift of the present, and are thankful for it, living your life in a way that celebrates it. When you live Mahalo you don’t take anything for granted, and you Mālama what you have, taking better care of it.

Mahalo is the life perspective of giving thanks for what you have by using your gifts—and using all your gifts—in the best possible way. You draw from Ho‘ohana, and your inner passions, and live with intention. You begin to realize that it would be wasteful not to use whatever talent you were fortunate enough to be born with; it would be ungrateful and unappreciative. You begin to question what good is destined to emerge from the talent you have, and you explore all possibilities. Mahalo goes beyond thinking or saying “thank you” for something you’ve been given; It is when you give thanks with more giving, you live in a manner that makes you deserving.
—MWA page 196-197

An attitude of gratitude as a way of living. The full life’s perspective of Mahalo. You know you want it. This month, let’s claim it as our own.

Now aren’t you glad November is here? Let’s Talk Story.
Rosa

Postscript: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

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Loving my Weekly Review

One of the significant reasons that David Allen’s GTD has struck such a resonant chord with me, is that I have always been a huge fan of doing the process he calls the Weekly Review. I’ve long been a Personal Productivity Practice nut, and I’ve done my own kind of weekly review for as long as I can remember being in management. It is as much a habit with me as is brushing my teeth. At this point of my life, to not do it is inconceivable. I must do my weekly review to feel I have any control over my schedule —and thus my life—whatsoever.

When I don’t do it I tend to feel scattered and lost, and I get this nagging feeling I am missing something. Not forgetting it, for I’ve learned to collect/process/ and organize and not rely on memory. I’ve also learned to then honor landscape of my calendar. But without the weekly review I can still feel I am potentially missing something, because I have to design that landscape of my calendar with the proper perspective. It is that proper perspective the weekly review gives me.

Allen has a great checklist for the Weekly Review, and I recommend you try it even if you haven’t yet read his entire book. Here’s a link. Unless you are spontaneity’s child, and have never bothered to organize yourself at all, I am sure it will be familiar enough to you to serve as the next best evolution of whatever process you have been using to 1) evaluate the prior week and 2) get ready for the next one — if you are in business, and especially in a management and leadership capacity, you best be doing those two things at minimum.

So what better time for us to talk about this than a Saturday evening, and the final one before our goal of Sweet Closure tomorrow.

Here’s what you do:

Unleash Your Potential

You do know it’s there, so break it out of solitary confinement.

My friend, and Ho‘ohana Online Community author Kevin Eikenberry writes an e-letter called Unleash Your Potential which I highly recommend you sign up for if you want to do your own jailhouse rock every Monday morning.

Two Monday’s ago he wrote one called “Going Beyond Goal Setting” which helped me immensely as I did my final edits and put the finishing touches on my own monthly Ho‘ohana Newsletter, and on our October Ho‘ohana, Sweet Closure. I was rocking and rolling and getting all charged up about it all over again.

Kevin made a couple of good points about goal setting in his e-letter (and I’m paraphrasing):

There is one very important reason everyone is not a goal setter: People don’t set goals now because they didn’t achieve the ones they set in the past.

Stop worrying about goal setting, and start focusing on goal achieving.

So that’s exactly what I did in our Ho‘ohana this month with the October Action Cycle: focus on the doing of it. I took you through a fast brain-drain exercise in the October Ho‘ohana on the goal-setting part, but Kevin is right: you have to focus on the achieving part, and this line-up of steps should take you no more than two minutes max when you deliberately channel your thinking on it:

1. make a decision to take action
2. commit to that decision
3. write down your next action
4. calendar that next action - soon

Then this is the cycle part (and the achieving part)

• honor your calendar and do that next action when the time arrives
• decide on the very next action with the goal
• return to the top (number 1.) and do it all again - 4 steps (honest, only 2 minutes!) and 3 bullets (very satisfying, goal achieving ones.)

Unleash your potential and achieve your goal. Just pick one goal. One goal achieved is worth way more than 2 or 3 goals planned and stalled.

This is going to be a terrific month for a lot of people in our Ho‘ohana Community - don’t you be left behind. Come month-end, we want you celebrating with us. Join the conspiracy, and do the jailhouse rock.

Shout out: I am very lousy with graphics: a free copy of MWA to anyone who can turn the October Action Cycle into a post-able picture or diagram for me!

Related posts:
Kevin’s recent article for Talking Story: Being A Continuous Learner.
MWA3P; my October Action Cycle.
October Ho‘ohana: Sweet Closure.

Visit Kevin at his place:  Kevin’s Blog

MWA3P; my October Action Cycle

I am rereading Stephen Covey’s First Things First. This is one of the blurbs in the front matter of the book:

“I hate time management systems. Do lists, day planners, and breathing-by-objective systems give me the hives.

But I love First Things First — Covey and the Merrills’ approach to making your life meaningful and successful on purpose. The subtitle tells it all, ‘To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy.’ That’s making your life work instead of making work your life. Super!”
— Ron Zemke, coauthor of Service America and Sustaining Knock Your Socks Off Service

I agree and disagree with Mr. Zemke. I agree in that I too love First Things First, and reading it again has been a sort of homecoming for me. I disagree (slightly) in that I’ve never hated time management systems, I’ve been captivated by them.

Much as I like to explain that ‘time management’ is a kind of misnomer, I’ve always been fascinated with the organization and systems part of the concept, and I’ve sunk a small fortune (and BIG amounts of time) into playing and experimenting with every planner to catch my fancy. Paper, digital, cosmically star-aligned … you name it: I’ve probably tried it or at least checked it out enough to consider myself an unofficial, self-proclaimed expert on them (whatever ‘expert’ means.)

The reason my fascinated continued? I’m still looking for one that works.

October Ho‘ohana: Sweet Closure

There was this wonderful episode of the sitcom Friends that ran during the height of that time the show’s writers had much of the country yearning for Rachel and Ross to get together; let’s see if you remember it.

Rachel was in a restaurant on a date with someone else, and her trials and tribulations with Ross were all she could think about —and talk about. She so wanted to be over it, but she just wasn’t. Her poor date was torn between being there for her and figuring out how to make a beeline for the nearest exit. He was perfectly cast. With very few lines to say, his facial expressions said everything we needed to know in reading his mind.

Finally, an increasingly tipsy Rachel borrows a cell phone from a neighboring table and leaves a voicemail for Ross telling him they “are over.” At the end of her dramatic speech, she ends with the line, “and that my friend, is closure.” I have never heard the word closure used in such a delectably satisfying way, and that episode sealed the deal with me on the fascination I have always had with the concept — delicious, savory, relief-filled Closure. I love checking things off as done. Especially BIG things.

So here we are in October, the month that begs for closure in whatever you had hoped to achieve in the year, for let’s face it: November and December are mostly about the holidays to come, that seemingly relentless line up of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve and New Years Day. School breaks, holiday parties, gift shopping and a rapid succession of other schedule changes annihilate the predictability of your routine. It’s supposed to be joyful, but somehow it becomes a cruel gauntlet that wreaks havoc on any sense of normality you tried to get to until this calendar parade started colliding with your psyche, stressing you out. No wonder most New Year’s resolutions are rooted in nothing more but emotional turmoil.

Here’s our goal for October: we are going for Closure with some key things we consider the unfinished business of 2005 so that we can totally and blissfully enjoy the holidays for a change. The holidays are goodness and light, and we should enjoy them, not dread them. We will allow October 31 and January 1 to be the bookends that they undeniably are to these holiday months, and we will be proactive about living them fully (i.e. gleefully) for a change.

Are you with me?

Now if like many others in our Ho‘ohana Community, you just got into some new learning initiative in September, hurray for you — keep going! This is not a contradictory concept, for I’m not saying you only have the month to wrap that up. What I’m suggesting is that you choose some other long-standing battle to win. In fact, in doing so, you’ll likely clear the deck and banish more clutter. (Remember ‘Opala ‘ole?) We are going to pick a major goal or two we’d set in this past year, and we are going to achieve it this month. We are going to check it off your list, and savor the delicious, delectable, soul-satisfying taste of closure with it.

Take a quiet half-hour today — no procrastination folks, we’re starting the day you read these words; print this if you don’t have time right now — and write a brain-to-written-page drain of the year’s goals that are still open-ended for you. In GTD jargon, write down your mission-critical open loops on the 10,000 foot Project level.

This first step is critical: believe me, writing them down and staring at them on the written page helps. But don’t go complete-collection crazy on me here; as sacrilegious as this may sound to you if you are a GTD devotee, don’t pull out that list you already have in @Projects. This is an exercise in which I want you to rely on the emotion-messages of your gut, your intuition, your psychic RAM (random access memory), and yes, those stress levels begging for some relief, for closure. Just open the steam vent of your internal pressure-cooker.

Now look at what you’ve written down and do these very important next steps:

Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity.

Preface: There’s an announcement about the October Ho‘ohana at the very end of this post.

Every time I go to a brand new place I seem to return home with some feeling for that locale’s sense of place. It’s sort of an invisible, ever-present to-do list which must be checked off in some way before the visit ends. If not, it feels that my time is incomplete there. Dick Richards and Dave Rothacker very insightfully picked this out about me in their recent discussion after Dick’s review of my book Managing with Aloha. (Again Dick, my mahalo.) In far less complimentary words, my family will chide that’s “one of the things” that is strange about me.

Sometimes the experience is pretty profound, like the day I stepped outside the door of my flight to the Big Island in 1989 on what was to be a short visit, a temporary job to help open a new hotel there, the Ritz-Carlton, Mauna Lani. The last time I’d been to the Big Island had been 14 years before and I’d felt no connection: In fact, I got into a car accident and was med- evac’d off the island in a chopper. However this time, I felt it instantly as I stepped into the island air, and before I even made it down the stairs (Still today, there are no jetways at the Kona airport.) There was this feeling of warmth that had nothing to do with the sun, and this feeling of rightness with the unmistakable pull of belonging. Before I even went to baggage claim I called my husband and asked him how he’d feel about moving to the Big Island to raise our two children there. I had no idea of what would be involved in what I was asking him to do. It was simply the right place for us, the only place, and I knew it.

Life Long Learning

Life long learning… I love the alliteration of the words. Say them slowly. Life long learning... Thank you, Rosa for this wonderful opportunity to share my two cents with the Ho‘ohana Community.

I consider each day a success when I have learned something new. There are some days that the enlightenment comes early and often, and then there are some days that it comes late. Why are some days better for learning than others? I’d like to share what I think are the keys for this learning. These ideas may resonate with you, or they may not. I am interested in your response either way.

I think that openness or readiness is the first step to learning. My wife teaches kindergarten and comes home frequently with stories of her little friends’ daily exploits in her classroom. One year she had two students born on the same day but one year apart. Unusual, yes, but while each was physically different and each at a different state of readiness that September, when you looked at their portfolio in June you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. The journey was different, the result was ultimately similar. Now while the kindergartners themselves have little choice in determining their readiness to learn, that is not the case when we are adults.

The alarm goes off in the morning. We get up, get ready and hopefully get a chance to do what we do best. It is our choice to make it a good day, or a great day! It is our choice to be open to what is happening around us. It is our choice to stop and smell the roses. I think that recognition is the second key. Noticing that the rose is so red this morning. That the dew catches the sunlight just so. You wish you had brought your camera along.

Making connections is the third key for me to life long learning. It is an exceptional individual who will truly discover something new. The Newtons, DaVincis, Einsteins are far and few between. However, much progress is also made by those who take the little steps. All of us can take little steps. We can make the connection that one and one can be more than two and go for it.

Another way to explain this is to draw the parallel to the game of Bingo. You have a card. It is your card. Somewhat unique in its combination of numbers and letters. Just like you are uniquely You. Different from everyone else in some special way. Bingo also has a “caller”. He, or she, calls out the letter and number combinations. You are sitting at the table amongst friends, talking, and trying to pay attention. Your number gets called and you mark your card. The conversation continues, letters and numbers get called, eventually your card gets filled and you yell Bingo!

This card is just like your life. Your qualities, talents are stamped on the card. You go about your business and find some numbers match your card. You are open, recognize some opportunities, pursue them, and things happen. Doors open, doors close. The road goes on. Be open and ready for what life prepares for you. Recognize opportunities when they arise. Make the connections. Make it a great day!

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is Steve Sherlock, the author of the Passion for the Good Customer Experience blog. Steve is also one of my co-authors on The blog Synergy, a new collaborative effort in blogging; that is where you will always find your link to Steve in the right column Ho‘ohana Online Community Listing. Click in: the last time I checked, Steve was writing for 5 different blogs!

Lifelong Learning: Stop The Cliches

How many times have you heard someone say they are too old to learn something new?

It’s often expressed as "You can’t teach an old dog new tricks" or a similar cliche that has little basis in reality. In fact, such falsehoods do less to help people, and do much to hinder them. Instead of encouragement, age is treated as an impediment to learning. I say it’s about time to stop the cliches.

Lifelong learning is a way of life for everyone, whether they are aware of it happening or not. People learn new skills and ideas all of their lives. That old dog is always learning some new and often very exciting tricks, whether or not the dog even realizes the change. That alteration in perception often goes unnoticed, and therefore is very often disregarded. The fact remains, however, there are indeed new tricks to be learned.

It’s an established truism of life that everyone will not only have more than one employer during their working life, but will also be part of more than one career. Those careers may be so different from one another, that the person will have to be almost entirely retrained every time, to make the changes effectively. The need for lifelong learning becomes apparent when the number of career changes is considered as part of the equation.

Not only are more people changing careers than ever before, university and community colleges are experiencing explosions in continuing education enrollments. Not only are the students taking career related courses, but many are choosing topics for enriching the enjoyment of various crafts, activities and hobbies. Learning some new techniques and skills for lifestyle enhancement and personal growth are very much a part of the lifelong learning experience.

In the formal academic world, students are no longer the traditional recent high school graduates. It’s not uncommon to see students old enough to be the parents and the grandparents of the stereotypical student. Formal higher education has lost the age barriers entirely. University and community college classes now have students of all ages. Retraining for new careers is part of the reason, but personal interest is very much part of the educational experience as well.

Don’t look now, but the old dog is learning some brand new tricks and even some exciting and unique twists on them as well. That’s one cliche to be buried along with the bone. In its place, we’ll use a better cliche: "You learn something new every day."

Now that's cause to celebrate lifelong learning!

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is Wayne Hurlbert, author of Blog Business World. Wayne is mentor extraordinaire for the successful entrepreneur who blogs in business, marketing, public relations, and search engine optimization. You will always find your link to Wayne in the right column Ho‘ohana Online Community Listing.

Path of Learning

When Rosa so graciously opened her Talking Story forum this month on life-long learning, I was immediately intrigued.  Humbled by the invitation, I hemmed and hawed about what best to contribute here about the topic.  As my life’s work has revolved around teaching, learning and questioning, what came to mind was how we define knowledge and learning.

A good friend of mine grew up in a family where the kids were encouraged to be the “smartest one” in their class – meaning that the expectation in her family was to excel, to do her best, in whatever she did.  And my friend certainly has used the family credo to her advantage – she is one smart cookie, with many educational credits to her name, many work accomplishments, and is well respected in her field. 

I think about my friend’s experience in contrast to my family, where kids were just expected to be “smart”.  While “smart” wasn’t really defined explicitly, people in my family were academics, teachers and doctors. “Being smart” was an assumption: they were “smart” people, and so therefore you would be too.  “Smart” meant doing well in school.  Going to college was a given, and graduate school encouraged. 

For many of us, my friend and me included, being “smart” has been defined as what we know and is judged by what we achieve.  We go to school, where we learn how to learn in order to achieve; when we leave school, we learn how to be in the work world in order to achieve.  Learning winds up being driven by a desire to get to certain ends.

While life often dictates a focus on achievement and accomplishment, as time passes I’m finding that I’m less interested in how “smart” someone is judged by their book learning or what they’ve achieved.  Instead I’m more interested in how someone knows what they know, how they’ve formed their interpretations of the world, and what they say they want to learn more about. It’s less about the knowledge and where we’ve been, and more about the learning and where we’re going. 

Focusing on what learning means for each of us as individuals – and there have been some great examples here this month – we each have opportunities to more fully explore our humanness, our foibles and our gifts.  Finding and following our own path of learning, we have much gain and offer by increasing our own awareness and curiosity about the world around us.

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is work/life coach Hanna Cooper,  author of Making A Difference, where she shares her ideas, resources and support for people working to make a difference. You will always find your link to Hanna in the right column Ho‘ohana Online Community Listing.

The Art of Reinvention

This is a special day for me. To be able to contribute my thoughts to Rosa's community of readers is a privilege I do not take lightly. Rosa is one of my favorite bloggers, not only for her keen insight into the human mind, but for her unselfish friendship. Rosa helps me feel bigger and better than I really am.

When I received the invitation to write something for this month's Ho'ohana, it struck me that this was a great opportunity to be myself. I don't often get to do that, since the blog I write for has an alter-ego named Jane. I normally write from Jane's point of view, on the subject of marketing to women online. Jane, named after those old 20th century kids, Dick and Jane, likes to get provocative at times, and tries to be humorous, while helping the readers learn something about how women shop online. Jane is a part of me, Yvonne, but she isn't who I am.

Rosa's invitation made me stop and think about who I really am. The challenge to write about learning gave me pause, because I believe that learning is such a vital part of every day life. I believe that people learn something new every day, regardless of intent. I believe that having the skill to recognize what you've learned today, is an indication of success. If we can look at the word 'success' first, and determine what it means to us -- because success is a concept that is different for everyone -- then, we, as human beings, can come to some conclusions about the value of success, and how our day-to-day learning contributes to the successful outcome of our lives.

My life has been an up and down roller coaster. I joke about the soap opera quality of my life. But, it's not really a joke. I've been through the ringer a few times -- and, I've been told that such things would have crippled a lesser person.

That doesn't seem right to me. To me, there are no lesser persons. Everyone on this planet is of value, and though some may have a hard time playing the cards Fate has dealt them -- that doesn't mean they are less than the person standing next to them.

Myself, I found strength through reading. Books were my closest companions as a child. I lost myself in the fictional worlds of Anne of Green Gables, and The Telltale Heart, and romance novels. I read science fiction and dreamed of worlds far away from the one I lived in. I read historical novels and marveled at the power of intellect to beat down violence. I read magazines full of short stories and dog books with less than happy endings. I read and read and read, and I knew -- though it wasn't apparent in the house I lived in -- that there was a better world out there.

It took me a very long time to discover where I fit into that world. I knew what I wanted (sort of), but didn't know how to get it. Along the way, I picked up some interesting thoughts. I learned some valuable lessons and I slowly came to realize that -- I could have what I wanted. It was there for the taking -- I needed only reach out and take it.

Naturally, there was (is) a price to pay. It's so true that there is no free lunch, despite the scam artists who continue to trick people into believing there is. What I learned was that having what I wanted didn't involve $$. It didn't involve time. It didn't even involve education. It involved a change of mind. A reinvention of myself. In order to have what I wanted, I had to give myself permission to be happy.

That may seem so natural to some people. Be happy, your Mom and Dad tell you. Bobby McFerrin sang, Don't worry, Be happy, not that long ago. My favorite US president, Abraham Lincoln, once said, "A person will be about as happy as he or she decides to be."

It wasn't until I made up my mind to STOP being unhappy, though, that I could, finally, turn my energy to being happy. To accomplishing all the things that come with being happy; having a family, having a home, building a business, working to help others achieve goals; until I could make peace with myself, none of those things could happen.

And so, here I am. Still trying to be the happy person I deserve to be. Still struggling because there are decades of unhappiness to forget -- and not forget, since much of what I am today came from those decades of darkness. Today, I stand before audiences and talk about writing, or blogging, or marketing to women online, and I think about why all those eager faces are turned to me -- it's because I am the person I have always wanted to be. Someone with knowledge -- and compassion; someone with education -- still eager to learn; someone with a youthful heart -- despite the years on her birth certificate. I remind myself that I deserve to talk to these people, to have a business helping people write and publish books, because it's what makes me happy.

In the end, I deserve to be happy. That's what I've learned. And continue to learn. It's what I try to help others recognize, that -- "Happiness is like a crystal, fair, exquisite, and clear, broken in a million pieces, shattered, scattered, far and near. And Lo! along life's pathway, some shining fragments fall. But there are so many pieces, no one ever finds them all." (written by Pricilla Leonard)

When all is said and done, I have learned to appreciate this saying, written by an anonymous hand, "Happiness is found along the way -- not at the end of the road."

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is Yvonne DiVita, best known to most of us as Jane, author of Lip-Sticking, where she delights in sharing her insights with us on marketing to women online. You will always find your link to Yvonne - and Jane! in the right column Ho‘ohana Online Community Listing.

Refuse to be defined by your daypart

Rosa asked me to share a story about my experiences with learning.

Once upon a time, I was a reasonably successful professional radio announcer in Baton Rouge.  In the radio business, the day is sliced up into “dayparts” and you always start in crummy dayparts (like midnight to 6am on Sunday morning) and move to more desirable dayparts as you move up the ladder.

One day, one of my previous bosses killed himself in a gruesome way because he was moved from a top-ranked daypart to a less prestigious one (morning drive to mid-days).  It was about that time I decided it might be time to look for other career options - I didn’t relish being defined by my daypart.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do and considered all kinds of other options (garbage man, advertising, and a whole range of other things were on the list). 

One February afternoon, my roommate came home and told me the software company he worked for was looking for a technical support person.  He explained that a technical support person would be responsible for handling telephone calls from software users and helping them solve problems.  I’d always enjoyed puzzles and problem-solving so I decided that might be fun.  He called and set up an interview with the founder of the company the next afternoon.

A few minutes later, I realized I didn’t know anything about DOS (the operating system in use at that time).  I asked my roommate if he had anything I could study, and he gave me a copy of Microsoft’s MS-DOS manual and Peter Norton’s book “Inside The IBM PC.”  I stayed up all night cramming on these books and trying out what I learned on my other roommate’s IBM XT computer.

The next day, I went to the interview and, miraculously, I got the job.  There I was, a naive young kid starting his first job in the computer industry!

20 years later, I still work in the software industry and I love it. 

This type of stepping into the unknown has become a bit of a habit with me.  Every 18 months or so, it seems,  I end up taking on a new opportunity which requires me to learn very new skills (I’ve done and managed such things as customer support, quality assurance, marketing, software programming, product and program management, IT operations, web publishing, IT audit, process consulting, and, most recently, business development).  Some of these career changes have been things I’ve asked for; while some of them have been imposed. 

Stepping into the unknown is always scary, but I’ve learned the most valuable things in the situations where I’ve pushed through the fear and taken the chance – sort of a “burning platform” approach.  In some cases, I realized I’d made the wrong choice (thanks, dot-com hype) but I moved on and looked for the next challenge.

JFK said, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard…”  We’re at our best when we make the hard choices. 

Make a few hard choices and seek the challenges in the unknown. Refuse to be defined by your daypart.

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Dwayne Melancon, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho‘ohana Online Community. Dwayne is the author of Genuine Curiosity, and his ho‘ohana is that he is “Always on the lookout for new things to learn,” just as he has shared in this wonderful story!

My Learning Journey

As I reflect on this month’s Ho'ohana on Lifelong Learning I find that, at this time of my life, learning for me is centered in Inquiry.

It hasn’t always been that way. In fact, the concept of learning itself has been a learning experience for me. I remember back at Kailua High School when it seemed that learning was something that only happened in school. The teacher could be counted on to give us things to learn. I just partially showed up to receive what it was that the teacher had to offer. I took the occasional test to prove that I had, or at times had not, learned the required material. At that time, learning wasn’t something that I did for myself, it was something that was done to me. I really didn’t like it much then. I wasn’t really interested in what the teachers thought was important for me to learn. That is until I went to college…

At last! College and learning was interesting! I could choose my own courses and concentrate on learning stuff that I was interested in. It was really cool to have some choice and control over what I learned and when. I discovered during the experience that I had a thirst and a talent for problem solving and mathematics. I had found a fun place where there were endless puzzles to solve. The math teachers often hid a devilish puzzle somewhere on their tests to try to stump the best students and I took it as my personal mission never to get stumped. It was our little competitive game and I loved them for it. I didn’t quite achieve the perfection I sought, but I did well and enjoyed the personal challenge. Learning at this time was no longer something that was done to me, I was the one who was in charge of my learning, and it made all the difference. Yet I still had a notion that learning was something that happened only at school and when I was done and had my diploma in hand to enter the work force, it would finally be over and I could relax. Hah! That is until I started working…

I chose to work in what was at that time the brand new field of programming computers. Computers were a great match for me. They utilized my problem solving and math skills and again I found myself in a wonderland of never ending puzzles to solve. I was in heaven. As I learned to expertly program the computer that my company was using I found that as soon as I was getting to know everything there was to know about the computer, a new one would come out. It would have a new and more powerful operating system and more complicated things to know about. I loved this recurring cycle – it meant that the puzzles would still never end. So, with no one giving me a syllabus outlining the learning I needed or should follow, I eagerly read all the technical manuals, tried new things, and strived to make my programs the best in the industry. I remember thinking specifically that I wanted to be the best programmer ever.

I now know that I could never reach that unattainable goal, but the goal gave me the energy to stretch and learn, not because a test was coming next week as it did in college, but because there was something deep inside of me that I wanted to achieve. I craved the knowledge of my craft so much that regardless of what was asked of me, I wanted to know as many things as I could. Since learning was of course about accumulating information, I wanted to cram and hoard as many facts as I could into my head in order to be recognized by others as being the best and most knowledgeable. That is until I could no longer keep up with all the changes and the new stuff coming out…

The big shift to a new level happened in my thirties. I had built a great career. I had moved myself and my family to the mainland to work for one of the biggest computer companies in the world. I was recognized by my peers and had earned some awards for my software designs. Yet I wasn’t the best computer programmer in the world and was starting to realize I never would be. I had two young daughters whom I cherished and I was mesmerized by watching them grow and learn. Their little brains at such a young age were much more complicated and interesting than any computer had ever been for me. I became ensnared by the beauty and enchantment of the human mind.

So, to my surprise, I went back to school. I went to USC to get my masters degree in computer science and I focused on applying computer science to the study of consciousness. Once again I found myself in heaven, learning at a much deeper level than I ever had before about a subject that was more complicated than I or anyone else I knew could ever fathom. And yet, I still found that being a father to my daughters was still more interesting and powerful than anything the courses could offer me. The courses I was taking took the same approach to understanding the human mind I had always been taught and had used thus-far in my life – my professors and I were all looking for the answers to the questions we had about the inner workings of the mind. Yet, with the role of being a father to my daughters, answers didn’t matter so much to me any longer. What turned out to be effective in raising my daughters was for me to develop the skill to recognize the appropriate provocative questions that would trigger their curiosity and wonder about their world and lead them to the next step in their discovery.

It wasn’t about learning and teaching what I thought was right, but joining them in their curiosity and wonder, knowing that they needed to develop their own answers appropriate for where they were in their life of pony tails and Barbie dolls while I relished in wonder what their answers might be. Again I was in heaven, entranced with their endless energy, curiosity and love. I had never experienced learning being about love before, but both of my daughters taught me the miracle of learning at the level of love. This continued to grow as my daughters did – until I couldn’t just do it at home with my daughters any more. They grew up – and so did I.

Over some time I became compelled to realign the gap that was widening between the work that I was doing and the learner I was becoming. I could no longer be satisfied in a profession of solution seekers. Finding answers to problems became too small of a concept to hold who I was becoming. So I went back to school again – this time to learn an entirely new profession as an organization consultant that helps groups and organizations of people stuck in difficult issues learn and grow their way out of them.

I now live my life fully as one whole person. I no longer have multiple selves - one that goes to work to make a living and one at home that I share with my family. I do my work sharing my largest loving self with people and organizations and skillfully find the appropriate provocative questions that will trigger their curiosity and wonder about their situation and lead them in the next step in their discovery. Here I am again – in heaven, with a whole world, my larger family, to wonder with.

At the center of that wonder is an essential question for me – one that I do not ever expect to find an “answer” to. One that drives my inquiry every day with every group of people I engage with. The question of my inquiry is: “How do we come together powerfully to do the work that is important to us?” You will find it on my web site and over my computer in my office. I strive to live in this question every day and express the wonder of it with everyone I encounter.

At the heart of this inquiry is a deep knowing that an essential part of this inquiry is to show up to each engagement with a deep embodied expression of Aloha. I have known and lived Aloha since I was very young and mistakenly took it for granted that the whole world lived this way. When I left Hawaii for the mainland it was a painful realization that so many people have not experienced Aloha. But it surges in my body with every beat of my heart as I first inquire to understand others in partnership to discover how we can work powerfully together – whether the other knows about Aloha – or not.

So, while the meaning of lifelong learning has changed for me many times over the years, this is the deepest and most “never ending” learning I have experienced so far and it is the most satisfying. Every day I am eager and curious about how each and every person, every one of you, is showing up right now, in what ever form of learning you are finding meaningful to you, in order to discover how we can be more powerful together than if we remain separate.

Whether you see learning as imposed, guided, accumulated, grown, nurtured, loved, or something entirely different than I have, I invite you to engage me and each other in this mutual learning about learning and discover how powerful it truly is for all that choose the path to engage.

Postcript by Rosa: I am so pleased to introduce our Ho‘ohana Community member Jeff Young to you this month with this article on his journey of lifelong learning. Visit Jeff at his website, www.coignite.com for more on his ho‘ohana; “to work with dynamic leaders who who want to learn how to create exceptional organizations that are capable of accomplishing great things together today and tomorrow; who want to bring people together powerfully to ignite their potential.”

Astronauts, Toastmasters and lifelong learning

On 20 February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. On 10 December 2004, I delivered the last of ten speeches in my Toastmasters Communication and Leadership manual and gained the status of Competent Toastmaster. Those events are obviously unconnected, but I believe there is some common ground there too. Both John Glenn and I had to learn our craft and we did it by using three key methods:

We learnt by doing, we reduced our risks and we surrounded ourselves with other learners.

I joined The City of London Toastmasters in November 2001. I discovered a club full of smart, friendly people, each one dedicated to improving not only his or her communication skills, but mine as well. The materials provided by Toastmasters HQ provided an excellent framework for learning. I embarked on the program that all Toastmasters aim to complete - the ten speech Communication and Leadership program - which I completed last year. Along the way, I delivered impromptu speeches, workshops, prepared speeches, and speech evaluations (when I gave feedback to others in the club). I ran meetings and organized PR. I even took part in - and sometimes won - speech and evaluation contests. And although I am now one of the veterans in our club, there is no sign of the learning letting up. The mission of City of London - and of the 10,000 other Toastmasters clubs around the world - is:

to provide a positive and supportive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.

Now, that's 'Imi ola.

And what about John Glenn? Well, during that historic space ride, John Glenn wore a heart rate monitor and, according to The Right Stuff, his heart rate never rose above 80 beats per minute. That's about average for a grown man sitting down and watching a bit of television or reading the news.

Think about that for a second. Imagine how your heart would race if you were packed into a rocket and fired into space. Factor in that Glenn was sitting on tons of highly volatile rocket fuel and that previous NASA rockets had an alarming propensity to explode! My heart beats fast just thinking about it, yet when Mission Control told Glenn of a delay, he was so calm, he took a nap. During the wait, and from lift off to splash down, Glenn stayed cool, calm and collected, and his heart rate held steady.

To understand how Glenn maintained such calm, you have to look at his training regime. For literally years, Glenn and the other six astronauts picked to train with him, had rehearsed and rehearsed. They hadn't just read books or learned theories. They had instead logged hundreds of hours in simulators and in g-force trainers and on "parabolic flights" which mimic the feeling of being weightless. They had done everything they would have to do on a space flight without ever lifting off into space. The seven astronauts coached one another and gave one another feedback, refining their performance to the highest levels. When the big moment came for Glenn, he drew on what he had learned, he had confidence in his training, and he was calm. Boy, was he calm.

I believe that the stage at my Toastmasters club is my simulator. My every speech at Toastmasters is a parabolic flight. My club mates are the other astronauts. And whenever I make a vital presentation in front of audiences of strangers - that's my space flight.

When it comes to lifelong learning, the lessons here are three fold. Effective learning happens when you:

1. Learn by doing. Books and blogs are great, but nothing beats getting up and doing that which you are trying to learn. Want to learn public speaking? Then speak in public. Want to learn leadership? Then be a leader.
2. Reduce the risk. Don't expect to learn everything all in one go. Find or create a simulator. Expose yourself little by little to greater and greater challenges. Don't be afraid, but don't expect to blast off before you are ready.
3. Surround yourself with other learners. Helping others to succeed reinforces your learning. And you will be astonished by what you learn from others, once you accept their help.

Now, if you are saying "that's all well and good for astronauts, but what about earthbound learning?" let me introduce you to Wally Schirra.  Wally was another of the original seven astronauts, alongside John Glenn, but you probably don't know his name. That's a shame because he was the astronaut's astronaut - he flew more orbits, used less fuel, and landed more accurately than any of the others. But he wasn't the first and the day after he splashed down, President Kennedy informed the nation of the Cuban missile crisis. So Wally Schirra's story was pretty much lost to history.

But here's my favorite thing about Wally Schirra.  Wally understood the three lessons - learn by doing, reduce the risk and surround yourself with other learners - so when Wally  Schirra decided to do some earthbound learning, where do you think he went?

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is Adrian Trenholm, sending us his wonderful story of learning from London. Each and every day, you can visit Adrian on his own blog, where in sharing his ho‘ohana, he urges all of us to communicate better, and he coaches us to do just that.

Lead Your Learners To Better Thinking

Throughout this month's Ho'ohana emphasis on learning, I have been thinking about what and how I am learning.  But oftentimes, I am on the other side of the table, working with student leaders, trying to enhance and direct their learning. 

Sometimes the lines are often blurred between student and teacher.  It's hard to tell who's doing the learning and who's doing the teaching.  The journey through the material together usually ends up showing all of us something that we hadn't seen before.

But there are situations where I must stand in front of students with a message, a lesson, an exercise that will stimulate their learning.  It is during these times that I want to make the most of my opportunity to teach in such a way that the students will make the most of their opportunity to learn.

I've used many of the following tips as a way to engage students in the learning process.  Whether you teach college students, jr high students, or a board room full of executives, these are effective practices:

Call on students randomly, not just those who have raised hands.

Ask broad, open questions.  "Yes/No" questions are easy to answer without any real thought.

Utilize "think-pair-share." Give each individual two minutes to think, two minutes to discuss with a partner, then open up the class for discussion.  It is proven that if you can get a person to talk and dialogue in a small group setting, they'll be more comfortable in expressing their ideas to the larger group.

Remember "wait time."  Use ten to twenty seconds following a question that requires students to think.  Become comfortable with the awkward silence that students need to process what you're teaching.

Ask follow-up questions.  Questions like, "Why?", "Do you agree?", "Can you elaborate?", "Tell me more.", "Can you give me an example?"

Withhold judgement. Respond to student answers in a non-evaluative fashion.  At certain points in the dialogue it is appropriate to get students sharing and offering feedback, even if their answers are off-base.  If you immediately correct their responses, they will be less apt to participate.

Ask for summary statements.  This promotes active listening.  Asking students to summarize what someone else has just said or what you have just taught them.

Survey the class.  Ask your students something like, "How many people agree with Trish's interpretation?" (thumbs up, thumbs down).

Allow for students to call on others.  This way, students can involve others without you being the one to invite students into the conversation all of the time ("Richard, would you please call on someone else to respond?")

Take issue with your students.  Require them to defend their reasoning against different points of view.  Some would call this the "devil's advocate" position.  It may not be that you disagree with your student's response, but you want them to consider their position against an opposing view.

Ask students to "unpack their thinking."  This asks to students to describe their thought processes involved in arriving at a certain conclusion.  You are asking them to "think out loud" for the rest of the class.

Have students ask questions of their own.  Questions will provide opportunites for clarification, as well as, a chance for you to discover how much of the material your students have internalized and understood.

Whether teacher or student, the important thing to remember is that we usually take away from an experience what we're willing to put into it.  Involvement, engagement, and application are crucial characteristics of an effective learning experience.

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Tim Milburn, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community. Tim is the author of studentl.inc. His ho'ohana is developing lifelong leaders, one student at a time.

Want more of Tim? Tim’s first post for our Ho‘ohana on Lifelong Learning this month was Are You A Learner?

Learning Trigger Points

As one of the newest members of Rosa's Ho'ohana Online Community, I find it a real honor to not only be part of this distinguished group but Rosa has allowed us to provide a guest post this month.   Before I became part of Ho'ohana, I already was a regular reader of many of those in the community and believe that these are some of the highest quality blogs out there in the vast blogosphere.

Rosa asked us to consider a topic that is very special to me, Lifelong Learning.  Already there have been some excellent posts by others in the community with their own personal take on the learning process. So for this post, I am going to share my personal "learning trigger points" that moved me in the direction of learning:

Since we are talking about lifelong learning, I guess the best place to start is from birth. For the first 22 years of my life, learning wasn't something that I felt I had any choice.   I had to go to primary school.  My grades needed to be good enough to stay in school and get into college.  I had no choice but to go to college, it was expected of me in order to have a successful career and eventually support a family.   

Therefore, I never saw learning more than that - a necessity in life.   I also did the very least necessary to make it through the first half of my life.  Sure, there were leanings towards certain subjects (I was very good in math), and I had choices on what career I wanted to go into (anything with computers). However, I never read books outside of those required by school.  I never did extra credit.  I just got by.  I got decent grades but didn't excel. And for me that was just enough.

However, when I started my career, and wasn't "forced" to go to any more education that I had a choice.  I could read books or not.  I could get more training or not.  I could learn additional skills or not.  And thus, I achieved my first trigger point:

Trigger Point #1 - Learning isn't what you have to do, it's what you want to do.

Now, I started reading some things on the side on my own terms.  I still wasn't learning that often, but I realized that I needed to learn beyond what school had taught me in order to have success in my career.  After a couple of years, I started to slack off.  As I see with many people, I felt I had enough knowledge to do my job and there wasn't anything else that somebody was going to teach me.  It wasn't until I applied for a job that had skills that I wasn't qualified for and ended up getting hired for, that I achieved my next trigger point:

Trigger Point #2 - Learning is not about who you are, but the potential of who you can become.

I had become laxed in my learning, because I was only concentrating on what I currently needed and not want I could be learning in order to move further in my career.  When I got this job that I wasn't prepared for, my eyes opened up.  I don't know everything!  I then spent the next several years learning as much as I can for this job while keeping an eye for other opportunities.  It was during this time that I also saw much success and promotion at work.  I was given better titles, more responsibility, and of course more money.   

However, as I got busy with work, I started doing what I also see many poeple do.  "I don't have time to learn", "There aren't enough hours in the day".  So, I stopped looking for oppportunities instead I almost expected that the organization should throw conferences and other training opportunities in my lap and provide me much time off in order to learn.  I also got resentful when I felt that my company let me down when that didn't happen.  After much waiting and realizing that I wasn't getting over those feelings, I reached my next trigger point:

Trigger Point #3 - The best learning doesn't always come to you, you need to go looking for it.

Even if my organization gave me the opportunities, they were too infrequent to make enough of a difference.  I realized that if learning was important enough to me, I needed to make the time.  I never had time for vacations, but you know that I used every vacation day and made time for it!  Same could be true with training.   So, I started finding hours both at work and outside of work where that time was focused only on learning.  At first, it wasn't much time at all.  But, I started finding another few minutes here and there.  Minutes turned into hours each week.  I also realized the more important and the current trigger point in my life:

Trigger Point #4 - Once you realize the benefits and rewards of learning, you can't get enough of it.

I am addicted to learning now.  I can't get enough.  I am reading several books right now on various topics.  I am finding seminars, conferences, user groups and other opportunities to connect with the community and learn - many of those things not only local but free or inexpensive.  And, starting this year, I have extended my learning through blogging and subscribing to blog which has tremendously expanded my knowledge.  I can't wait until the next post, the next book, the next class in which I can learn something new and related it to what I have already learned.

I can't wait to see what trigger points I have in the future!

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Skip Angel, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community. As Skip said, the listing for his blog is a newer one for us, and I am so excited to have Random Thoughts from a CTO included in my suggestions for you. Click in to visit Skip often, for you will see that his learning has kicked in with a vengeance, and he has much to share!

Learning and the richness of life

If I take a look to what has been a common trait in my life I would have to accept that a good part of it has been marked by the desire to know or to say it better, for the desire to know more. In my professional experience I have wondered if this was a peculiarity of mine or the drive to know more is present in all persons. If this was the case learning should be a key to opening new doors both at work and in our lives.

In order to assess the importance of learning we should take a look at the first stages of the human development. Humans are very underdeveloped creatures; we are born in a situation in which we need the care and the help of others, particularly our mothers. We become persons not only by the acquisition of food and liquids, we mature as persons in the context of a net of relationships, a warp of affects, demands and responses.

In this maturing process, there comes a moment in the evolution of a toddler, when the child starts to gain upright locomotion and he or she can look at things as to a world available to her. The paediatrician Margaret Mahler called this very special moment in our lives “the beginning of a love affair with the world”.

From this very moment on, we are “condemned” to be fascinated by the world, to discover its secrets and to be surprised by its revelations. This I think proves that learning is a drive common to all people, a trend that makes us possible the joy of living. Our love affair with the world tells us that our life is an ever changing succession of events. But what is the shape of these events and how do we face them?

The first character of these events is that they show themselves. Events are neutral we could say, but there they are, in all their richness.

As much as the world is rich it is also impossible to be grasped in its fullness. It is slippery. As Martin Heidegger wrote, the world is elusive.

Our next question is, how do we face this rich and elusive world?

In this context our life evolves and sometimes we achieve our goals and sometimes we fail. But we try to be the masters of our own lives. It is in this game of trying and watching, of becoming in love with our world and becoming disappointed by it where learning gains such an importance.

After this introductory words about the place of learning in our lives I´d like to add a personal touch in our conversation. Now I will tell you about the practical side of learning.

How do I manage to learn while working? I´d like to give some clues to help you start learning or just to contrast your experience with mine.

First of all, if you want to start learning, you´ve got to begin from a point you would love to know better. That is one of the keys of any successful learning action. Never, again, never, start reading or trying something you feel indifferent about. It doesn´t matter if you don´t see the direct connection with your work or the tasks you usually do at work. Always start from the exciting, from the attractive. Choose something you really feel knowledge hungry about.

Second. Never, never listen to those who tell you that what you are learning is not important for the job. Or even worse, that it could be even dangerous for it.

Third. Never feel worried by intellectual barriers. I mean, there is in every realm of knowledge a kind of collective consciousness that tries to preserve the purity of the discipline. Be it economy, sociology, psychology or marketing, some people will always remind you you are a stranger in their field. You can notice how they think for themselves: what is this guy doing here? Don´t worry, you are not an stranger for knowledge is a territory without frontiers, it is a land without borders.

Fourth. There are no borders even within any field of knowledge. Sciences, intellectual disciplines have been coined throughout history but they are not closed boxes. You can jump from one school to another, from one genius to another, from one practice to the opposite.

Fifth. Never feel embarrassed if after you have completed a learning cycle you feel like opening a new one. Learning demands repetition as it brings us pleasure, the pleasure of doing things unusually well.

My advice is that learning will bring you pleasure, will help you to master your life and will give you the possibility of meeting people of different personal and professional backgrounds. Learning adds variety and richness to life. It colours our existence.

Postcript by Rosa: Our Guest Author today is Felix Gerena, the author of the BrandSoul blog. Felix is also one of my co-authors on The blog Synergy, a new collaborative effort in blogging; that is where you will always find your link to Felix in the right column Ho‘ohana Online Community Listing.

My Aha! Moment in Auditory Learning

I’m listening to David Allen’s GTD on CD, and it is giving me a new resolve to get my long-overdue audio book done for Managing with Aloha. I’m looking for some feedback here; if I move it up in my priorities—and on my Must-Finance List—would you be interested in it? I’d also want to make it a value-added project, not just a reading of MWA as is; If you’ve read MWA, what would you want me to add in?

I have never thought of myself as an auditory/verbal learner, knowing how highly visual, tactile, and kinesthetic I am. However the truth is that while we all have our preferences and an innate strength in a certain learning style, we learn in all these different ways, simply because it’s a biological thing:

-- Our ears and voice enable us to be auditory and verbal
-- Our eyes enable us to be visual
-- Our sense of touch enables us be tactile
---Our emotions enable us to be kinesthetic
-- And our brains and our spirit help us add an instinctual, gut-level wisdom and intelligence to all four

Even when like me, you do not think of yourself as an auditory learner unless you force it—and maybe especially because you don’t (think of yourself accurately)—listening and speaking gives you different undeniable triggers. Same thing with the other learning styles.

So Rosa, what’s your point?

If you’re on my main page, BE SURE you click the next link to open the extended post! I promise you this is good stuff!

Being a Continuous Learner

When Rosa asked me to contribute to this month's theme of Life Long learning, I was thrilled, because I have much to say about this topic.

After a few days of pondering (and perhaps a bit of procrastination, wanting to say just the right thing), I've decided to post an article that I wrote for a recent issue of my Unleash Your Potential newsletter.

I'll post some "original" thoughts before the end of the month, but for now, I hope this adds value and vigor to the conversation...

Being a Continuous Learner

When people ask me what business I’m in, I often say, “I’m in the learning business.”  It sounds intriguing, and it is certainly true.  But, truth be told, we are all in the learning business.

Why?

Because as human, we are learning machines.  We are most alive and functioning closest to our potential when we are learning, adapting, adjusting, and finding new ways, approaches and techniques to improve our lives (or the lives of others) in some way.

I believe in the above statements.  They are as true as any other statement I could write here.  But rather than talking about the philosophy of humankind, let me get much more pragmatic. 

Change and Learning

Change is all around us in our lives.  Some say the rate of change is increasing, but whether that is true or not, the fact is that our business lives are all about change.  Products change, Customers change, process and policies change.  We are put on a new team, we are entering new markets, and we have set new goals.  In all parts of our daily professional lives change surrounds us.

In order for us to cope with that change, we need to be willing and able to change.  And learning is a key component in developing that ability.

So when I talk about continuous learning or life long learning, I’m not suggesting everyone needs to take a course at their local college, or go back to school for a new degree.  Continuous learning is an attitude and a set of behaviors that allow us to succeed in our ever-changing environment, and is the best lever we have to turn who we are today into who we want to be tomorrow.  Change requires learning and conversely, there is no learning without change.

So if life long learning doesn’t necessarily mean the “professional college student” and doesn’t require us to be the person who was always asking questions in every class we ever attended, what are the behaviors that make up a true continuous or life long learner?

I’m glad you asked.

The Behaviors

There are some common threads among those who actively are learning and growing as professionals (and humans).  Life-long, continuous learners:

• Have a beginner’s mindset.  If you approach anything with the mindset of an expert, you will learn nothing.  With the expert’s mind, you are looking for confirmation and validation of what you already know.  A beginner on the other hand, looks constantly for one new tidbit, one or more ways to expand on their current expertise.  In other words, expert or not, they don’t think that way, because they know that only with a open, beginners mind, can they benefit from the learning opportunity.
• Make connections.  Peter Drucker, the famous and influential management thinker wrote, “To make knowledge productive we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.”  Continuous learners do that.  They continue to think about what they have learned in one part of their life and how it relates to and connects with challenges, problems, opportunities and situations that occur in other parts of their life.
• Are flexible and adaptable.  Learning requires change, so continuous learners realize that they must be willing to adapt and change if they want to grow.
• Are always learning something.  Life long learners learn new things “just because.”  They’ve always wanted to play guitar, so they take lessons.  They want to ride a unicycle, so they try it.  They learn how to quilt.  They learn a new language. These people don’t invest the time required just so they can play “Love Me Tender” or say “good morning” in Chinese.  They also do it because they realize that our brains are like muscles.  The more we exercise them the stronger they will be. 
• Are continuously curious.  One of the most powerful learning questions we use is “Why?”  Why is the question of the curious.  Life long learners remain curious about people, places, important and mundane things as well.  By cultivating their curiosity they are adding to their knowledge and perspective, while exercising an important part of our learning brain at the same time.
• Learn in multiple ways.  In school we learned in a relatively limited number of ways, which unfortunately leaves some people with a limited view of learning.  Continuous learns know that they can learn by reading, by listening, by trying, through others, with a mentor, etc. (etc.!) 
• Teach others.  Something magical happens when you teach someone something – you suddenly understand it better yourself.  Life long learners teach others not just to help the other person (or to show them how much they know) but because they know it helps them deepen their own mastery of their own learning.

How to Use This List

Now that you have read this far I hope you are convinced of how valuable it can be to be a more active learner.  You have also read a list of characteristics.  Now that you have read that list of characteristics, I’d like you t read it again.  As you read it ask yourself these questions:

• How well do I stack up against these behaviors?
• Which ones would I like to get better at?
• Who do I know that is exceptionally good at each of these characteristics?
• How can I learn these traits and habits from those I know who are better at them than I?

Your answers to these four questions (and the action that you take) will put you on the road to being a more active, continuous learner.

Enjoy your journey.

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Kevin Eikenberry, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community, Kevin writes Kevin's Blog. His ho'ohana is learning, with thoughts and ideas shared to help organizations, teams and individuals transform their potential into results.

Serendipitous Learning

One of the commonest but least useful questions people ask about learning is: "What use will it be to you?"

The plain answer is there's no way of knowing in advance. Sometimes you find yourself needing something and there it is; right from an area of interest or piece of learning you undertook years ago with no thought it would ever be useful. I've proved many times that nothing I learn is ever wasted.

I am always finding past learning helpful, even in areas that seem of no practical benefit to my working life. Their commonest use is to spark creative thoughts and possibilities. Indeed, there's a good argument creativity is mostly linking ideas that haven't been linked that way before.

I'm a keen birder: a bird-watcher. Pretty useless, eh? Not at all. Listen to this.

Birders use a term called "jizz." It stands for "general impression, size and shape." I believe it was coined in World War II to help pilots distinguish between enemy aircraft and friendly ones. You only got a split second to decide whether to attack or not.

Anyhow, birders use "jizz" as a primary tool to identify a flying bird from a mere glimpse. It works because you build experience in what common birds look like. The more birding you do, the better you become at using "jizz." True experts astonish novices by casually glancing at a distant bird and saying "Broad-winged Hawk" in a bored voice. It's not BS. They'll be right 99.9% of the time. Why does it matter? So you can focus on unusual birds and "filter them out" from the common ones all around.

And what have I been able to link this to in my business life?

Using "jizz" allows birders to put their attention where it matters. They don't get distracted by common birds and miss the rarity among them. That's a great trick for managers. Use your experience to "filter out" unimportant data and snap right to the one or two things that are unusual and worthy of attention. Do it as birders do: spend time looking at common issues until you can recognize them at the merest glance. Good birders never say watching common birds is a waste of time. They do it partly from their love of birds and partly to tune their capacity to spot rarities by "jizz.".

By knowing about "jizz" I've also been able to understand you don't need to know all about a situation in detail to see it for what it is and start work right away to deal with it. A quick glance at its "jizz" is often enough. How much use would that have been in the past days in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Suppose government agencies had taken a quick look, grasped the essentials of the problem and started on a relief effort well before knowing all the details. I think thousands of people could have been saved.

There are other links as well. Birding has taught me the importance of context ("habitat" in birding terms). Understanding habitat lets you know where to look for birds. Experienced birders see more than novices because they know where to look. They also know to rely on peripheral vision, because it's great at picking up movement over a large area.

Good managers know where to look to understand what's truly important in their business. They can also learn to use their peripheral management vision to alert themselves immediately to any changes needing attention.

So follow your passions. Learn all you can about anything that interests you. Never mind if it's "useful" or "relevant." It's all relevant. If you're passionate about cats, learn all you can about them. If you love hiking, learn all you can about the sport and the places you hike through. Keep adding to your learning. One day (you can't predict when, so don't worry about it) it'll be just what you need.

When people say they're "out of ideas" or they've "got a creative block," what they mean is their minds have run out of fuel. Learning supplies that fuel. The richer your experiences, the more creative and useful the links you'll be able to make between them. And the more likely you'll be able to find the insight you need in some future tight spot.

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Adrian Savage, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community. Adrian is the author of The Coyote Within. His ho'ohana is in sharing insights on how to survive and prosper in a harsh world.

Lifelong Learning - Showing up, Reaching Out, and Digging In!

What new learning do you have your sights on next? What do you hope to accomplish, and how?

My friend Thom Quinn and I have been talking for months about joining the Toastmasters to improve our public speaking skills. This summer, I reached out to some of the local chapters of Toastmasters to find out when their meetings were, how active they were, and how I could get involved. Kathy Shine of the Cream City Communicators has been very diligent about getting me information about this new Toastmasters club in downtown Milwaukee.

Beginning September 14th, 2005, Thom and I will embark on our mission to improve our public speaking skills. That's my mission, and how I'll accomplish this is really quite simple. It's how I do almost everything I do, and with gratitude to my good friend Rebecca Ryan who said a variation on this first, "I'll show up, reach out, and dig in!"

Allow me to explain what I mean: Show up - my first item of business is to show up to the twice a month meetings; Reach out - I'll ask for help when I need it, and also ask for feedback from Thom and from other members; Dig in - I'll do everything I can to get as much out of the club as I can, and also will help other members grow too, because in helping others first, you're able to help yourself. I'm not going into Toastmasters with any preconceived notions about what a club is supposed to be like, I'm going in with an open mind that it will help me learn and grow new skills necessary to get to where I want to be.

A question Rosa didn't ask but is of vital importance to me is "Why do you want to learn this new skill?" First off and short-term, I want to learn this new skill to be a more effective leader to my team and to my company. Long-term, I want to do public speaking and leadership coaching, and this is a good, inexpensive, low-pressure training ground for me. I haven't done any Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, or Brian Tracy courses, though I have read many books by each of them. This is step 1 in my life plan. Thank you for allowing me to share it with you. Make each day a great day!

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Phil Gerbyshak, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community. Phil is the author of Make it Great. His ho'ohana is making small changes to see big results, and he challenges all of us to do the same: the question he has started his post with today is one I posed to everyone in our Ho'ohana Online Community this month.

Are You A Learner?

Marcus Buckingham is my hero.  He has the ability to take something that may seem complex to many people and simplify it into a manner that's easily understandable. 

In his book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham introduces the reader to the StrengthsFinder or StrengthsQuest by The Gallup Organization.  This exercise is an online test that highlights the users key strengths in five areas.  I must say this -- this test nailed me.  When I showed the results to my friends, they were nodding their heads in agreement.

One of my strengths was entitled: Learner.  This is what it said:

You love to learn.  The subject matter that interests you most willl be determined by your others themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning.  The process, more than the content or the result, is expecially exciting for you.  You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence.  The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered -- this is the process that entices you. 

Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences -- yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes.  It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. 

This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential.  The outcome of the learning is less significant than the "getting there."

Everytime I read that I am more motivated to discover something new.  Do the above statements describe you?

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Tim Milburn, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community. Tim is the author of studentl.inc. His ho'ohana is developing lifelong leaders, one student at a time.

Learning Plateaus

I’m thrilled that Rosa has chosen Lifelong Learning for the Ho’ohana Community this month, because learning is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Four months ago my family and I moved to Hawai’i. We’d waited too long to make this move, trapped by a chicken-and-egg dilemma…it is difficult to get a job here until you move, and making the leap of faith to move is difficult without a job. Finally we resolved the stalemate by moving with the intention to take whatever jobs came to hand first, gradually developing the relationships that would lead to doing the work that is our passion.

For me, this meant accepting a position with a well-respected hotel brand doing something I could never have imagined myself doing. Ostensibly I give out hotel and Island information; in actuality I get paid for convincing guests to spend 90 minutes of their vacation hearing about the hotel’s interval ownership program. I thought of myself as someone who wasn’t good at sales, especially not the kind you need to make in 120 seconds. Surprisingly, by the end of my first full month on the job, I was the top performer in my group. Five years ago that would not have been possible, because five years ago I was still in the grip of some terrible Enemies of Learning.

Of course, I didn’t have a clue that I was getting in the way of my own success as a learner. In many ways I was and am devoted to learning. I love to read “sideways”, finding connections in other fields to the questions I’m dealing with in my own. I’d enjoyed taking on new assignments in my career, ones that required me not only to grow in my management skills, but even to master whole new functional areas. At one point my job assignment required me to learn Portuguese, and within a year I was fluent enough to attend business meetings and social engagements at which no one spoke English.

The problem I had wasn’t with learning something genuinely new. The Enemies of Learning showed up to prevent me from make real leaps into mastery in disciplines where I already considered myself knowledgeable!

Fortunately, as an aspiring entrepreneur I was told by a friendly VC that he wasn’t convinced I had what it took to be an effective start-up CEO. I asked him what it would take to convince him—and he introduced me to Bob Dunham and directed me to enroll in a 2-year program offered by Bob’s company Enterprise Performance. In May 2000 at the opening conference of the program, Bob handed each of us a copy of George Leonard’s book Mastery with instructions to read the first chapter for our homework that night. Bob further told us that his intention over the next two years was to rebuild our competencies as managers and leaders beginning from a new set of distinctions and somatic practices, and that since we were not as yet in a position to assess the credibility of his claims, he was asking us to commit to faithfully doing the assignments and practices as he requested. He used the phrase “dignified beginner” to describe the stance he was asking us to take.

Now this posed a bit of a problem for me. I was already teaching leadership seminars and had definitely come to the program with the skeptical attitude that I would sift through each tidbit he offered, comparing it against my own ideas, taking what I liked and leaving the rest. Bob had my number.

So did George Leonard. I read the entire book that night and lay awake in bed for hours. I conceded that my ego and identity as a competent manager and leader would likely cause me to argue my existing opinion rather than be open to learning something new.  My attachment to what I knew was the Enemy of what I could learn.

Reading Leonard’s book, I saw a second Enemy in myself. One of my strengths is that learning is typically easy for me. The shadow side of this strength is that I hate reaching the long plateau that comes sooner or later. My tendency is to behave as what Leonard calls a Dabbler. Rather than persist past the plateau to a new level of mastery, I’d rather learn to do something adequately, then jump to something new for the thrill of climbing that steep learning curve.

By morning I reached a compromise with myself. I would do everything Bob asked, as he asked it, for one year. After that year I would evaluate what I’d learned and decided what my commitment would be for the second year.

As you probably suspect, long before the end of that first year I was a total convert. The learning experience was exhilarating and liberating. I became a better manager and a much better learner. I persisted through all the plateaus of the two year program.

Which leads me to confess that I’ve already reached the plateau phase of my new job…I find myself daydreaming about other opportunities. I’d say one learning objective for me this month would be to bring discipline and focus to the plateau, to reach out to others who can teach me what I need to rise to the next level. I haven’t learned to love the plateaus yet, but I’ve learned I can persist on them.

I've also discovered that it helps to have the company of a good teacher and members of a learning community to walk those long stretches.  Anyone else care to declare what learning plateaus they're on and bond together for moral support this month?

Postcript by Rosa: You can always find Beth Robinson, our Guest Author today, within the right-column listing of our Ho'ohana Online Community; She is the author of Execukos. Her ho'ohana is to help leaders, organizations and communities develop their wisdom.

Related post: Mastery: Permission to be oh so human.

Start a List: “What I Want to Learn”

Remember, wanting is a good thing. The instinctive, natural selection of wanting.

It’s been a very stimulating weekend so far. I’m getting a lot of help from all of you in ignoring my new “empty nest syndrome” — I don’t have the time to succumb to it! …Zach’s call home Friday night really helped too :-) … When he talks about what his new college environment is beginning to gel as for him, I get very energized myself.

I hope you have decided to ho‘ohana with us this month. Our Ho‘ohana on Lifelong Learning is starting to strike a chord with people and I’m cheering! This month is going to be fun, and isn’t that what learning should be?

Dave, Phil and Adrian have gotten us started so magnificently; mahalo nui guys! I have already sent you to Dave; Do click in to the articles Phil and Adrian wrote about Lifelong Learning:

Stephen Covey devotees know of his 7th Habit, Sharpen The Saw; It is the habit of self-renewal. Phil Gerbyshak of Make it Great! shares with us how he’s interpreted this habit for his own journey with continuous learning. He offers us six different options, and I’d encourage you to jump into Phil’s comments with some ideas of your own. I couldn't resist his post: click in and you can see what I added there.
Sharpen Your Saw by Continuously Learning.

We often hear that to be more productive, we all could learn to say “no” more often. Adrian Savage, author of The Coyote Within writes of how saying “yes” is a much better approach when it comes to Lifelong Learning.
Saying “Yes” to Life.

Learning and living are the same. When you stop learning, you start to die a little every day. Strong scientific evidence links between brain cells can regrow at any age if you give them some exercise. Your brain is a case of "use it or lose it." —Adrian Savage

Start a Learning List for yourself: Just write down all the intriguing ideas coming your way this month, and something will start to emerge as your first pick before you know it.

Want a glimpse at my list?

We learn from people

First one learns. For the learning to stick, be fulfilling and become meaningful, one must apply what they have learned to what they do. They must allow their learning to evolve to personal belief—it becomes their mana‘o, the deep and certain belief that drives one’s instinctual actions. This is what Managing with Aloha represents for me, and this is what I hope to share with you.
— Managing with Aloha, page 12

You know me pretty well by now, well enough to know I adore books and all the pleasurable learning they have to offer us. In the Ho‘ohana Newsletter I sent out via email yesterday, I announced that George Leonard’s Mastery would be our book pick for September, and I’ll be writing about it in the next week or so. In a word, it is exceptional. Books can affect me quite dramatically; when you know what I’m reading you can very successfully guess at what I’m thinking. In my mind’s eye, I can see Bren, Dwayne, and Kevin smiling knowingly as I write this; they have all written or spoken to me about their own exuberance for Mastery.

Yet where do books come from? Someone’s mana‘o; their deeply held beliefs and convictions transmitted to the written page. In fact, to have George Leonard speak to us of Mastery would be even better than reading his book. Having Tom Ehrenfeld bring his Startup Garden to life last month was extraordinary. It is my hope that those who have read Managing with Aloha feel the same way when they spend some time with me.

Books are magnificent, however we learn from people. And the far majority of those we learn from are not authors.

I feel very privileged to know some wonderfully learned people. They are intelligent, perceptive, and extremely resourceful, and they learn because they are both curious and exceedingly humble. They have a hunger for knowledge, and they seek it continually, instinctively understanding how it nourishes them and makes them better. They teach me on a daily basis, and I marvel at the abundance created in my life because I have come to know them. They come from all walks of life, are of all ages, and they live all over the world. They are the people in our Ho‘ohana Community.

People, and the effect they have on us, are our catalysts for learning.

We’re in for a very special treat this month. For the first time you will read postings from Guest Authors on Talking Story. They will be writing about their mana‘o with our Ho‘ohana this month, Lifelong Learning. I can’t wait.

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it. - Albert Einstein

Postscript: The Ho‘ohana™ Newsletter is sent on the first of each month. If you would like to receive your own copy, you can subscribe here:

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September Ho‘ohana; Lifelong Learning

‘Ike loa is to know well. To seek knowledge and wisdom.
‘Ike loa is the Hawaiian value of learning.

My children were just ending their middle school years when the trending toward the year-round school calendar made its way to Hawaii. So for us, Kepakemapa (September) has always signalled a definite shift: the month has been synonymous with Back IN School and the disciplined scheduling habits that came with it. The laid back laziness we indulgently wallowed in over the summer was but another memory, and hopefully it had recharged us. The Back to School shopping had been done in August, the nice new teachers had begun to dole out homework, and it was time to buckle down and get the brain in gear.

Ashley and Zach always went through a rash of different emotions about all this. Me? I’ve always loved it, always will.

As a mom, September has held exciting prospects for me, for I knew that by the time summer returned and another school year had gone by, my children would have grown in wondrous ways. Not physically, although of course that happened too, but intellectually. I couldn’t wait for the debates; for them to trump my old thinking with their new whys and why nots. Whether they realized it or not — and no matter how much they might try to fight it — they would learn, and they would continue to tweak how they learned. They would be affected by the knowledge that had been shared with them, that had challenged them to understand and comprehend it, and they would emerge as new people.

Throughout it all, I’d be preening like a brilliant blue peacock.

‘Ike loa is the value that my managers have told me “turns you into an absolute fanatic” and I suppose that’s true. It is one of my favorites, for it is all about learning and seeking more knowledge, something I am very passionate about. Gaining more knowledge equates to having more confidence and belief in one’s ability and capacity to learn, and having more of that self-belief empowers you, liberates you and releases a creativity you may not have even realized you possessed. You constantly give birth to new possibilities in this creative process; you create your own destiny, seeking your best possible life (‘Imi ola).

You are sure to feed your body each day, aren’t you? Well, new knowledge is the food for mind, heart and soul. Without it, you are not providing nourishment for your overall well-being. We grow as we learn.
—Managing with Aloha, page 135-136

When we’re in school, we wonder, when will I ever use this stuff? Only after our schooldays are done do we finally realize that we weren’t there to remember the stuff; we were there to learn how to learn it, to get practice at a host of different learning styles — virtually risk-free — until we finally discovered the best way we personally could be, and would be, lifelong learners.

Fast-forward to a career in management, and guess what? We are taught to recruit and hire learners, for learners innovate, learners embrace change, and change is the “new normal” in business. We discover that if we can now perceive how our employees learn best, we can manage them better; we can help them banish routine, boredom, mediocrity, apathy and complacency. We can help them love the work they do, and associate more meaning to it. As their champions, we can love our own work too, for our employees have become our work. They are our causes, our successes, our joys.

We become parents, and we discover that as our children learn they become more confident, more independent. They can become more inspired, they can have more hope for the future, and they can see more possibility than we can. They can be better than we ever were. They remind us that everything is impossible until the first person does it, and someday someone will. They dream of being that first person, and they infect us with their dreams; we suddenly become very conscious of the time we have already let slip by. We discover that giving them a love of lifelong learning is the best possible gift we can give them —  and that is a gift we are fully capable of giving them.

As we make all of these discoveries, what about us? What about our learning?

Us too. Same things. It is never too late.

Ho‘ohana with me this month: Let’s go back to school; a school of our own design. Let’s learn something. Let’s learn a lot of somethings. Let’s get inspired, and nourish our minds, our hearts, our souls. Let’s lead in learning with our own good example.

We’re here to live our lives too, and “of those to whom much has been given, much is expected.” Ours must also be lives of lifelong learning, and lifelong growing. We deserve it.

I am going to challenge you this month: If you feel you are already a learner, you will be the one I pick on the most! Set your sights high in these next 29 days: Today is your only day to decide and plan: What will you have learned when September is over? Choose something of your own design, and then get ready to learn even more.

After all, we are the the Ho‘ohana Community.

Postscript: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

Hawaiian Technorati Tags: Ho‘ohana. ‘Ike loa. ‘Imi ola.

Your entrepreneurial point of view: a gift for growth

What have you done with your Ho‘olaule‘a gift so far? Did you tuck it away in the back of your mind, or have you allowed it to begin its magic for you?

For many years I was content to be a very good manager for other leaders. I never thought I could be a visionary leader, or a budding entrepreneur and business owner, because I didn’t have a novel, earth-shattering mega idea.

I was wrong.

You may be too. Or you may be that person with an entrepreneurial point-of-view who still thrives in corporate business. Do you know which person you are?

You’ll never know for sure, if you don’t ask yourself the questions that will help you to find out.

Our Ho‘olaule‘a gift to you this month is a chance to find out your answer sooner versus later. It’s an invitation to your journey of self-discovery.
—Excerpt, Our August Ho‘ohana is Ho‘olaule‘a; Celebration!

If you accepted this gift of an entrepreneurial mindset which Tom and I hoped you would, I am very confident that you are viewing the job you now hold through fresh eyes, and with an embrace of new learning no matter what working environment you may be in. Despite your tenure there, you will have succeeded at banishing the passion killers of boredom, complacency, and apathy. The light at the end of your tunnel has become brighter, warmer, and more welcoming.

Readers of Managing with Aloha know there is some tough love in my book. Lisa mentioned it in her book review. My coaching clients will tell you it also emerges in my coaching if I begin to hear any traces of “oh woe is me” creep into their voices; I will not commiserate with them or accept their excuses. Instead, I will coach them to move beyond that first impulse and better consider the power they themselves have within their own circle of influence. The question becomes, Well, what are you going to do to make things better? How will you get something better to happen?

As a management philosophy, managing with Aloha actually solves problems pretty easily. The harder task is allowing it to influence greater ambition when people feel that things are okay and fine as they are; when they are willing to settle. As a coach I usually have a more optimistic view of their capacity and potential than they do; I see a brighter future for them than they see for themselves. And please understand that vision I see is not necessarily about a promotion, a better title, or a lucky leap into a lifestyle of luxury; it’s about living a happier and more fulfilling life within the passion of the work they have chosen to do. It’s about taking the strengths they have from good to great. It’s about being able to enthusiastically and confidently answering the question of what their true calling is.

And it’s about trusting in their own wild and wooly ideas and not allowing them to die.

Let’s look at some other ways in how Tom’s Startup Garden synchronizes so beautifully with Managing with Aloha.

We Talk Story with Tom Ehrenfeld this week!

I had previously announced that Monday, August 15th would be the day of my interview with Tom Ehrenfeld, business journalist and author of The Startup Garden. Slight change of plans: We will be talking story with Tom all week long!

Once our interview started, I found it incredibly difficult to stop, for talking to Tom is, well, you’ll read for yourself why. Let me just say that you are in for a treat, and I have much mahalo (gratitude and appreciation) for Tom’s generosity in sharing his time and his honest mana‘o (thoughts, convictions and beliefs) with all of us this month, especially in light of what he currently has going on already. If this is not an extraordinary Virtual Ho‘olaule‘a, (celebration) and you can imagine a better one, I’d like to hear about it!

Meet Tom as the Mea Ho‘okipa he is, the giving host.

In agreeing to this format, Tom has opened the door to talking story with all of you too. Thus my decision to spill our interview over into installments throughout the week: You will soon see how each interview segment is incredibly rich with the possibilities for more discussion.

I encourage you to jump into the comment conversation this week: If you have never done so on a blog before, there is no better time, with the bonus of feeling the aloha of our entire Ho‘ohana Community of readers. I know that personally I’ll have to restrain myself and give the rest of you a turn!

We get started tomorrow as promised. Today, I’ll end with some quick links you can use as reference points, or to catch up with us if you are just clicking in (so be sure to open the extention of this post). I’ll also be updating this entry all week long as a Table of Contents for our future reference, with a home-page resident link parked for you in the Lōkahi features column to the right.

Let’s Talk Story!

Why The Startup Garden?

Had an after-work front porch visit with a good friend Friday evening. She’s just begun to read Talking Story regularly, and “Why The Startup Garden?” was the question she asked me into our second brew. “Why does it figure so prominently into your Ho‘olaule‘a this month?”

My husband had been talking story with us, and he muttered “She had to ask,” under his breath before announcing it would be a good time to see if he could catch the early evening news, and escaped.

As I explained my why to D. it occurred to me that I should do so here on Talking Story too, and best before the book review I promised you tomorrow. After writing this blog for a year now I do assume we have my past history together, and I’ll err (by not giving you enough information) on the side of not wanting to sound repetitious or preachy. There are certain subjects I fully realize I have soap-box tendencies with, and having an entrepreneurial mindset is one of them.

Let’s see if I can make this to the point, short and sweet. You can bet this will be an exercise in self-editing … lucky you to only see the finished product … :-)

Let’s get on with it! Ho‘olaule‘a prizes :)

I promised you a Ho‘olaule‘a this month, because we’ve got some celebrating to do. Now that all the burning issues are behind us, Let’s get on with it!

We have Ho‘olaule‘a prizes!

To win a prize, all you have to do is read Talking Story this month and celebrate along with us, wishing a happy year One to Talking Story, and a happy happy year Two to Say Leadership Coaching. Then we’ll see if you can answer some questions.

Mark this date: On Wednesday, August 31st I’ll be posting a very short trivia quiz at exactly 7:00am Hawaii Pacific Time. The first people to email me with the correct answers will win the prize of their choice.

Easy. No tricky Hawaiian words to decipher, promise.

The Prize Line-up

Personally, I think all of these prizes are equally wonderful (yes, I am biased and I admit it) so first to win will have their first choice, then second, then third etc. until our prizes are all claimed. We have 9 aloha-full, fantabulous prizes:

Tom Ehrenfeld and The Startup Garden

I have the enormous good fortune to have a wonderfully knowledgeable accomplice this month with my Ho‘olaule‘a Ho‘ohana!

His name is Tom Ehrenfeld, and he is the author of our Talking Story Book of the Month, The Startup Garden, How Growing a Business Grows You.

Tom is a business journalist and former writer/editor at Harvard Business Review and Inc. His work has also appeared in The New York Times and Boston Magazine. He is a frequent speaker on small business issues, and in Blogsville we have recently come to know him as a guest author on the 800-CEO-Read Blog.

Tom and I met back in June via email, after I had snagged one of his 800-CEO-Read Reviews on Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit for Talking Story. My post was short, but there was a spirited comment conversation thereafter, and much to my delight Tom jumped back into it with us. Tom Ehrenfeld was now a talking story member of our Ho‘ohana Community!

Tom’s name was familiar to me because I had read his book about two years earlier. I remember spending a good two hours in Borders Bookstore one morning, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of their business book section devoted to Entrepreneurship and Small Business. I pulled nearly every book off those bottom three shelves and previewed them, and when I had made my selections and walked to the cashier, The Startup Garden was one of only two books which had made the cut.

Our August Ho‘ohana is Ho‘olaule‘a; a Celebration!

Preface: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

Our Ho‘ohana theme this month is called Ho‘olaule‘a, the Hawaiian word for Celebration.

What are we celebrating?

A One-Two punch of goodness: This month is the One-Year Anniversary of Talking Story, and the Two-Year Anniversary of Say Leadership Coaching (SLC). I am thrilled with how far we’ve come, I’m excited about what’s ahead, and I invite you to celebrate with us!

With both SLC and Talking Story I jumped in feet first with a little forethought, and a lot of impulsiveness. I now realize how incredibly lucky I was, though I prefer to say ‘blessed’ instead, for blessed is so much more accurate. In these past two years such abundance has been created, and this month we’ll be taking a look back at some of the highlights that brought us this far. You, my Ho‘ohana Community, have played a huge part in getting both SLC and Talking Story to where they are today, and we want to take every opportunity we can this month to say mahalo; thank you.

At the same time we want to give you a gift: A month-long look at your opportunities for entrepreneurship. Before you say, “Thanks, but I’m not interested in starting my own business,” let me explain that you don’t necessarily have to. I’ll explain why we think our gift is still one for each and every one of you, fledgling entrepreneur or not.

Pack Rat No More

My June Ho‘ohana on ‘Ōpala ‘ole seems to have been very timely for many of you to adopt as a summer-long project, for I’m still getting emails about it — glad to hear it!

Once again, ‘Ōpala ‘ole translates to without (‘ole) rubbish (‘Ōpala), and our goal was to clear out the clutter in our lives so we could make room for better things.

Today I got an email from a fellow pack rat who had reprinted a Sidebar they read in Woman’s Day magazine’s June 21, 2005 issue, and I thought it was great. I’ve always been a fan of good self-talk: We can create better habits for ourselves with some of these tricks.

My butt is starting to hurt

Preface: If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

My butt is starting to hurt. Or as my son, Mr. Physically Fit himself, implores me to say, “Glutes, mom, say glutes.”

And that hurt is a very good thing.

I can feel it when I’m on my run in the morning, and that means I’ve shed those extra pounds that were just fat and I’m starting to tone!

How are you doing with your July Ho‘ohana? We’re a good twelve days into it, so are you feeling better yet?

If you need another push in the right direction, consider downloading the ChangeThis manifesto by Dr. Michael Gonzales called Barriers to Health.

He starts by saying that we all pretty much agree that regular exercise is good for us, so why don’t we do it? Then he offers his explanation of the three barriers that get in our way: Time (i.e. finding it), Motivation (i.e. getting motivated), and Worthiness (i.e. feeling that you are worth it). If these sound like any of your excuses, download it and read what the good doctor has to say.

In his motivation discussion, this sentence in particular jumps out at you (literally … take a look at the manifesto):

“Your body is not stupid, and therefore avoids that which is not enjoyable.”

So how do you make it enjoyable?

For me, picking the right time has a lot to do with it. I exercise in the morning because it’s my favorite part of the day; I am definitely a morning person. I’m up by 5am and in full exercise mode by 5:30am (stretching, weights and some resistance stuff). By 6am I’m hitting the pavement for my run, because Big Island sunrises are just glorious, and the best view of the sun coming up is just short of 2 miles from my house near the Waikoloa stables, where the sun gets cradled between the Kohala Mountains and Mauna Kea (“white mountain” The 4,200 meter high summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii houses the world's largest observatory for optical, infrared, and submillimeter astronomy.)

Space Shuttle photograph of Mauna Kea volcano. The light colored area at the summit of the volcano is glacial deposits. Glaciers covered the summit between 29,000 and 10,000 years ago. Numerous cinder cones dot the surface of Mauna Kea. Waipio Valley (top-right corner) is a deep erosional valley in Kohala volcano. (Photo and caption credit). Not what I actually see of course, but I thought it was a very cool photo.

If there was a summer rain the night before, there is this just-washed crisp freshness to everything: The plants are greener, the road itself is cleaner, the smells are more fragrant. If there happens to be an early morning drizzle I feel like I’m getting this blessing from heaven. By 7am I’m usually back in my garden for my cool-down, and depending on the season I’m picking mangoes and Ka‘u oranges (now. Yummy!) vegetables before the wild turkeys get to them, or flowers for the house.

So because of the exceptionally good fortune of living where I do, running becomes more than a physical pleasure for me; it intensifies so many other senses and self-indulgences.

The timing is also a biggie for me because I am done by 7: It heats up pretty quickly here, and I don’t like running in the sun and having to deal with sunscreen, a cap and sunglasses. The less gear the better, and hey, that’s huge with me in keeping it enjoyable.

Get creative with your own ideas: move out the furniture around your television and replace it with every impulsively-bought exercise toy you bought so you only watch tv when you are exercising --- with the whole family. Join a club in a neighborhood different from yours so you can meet new people and do some networking.

By the way, in his manifesto, Dr. Gonzales goes on to say,

“The answer here is about forming a habit. Once you form a habit via repetitious exercise, your mind is no longer involved in the decision process of whether or not to work out. This greatly increases the likelihood that you will work out and work out consistently.”

My bold highlights --- Sounds pretty GTD-ish and Covey-ish to me, right in line with our previous discussions lately. So go for the gusto and the full synchronization here: bring your good health into the picture.

Totally unrelated post other than the title:
Does this make my butt look big? Can you resist clicking in? Aw go on, Bren wrote it.

Pedometer: 12,987
What’s this about?

Walk with me!

Are you getting fit with me this month? [It’s the quest of our July Ho‘ohana.]

This is just too cool: Gmaps Pedometer. Via Darren Barefoot.
I still have to figure out how to use it (read Darren’s posts), but I love the whole idea and that I can learn it :)

Darren also posted this in Geeky Traveller, which is a fun new blog to cruise; my newest subscription to lurk around.

[For the GTDish at heart and MWA3Pish at play, here’s another Geeky Traveller post title to tantalize your curiosity: 43 Places.]

And because you know I love well done About Pages: About Geeky Traveller.

A snippet:

Welcome to Geeky Traveller, a website dedicated to the places geeks go, the things they do when they get there, and the gadgets they play with along the way. Thus far, the site features hotel reviews, gadget reports and nerdy travel stories.

Do you have a story to tell? Did the wifi in your hotel cost more than the room rate? Did you discover the perfect network cable? Did you visit the particular accelerator at Fermilabs? Tell me about it.

July Ho‘ohana: Here’s to good health

What I had hoped for when I wrote June’s Ho‘ohana on ‘Ōpala ‘ole, was that clearing the clutter for us would open up some space. Space for better things, and for more freedom to pursue them.

What do I mean by better things? The things that dreams are made of, and the goals of work-worthy passions. The work with which we create our destiny, and make some contribution to humanity. The stuff of legacy building, and of making meaning in our world.

What are you really meant to do with your time? What is the burning goal that has been eluding you? In clearing away the other clutter of your life, what’s left that stops you from achieving it? What still stands in your way?

For many of us, it may be that we ourselves are in the way, and what we need is better practice in willpower, tenacity, resilience and self-discipline. So I started to think about what we could all practice together in July that would help us with these things. The more I thought about it, the more I came to one answer: working together on our best possible health.

Our health is the ultimate reality check for us. When you or a loved one are in poor health, every other priority in the world pales in comparison. Yet knowing this, when we are in good health we make the terrible error of taking it for granted. We skip a day’s exercise here or there, and soon we are hardly exercising at all. We eat on the run, and soon we can’t remember when we ate some wholesome food.

I’ve had so many of you tell me that our June clutter-busting has been liberating, and you’ve inspired me with your choosing of some new things to occupy your time with, such as fortifying key professional relationships, and spending these precious days of summer with family. However before you choose too much other newness, I encourage you to invest in your health this month. If you aren’t exercising regularly, eating well, and sleeping as much as you should, use this month’s Ho‘ohana as your encouragement to start. Be sure you fit in a healthy regimen and better lifestyle into whatever personal productivity model you are revamping: its way too important to be left out or neglected.

All this marvelous travel I’ve done has meant too many business lunches and dinners lately. Too many scones and bundt cakes have invalidated any calorie delusions I’ve had sipping my low-fat lattes every morning in coffee houses, and right now I’m packing a few more pounds than I should be. So for me, July will see me back to wearing my pedometer daily to be absolutely sure I get my 10,000 steps or more, and thanks to Hawaii’s wonderful summer weather I’ll be hitting the pavement early each morning. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a very visual person, and those words — willpower, tenacity, resilience and self-discipline  — are going up on my refrigerator door so that I eat better.

My goal this month: I will once again do the 5-mile Kilauea Caldera Run & Walk this year on July 30th at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, and I’ll be ten pounds lighter than I am now when I do (which is the weight I know I am healthiest at). I’ll be sending in my registration today: if you are on island July 30th consider joining me. All the details are here.

Set your own goal for better health this month. Commit to it by commenting here, and sharing your goal with the Ho‘ohana Community. You’re important to us, and we’re all here to support you.

Have this coming 4th of July weekend be your kick-off to a month-long celebration of good living. Here’s to your good health.

Related Link:
Volcano Wilderness Runs, and the Legend of Makoa.

If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

Kākou in the Ho‘ohana ‘Ohana with ‘Ōpala ‘ole

You know what is amazingly wonderful? Just a few months ago I would not have dared to put that many Hawaiian words in a post title without definition. However today, there are so many of you who know exactly what I mean!

For the malihini (newcomers and first-time visitors), please stay for a while and learn with us!

If you are new to Talking Story:

Kākou is all of us together, inclusively.

‘Ohana is family, or in our case, a human circle of Aloha.

Here, we refer to all the readers of Talking Story, SayLeadershipCoaching.com and ManagingWithAloha.com collectively as the Ho‘ohana Community.

Ho‘ohana is to work with passion and intent, and each month we have a Ho‘ohana theme we work on Kākou, together. We learn more together, and we learn better together. In doing so we share our Aloha with each other across miles of cyberspace and ocean-wide distances.

Thus we are Ho‘ohana ‘Ohana, an ‘Ohana brought together in our Ho‘ohana to learn worthwhile work.

‘Ōpala ‘ole is this month’s Ho‘ohana theme, in which we are doing away with clutter. ‘Ōpala is rubbish, and ‘ole is without.

(See how much you know!)

So, the hapa phrase (hapa is half, i.e, Hawaiian mixed with English to help learn),
Kākou in the Ho‘ohana ‘Ohana with ‘Ōpala ‘ole of my title means

All of us together in our Ho ‘ohana Community ‘Ohana are working to banish the clutter in our lives this month.

I’m in between offline business trips, and I’ve been trying my best to keep up with a few bloggers of the Ho‘ohana Community whom I know are in alignment with our ‘Ōpala ‘ole clutter-clearing efforts right now. I found a couple of articles I’d like to share with you.

This is a longer post because I’m about to take off (and off-line) again … you can read it a little at a time until I can post next!

GTD + 7 Habits + MWA = MWA3P

I’ve always been one to listen to my instincts, and it seems they’ve been pretty good lately. Some of you may recall this passage from my book, Managing with Aloha:

“Na‘au is one’s gut feelings and intuition. Some [kūpuna, the elders in our families] will teach that the gut is the seat of one’s personal wisdom, not the head: They are urging you to listen with your entire being, careful not to dismiss your own intuition too quickly. Intuition is referred to as ‘emotional intelligence,’ different from mindfulness, logic and reason.”
—page 215 of Managing with Aloha

My instinctual, impulsively put together Covey-Allen project is off to a pretty dynamic start, for I had an interesting weekend of emails, comment conversations, and blog hopping summoned by trackback pings. The goals I had for this coach-and-learn project of mine have gotten more ambitious, and there are now two future Kulia i ka nu‘u goals wrapped into the project too (goals which get you to reach higher). Very very exciting.

If you’ve already signed up to participate, thank you so much for the vote of confidence. However I need to let you know that I’ve pushed the Monday email I had planned to kick this off with to Tuesday June 7th.

The biggest reason for the day’s delay is that I felt it important to answer these questions here first for those of you who are still lurking around this project deciding if you want to participate. They actually are the same question, but people ask me about it differently:

My coaching clients are asking me,

Rosa, how does this fit into what we are learning about managing with Aloha? What is the value connection?

Talking Story readers are asking me,

Rosa, why are you getting into this? What does your GTD-7 Habits coach-and-learn project have to do with Managing with Aloha?

The answer to this last question is, Perhaps everything.

Time management is a misnomer: you don’t manage your time, you manage yourself and how you use time. Time is, and always will be, a finite thing with very defined, unyielding edges. You make choices, hopefully value-centered proactive choices, about how you allocate your time.

Now there is an abundance mentality inherent in aloha and in managing with aloha. Our June Ho‘ohana, ‘Ōpala ‘ole (pursuing your best-possible life by eliminating the clutter) is about increasing your personal capacity for the “right stuff” so that this abundance factor of aloha can begin to work its magic for you.

I know that “Personal Productivity” is noticeably missing from the index in MWA, and it’s missing on purpose: I’ve never been completely satisfied with the system I start my managers on enough to put it in the book. I think the process I’ve been coaching them on is pretty good, and it’s always been a marked improvement to what they’re already doing. For instance we incorporate the Daily Five Minutes and I coach them on the measurements of The 3 R’s. However it’s not as good as I want it — yet.  Covey’s 7 Habits are already integrated, and I strongly suspect that Allen’s GTD may be the missing piece I’ve been looking for to complete my MWA management productivity process comprehensively.

While I only know them through their books, it seems to me that Stephen Covey and David Allen have something in common: they are not arrogant. They seek to help us, and they are good coaches, but both of them share their knowledge as personal lessons-learned, saying outright that we need to be true to our own personal values. That resonates with me and my personal ho‘ohana (my passion for meaningful, worthwhile work), and it resonates with everything I coach you on in Managing with Aloha.

I was not an early adopter with GTD; frankly it was completely off my radar until I started reading about it in Blogsville … Hawaii seems to be an untapped market. However I’m making up for that in my own MWA, values-centered way :)

There’s a glut of writing already online about GTD: That’s both good and not so good. Good in that we have many to learn from, not so good in that we have to eliminate the clutter and find the gems. And that is perfectly in sync with our June Ho‘ohana of ‘Ōpala ‘ole.

There’s been another frequent question in my email these past few days:

What from this project will make it to Talking Story, and what won’t?

There are parts of this project that will integrate into our June Ho‘ohana, and there are other posts I have in drafts that are separate. On Talking Story I need to make room for both, so when it comes to this project — will you indulge me? I’m going to give this the MWA3P nickname from now on (the MWA Personal Productivity Project) — Talking Story is likely to get the highlights, and the MWA3P email subscribers will get much more detail. From that detail they can proactively choose what they keep, and what they discard.

And who knows, maybe, just maybe, they will have participated in my next book. We shall see how this goes.

At the very least, I’m sure we’ll pick up some very cool tricks (see page 85 of the GTD paperback).

Tags: 7 Habits. GTD.

Update: The MWA3P Project subscriptions are no longer available. However you can still access the information and conversations we've had here on Talking Story about MWA3P by clicking on that category link.

'Ōpala 'ole and your Personal Productivity

Update: The MWA3P Project subscriptions are no longer available. However you can still access the information and conversations we've had here on Talking Story about MWA3P by clicking on that category link.

June 03, 2005

Aloha mai kākou,

Increased personal productivity is a constant goal for all of us, isn't it. Life seems to get more complex each day, and we have a lot to handle.

On Wednesday I had emailed you with our June Ho'ohana on 'Ōpala 'ole, a theme of clearing out some clutter this month as an intermediary goal, so we can more effectively tackle the larger goals we may have set for ourselves in 2005: By the time it ends, I want to help you feel this was a year where you succeeded with what you've set your sights on.

It is time to get things done

A second item in my Ho'ohana Newsletter was the recommendation to look into David Allen's Getting Things Done. In my opinion, Allen's time management/ personal productivity system has reached a tipping point in business-speak today, especially in articles written for the internet. I've looked into it, I've read his book, and I've started to incorporate what he suggests.

Yesterday I did a follow-up article which examines how the productivity teachings of Stephen Covey and David Allen intersect and synchronize: As I see it, Allen is bringing fresh attention to Covey's timeless principles, and what is attractive to me in particular, is his knowledge of our new electronic communications so we can integrate the two effectively into our busy lives. Here's a link to yesterday's article:  Why GTD reminds me of the 7 Habits.

This is the purpose of my email:

Read yesterday's article for a clearer perspective on where I am in my thinking about these two masters' synchronicity. Then, let me know if you plan to read Allen's book, or have, and are already using his system, and you want to receive more frequent email notices from me this month as I proceed with my own incorporation of what he teaches.

Basically I'm inviting you to be a fly on the wall to my own personal productivity integration and thought processes this month. (Or a coach willing to help out the rest of us — I know I’m a fairly late arrival to GTD.)

No assignments, no homework; You make your own proactive decisions, and hold yourself accountable for them. However I don't want to send emails to people who don't want them. If you are a regular RSS user, I'm not planning to put everything about this on Talking Story.

This is how you let me know if you're interested:

1. Start the email subscription process by typing your email address in the box on this page which says, Join the Say Leadership Coaching mailing list. Click the Go button.

2. You'll be taken to a screen where you can update your preferences with me. You can sign up for the other stuff there if you want  to, but for this particular project,

3. Under Your Interests, click off Rosa's Covey GTD Time Management Project.

4. Hit the Submit button at the bottom of the screen. It is a double opt-in process, and you'll get an email back to verify your subscription.

Sidebar: If you are an email subscriber but you are reading this first (my emails are generally set for morning Hawaii PT) you might want to wait for the email and use that link — it’s a step or two shorter.

By the way, this coaching is absolutely free. Although I am very confident this will be a good thing, I can't charge you for what I haven't actually done yet! We'll be learning as we go, together. As with all my emails, you can opt-out at any time you're no longer interested: there's a convenient one-click link on every message you get from me.

Your Next Action:

Don't procrastinate! I have already drafted my first email for the project, and will send it out on Monday.

If you have friends or coworkers you feel might be interested in this, feel free to tell them too.

Leave a comment here or email me if you have questions. Let's 'Ōpala 'ole, clear out the clutter, and GTD, get things done. There's only so much time in each day; "managing" it is about making the proactive choices on what you do with it.

Me ke aloha, a hui hou,

Rosa Say
Say Leadership Coaching

Postscript: With this post I’ve set up a new category here on Talking Story for Personal Productivity/ Time Management.

 

June Ho‘ohana: ‘ōpala ‘ole

Over the years I’ve picked up pretty good ‘personal productivity’ practices, for I’ve been swept away in time management fanaticism now and then, where ‘organized’ could have been my middle name.

However the monthly Ho‘ohana we have for Talking Story is one thing I don’t plan too far ahead. Instead, I try to pick themes that are current with what most of us seem to be talking about, and it usually happens that the next month’s theme just falls in my lap about the middle of the month prior. Of course I also look for connections to Managing with Aloha (which isn’t too hard for me!)

So it was for June, with our Ho‘ohana for this month falling in on my consciousness while I was on a business trip doing a lot of what I most love to do — talk story with you. Remember this?

May 14th

What I’m hearing from everyone I meet with is this:

The more global we get in thinking about our world, and the more we agree that we want to be continually learning and seeking some greater good for ourselves, the more overwhelmed and frustrated we are.

It’s all just too much.

From there, this would be a glimpse into my late May mind map: First Things First … Stephen Covey … principles and values … habits … proactivity versus reactivity … self-renewal … It’s never too late to Begin with the End in Mind … David Allen … one item at a time ... is it actionable? … the in-basket is not a storage bin ... get clean, clear, current, and complete.

This is the good stuff that collides in one’s brain when learning begins to get sticky.

But before I can deal with it more comprehensively, ‘ōpala ‘ole, I need to take out the trash. I want good sticky, not messy sticky.

Let me ask you a couple of questions.

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? Set any goals or objectives for 2005 at all?

It’s June 1st today, so five months in (151 days to be exact), how are you doing with them?

I bet you were pretty charged up, ambitious, and excited about them when you set them. How are you feeling now?

A month from now we’ll be on the downslope of this year, embarking on the second half. Will you be ahead of the game, catching up, or — gulp! — just starting?

If you don’t care for your answers you are not alone: I’m guessing about 95% of us won’t.

Take heart. Our June Ho‘ohana is for you — and me.

We’re going to set an intermediary goal that by July 1st we are going to feel good about that turn of the calendar page because we’ve taken a first, very important step: we’ve de-cluttered our lives. We’re embracing sticky.

‘ōpala is the word for rubbish in Hawaii. (One reason the Chevy Opala was never that popular in the islands - why would someone name a car after trash?)

‘ole is the word for without, or in the absence of.

Put them together, and our Ho‘ohana ‘ōpala ‘ole in June is to streamline and be clutter-free. We will toss out the trash and clean up the mess that may be weighing us down.

As David Allen might say, we are going to collect all the random stuff, and eliminate the trash, so we can start to get things done.

As Stephen Covey might say, we need to put first things first, for it’s the habit of personal management. It’s never too late to begin with the end in mind.

This is how I’ve been saying it;

“The reality of a strengths and values-based management practice like Managing with Aloha is that it requires you to focus on “higher-level thinking.” Doing that can be very frustrating when there is still too much lower-level “stuff” clogging up those thought channels you want to otherwise direct.”

Last week I saw that someone else in our Ho‘ohana Community may have been thinking somewhat along these same lines, and I don’t believe he’s alone.

“Many people make New Year’s resolutions, and vow to change their ways ‘round the beginning of each year.  Not me — it seems that I become introspective about this time every year.  I’m not sure why that is — maybe the long days remind me there is so much more I could be doing; maybe it’s some hold-over from when I was a kid and summer always seemed like a new start.”

“Whatever the reason, I’ve been reflecting on the aspects of my life that I want to change … as summer comes, I encourage you consider who you are, who you want to become, what you’ve been doing for yourself and others, and what actions you can take to improve.”
— Dwayne Melancon of Genuine Curiosity writes on “The coming of summer.”

So I’m proposing we start by cleaning up the clutter Hawaiian style, ‘ōpala ‘ole.

As Dwayne tells us, summer is coming and we need to get ready.

Slide that trash can over here, Ho‘ohana with us, and Let’s Talk Story.

Mahalo nui to Robin for the new picture this month of Lahaina harbor on the island of Maui. You can click on the thumbnail I've added here for a larger view so you can see the great detail of her shot.

If you are new to Talking Story, Ho‘ohana™ is the monthly newsletter of Say Leadership Coaching, sent on the first of each month to our email subscribers. Talking Story is home to the Ho‘ohana™ online essay of each issue, and we explore more on the newsletter’s theme periodically through-out the rest of the month. The best way to sort out the Ho‘ohana™ posts from the others, is to click on the Talking Story category link named Monthly Ho‘ohana: they’ll appear from newest to oldest. 

21 Leis of Aloha for your weekend reading

Personally I find that evenings and weekends offer me the best pockets of time for catching up with my reading. However postings generally slow down in Blogsville on the weekends, and to catch the best of the past week, those pockets of time fill up quickly with random archive surfing or RSS feed skimming.

I’d like to help you out this weekend — and anytime you’d like a dose of joy and enthusiasm to color your reading.

Bookmark this post as your index to 21 gems, gems which we learned this month to think of as online Leis of Aloha.

Sidebar: If you already have a feed or bookmark for Talking Story — mahalo nui! — you’ll find that the link to this post will be parked in the right column under the Lōkahi heading for your future reference and convenience.

“I smiled wide today
Recognition is sublime
Buoyed and humbled”

This was the haiku that Lisa Haneberg wrote for Stacy Brice after Stacy had given her a May Lei. I think it is a sentiment that everyone who receives a lei will echo.

The giving of leis is a Hawaiian tradition I just adore. Any tradition that is about giving recognition or some kind of acknowledgement to another person by sharing your aloha spirit with them is tops in my book, and if you know of something similar in another culture, please do share more about it in the comment fields of this posting.

In Hawaii May Day is known as Lei Day, and so for the month of May I had asked the Ho‘ohana Online Community of bloggers if they would like to give virtual leis to others in the community as a means of carrying out this Hawaiian tradition with Talking Story as their Mea Ho‘okipa (host/hostess). This post is a recap of the wonderful leis that were so unselfishly given all month long. When leis are given in an online community, there is learning to be shared with all of us.

You need not be a blogger to give someone a virtual lei of your own: I guarantee you that every web site author who has some kind of comment capability enabled, or offers you an email address to write to them, would consider hearing from you to be a lei of the best possible kind.

We all thrive on getting feedback from each other; from learning about the vast capacity of understanding and camaraderie we share. If you have never commented on a blog before, please consider doing so today: choosing any of the bloggers from the Ho‘ohana Online Community as your first brave attempt will be safe for you and a positive experience, for I am confident they will respond to you with their own lei of appreciation.

Here are their leis:

Leis and Learning with Matt and Yvonne

It’s Aloha Friday! And what better way to celebrate it than with more May Leis!

Leis and Learning with Matt

A May Lei for Lip-Sticking
“The Lip-Sticking blog is a wonderful blog dedicated to showcasing how to market smartly to women on-line.  What makes this blog interesting to read is the writing style of Yvonne.  Yvonne speaks through “Jane” who has her thoughts on how marketing should and should not be done when trying to appeal to women.”

Then in a delightful stroke of fortuitous serendipity (was that Jane-like?) I find that today Yvonne has given a lei of her own, treating you to a marvelous sample of the writing Jane does that Matt is referring to:

Leis and Learning with Yvonne

Jane Goes Virtual to Give a Lei
“The blogosphere is growing so big, so fast, it’s hard to keep up with the good blogs, block out the bad blogs, and just find time to read one’s top 20 favorites. Jane’s top 20 are blogs with personality – blogs with a voice – blogs that don’t merely ramble on but that offer insight into the human condition. Virtualosophy is such a blog. Stacy’s ‘voice’ is welcoming but educational; inviting but personal; informative but humorous.”

Be sure you click in directly to both Matt’s place and Yvonne’s.

Infectious, isn’t it? Who will get a Lei of Aloha from you today? Do something wonderful for someone you know.

A May Lei for Renaissance Girl

“By and for creative people who like to do everything.”

Some of the best writing to be found in Blogsville is on Renaissance Girl. I have loved reading this wonderful blog as written by Jay and Nigel from the moment I found it — or to be accurate, from the moment Jay found me and commented on Talking Story, with a link which allowed me to track her down! And then, wonder of wonders, there was Nigel too: I was in for a double whammy of Canadian tag-teaming goodness.

If you aren’t reading Renaissance Girl, you are missing out: There is something about the mindful romps Jay and Nigel take us on that are so tantalizing. They are thoroughly engaging and sincere, and they offer us complete transparency of thought: They are so forthright and honest; so willing to bare their souls. Along the way, we get glimpses of what apparently is a friendship between them that nourishes them both. At some point you can’t help but wonder about how your own friendships compare.

I am one of those coaches who gets her clients to write a lot: writing can stimulate amazing breakthroughs for people. These breakthroughs are what Jay and Nigel do not hesitate to reveal to us.

I think the best way to describe what you will on Renaissance Girl is to offer up a few samples: Time to get some Words to Live By.

You will find that what follows is out of context to tease you: I’ve done so on purpose, for you must click in for the full measure … I am linking random sentences and not post titles. Here we go:

Play is very creative. You use your imagination and also turn off that destructive little voice inside that says you don’t measure up. This combination of letting yourself go and turning off your inner critic is the best environment for becoming remarkable, or realizing your inner artist.

So be a kid. Play in the sandbox. —Jay

How often do we attempt to categorize ourselves and find the result to be a cramming of our unique character traits into a pre-formulated standard that does not accurately represent the diversity of ‘us’? How many of us are truly observing ourselves? If we do not know ourselves or are mislabelling ourselves, how can we possibly hope to have the inner compass/context to observe the other? —Nigel

I think it is ok to be Dissatisfied. I also think that there is additional learning to be had in riding out our dissatisfaction- looking deeper into what we really do need (as Chris says) and honoring the little voice inside ourself which is trying to tell us that maybe something isn’t right (even if it's not the something we think it is. —Jay

I have just been assigned another project, on top of the one I am currently mismanaging, and I am grieving the loss of the little lull I had been taking for granted. By “lull” I mean being left to my own devices and pretty much setting up my day as I saw fit. If that meant reading all day, I read all day. If that meant chasing down some tangential issue (see yesterday’s post), I chased it down. Now I have to time manage and actually figure out a way to optimize my deliverable out-put. I need to be very motivated right now. I need to produce something that someone can have and hold.

And, damnit, I actually want to…I want to rise to the challenge and prove to myself that I am not an impostor. —Nigel

Authenticity is absolutely captivating, and if you want a taste of it, Renaissance Girl needs to be on your reading list. Get your daily dose of what’s real.

Renaissance Girl: more than just a blog - it’s a way of life :)

There will be leis as long as we learn to give them

In the beginning of this month, I encouraged the Ho‘ohana Online Community to join me in the giving of May Leis by doing a review of another author, and their sharing of aloha continues to be so enthusiastic! It is true that I started them off with some surprise assignments (to review another Ho‘ohana Community author on their blogs), but the three I have to point you to this morning are all extras, given in their own generosity of spirit.

Yvonne has given a lei to David St. Lawrence

Smart Man Online: David St. Lawrence
“Dear readers, Jane is all atwitter today. We have a celebrity on board (while we think of ALL our interviewees as celebrities, once in awhile, we catch a bona-fide celeb, one that qualifies by virtue of anyone's definition of the word). David St. Lawrence is one such person.”

In her interview with David, Yvonne (aka Jane) mentioned his new book. And if you want to read more about it, then you must click in for this next lei too: this one is at Genuine Curiosity.

Leis and Learning with Dwayne

Review: “Danger - Quicksand - Have A Nice Day”
“I’ve just finished reading David St. Lawrence’s book Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day.  After reviewing David’s blog, Ripples, I found out he’d published the book and I ordered it.”

“If you (or a friend) are working in a dysfunctional environment, this book can help you move on to a better situation.  If you are having a tough time finding a new job after leaving you old job, the last 1/3 of this book provides great methods to lift your spirits, design and define your ‘dream job.’”

I had also encouraged our Ho‘ohana Online Community of bloggers to reach their hand outside our present community, for we know that there is an even greater wealth of knowledge we can learn from: we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface here. I congratulate Kevin Eikenberry for being the first (that I know of) to do so:

Leis and Learning with Kevin

Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog
“There are blogs, and weblogs, but only one (that I am aware of) FunLog. This blog, written by brilliant designer and maven of fun, is well, fun. Any given post might relate thoughts on the value of fun to our work, or describe a new game for your consideration, or describe an interesting website, or share insights from a recent project he has worked on. In other words, this is a site where the specific content may be random, but the niche is clear. The niche is fun, or as Bernie’s URL defines it, Deep Fun.”

Fantastic! This is all part of what the Reinvention of the Business Community is about.

By the way, it is Kevin’s birthday today: click over to Kevin’s blog and wish him a happy day!

Leis and Learning all day long; visit Wayne and Nigel just for starters

Big day for the Say ‘Ohana; Zach’s Commencement Exercises for graduation kick off at 10am this morning. So we’re up early stringing the last of the flowers from our trees to attend the festivities armed with leis for Zach and his classmates.

While we’re there, you can enjoy the leis of aloha being given by the rest of the Ho‘ohana Community. I have two more to point you to in this post, and you can click here to catch up with the others.

Leis and Learning with Wayne:

Execukos: Wisdom in a blog
at Blog Business World

“Execukos is a powerfully written blog about wisdom. Execukos is also about sharing that wisdom with others. It’s a blog that is also written simply and on a personal scale. Beth combines complex ideas and concepts into language comprehensible to all of her readers. I consider that a certain sign of her high level of wisdom as a writer and teacher. Ideas well expressed are more powerful, and much more likely to be adopted, and shared with others. It’s a blog about teaching business leaders, organizations, and entire communities the value of incorporating wisdom into the leadership and management styles.”

Read more at Blog Business World.

Leis and Learning with Nigel

Genuine Curiosity: Genuinely Inspired
at Renaissance Girl

“I have enjoyed Dwayne’s fearlessness in sharing what he is learning, how he is learning, and, most of all, where he feels he needs to learn more. Everything from organizational tips to goal setting with his family, Dwayne appears to understand that to be a true teacher he must reveal to his audience that he is still very much the student. For me this provokes rapt attention and a belief that what I find at Genuine Curiosity will be stripped bare of self-promoting (or protecting) gloss that would otherwise obscure Dwayne’s intended meaning and advice. Dwayne does not try to set himself up as a wise leader but in his empathetic language and accessible posts he certainly elicits respect for his knowledge base... and a promise of repeat visits.”

Read more at Renaissance Girl.

Enjoy your day and your reading, and think about giving your own May Leis of Aloha; it’s sure to leave you with a great feeling.

Leis and Learning with Chris

Have you given someone a May Lei of Aloha yet? Counting today, there are just eight more days in which you can be part of our Ho‘ohana celebration this month: we’re doing so to let others know how much they teach us, and how much we appreciate it.

When you give someone a lei, you are letting them know how great you think they are; you give them incredible acknowledgement. Best of all, you get a good feeling telling them so. Just ask Chris.

Chris gave his lei to Bren yesterday:

“Slacker Manager is a thought-provoking, articulate blog on how to thrive in work by focusing on working smarter rather than working harder.”

Besides giving us a few highlights of the Slacker Manager blog, Chris shared some of Bren’s Slacker@Work manifesto with us too: You must click into the Alchemy of Soulful Work for the direct hit to the excerpt on exactly what being a Slacker is, for as Chris says, “There’s a bit of the Slacker in all of us.”

After you read what Chis has written, you’ll be inspired to have a “satisficing” day of your own. Click in.

Leis and Learning with Scott

If you are reading this right now, you are part of the Talking Story Ho‘ohana Community. Positive outlook required, but that’s pretty much it.

Wasn’t that easy?

Because it’s always been that easy, some who have been in our Ho‘ohana Community for a long time now may not even recall how it happened … yet now they are giving out leis, strung together in a style all their own. You gotta love it.

Scott Hodge has given a lei to Christopher Bailey:

“Doesn’t this guy look like the kind of guy you would want to have a cup of coffee with?  Seriously.  His name is Christopher Bailey and he has a blog with a very cool name - “the ALCHEMY of SOULFUL WORK: Exploring the holistic relationship between our work, our life, & our spirits.”

You gotta like that.

Christopher’s blog is refreshing for a lot of reasons.  For one, he clearly thinks about what he’s writing about (we appreciate this, Chris.)  He also writes with a refreshing dose of authenticity.  And I also appreciate his positive and upbeat style of writing (even in regards to weeds!!).  I don't think I’ve ever read a depressing post from this guy (hold on...I'm checking the archives...)  Ok, I’m right.”

Read the rest here: Christopher Bailey’s Holistic Blog

When I read Scott’s lei for Chris, he said something that compelled me to leave a comment for him … click in and find out what it was.

Leis and Learning with Todd and Kevin

A rainy Sunday for us here on the Big Island of Hawaii, but as I look out my window I can see my plumeria and puakenikeni trees glistening thankfully with the refreshment and I’m grateful: With graduation coming up this Wednesday I will need their flowers for the leis we’ll string in celebration.

Meanwhile today, in Texas and in Indiana, Todd and Kevin were giving out May Leis of Aloha of their own: Aloha knows no boundaries, and lives far beyond our island shores.

Todd’s Lei was for David St. Lawrence:

“One click over to Ripples and I was hooked.  David tells it like it is.  He hold no punches.  He challenges you to think (which I love!).  He questions you.  He engages you.”

Todd also shares a bit with us about David’s new book; Click over to Business Thoughts for his review.

Kevin’s Lei was for Wayne Hurlbert:

“Wayne’s focus is helping entrepreneurs think about marketing, blogs and more. He does a great job of that with very frequent posting ... His posts are longer than many other bloggers, but that certainly isn’t a problem, because he writes clearly and always has something great to say. While I could point to many specific posts, two within the last couple days have been especially valuable to me and reading them will tell you what I mean about Wayne’s valuable content..”

Which two? Click into Kevin’s Blog and read more.

Leis and Learning with Beth

Beth Robinson gave her May Lei to Robin Scanlon of Ramblings, and in doing so she was also inspired to post a first on her own blog. It awaits your discovery! But first, read about her lei.

Robin’s Lei:

“In treating her photography with her Zen mind, Robin becomes a photographer who is not only skillful but also wise. Wisdom is a gift to one who falls under its gaze. Because Robin is so deeply committed to seeing the world with new eyes, her weblog gave me new eyes this morning.”

Beth’s Learning:

“What’s cool about art to begin with is that as a non-artist I tend to go about my business oblivious to the visual world around me.  An artist opens my eyes, amazingly allowing me to see not something new, but something that was already there.  The phrase “seeing with new eyes” captures that feeling.  Art is like instant laser surgery, it changes me. I become a different “observer” than I was a moment before.  With my new eyes, I connect to the world directly..”

Within Beth’s review for Robin you’ll find that first I mentioned: be sure you click in to see it.

Leis and Learning with Lisa

Our May Leis continue to blossom! Click over to Management Craft today for the lei that Lisa Haneberg has given to Adrian Trenholm.

Adrian’s Lei:

“Adrian is a communications expert and award winning public speaker residing just outside of London. He is also one of the bloggers for 173 Drury Lane … Check out Adrian’s blog. He is an interesting fellow who, in addition to business stuff and communication stuff (his passion and forte), is also into cooking, cycling and Toastmasters.”

Lisa’s Learning:

“Adrian makes some very good points about the importance of open relationship building between clients and consultants. I could not agree with Adrian more. As a consultant, you don’t hire me because of my content (even though I have some cool stuff). You hire me and all other consultants because of who I am and the collaborative relationship we have built. I also agree with Adrian that the best consultants help their clients get better and build capacity.”

Within Lisa’s review for Adrian you’ll also see a picture that will have you salivating … have you had lunch yet? See Breaking Bread with Blogger Adrian Trenholm.

Leis and Learning with Stacy

If you have not yet met Lisa Haneberg, this is the perfect time to introduce yourself. Stacy Brice has written a terrific review of Lisa‘s blog Management Craft, offering you links which are a truly wonderful sampling of what Lisa normally offers up:

Lisa’s Lei from Stacy:

“Lisa Haneburg is a very cool woman. She writes with a gracious and authentic voice, is passionate about her life and work, absolutely gets it (management and leadership) and wants to help others get it, too.”

Just a bit of Stacy’s Learning: She shares about the process of online learning itself.

“Now the owner of my own successful company, management and leadership are important to me in completely different ways ... I’ve read the right books, I’ve done courses, I’ve developed my own style over time, and yet I am always drawn to people who write about what great management and leadership are at their core. I'm certain that there's always something left for me to learn, and I love learning it!”

“Here in the blogosphere, it’s easy to find people who write about those topics, but only a few do it in a way that managers/leaders can learn how to be great, and workers can learn (from the same posts, mind you) who great managers and leaders should be, and what they should do.”

You must click in and read Stacy‘s complete review of Management Craft, in her post called Jazzed by Management Craft.

Leis and Learning with Dwayne and David

I am working through one of those things you would call a good problem to have: keeping up with your May Leis as I travel! I have two more to point you to today, guaranteed to brighten your Sunday reading if you have not seen them yet.

A Lei from Dwayne Melancon for David St.Lawrence:

“There are lots of things we can learn from David. He posts on a broad array of topics including philosophy, blogging tips, Chernobyl, social issues (including how blogging can help), business, communications, life after leaving the corporate world, and more.”

Click in and read Dwayne‘s complete review of David‘s blog Ripples, in his Blog Review: Ripples.

Second, a Lei from David to Matt Sunshine:

“Matt Sunshine has a bright, refreshing site design and ideas to match. His blog, Ideas, Leadership and Vision is a pleasure to read. Perhaps that's because his purpose is to inspire, not sell you something. I found his blog to be an elegant balance of posts on business, technology and personal goal setting.”

Click in and read more of what David has to say about Matt Sunshine‘s blog Ideas, Leadership and Vision, in his post called Sharing the Sunshine.

Footnote:
This month the giving of May Leis continues to celebrate the online community we have become outside Talking Story, and I am so pleased to be your hostess. I will point you to them all month long.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit. Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give. — from this month’s Ho‘ohana™ May Day Gifts of Aloha

Tags: May Leis. Community. Blogs.

Leis and Learning with Jay

Have to tell you, I am loving these May Leis! You are all so wonderful in catching the spirit of aloha right now! Our favorite Renaissance Girl Jay gave a beautiful lei to Scott Hodge yesterday:

Scott’s Lei from Jay:

“Anyone who writes about “life, leadership and lattes” is definitely a person after my own heart. Upon reading more of Scott’s blog, what really struck me was his tremendous enthusiasm. No matter what he is reviewing: A new CD, a book he’s reading or even web-based teleconferencing, he brings an infectious joy to his writing.”

Just a bit of Jay’s Learning:

“One of Scott’s more recent posts about his passion for leadership called “Inspiring Others” is really worth checking out.”

Click in and read Jay‘s complete review of Scott‘s blog, in her post called My May Aloha.

Footnote:
This month the giving of May Leis continues to celebrate the online community we have become outside Talking Story, and I am so pleased to be your hostess. I will point you to them all month long.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit. Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give. — from this month’s Ho‘ohana™ May Day Gifts of Aloha

Tags: May Leis. Community. Blogs.

Leis and Learning with Adrian

Another wonderful lei given today, this time from Adrian Trenholm to Todd Storch!

Todd’s Lei:

“Todd Storch, of the Business Thoughts blog, is riding this weekend in the FedEx Kinko MS 150, a two day cycle tour through North Texas and Southern Oklahoma, in aid of those living with multiple sclerosis. He stands to raise over $3,000 for a very worthy cause, so why don’t you nip over to this post and say good luck? And you can even sponsor him.”

Adrian doesn’t stop there, he gives you a great overview of Todd’s blog, Business Thoughts.

Adrian’s Learning:

“Todd is generous with his thoughts and with his deeds and he has his eye on the future - but not in some impractical, sci-fi kind of way. With Todd, you learn what’s coming up and what you can do today to get ahead of the game.”

Click in and read, Good Luck Todd Storch!

Footnote:
This month the giving of May Leis continues to celebrate the online community we have become outside Talking Story, and I am so pleased to be your hostess. I will point you to them all month long.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit. Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give. — from this month’s Ho‘ohana™ May Day Gifts of Aloha

Tags: May Leis. Community. Blogs.

Leis and Learning with Dwayne

Have you noticed a new link added to the Ho‘ohana Online Community (right column) recently? It takes you to Genuine Curiosity, the terrific blog that is written by Dwayne Melancon. I highly recommend you spend some time there.

Dwayne has been doing some Ho‘ohana Community visiting of his own, and when I caught up with him again yesterday, I saw that he’s given a lei to Lisa Haneberg and added some of his own learning. 

Lisa’s Lei:

“Lisa's got some great insight to share about how we can destroy or create success purely based on how we treat other people, and how we choose to interact with them.”

Dwayne’s Learning:

“That got me thinking about what the best managers I've worked for. What did they do that the others didn't? It was amazingly easy to tell the difference between the best and the rest, and also very easy to rattle off a list of what set them apart.”

Dwayne offers you seven things he remembers as distinctive about those great managers he worked for. Click in and read, What Good Managers Do.

Footnote:
This month the giving of May Leis continues to celebrate the online community we have become outside Talking Story, and I am so pleased to be your hostess. I will point you to them all month long.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit. Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give. — from this month’s Ho‘ohana™ May Day Gifts of Aloha

Tags: May Leis. Community. Blogs.

Leis for Community, Learning for all of us

My monthly Ho‘ohana™ was started back in August of 2003 when I left corporate life and decided to start my own business. It started as little more than an on-going personal update, for after years building up a professional network I didn’t want to lose touch with people, even if they were no longer connected with my business. They’d been connected with me, and they were important to me.

From those humble beginnings, readership of the monthly Ho‘ohana™ e-letter has grown by leaps and bounds, forwarded to many new friends by older ones, and now almost daily by subscriptions on my websites. As for my business community, some unanticipated connections have happened in the most magnificent way, and I have to give credit to this forward-thinking medium we call the blog.

I have written about the reinvention of the business community before and how bloggers are doing a couple of different things.

We are reinventing competition by competing with ourselves first and foremost. We stretch and grow to make ourselves new, and what we compete against are our former selves.

We are reinventing assets and currency, by adding priceless intangibles that cannot be assessed dollar amounts; intangibles such intellectual currency, emotional engagement, permission and attention.

We are reinventing our very attitudes about work, banishing the 9-5 attitudes and entitlement mentality that can sink promising human enterprise. We are creating business partners within our own companies, and in global neighborhoods.

We are reinventing what it means to “get involved.” Community members challenge mediocrity, yet positively propose solutions and freely exchange ideas — whining, complaining and commiserating are not tolerated.

We are reinventing benchmarking and networking, by creating global relationships that cross industries and cultures. If you have an internet connection you are invited to participate. The choice is yours; there is no old boy’s network making the decision.

More on this is in The Reinvention of the Business Community.

Business communities are being reinvented both online and offline. Online, I truly feel the bloggers of our Ho‘ohana Online Community are the leaders in this movement, and that is why I am so proud to feature them on Talking Story. Look to the right at the listing called Lōkahi: featuring our Ho‘ohana Community and you will see just a small sampling of what can happen in our new virtual communities. Perhaps the biggest benefit has been in ‘Ike loa, the seeking of knowledge and wisdom. We have learned so much from each other.

This month the giving of May Leis continues to celebrate the online community we have become outside Talking Story, and I am so pleased to be your hostess. I will point you to them all month long.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit. Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give.
— from this month’s Ho‘ohana™ May Day Gifts of Aloha

Visit Bren at Slacker Manager today. He has given a May Lei to Kevin Eikenberry of Kevin’s Blog. Leader that Bren is, he starts us off with our Ho‘ohana Community May Gifts of Aloha with a terrific profile for Kevin, explaining why those links to the right to Kevin’s Blog and to Slacker Manager are so click-worthy.

Related Posts:
The monthly Ho‘ohana™ Newsletter.
The Reinvention of the Business Community.
Join the Ho‘ohana Online Community of Bloggers.
Where we started: Introducing the Ho‘ohana Online Community.

Tags: May Leis. Community. Blogs.

Talking story, Genuine Curiosity and Baseball

“There are many kumu (teachers) and kūpuna (elders) who know much more than I; as charted by their own life’s course, they may tell you of more insightful experiences. I encourage you to listen to the stories that are shared by elders, for their lessons learned can inspire you, and may enrich your own understanding.”
—Managing with Aloha, page 19

Yesterday I received a wonderful May Lei from Dwayne Melancon. He wrote a very generous recommendation for Talking Story on his own blog, Genuine Curiosity - great name, don’t you think?

I read what Dwayne had written for a second time this morning, and it reminded me of a nice experience I had on Saturday afternoon at my son’s ballgame talking story with a kupuna (elder), Mr. Rivera.

Zach’s game was at the Ka‘u ball field. There are two short stacks of bleachers there, but no dugouts, so each team normally camps on the bottom rows of the bleachers. To give them their own space, all those who come to watch the game bring our own canvas beach chairs to perch on the hillsides behind the bleachers. With the normally bright Ka‘u sun, we usually have the better end of the deal sitting in the shade of the trees with great views of the field.

When I first spotted Mr. Rivera he was getting comfortable on a patch of grass about twenty feet away from me. He was dressed way too nicely for a ballgame, with a crisply pressed aloha shirt, dress shoes and slacks, so I didn’t expect him to stay too long and turned my attention to the game. However he was still there at the end of the second inning, and I noticed him again as he shifted to get more comfortable. I started feeling that I shouldn’t be the one with the canvas chair while an older man sat on the ground, and I offered my chair to him.

At first he declined, but at my insistence he took it, settling in gratefully. I sat down in the grass next to him at his left, and it didn’t take long at all for Mr. Rivera to start talking story.

I never would have guessed it just by looking at him, but turns out that Mr. Rivera was all of 95 years old, and he was there to watch his son at the game — the home plate ump, just turned 71.  Full rich lives, far from over.

Mr. Rivera has a passion for baseball, and he told me about his own playing years in plantation Hawaii, when the lunas (plantation bosses) would drive everyone to the ballpark in the cane haul trucks when their shifts were over, stopping at street corners to pick up their families on the way. He took his turn at coaching, and eventually he became the team manager. Much later, Mr. Rivera would be home plate ump all through his three sons’ games. He was sure to teach them much more than the rules of the game so they could once day take his place behind the plate. Things like consistency, fairness, professionalism, and how to handle unruly coaches.

Most of the time Mr. Rivera talked story without taking his eyes off the game. In his soft but certain voice he rhythmically called every play and pitch a split second before his son did, telling me his stories in the inning breaks when each team took the field. He cheered and spoke his admiration for every player having a great at bat or fielding with precision, and his delight was infectious when bases were successfully stolen. Bases loaded, the Waimea pitcher persisted, pitching three strikes for the third out, and Mr. Rivera spoke of the boy’s focus and determination with immense pride: Ho‘omau, he didn’t give up. He “won” the inning: loading up those bases before that critical moment didn’t matter. On the contrary, it created his defining moment.

I don’t know if I have ever enjoyed watching a game as much as I did Saturday afternoon with Mr. Rivera.

One of his best stories was about a playing season when attendance was particularly low at the games. His coach knew he had a great team, and he struggled to get his team better motivated when no one seemed to care about baseball enough to watch them anyway. In a flash of inspiration the coach had every player shave their heads to simply inject fun and novelty into the game, letting them play without caps in early evening games under the stadium lights. Before you knew it, more and more people came to watch, for they became known as the Bald-headed Baseball Boys. His own bald head was Mr. Rivera’s mark of distinction at school. That season’s attendance became one for the record books.

I learned some other things about Mr. Rivera and old Hawaii that had nothing to do with baseball but everything to do with the honesty and openness of talking story, even to a stranger. When I asked about his family, I learned he had been married twice, to both an older and younger sister in the same family. His first wife died at 24 when she got sick with food poisoning and the plantation doctors decided to operate, opening her up to check if they could see what was wrong.

However most of Mr. Rivera’s stories were enchanting, and he laughed at his own pleasure with the wonder of what his life has meant to him. To tell his stories was to re-live them. I got much better at asking him questions, and he’d smile at me and wait expectantly for the next one. His eyes were still on the game, but I knew his ears were for me.

Indeed, talking story and sharing our aloha with each other is a wonderful way to pass the time with someone.  Just like Dwayne says,

“After a great lunch conversation at a table full of people strangers thrown together at the conference, I commented on how cool it was that we'd had so much to talk about and share even though we'd never met before.”

“He tells me (how’s this for a cosmic nudge), ‘Yeah, I love talking story.’

So do I.”

Me too Dwayne.

Saturday was the last game of the season. Next year Zach will be at college, but I may take in another game now that I know where to find Mr. Rivera. I have a lot more to learn.

Related posts:  On Talking Story.  On Ho‘omau.

May Day Gifts of Aloha

May 1st, May Day, is fondly known as Lei Day in Hawaii.

On this day, you make a lei, give a lei, and wear a lei.

First held as an island-wide celebration in 1928, May Day is one of Hawaii’s more modern customs (some history here). On this special day, beautiful leis are made, worn, given, displayed, and entered in lei-making contests. A necklace or wreath of flowers which are worn, a lei symbolizes love, support, caring and friendship. With their fragrance and beauty, and as offered in the spirit of gift-giving, leis evoke strong feelings of Aloha ‘Āina (love of our land and our culture). May Day arrives with spring, so flowers are plentiful and irresistible now, however leis are also fashioned from leaves, shells, nuts, feathers, fabric, ribbon, beads, and even paper.

Leis are Hawaii’s most visible symbol of May Day, however there is much more to this special day. Most islanders believe that the sole purpose of May Day is to engage in random acts of kindness, to practice being Mea Ho‘okipa, and to celebrate the Aloha spirit.

Why restrict such wonderful intention to just one day? In honor of the entire month of May, our Ho‘ohana this month will be to share the spirit of May Day and the gifts of May you are able to give. Consider your own culture, your own sense of place: How can you “make a lei, give a lei, and wear a lei?” When we speak the word “lei” here on Talking Story this month, what kind of giving, sharing, and random act of kindness will it represent for you?

While you are thinking about it, a bit more on today in Hawaii to inspire you.

May Day erupts in passionate and elaborate showcases of our Hawaiian culture, for Lei Day has also become a celebration of life through hula (the Hawaiian dance) and song. Schools throughout the islands have May Day Programs planned months ahead of time, and rehearsals can begin as early as when children return to class from their Christmas break. May Day presents kumu (teachers) with the perfect opportunity to teach island children much more about the artistic expressions of our Hawaiian culture; learning is vividly realized in the performance of a hula and singing of a mele (song).

May Day Programs differ from school to school, but at most there is a May Day Court that harks back to those days when Hawaii was a monarchy. Upperclassmen are selected for the honor of being King or Queen, or island Prince and Princesses, a pair of royal siblings for each major island of our chain: O‘ahu, Maui, Kaua‘i, Kaho‘olawe, Lana‘i, Ni‘ihau, Moloka‘i, and where I live, the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Each member of the ali’i (royal court) will dress the part elaborately, with the garment colors and leis which are associated with each island.

The other given is that May Day is kākou, for everyone. Each and every child participates in the May Day program, presenting their hula and song as gifts to the ali‘i (royal court). No one is excluded. Everyone wears the fabrics and prints of Hawaii, and of course, everyone wears a lei.

At workplaces everywhere it is understood that if you are a parent there is no place more important to be than at your child’s May Day Program: Time off requests are submitted early, flex time is magically created for this one special day, meetings and conferences are rescheduled, or peers cover for you.

My own children’s May Day Programs ended when they entered high school. Still, there are lei to be given. I will be stripping the plumeria and puakenikeni trees in my yard of their flowers this morning, and making my own lei to give. On May Day that has always been their purpose, and so it shall always be for me: To let a flower dry and wither on a plant unloved today is just plain wrong. However my trees are a blessing: There will be more flowers all month long, and many more days I have the opportunity to give a lei.

Join me: This month, create and give your own lei of aloha. The opportunities are endless.

Tags: May Day. Aloha. Lei. Ho‘ohana.

The Art of the Sale and Trust.

Our monthly Ho‘ohana themes have proven to be so serendipitous: either that or they cause me to be more open-minded in embracing the happenstance in my life that blends into them.

This month it happened again with Bottom-Line Aloha and the Art of the Sale when I had the wonderfully good fortune to meet the gentleman who is the new Senior Director of Sales & Marketing for our Hawaii Convention Center, Mr. Ron Adams.

Ron is but a month into his new position at the Center, however Ron’s name is one that is familiar to many in Hawaii, for he has been a mentor for several who have chosen sales as their career: I just so happened to meet one of them within days of meeting Ron, and this young lady very appreciatively shared how much Ron’s tutelage had meant to her and had shaped her own now-noteworthy career in hotel sales and marketing.

With my own recent thoughts on the Art of the Sale as fertile ground for more exploration, Ron very graciously let me grill him about his chosen profession. And in the true spirit of aloha, he agreed to share his answers with all of you here on Talking Story.

Ron I was so fascinated by our first conversation, for it was apparent to me that sales is something you truly love to do (it is your Ho‘ohana). What is it about sales that is so very appealing to you, and how would you describe "the Art of the Sale?"

Ron:   There have been times in my sales career I have not always enjoyed sales. This mostly has to do with the product I had responsibility to sell. I am ‘jazzed’ with selling again now I am with the Hawaii Convention Center. This is a terrific product and the operation is super. We simply need more business.

I know from past experience Hawaii is a terrific business destination. Hawaii has had terrific success in marketing our destination as a top leisure destination. That success has been something which sometimes gets in the way of convincing a meeting planner successful business can also be done here. Our job in marketing and sales is to shift that perception and to find the right prospective customers who will really benefit from holding their meetings in Hawaii and in the Hawaii Convention Center.

Because I know certain meeting planners will benefit from holding their meetings here I feel good when our team can shift perceptions and perform above expectations and make all of this work for the planner, the attendee, and the people of Hawaii.

You had told me that you believed sales was about "creativity and problem-solving." Would you talk about this again for the benefit of our Ho‘ohana Community of readers?

Ron:   The sales process is opening someone’s mind to a place, a product, etc. which they had not previously considered as a benefit to them. The sales person must really understand the prospective customer’s needs and believe the product being sold will meet or exceed those needs.

Not every product will universally do this for a prospective customer. The successful sales person will take the time to understand the prospect’s issues and then only if the sales person’s product will truly be a benefit to the prospective customer will the sales person present the product in a way which clearly shows the prospect how the product benefits the prospect and thus solving a problem and creating a customer.

As someone who must both manage and lead other sales managers, what is your strategy in getting to "Bottom-Line Aloha" and optimizing productivity in the sales and marketing effort? What must a leader know to manage other sales people effectively (i.e. practice Alaka‘i)?

Ron:   A sales manager and leader must know his sales team exceedingly well. Everyone is motivated by different things or issues. An individual motivation program must be developed for each individual on the team. While these motivation programs must be individually tailored they must be perceived by the team to be equal and fair to all. That being said there will likely be people on sales teams which cannot be motivated to perform. Those people need to be taken out of sales so as not to destroy the motivation of others.

Ron when you have a vacancy for a new sales manager, what are the strengths and personal values you are looking for (so they achieve ‘Imi ola)?

Ron:   In the meetings market sales are made face to face with the meeting planner. Experience is one key value. The other is the sales person’s reputation in the industry. Will the sales person be able to get and keep the trust of the meeting planner? This market segment is all about trust the meeting planner has with our sales people to deliver what is promised.

Ron I think of sales as a very individual and competitive field: what are your objectives when you work with an entire sales force collaboratively (Lōkahi)and inclusively (Kākou)?

Ron:   Again the word trust comes into play. The entire sales team must trust the entire operation to deliver the promises made to the planner. They must also trust each other in the way each sales person deals with customers. One bad apple spoils the barrel. --- I guess the reason clichés become clichés and stay in our language is that there is something true in the ones that last.

How would you describe the best-possible relationship between a sales person and their customer?

Ron:   As close to complete trust as one can have.

You and I have met at a time when you are about to embark on a new journey in your career: how do you envision putting your personal signature on your work as the new Senior Director of Sales & Marketing for the Hawaii Convention Center? What are you hoping to achieve for the people of Hawaii (Kulia i ka nu'u)?

Ron:   It is not really about my personal signature. It is about the entire sales team making the business happen for Hawaii and the Convention Center in particular. We have a social obligation to the people of Hawaii to generate business which allows them an opportunity to remain as fully employed as possible which in turn will allow them to raise their families in the best possible manner. It is about our whole team accepting this responsibility and being held accountable for production.

Mahalo nui loa Ron for sharing your thoughts with us. From now on, I for one will always think of sales as creativity in problem solving and building a relationship of trust.

One of the profound impressions Ron left with me, was this sense of civic responsibility he has to our Hawaii communities. He clearly understands that better business translates to better opportunities for our residents whether they are directly connected to the hospitality industry or not.

I’m hard pressed to think of a better way of defining what “Bottom-Line Aloha” can mean for all of us.

Aloha and welcome to your new position Ron. Kūlia i ka nu‘u!

Related posts:
‘Apelila Ho‘ohana: Bottom Line Aloha and the Art of the Sale.
The Art of the Sale 1 and 2.
The Art of the Sale 3: Be “simply better.”
Art of the Sale 4.

The Art of the Sale: Sell “simply better.”

In 1999 Paco Underhill released a terrific book called, Why We Buy: the Science of Shopping. He revealed the why of our purchasing habits.

“In Why We Buy, Underhill explains why we do what we do, notice what we notice, ignore what we ignore and buy what we buy.”

At the time the book came out, my career had temporarily sidetracked (very happily) from opening hotel resorts into retail, and Why We Buy became a sort of bible for me. Read the book reviews and you’ll see they run the gamut from “magnificent” to “misleading.” I was definitely on the magnificent side of opinions spoken because I had sort of fallen into retail by default and didn’t bring all that much knowledge about it with me. If Paco Underhill had answers for me, I wanted to have them.

I learned a lot about buying habits from that book. Because I was not that entrenched in the traditional retail mindset, Underhill wasn’t shattering any paradigms for me; he just sparked bunches of aha! moments, and I was an eager student. As I read his book, there would be certain phrases that would jump out at me like bursts of brilliant lights:

“Why We Buy is about the struggle among merchants, marketers and increasingly knowledgeable customers for control.”

“Why We Buy explains how consumer and retail marketing has gone from being a war to being a bar fight.”

“There is a reason why the Jeep Cherokee comes with a makeup mirror on the driver's side.”

In fact, reading them out of context helped me and my staff think for ourselves in the framework of our own four shops. When I had ShopTalk (my weekly staff meeting) we’d put one of those phrases on the table for discussion and on-the-shop-floor applications that same afternoon would be immediate. There were a lot of customer insights and merchandising ideas that came out of those meetings. Underhill’s book helped us pick our trees out of the very dense forest.

The lessons I learned from Why We Buy have stayed with me a long time, way after I did my last storeroom inventory and tagged my last markdown. I needn’t think that intensely about them anymore. However as with most books, over time I tend to distill the many lessons into one central take-away, and this is the one I took from Why We Buy:

When I evaluate my own business now (not specifically retail, but still a selling business), the question that I ask myself on a continual basis is, “why should they buy — from me?”

The answer also tends to be fairly singular: It’s got to be because what I offer the potential customer is simply better. Better than anything else that’s out there, better than anything anyone else can do for them. It’s a better value, a better experience, a better everything. It’s the best part of me and what I can do for someone else.

I’m pretty sure that Paco Underhill’s book had a lot to do with me finally giving up on the pursuit of perfection. Better can be best far and above perfection. I saw this in action again on my recent Spring Break vacation with my family when we fit in some outlet shopping one afternoon.

My daughter and I went into a Calvin Klein store that must’ve been as close to perfection in merchandising display as you’ll ever find in an apparel store. Everything looked pristine and untouched, and we noticed it as soon as we walked in the door. We’d soon find out why.

We walked over to a section where women’s casual tops were precisely folded and stacked by color and size in chest-high shelving units. On the top of each unit one of each color was fanned out for the customer to see the selection. The moment we approached the display and picked one garment up we were flanked by two salesgirls. They were cordial but it was obvious they were there for one and only one reason: to perfectly refold everything we touched immediately after we set it back down. It was pretty clear they wanted us to look but not touch. Finally, one of them couldn’t stand my daughter’s indecision on a color anymore and said, “Why don’t you just let me get it for you when you finally decide what you want.”

It didn’t take long for their hovering to get to us. We left the store in its cold, sterile, lonely, and perfectly pristine condition without their making a sale to what had been two customers very willing to part with their money.

When it comes to selling, people can be turned off and intimidated by perfection. We want comfort when we buy, and we want to feel and touch. I agree with Underhill that online shopping will never replace stores we can walk into, not by a long shot. We hate locked cases, and we love test drives. “Shown actual size” will never be as good as “looks great on you.”

When we sell, our job will always be to make what we have to offer simply better. That’s a very big part of the art of the sale. It’s a lot easier to sell when you know that what you have to offer is simply better. Not perfect, but heads and shoulders above the closest possible comparison. And feels better is best.

Be simply better.

Related posts:
‘Apelila Ho‘ohana: Bottom Line Aloha and the Art of the Sale.
The Art of the Sale 1 and 2.

‘Apelila Ho‘ohana: Bottom-Line Aloha, the Art of the Sale

Since Managing with Aloha has been released, I’ve found that the single biggest misconception about incorporating the values of aloha into the business environment is this, paraphrased from more than a few tentatively asked questions in my presentations and coaching:

“I understand the worth of managing people well, but can you really make a good profit with so much emphasis on something as warm and fuzzy as aloha?”

You bet you can.

Interacting with people on the basis of shared aloha is the only way I know of to make the sale and have everyone feel good about it. Not pitched to, not ripped off, not misled, not undervalued, not used and abused, yet still sold to, and happy for having made the transaction. ‘Sell’ need not be a four-letter word (with push, hawk, plug, deal and hard sell — what four-letter word were you thinking of?)

“We don’t sell, we help the customer buy.”
Motto of the Mea Ho‘okipa of the Club Shop at Hualalai

Selling does have a stigma to it. It’s largely been my experience that most people instinctively hate to sell (culturally a virtual given in Hawaii) yet businesses need sales to happen.

Sales = cash flow.
More cash in than cash out = profit.
Pretty simple.

This month our Ho‘ohana theme is about selling, something all of us in business have got to do. We’ll call it Bottom-Line Aloha, the Art of the Sale.

Count me among those who when pressed with the fundamentals of it will say, “I hate to sell.” In fact, Gallup aficionado that I am, the only book in the strengths management series that I have not read is the one called Discover Your Sales Strengths. Never even bothered to pick it up and scan the jacket blurbs, for the voice in my head would be saying, “Nope, not for me. No sales strengths to cultivate in this manager, not a single one.”

Over the years, as I’d interview people applying for sales positions who said the exact opposite thing, “I love to sell!” I’d try my best to get into their heads and figure out exactly what it was they loved about it, completely unable to personally relate to their enthusiasm. (I do have a theory on this that I’ll share with you in future posts this month.) Those were usually the longest interviews I’d conduct because I was so sure they were trying pull something over on me. Yes, I was convinced they were selling me something. You get the irony too? Unbelievably, back then I didn’t.

Since founding Say Leadership Coaching I’m discovering that I really enjoy marketing, however I still do not care for sales. I think it stems from the fact that I am a very lousy closer.

But once you become an entrepreneur and self-employed, hating sales and not making the sale is not an option. You don’t necessarily have to do it yourself, but it if you don’t, you better get someone to do it for you, and you better take care of everything else so they don’t encounter any roadblocks.

In my case that’s what I’ve begun to do in assembling my ‘Ohana in Business, creating partnerships with people who have the strengths which I don’t have. And in particular, if you are a good sales person and Mea Ho‘okipa I’m looking for you!

I’ve been told by many people that Managing with Aloha is a very good book, and it is a product that I should be very proud of. I am proud of it, but I’m pretty miserable at personally selling it, other than when I get in front of a room full of people and give a speech about what’s written in it (if I may say so, I am good at that). I give thanks daily for the wonderful people I have at Island Heritage who do the day-to-day sales for me, and the generous bloggers who have evangelized about MWA on my behalf.

Thing is, my book is only one of the things that must be sold at Say Leadership Coaching, and being in business, chances are you’ve got to sell something too.

So this month kākou, together, we are going to tackle Bottom Line Aloha, the Art of the Sale, me in my business, you in yours. Let’s learn together, and get better at making our profits happen, doing it with aloha.

Let’s talk story, shall we?

Footnote 1: If you love sales, have learned to manage salespeople well, are a leader passionate about sales reinvention, or can share any nuance of the art of the sale at all (perhaps a sales book review?) We want to hear from you this month! Please participate in our April Talking Story Meme. Details are here.

Footnote 2: I’d like to give credit where credit is due: I took the phrase Bottom-Line Aloha from the write-up for Managing with Aloha in the current Spirit of Aloha, the in-flight magazine for Aloha Airlines. It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Tags: Aloha. Profit. Sales. Selling. Meme.

Reinvention, Tradition, and Circle of Influence.

There is a firestorm going on with the Carnival of the Capitalists today.

I’d clicked over to pick up the new link for the week for our Ho‘ohana Community Online listing (what I’m talking about is here) and read this:

Welcome to this week's Carnival of the Capitalists, which is my privilege to host for the second time.

I've just come back from a week's skiing in Austria to find over 50 excellent entries in the carnival's mail box. While I've duly read and mulled over each of them, I can't help thinking that it's a daunting task for you, the reader, to give all these great bloggers the attention they deserve in one mega-session.

So I've unilaterally decided to break with tradition slightly and publish one batch today and another on Wednesday. Sorry if you hate the idea, but if I've made your life a little easier, I'm pleased. Either way, leave a comment below or drop me an email (russell AT mobhappy DOT com) and let me know what you think, so other hosts can take board your feedback.

Well, so far the more vocal customers are not happy with Russell’s break from tradition. You can click over there and read the comment string: There are some lessons in customer focus and marketing to be learned there. This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists.

I’m pointing it out to you because while Russell may have had very good intent with his decision, one’s circle of influence is something we who wish to reinvent must be aware of, and be realistic about. There is so much we can all do within our own Kuleana first: Start there, and do it well so that you will have a grand stage from which to launch your future efforts as your circle of influence grows with each success.

In our Reinvention Forum, Wayne had talked about involving everyone concerned in reinvention decisions, and his article is well worth another read when framed in this real-time case study over at Russell’s Mobile Technology Weblog.
Wayne Hurlbert on Reinvention: Whole Business Marketing.

There are two different customers involved here, the authors who submit their articles each week, and those who read them (which includes many in the first group as well.) Let’s think about this:

What kind of reinvention could Russell have done instead that would make the Carnival fresh this week, but not break from tradition in such an alarming way for so many? What do you think?

Related posts:
Working within your Circle of Influence.
The Reinvention Forum Index.
I’ve written about the Carnival two other times:
Carnival of the Capitalists.
So far, I subscribed to 3 new blogs this morning.

Tags: Reinvention. Tradition. Customer Focus. Circle of Influence.

Lōkahi: Our Talking Story Visible Reinvention continues!

What a great week!

I had saved the page views of our HOC (Ho‘ohana Online Community) reinvention essays in my laptop, and on my plane ride home late Saturday I read them all over one more time. A couple of thoughts came to mind for me …

This is just too good to let slip into the archives. Familiar feeling … I felt this way when the February book reviews were done too.

Even more incredible, these essays are from only a small fraction of the great business minds we have in our Ho‘ohana Community. Just imagine what else is possible!

The month’s not over, what other visible reinvention can happen on Talking Story, and for Managing with Aloha?

Yikes! My battery is running low --- find some paper!

For in reading those essays, I was coming up with more business ideas for Say Leadership Coaching, both online and offline, and in virtually every facet of my business. Blinders were coming off, paradigms were shifting, I could see some automatic pilot of my own that escaped my awareness up to that point, and I was getting very excited.

As a result, my To Do List is very long this week, and you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So today, another small visible reinvention for you, but one I am so pleased with, pleased beyond words. For it represents the evolution of our community. It represents how we are going to take the lead in the reinvention of business communities, and in our spirit of aloha post it on the Talking Story home page for others to see, and hopefully get inspired themselves.

In the right column is a new reference listing: it’s called Lōkahi: featuring our Ho‘ohana Community. Check it out.

Why Lōkahi? As I’ve written in Managing with Aloha:

People who work together can achieve more. Lōkahi is the Hawaiian value of collaboration, cooperation, harmony and unity.

Therefore Lōkahi rings these values to teamwork, defining how those who work within an ‘Ohana in Business [and in a Ho ‘ohana Business Community] can be most effective in their collaborative efforts.

Lōkahi gives us a demeanor to strive for in working with our peers in the best possible way. We want their help: many hands (Laulima) make the work more pleasant (‘olu‘olu) and they move it along faster. With Lōkahi, we can achieve more by working together in harmony with others.

Lōkahi is the value of teamwork in pursuit of synergy.

I must again say mahalo nui loa to Lisa, Yvonne, Anita, Chris, Todd and Wayne for this past week’s forum. My HOC ‘Ohana, you inspire me!

Related posts: 
The Reinvention Forum Index.
A Visible Reinvention for Managing with Aloha online.
Don’t let Reinvention intimidate you.
Our March Ho‘ohana: Visible Reinvention in Action.

Tag: Reinvention. Lokahi.Community.

The Reinvention of the Business Community

When I look back at this past week, I am filled with a sense of wonder.

Barely three months ago, we started the New Year with a Ho‘ohana theme of community: do you remember? In part, this is what I’d written on January 3rd:

“Here at Talking Story, you’ll likely find I am eager to embrace new chapters: watch for the new to make itself known in the months to come. And expect that I will ask you to participate: I believe in embracing Ka la hiki ola as the community we have become.”

Back then, I wrote that on a feeling, an intuition that was unspecific yet very strong. I felt very confident writing those words even though I had no idea what the New Year would bring.

This past week, as our Ho‘ohana Online Community gave their mālama — their caring for, their stewardship — to Talking Story, I kept going back and reading about community again. This morning my own thoughts keep coming back to this: Perhaps it is in the evolution of the business community that we will achieve our greatest reinvention in the shortest amount of time.

It used to be, that business people competed with each other. They may have been friendly, but they didn’t network and pool resources.

It used to be, that business people trained and groomed their own. They didn’t mentor others outside the fold and openly share “proprietary” knowledge.

It used to be, that work was work and work was left at work. People didn’t write about it, and become citizen publishers calling for work reinvention on their own time.

That was then, this is now, and we’re not going back. We don’t want to.

We are reinventing competition by competing with ourselves first and foremost. We stretch and grow to make ourselves new, and what we compete against are our former selves.

We are reinventing assets and currency, by adding priceless intangibles that cannot be assessed dollar amounts; intangibles such intellectual currency, emotional engagement, permission and attention.

We are reinventing our very attitudes about work, banishing the 9-5 attitudes and entitlement mentality that can sink promising human enterprise. We are creating business partners within our own companies, and in global neighborhoods.

We are reinventing what it means to “get involved.” Community members challenge mediocrity, yet positively propose solutions and freely exchange ideas — whining, complaining and commiserating are not tolerated.

We are reinventing benchmarking and networking, by creating global relationships that cross industries and cultures. If you have an internet connection you are invited to participate. The choice is yours; there is no old boy’s network making the decision.

More from January’s Ho‘ohana:

“Talking Story was born to be the discussion pages of Say Leadership Coaching, the company I started and dedicated to the ho‘ohana (passionate, intention-filled work) of those who manage, and the people they work with.

My hope was that it would evolve to be the collective voice of an entire community, and thus Ho‘ohana Community is the name that came to be for you, those who read these pages and choose to talk story with us, sharing our mana‘o (deeply held thoughts and beliefs) as an ‘Ohana in Business, a community of like-minded people.

What does “like-minded” mean for us? It means we are intent upon managing our work, ourselves, and our lives with aloha.”

Well this past week there was certainly an abundance of aloha.

It was only this past January that I invited a dozen other bloggers to begin the Ho‘ohana Online Community with me, and this past week’s forum of collective thought on reinvention is testimony to the incredible power that community can have. These generous Mea Ho‘okipa were so eager to add their voices to mine and they did so with such eloquence because you, dear readers, inspire us: You are our community of possibility, hope, and promise. My guest bloggers this week have relished the role of fire-starter: now the reinvention of business that is possible is up to you.

In the past week there were over 620 brand new, first-time readers visiting Talking Story for our forum on Reinvention (the total visitor count was much more): imagine the possibilities if every one simply started the business reinvention movement with their own circle of influence. You had some great inspiration this week, for Lisa, Yvonne, Anita, Chris, Todd and Wayne did way more than I asked them to do for me. Did you catch all of these related articles?

At The Alchemy of Soulful Work:
We're all responsible for reinvention.

At Blog Business World:
Blogging series as traffic builders.

At Business Thoughts:
Reinvention ... buzzword for laziness.

At Lip-Sticking:
Five Phantasmagoric Facts on the Women's Market.

At Management Craft:
Spreading My Tentacles!

At Small Business Trends:
Reinventing a Business.

I encourage you to lead as these business leaders have done. Make the decision to be a catalyst today: don’t leave it for “the other guy” —Reinvention is something you can make happen. Get inspired. Be proactive and be optimistic. We are.

“When I reflect on the past few months, I see many indicators which lead me to fervently believe that this new time is indeed a time for our community, one that has come together invested in the core values of Ho‘ohana and Aloha.

I believe that 2005 will be about championing a much-needed reinvention of work, and this is task for a community: no matter their passion, mavericks and revolutionaries cannot do it alone. What we need to achieve is too far-reaching: our workforce is dwindling and aging, while simultaneously our needs for a dynamic, vibrant workforce are growing. In addition, we are more sophisticated than we ever have been before; people everywhere are looking for fulfillment and a deeper sense of satisfaction. We want meaningful, significant, legacy-building work for ourselves, and for all those we care about.

So what are the answers? I don’t have them all, but I do believe that Managing with Aloha is a work philosophy that can help us find them.

What am I proposing? That we find our answers as a strong and vibrant community of collective thought and inclusive learning.

We can be a community brave enough to challenge each other, and tenacious enough to draw out the best in each individual, empowering them.

We can be a community which is forthright and honest, yet kind and respectful, professional and self-governing in our respect for each other’s spirit and dignity.

We can be a community whi