Looking for the good in people

“I learned early in life that if you want people to love you, you gotta make sure you love them back.” —George Foreman

Truer words were never spoken.

In your January Jumpstart, I’d asked you to do a Relationship Report Card of sorts; remember this?

4. In MWA, review the last paragraph on page 23 to this phrase on page 24: “… when you do hire, select employees you believe in and are willing to create a relationship with.”  Then, take stock of the relationships you have with those you manage: List their names, and rate your connection with them on a scale of 1-5, 1 being poor, 3 being just average, and 5 being terrific. This will be your starting point: in our February Ho‘ohana we’ll work on steadily improving your ratings.

If you are going to manage well, with the intent of aloha, there are no two ways about it; you have to like your people to begin with.

I will often tell managers that hiring is the single most important thing they do. When they hire the right people for the right position, everything else is so much easier. Choosing people you want to have a good working relationship with is part of the selecting well.

Interviewing well is an acquired skill, and it does take practice. There are three things I suggest you look for in candidates:

1. Value alignment, i.e. their personal values are in alignment with the values held in the highest regard by your company.

2. The talents and strengths you need for the position they’ll fill. Any weaknesses they have should be irrelevant to their role with you.

3. A great attitude. I am definitely a fan of attitude over experience, hands down.
[Related article: Experience Required. (Are you sure?)]

There is a 4th thing: you have to like them. It usually isn’t on the list because it seems so obvious, but make no mistake about how important it is.

Now all of that is the easy part.
What happens when you inherit the employees you have?

In starting a Managing with Aloha program with someone, inevitably questions like this one in my email today will come up:

“Rosa, how does one share aloha with a destructive or damaged human being?  Can one love the spirit within such a one while condemning the actions?  This is a very big philosophical question - every organization beginning to consider MWA has players who will not fit in for various reasons. How do you help them realize they need to move on, especially when their needs are met with their destructive behaviors?”

Dealing with this is at the heart of what management is all about, and it’s why managers matter so much.

“Can one love the spirit within such a one while condemning the actions?” Yes, I do believe that is possible, and beyond possible, badly needed by more of us. To best explain my belief, you can read pages 24 - 25 in MWA for my story of what Dr. Galen Chock had taught me about correcting someone’s behavior which preserving their self esteem.

Said another way, I choose to believe that people want to come to good, and that they do have it in them. However I empathize with the struggle you can go through, and in no way do I wish to imply the process is easy, especially when one is challenged to share their aloha “with a destructive or damaged human being.” However, I believe we must live and work in the vision of the possibility.

MWA is a philosophy about elevating the human spirit. It is about looking for the beauty in people until you find it. Sometimes, all you can do is honestly recommend people put themselves in another job which suits them better, so that their beauty starts to emerge again. However, you have to trust it’s there.

Let’s go back to your Jumpstart exercise.
How can you improve your ratings?

There are two tools explained in MWA specifically designed to help you improve your relationship ratings while they simultaneously help you discover the beauty in your people. Take some time to read about them in your book. They are;

1. The Daily 5 Minutes on page 145, and

2. The Mahalo Log on page 202.

You should think of the Daily 5 Minutes as a daily vitamin, and yes, the daily part is crucial to your habit. You can think of the Mahalo Log as the booster shot to get when you need it. Together, both of them can reinvent the relationships you have with your staff, and help you see beauty everywhere.

Since MWA was first published I have written many more articles about the Daily 5 Minutes, and you can find them on Talking Story in this index.

technorati tag: Aloha. MWA index: Aloha.

--------------------Tracking MWA Jumpstart:

NEXT JUMP: “Catch a Rising Star”—yours. Part II.
[You will see Part I linked in the post.]

BACK TO THE LAST JUMP: Articulating Aloha in your Language of Intention