Homework for the Workplace

Now that I teach in the workplace, I look at homework in an entirely new way.

When I was in school, I figured the teacher gave us homework to check if we understood what we were taught. “What we were taught” was a combination of two things: What we were given in class, and what we had to read or figure out on our own later. Homework was also practice for the test that would inevitably come at some point.

I teach adults, and in honoring the fact that they’re all grown up, I figure they’re ready for homework reinvented. For one thing, the test sure is different.

With teaching people about Managing with Aloha, I ramp up the expectations, assuming that if you don’t understand and agree with what I’m teaching you’ll raise your hand before class is over, that is, before the homework is even assigned. Sometimes there’s reading that goes with it, with my book and others as the texts, but that’s in addition to the homework. That’s for going even further on your own and busting through your previous limits.

The homework I give (and I give it every single time I teach) is all about immediate application in the workplace: Now that you know something you may not have known before, what are you going to do with it, and by when? For example,

• If you have now learned that Kākou is about inclusive communication in business using the Language of We, what will you now do at work tomorrow to make it so?
• If you have now learned how managers intercept the ball in work performance using Lōkahi, crushing apathy and boredom, in which play this coming week will you make your move?
• If you have now learned about the five different elements Ho‘okipa brings to exceptional customer service, which element are you coaching your staff in before that next customer walks in the door?

There won’t be a test given by me, but you can be sure you’ll get graded by the people who really count.

Academic interest and a final exam you crammed for won’t get you a passing grade in Managing with Aloha. My classroom is not in the meeting room we use for the lesson; it’s in the workplace, and learning is when you make a lesson real by making it count for something immediately meaningful. Homework is when you put the key I’ve given you at class in your own ignition, turn the starter and begin driving.

Homework is also about consistency of visible action, for my students are managers and leaders, and they must understand just how visible they are. Just about everything they do gets noticed. Just about everything they don’t do gets noticed too. Therefore, the homework I choose for them, has everything to do with what I want others to notice about them, and about all of them as group of people who have purposely learned together. Everyone gets the same homework, so that every manager is noticed for the same things by every employee they manage. As a group of managers, I want them to become a peer group to be reckoned with, a force of Aloha that cannot be ignored.

Homework creates magic in the workplace. In Managing with Aloha, not doing your homework simply is not an option … unless, for some screwy reason, you don’t want it to work for you.

Today, I deeply appreciate every teacher who ever gave me homework to do. Where ever you are, and whatever you may now be doing, your homework worked for me, because it became a concept I was intent on making count for something. Mahalo nui loa; thank you.