Be Brave in Setting Your Limits

I recently added this to my contact page on RosaSay.com (it’s the page where I receive my business inquiries):

… let me save you some time as well: I don’t take guest posts, advertising, or requests to read your press release, or promote your product, book, website, service, or blog post… when time runs short, I skip reading those emails altogether. My mission is to mentor managers in alignment with the Managing with Aloha philosophy, and it’s honestly all I can handle: I commit my time to doing it as well as I possibly can.

I want to be nice, and graciously help people however I can, but that listing of what I don’t handle anymore is my truth in the framing of my life na ‘IMI OLA, and I think it is better to be upfront about it. Managing with Aloha is my circle of comfort and preferred place to be. Better yet if I state it in a way that owns my circle of influence, and hence, my circle of control.

As Austin Kleon says,

“Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.”

And as we say here, make it your HO‘OHANA work.

You’ve heard this before:

No single person can be all things to all people.

I can’t see you, but I can sense your agreement — and your relief that you’re off the hook!

You know what you are effective in and with. You also know what you cannot, and should not handle. Knowing those things, do you own it?

Let’s look at this through PALENA ‘OLE framing, Key 9 in our 9 Key Concepts. In the strictest sense of it, PALENA ‘OLE literally translates to being without limits, edges or boundaries. In our Managing with Aloha interpretation and strategically adopted key concept, we understand that limits, edges, and boundaries do exist, and further, they do help in the positive way that constraints will: What the savvy Alaka‘i Manager will do, is choose his or her limits purposefully.

Role-on-purpose will set the limits of positive constraint.

The commonly spoken identification of those intentions are as our parameters-by-design, our paradigms for success, or as we call it here, our circle of influence.

• The best paradigm of all? Our personal values.
• The best circle of influence? Where our personal values and our professional values are a match, and help define our chosen ROLE.
• For more clarity on this, scroll down to the sub-heading here, titled “Work your full circle.”

We do fairly well in scratching our line in the sand, and mapping out our basics. I take it a step further with you, and ask you for value-mapping, value-verbing, and Value Alignment (article 3 in this series on ROLE). I ask you to then walk your talk every single day, starting with good talk (Key 5: Language of Intention).

Today? I ask you to go farther and be braver with this mantra:

Say YES to the Role you Choose.
Say NO to the Role others impose on you.

“No thank you.” is polite, and it can be said with ALOHA, for your Aloha Spirit shines through when you are true to who you are meant to be, and it IS your ROLE.

The best “No thank you.” will always be followed-up with a demonstration of what you say YES to.

Reconstruct your role as a manager who manages according to your calling. Be ALAKA‘I in that you lead by merit of your own good example and consistent behavior — and that you set a higher bar.

Allow each NO to make you stronger.

I have to admit, that it was difficult for me to add those sentences to my contact page, for it is an obstacle thrown down another’s path: It’s a roadblock in reaching me. I have another page on RosaSay.com that was even more difficult for me to write: What’s free, what’s not. Yet after I wrote it, I felt liberated. I felt honest and true. I felt PONO.

So can you, when you turn each NO into your constraint of a more positive expectancy:

The epigraph of Managing with Aloha;
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist and philosopher

It has taken a career of twists and turns, and today I know who I am, and I know my best role. It can still be hard at times, but altogether it is easier and easier to own my role with each passing day — when that day’s passage means I have owned it, and I have done it well.

The conversation continues…

Aloha,
If you are newly joining us here, this is part of a mini series on The Role of the Manager Reconstructed. You can catch up with this reading path:

1. Now boarding; the ROMR Tour of Duty
2. An ROMR Archive Review
3. Reckoning with Role [to Value it.]
4. then back to the top of this page!

The Role of the Manager Reconstructed is one of our 9 Key Concepts in the Managing with Aloha philosophy.

This article may also prove useful to you if you wondered about the vocabulary we use:
Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology

Mahalo nui, thank you for being here!
~ Rosa