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You are here: Home / Key 3. Value Alignment / Teaching ‘Ohana Values

Teaching ‘Ohana Values

August 3, 2016

‘Ohana: “Family, and those you choose as family.
‘Ohana is a human circle of complete Aloha.”
—Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, page 97

“Parenting lessons can help you be a great manager.”
—Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, page 26

Tina Roth Eisenberg, who I previously introduced you to here: “Trust Breeds Magic” pointed me to this article on the Washington Post:

Five things that can make you a better parent right now.

  1. Cultivate a family value system.
  2. Prioritize self-care.
  3. Create strong but kind boundaries and routines.
  4. Don’t take your child’s behavior personally.
  5. Take the time to connect, and know how to laugh, play and not take yourself (or your children) too seriously.

You can click through to read those “five things” in full, however I could not resist highlighting number 1 here on the blog:

“1. Cultivate a family value system. “Well, jeez, who doesn’t have values?” you may ask, and the answer is that yes, when asked, all parents profess to having strong values. But Americans don’t have a common parenting culture that has been passed down to us. Our wonderful mix of religions, ethnicities, worldviews and customs means that we are able to create our own parenting and family mores.”

“This is both freeing and problematic. How do we feel about faith, busyness, education, puberty, sex, romantic love, marriage? The questions can go on and on. But rather than seeing this as a problem, parents have the power to create their own family values, and that’s spectacular.”

“You wanted more faith growing up in a family that didn’t practice anything? You can choose a religion for yourself and your children. You feel that travel is an important way to understand the world and how others live? You can hit the road with your family at every opportunity. You grew up volunteering and giving to others, and you loved it? You can continue it in your family.”

“But it’s not enough to just say something is important, or to do something without thinking about or explaining your choices. Effective parents consciously choose their value systems, talk about those choices and make sure that they are practicing them in their everyday lives. Parents know that if they don’t create a value system for their family, our society will, and, frankly, we don’t want society raising our children.”

— article author Meghan Leahy
Image credit: Gwen Keraval/for The Washington Post

Let’s reframe for management:

Leahy nails this in her summary, the bold reframing mine:

Effective managers and leaders consciously choose their value systems, talk about those choices and make sure that they are practicing them in their everyday work. These Alaka‘i Managers know that if they don’t create a value system for their ‘Ohana in Business, our society will. The influence of sense of place is inevitable.

We prefer to have our ‘Ohana in Business influencing our society in a values-centered way, as the positive role model we know it has the potential to be.

“Values only matter if you use them.
Using them makes all the difference in the world.”
—Rosa Say, The Mission Driven Company

Make your values specific.

Make them specific, and give them teeth.

“…it’s not enough to just say something is important, or to do something without thinking about or explaining your choices.”
—Meghan Leahy

As long as I am able to, I will incessantly talk to you about defining, exploring, aligning, curating, and setting highly visible in-real-life examples with your values, because to manage and lead with Aloha we must make our values practical, relevant, and useful.

Invisible, wimpy values cannot be the catalysts they are meant to be. Characterless, lackluster values are boring and uninspiring, and as long as they remain unremarkable, they will not equip us.

The mistake I see so many companies make, is that they allow their values to be generic, politically correct, unemotional and whitewashed. They are far too general: Executive teams will adopt values like “Excellence. Service. Teamwork. Responsibility. Integrity.” without digging into those words and making them truly mean something relevant to company mission and vision.

Don’t leave your values up to generic interpretation— It is lazy, and it is irresponsible.

Light a fire within your values. Talk about them constantly, and expect them to happen throughout your workplace and in all your business interactions.
— Rosa Say

Related Reading in our Aloha Archives:

  1. To Manage with Aloha is to Hack Behavior
  2. Management Style by Habit
  3. Curating Value Alignment

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Our #AlohaIntentions value for the month of August, 2016 is Aloha.

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19 Values of Aloha: Index Pages

There are 19 Values of Aloha taught within the Managing with Aloha philosophy:

Ch.1 Aloha | Ch.2 Ho‘ohana | Ch.3 ‘Imi ola | Ch.4 Ho‘omau | Ch.5 Kūlia i ka nu‘u | Ch.6 Ho‘okipa | Ch.7 ‘Ohana | Ch.8 Lōkahi | Ch.9 Kākou | Ch.10 Kuleana | Ch.11 ‘Ike loa | Ch.12 Ha‘aha‘a | Ch.13 Ho‘ohanohano | Ch.14 Alaka‘i | Ch.15 Mālama | Ch.16 Mahalo | Ch.17 Nānā i ke kumu | Ch.18 Pono | Ch.19 Ka lā hiki ola | Full Listing

Resource Pages

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Additional Resource Pages: 9 Key Concepts | 12 Aloha Virtues | A Manager’s Calling: 10 Beliefs | Conceptual Index (Lexicon Morphology) | Daily 5 Minutes | Hawaiian Glossary | Sunday Mālama | Archives

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The 9 Key Concepts of the Managing with Aloha ‘Ohana in Business Model

Key 1. The Aloha Spirit | Key 2. Worthwhile Work | Key 3. Value Alignment | Key 4. The Role of the Manager Reconstructed | Key 5. Language of Intention | Key 6. The ‘Ohana in Business Model | Key 7. Strengths Management | Key 8. Sense of Place | Key 9. Palena ‘ole

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