Managing with Aloha

The Hospitality Cancer? Routine.

This is about curing a kind of workplace cancer

I am in week two of a ten-week sprint for my company, in which we are bringing the one-two punch of Aloha and Ho‘okipa to a collection of Hawai‘i businesses in two-hour sessions. The goal of the class is to define the true art of exceptional customer service through the lens of these two Hawaiian values, in a way that will get all participants charged up and feeling good about being Mea Ho‘okipa and delivering on their companies’ promise.

Up to now, we have largely concentrated on coaching managers and leaders at Say Leadership Coaching, and this has been one of only two classes we have done in which we teach a whole work team together, regardless of where they may sit on their firm’s org chart (the second one is on Kākou and Lōkahi, the values of teamwork.)

Why the classes work

Both classes are very popular with the participants involved, and both have very high re-booking rates, and the reason has become pretty clear to me: The managers in attendance get to watch us coach their staff, and their staff get to watch us coach their managers. We keep it safe, and we keep it positive and charged with learning, and they love it.

You can probably tell that I am quite proud of these classes, because I feel good about the value we deliver with them. They are great fun to do.

“New” might just mean “different”

Most of the service and hospitality ideas we collectively come up with for them in our Aloha and Ho‘okipa class, are not new and they are not complicated. They do not require resources they don’t have, and for the most part they don’t cost a dime. What their new ideas have in common most of all, is that they are different— for them.

Before each class I devote about an hour of telephone time with my client, to get clear on their reasons for hiring us, and for wanting the class. I have long lost count of the conversations that have some iteration of this symptomatic phrase; “Well, there are several people in the group who’ve been with us a long time now, and they don’t like change.”

During the class, what we discover is that they are in fact starving for change. They are starving for fresh and for different. The cancer that is sickening their spirit is routine. They have become complacent and apathetic (and thus their service levels are mediocre) because they don’t have permission to be original, and to try different (or they think they don’t).

Your first instinct is probably to say, “hey, I’m not stopping them!” and maybe not intentionally.

Never, EVER say “Yeah, but ...”

If you have ever told your staff, “well, we’ve tried that before, BUT …” you are killing their spirit, and you are the complacency cancer’s lackey.

Our Aloha and Ho‘okipa class works for us because of a simple and effective coaching technique. When someone in the class volunteers, “well, how about if we … ?” no matter what the idea is, we say something like, “that sounds like a terrific idea, tell me more!” If a doubting-Thomas look crosses the face of any manager in the room we walk somewhere to divert attentions so that manager will not be in anyone else’s line of sight.

We prod, we encourage, we seed the idea with a some kind of twist, and no wet blankets are allowed.

Ideas are catalysts --- ALL of them

In asking people to “tell me more” they begin to cook up and create, challenging themselves to tell us something pretty fabulous as they keep talking. Their peers start to chime in because they want to help them please us, and long-suppressed ideas which WERE in their heads before we ever showed up, start to get remembered. Hands start shooting up for a turn to speak, and we get really good at calling on the arm raisers based on the rest of their body language; we keep the positive ideas flowing.

Bring your empathy to work

If you feel your staff has become complacent, put yourself in their shoes. If you’d be bored doing their job, chances are they are too! Routine work days are a cancer. They snuff out the warm spirit so necessary in giving hospitality to others, for your staff cannot light that candle if they have no fire of their own.

I sincerely believe that Mea Ho‘okipa are not that rare. They can be found in virtually every company (or they won’t be in business very long). It is entirely possible you can’t “see” them because they are bored.

However this is one cancer every manager can cure.

 

A Ho‘okipa red carpet is out for you at Talking Story

This is our last weekend before a new month is upon us, and you know that August will promise study on our next Managing with Aloha value! So in your quiet time this weekend, grab a cup of soothing tea and enjoy the hospitality of the guest authors we have welcomed to the Talking Story blog during July.

Have you read all of these articles yet? Even if you did at first posting, you are likely to find something new in the comment conversation ~ do join in!

A warm mahalo to all of these authors from our Ho‘ohana Community; the sharing of your mana‘o is very deeply appreciated.

Deb Estep: Ho'okipa Via The United States Postal Service
Lisa Haneberg: Build Energy then Go Where the Energy Is
Reg Adkins: Hospitality: Our Gatherings Seek to Meet a Need
Maria Palma: Hospitality: The Key to Peace on Earth
Dave Rothacker: Ho'okipa: A Mother's Love
by Rosa: Hospitality and the Comforts of Home, with Company
Reg Adkins: Our Gatherings Nudge Us Toward Collaboration
April Groves: Dissecting Hospitality
Joanna Young: Writer, reader, place: writing with ho'okipa
Maria Palma: Welcome to the Customer Service Carnivale!
by Rosa: A charge for the Ho‘okipa Brigade: Social Graces
April Groves: The Business End of Southern Hospitality
Dwayne Melancon: Hospitality is more than façades
Carolyn Manning: No Requests Required
Phil Gerbyshak: Hospitality: It feels like home
Rebecca Thomas at Career Niche: Be worth copying

Two more ways to get involved were offered there:

1. Take a look at the list we are starting of Books on Hospitality and give us your recommendations; which book would you add?
2. Co-write this posting, by brainstorming in the comments; What are your interview questions for the Mea Ho‘okipa?

Are you a Hospitalitarian? Are you a Mea Ho‘okipa?

I have recently noticed that Seth Godin is piling up the conversational trackbacks right now about a new job description: Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer. I’d suggest to everyone showing so much interest in the idea that the person they are looking for is the Mea Ho‘okipa, and that’s not really a new job at all: It is a timelessly crucial role.

Seth, as you put together your job anthology, I am quite sure you will discover the future is now. High demand? You bet.

Mea ho‘okipa are tireless advocates and builders of community, and here’s something else to understand about them: They advocate and build as well as they do as a “selfish act.”

As you may know, I hold Mea Ho‘okipa in very high esteem, for I greatly admire their capacity palena ‘ole (capacity without limits) in giving – in LIVING – the art of hospitality. I wish I could be more like them.

I believe that Mea Ho‘okipa are born that way;

Personally, I do not believe that you can teach someone to be Mea Ho‘okipa: Either they are or they aren’t. You can’t fake a genuine sincerity for giving that you simply don’t have in you. The good news is that many people have it.

Learn to interview in a way that reveals those naturally born Mea Ho‘okipa. Hire them on the spot. You can then better devote your time toward creating the best possible environment for them to deliver their art of Ho‘okipa without shackles, boundaries, or inhibitions. You discard any rules that get in the way of them doing what they feel the guest needs—not always what that customer may think they want, but what they really need to be satisfied. When it comes to their guest—your customer—Mea Ho‘okipa are extremely intuitive: They inherently possess the instinct to know the difference and they proceed accordingly, giving them perfect delivery of service. Mea Ho‘okipa are dripping with caring, that marvelous ability to instinctively know what their guest needs to be happy; they can feel it.

~ from Managing with Aloha, page 82

Are you Mea Ho‘okipa? Do you have that instinct that I believe to be “extremely intuitive?”

This morning I was skimming through a book I have now read several times, one that I feel should be required reading for anyone who aspires to have a winning business, for it certainly is a primer on ho‘okipa and hospitality. The book is Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.

Meyer has another word for those who are Mea Ho‘okipa; he calls them hospitalitarians. This may be a case of when my Hawaiian words are easier to say! However whether you call them Mea Ho‘okipa or hospitalitarian, we agree about how special a person this is.

“It may seem implicit in the philosophy of enlightened hospitality that the employee is constantly setting aside personal needs and selflessly taking care of others. But the real secret of its success is to hire people to whom caring for others is, in fact, a selfish act. I call these people hospitalitarians. A special type of personality thrives on providing hospitality, and it’s crucial to our success that we attract people who possess it. Their source of energy is rarely depleted. In fact, the more opportunities hospitalitarians have to care for other people, the better they feel.”

~ Danny Meyer, in Setting the Table (page 146 if you have it)

Yes indeed. Being selfish can be a good thing, one where you and your customer come together at last to the great delight of a prospective employer.

You see, the Mea Ho‘okipa do not experience their inner peace and joy unless they have given to another person. Their spirit is conveyed through the equation of warm and beneficial human interaction. To a customer, Ho‘okipa is unparalleled service —it is the epitome of service! —for it was given to them completely unconditionally, something that is exceptionally rare. What they are actually feeling, and experiencing, is ho‘okipa, the art of hospitality in the good hands of a master at providing it.

As said so succinctly in one of my all-time favorite quotes, “One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”

Related articles:

• How timely this is! Our value of the month is Ho‘okipa, the art of hospitality, and we had started July with this article: Ho‘okipa, the Hospitality of Complete Giving.
• What are your interview questions for the Mea Ho‘okipa? In the comments of this posting, you will find another quote from Danny Meyer about something he calls the “charitable assumption” of the hospitalitarian.
• Setting the Table, The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. My book review written this past March for A Love Affair with Books on Joyful Jubilant Learning.
• Another, slightly different take on selfishness: Selfish Mentoring. This is an article I had written for my guest posting invitation on Lifehack.org. Essentially the article is about better and smarter delegation, where Selfish Mentoring is about trading your ‘having to’s for more ‘wanting to’s.

The Customer and You; Together at Last!

Customers and the businesses they patronize have a peculiar type of relationship most times. It can be a barely synchronized, strange song and dance routine in which they move to different drummers. One wants to make a profit, and the other wants to pay the least amount possible for the most value they can get. Each watches the other carefully and suspiciously, waiting to make their grandest theatrical moves when they can do so catching the other with their guard down.

However there is one very glorious exception to this wary and restrained relationship, one time when both customer and business owner want exactly the same thing. That one time is everything and anything having to do with ho‘okipa, and the hospitality experience they share, more commonly referred to as the almighty goal of extraordinary customer service. With ho‘okipa bathing their relationship in the warmth of hospitality, everyone wins every time.

In fact, this is when the customer wants the business to win in a big, big way, for they have a vested interest in that success. Not only do the customers give in, they willingly participate and become guinea pigs for us. Amazingly, they will allow the warmth of a pleasant human interaction shared within hospitality trump shortfalls in product excellence and service execution every single time. People don’t want cheaper, they want better. Businesses don’t want to give cheaper, they want to give better.

Thanks to ho‘okipa, customers and businesses come together at last. Absolutely wonderful how that happens, don’t you think?

Ho‘okipa Coaching of the Day – Deliver on the Promise

Kūlia i ka nu‘u (strive to reach the summit) helps us define achievement for ourselves, and for our business.
Ho‘okipa (the hospitality of complete giving) will help us define the achievement we must attain to satisfy our guests and our customers.
—from Managing with Aloha

What does your customer dream about?

Business 101 teaches us to give customers what they want: Choose the right product or service, one that the market demands with enough regularity to reward you with profits if you become the supplier of choice.

Assuming you’ve done that in the creation of your business, Managing with Aloha incorporates the art of Ho‘okipa to achieve a service and product delivery that is unparalleled in the dreams of your customers, turning them into loyal customers for life. When people feel they have experienced the ultimate in good service and in hospitality, they return for more of it time and again.

In my book I mention Sam Ainslie, then my boss at the Hualalai Resort and someone I still think of as a mentor. Sam used to ask us constantly, “Do we deliver on the promise?” The promise meant the customer’s dream, and our confidence that they could make it come true with our partnership. In our place of work then, we truly thought of the promise as The Promised Land: Hualalai as the gracious, aloha-transformational Hawai‘i of the customer’s dream — what did they expect to find when they came to us, and were we delivering it to them?

What is The Promise in the dreams of your customers?

Where are you in that dream as Mea Ho‘okipa?

Photo credit.

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Mea Ho‘okipa = the epitome of the gracious host or hostess
Mea Ho‘okipa = you as customer service provider

About the embedded links I chose in this Coaching of the Day:

• in the creation of your business. If you are an entrepreneur, especially one working from home, I highly recommend you add Success From the Nest by Tony D. Clark to your website reading list (About Tony and his website). The link I chose goes to an article he wrote on his three musts for what I have referred to as Business 101.
• the art of Ho‘okipa goes to my value-of-the-month essay for July 2007 on Ho‘okipa.
• and in hospitality, refers to an article I had written on Talking Story sharing Danny Meyer’s coaching on the difference between service and hospitality. His words are a must read if you have not yet seen it. I share more about Danny Meyer, who has been called “America’s Most Innovative Restaurateur” in this book review done for Joyful Jubilant Learning.
• this Sam Ainslie link will take you to an interview Sam did in 2002 with Paul Spencer Sochaczewski of Golf Vacations magazine. It starts; “ ‘I've lived a dream,’ Sam Ainslie says. You might call it a charmed life. Everything he touches seems to go well.” Today Sam runs Kūki‘o.

A Cracker Jack® prize for Steve

Do you like surprises? Sure you do, we all do.
Giving them, receiving them, or both?

Remember Cracker Jack®? Can’t remember the last time I had some, and as I write this my craving for that sweet molasses smothered popcorn is intensifying, for it’s my second posting about it (as you’ll soon see).

When we were kids, my dad would come home with those oh-so-recognizable Cracker Jack® boxes for my brothers, sister and me, and then smile with an almost wicked delight as we scrambled to pick a box. He’d laugh at all the deliberation and wrangling we went through to finally settle on the box we claimed as our own, sometimes trading between the five of us, and sometimes protectively holding the first one we pounced on, refusing to let go. It was one of the few confections we didn’t tear into right away, even knowing that there was a surprise inside. In fact, I think that was why we didn’t.

Partly it was that delayed gratification factor, for both the treat and the prize — my dad didn’t bring it home that often; with a big family we all knew it was a good-paycheck kind of thing, especially because no decent human being would expect any kid to share a box with a sibling when there was only one prize inside it. Part of it was the almost endless second guessing about if we’d picked the right box or not, and should be reconsidering the trades, for with five of us there surely would not be duplicate prizes. Trading after the prize was revealed just wouldn’t happen; that was for sure.

We did go through two rounds of trades; “Wanna trade?” when we first opened the box to eat the popcorn – and you had to eat it to get to the prize; dumping it out to get the prize and then putting the popcorn back in the box to eat later was the BIGGEST no-no of them all; you were a baby if you did that – and “Wanna trade now?”  when we all had reached the package with the prize sealed inside.

As unruly a bunch as we could be, no one opened the prize packet until everyone had the treasure in their hands and all the popcorn was eaten (or my dad would never buy such wasteful kids another box ever again); it was this no-need-to-say-it kind of rule between us.

My goodness it has been a long time since I’ve thought about this! Had we understood values, principles, decision-making and such then, we would have known that some of our character and the way we now think may have been defined during those times we sat in a circle on the front lawn under the starfruit tree making our trades. As the shady spot next to the garage, that was the farthest we made it when dad came home with them and called us outside – he couldn’t wait to give those boxes to us either.

I was the oldest, and many were the times I’d trade with the two youngest ones just because my brothers wouldn’t and I didn’t want them to cry. At first I was pretty selfish and thrilled in the game-playing too, but eventually, keeping all eyes dry and moods decent come dinner time became much more important to me than whatever the plastic toy in that package … without explicitly saying so, my parents made it clear who was expected to be the oldest in both age and behavior while sitting under that tree.

I remember that I kept those plastic toys in one of those purple velvet bags that Crown Royal whiskey comes in; my grandpa had given it to me. Most of the time the bag was stashed in my underwear drawer (yes, clever…) and I’d only take it out when I got a fresh box of Cracker Jack® and a new prize to keep, or when I’d have to babysit and needed cheap bribes. All five of us had our own collections stashed somewhere, but they were never part of the “virgin trades,” another unwritten rule.

Who’d have thought we’d learn so much from a Cracker Jack® box.

All these memories came flooding back to me because of a certain idea. I started to give, but so far, I feel like I've been receiving mostly! How would you like to help me give a Cracker Jack® Prize to someone who is an exceptional example of who a Mea Ho‘okipa (exceptional host) truly is?

The “starfruit tree” we’re all sitting under is over at Passion for the Good Customer Experience. Come play: That Cracker Jack® Prize

Mmmmm, yummy. You know you want some!

Ho‘okipa, the Hospitality of Complete Giving

I know of you.
I know that there is great wealth to be shared between us.
I have been very eager for July’s arrival, giving us a stage on which to do so.

“Wealth, thought the people old, is found not so much in your possessions, but in the ability to give generously of what you possess… The primacy of giving is best shown by two of the most important values in Hawaiian and other Polynesian societies, namely generosity, or lokomaika‘i, and hospitality, or ho‘okipa. The essential nature of both is the liberal giving of what you have. Such an act of generosity deserves the name lokomaika‘i, which means good heart.”
—Dr. George Hu‘eu Sanford Kanahele, scholar and historian, and author of Kū Kanaka, Stand Tall, A Search for Hawaiian Values

When I reflect back on the too-short time I had the great privilege of studying with Dr. Kanahele, the kupuna whom I credit most for catalyzing my own journey in learning the Hawaiian values, two of his teachings consistently emerge as the most insightful and long-lasting for me. One is how he defined sense of place, and his open-arms embrace for all who wanted to be of Hawai‘i. He was a welcoming and receptive man. The second is captured best in the quote above, taken from his seminal book about the value of hospitality. It is quite closely connected to the first, for his welcoming and receptive nature was an inseparable part of his aloha; his spirit lived from the inside generously shared outside.

As a result of Dr. Kanahele’s teaching, itself lokomaika‘i and given to me with the unending generosity of his good heart, I would define ho‘okipa with these words when it came time to publish a book of my own about the Hawaiian values;

Ho‘okipa is the hospitality of complete giving.
Welcome guests and strangers with your spirit of Aloha.

What I have learned in my practice of what I was taught, is that in sharing Ho‘okipa with others, we gain our own joy and we invest in our own well-being. “One of life’s greatest laws is that you cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening your own as well.”

Ho‘okipa, the complete giving of hospitality

Ho‘okipa is the value we will visit this month, intent on having it receive and bless us as both intentional learners, and as those who want more of this splendid gift to be ever-present, vibrant and giving in our lives.

A lifetime of living in Hawai‘i learning about Ho‘okipa has impressed this upon me; the key word in my own definition for Managing with Aloha is strangers. Aloha must be present and offered to others freely, no matter who those ‘others’ may be, and no matter how little you may know about them. You know of them, that is, of their humanity and therefore, of their greater capacity. You must trust in the good which innately resides within them, even if you have not yet experienced it. You must believe they are supremely worthy of all you have to give them until they prove otherwise. Even then, it may be they are not yet in their own place of best receivership, and if you are Mea Ho‘okipa, the host or hostess who embodies the lokomaika‘i of ho‘okipa, you can trust their time of best receivership will come.