Are you an Alaka‘i Manager ready for The Daily 5 Minutes?
This MWA Resource Page is follow-up for this article:
Revisiting the Daily 5 Minutes: Lessons Learned.
In that article, I suggested you work on 5 things as readiness for the D5M practice:
1. Own your team culture — Be their Alaka‘i Manager
2. Increase your face time — CONVERSE
3. Improve your listening skills, and seek agreement
4. Take personal responsibility for ALL conversations
5. Earn a reputation as an investigative problem solver
[If you have not yet done so, please return to that article to read each of these in full context: Click here to have it open on a new tab.]
Our MWA Culture of Worthwhile Work
In Managing with Aloha workplace cultures, we batch in 5 to be reasonable about whatever initiatives we take on. We want open space and ample time for good work: We make room for finding the beauty in work, and we anticipate that our projects will become meaningful pilot programs.
I write this Resource Page with the assumption that you are a self-coached learner in our Ho‘ohana Community of Alaka‘i Managers, and I don’t have the opportunity to coach you (as done in this workshop) — you’ll have to know if you’re ready or not, and don’t worry, once you begin to work on this in earnest, you’ll know.
You are ready for the Daily 5 Minutes when:
— You have joined me wholeheartedly, as a champion for the art of conversation and Language of We. ‘Talking story’ has become your m.o. yet no one would ever accuse you of being all talk and no action: Conversing is your favorite next-stepping verb.
— You will already be culture-building, forging stronger workplace partnerships and reaping the benefits of Aloha energies. There seem to be more workplace ideas bubbling up than were ever generated before, and they aren’t generated elsewhere — it’s an internal phenomena within your team.
— You will feel your readiness intuitively. You will have the sense that you’ve just encountered the tip of the iceberg, and you’ll be wondering, “What else can we be doing? I know there’s more… I just know it.” You will also feel certain of this: “Whatever it is, we can handle it, and we’re the ones who’ll handle it best.”
This site is primarily written for the self-coached learner.
I would love to meet you and work with you in person, but that isn’t always possible. And there is so much you can do on your own!
Thus what follows are the Reading Pathways through the archives that will help you consider actions to take with each of the 5 learning suggestions I made above as readiness for D5M, the Daily Five Minutes: Turning this into an actively used Resource Page for study and personal application is up to you.
It’s a tool for me too, as your virtual coach of all that Managing with Aloha encompasses — I want you to be successful in making the philosophy your own! As I worked on this listing I only used what is already published in the archives, and it opened up a publishing outline for our future together: I will continue to update this page as I fill in the blanks I now see as opportunities for more learning.
Set the pace which is best for you: Tackle this as you tackle all of your learning, step by step, with new actions introduced to your daily habits as learning practice 1st, and new habit keeper 2nd. Read just one article at a time, and push yourself to turn it into action — no action, no change. The merry magic of it all, is that you actually have a workplace to practice in whatever your job or industry, and hence, you have a laboratory to reap highly relevant benefits from. The secret sauce in this alchemy is you, and your personalization.
Prioritize these 5 areas of study as you feel the need to: Once you get going, you’re likely to be working on parts of them simultaneously.
Study 1: Own your team culture — Be their Alaka‘i Manager
Don’t try to change whole-company culture; improve your own corner of it and go for a ripple effect where good begets more good. There are as many cultures within a company as there are managers: Own the one you primarily dwell in — own your team’s working culture first. Focus on being a better manager in the space of your own influences. Be an Aloha Energy Bunny, one obsessed with the basic happiness of their well-being ~ Happiness is readiness.
Looking for more? These are related site tags used in our MWA vocabulary and Language of Intention (Key 5): employing energy, goal-setting
Study 2: Increase your face time — CONVERSE
Increase your face time. Our need for person-to-person interaction grows every day! Don’t text, or send an email, or leave a voicemail, whenever you can have a personal conversation with someone instead. Conversations do take practice, and the goal is to improve the circle of comfort you have when you converse with the people who surround you. Yours, and theirs. Become attractive as a conversation magnet. Write down this affirmation: “People like to talk to me, and I enjoy talking to them too.” Read it every day, and Ho‘o — make it come true.
Looking for more? These are related site tags used in our MWA vocabulary and Language of Intention (Key 5): circle of comfort, conversing, talking story
Study 3: Improve your listening skills, and seek agreement
Work on your listening skills in each and every conversation you have. Each and every one. Ask for clarification on anything you don’t understand, or might misconstrue. Listen for the values which are at the root of whatever is being shared with you, and respond with the Language of We. Walk away from conversations making a small agreement that honors that value (and thus, that person) whenever you can.
- Speak up, I’m listening
- The Language of We
- Listening Alone Does Not Humility Make
- Managing: Learn how to ask “Why?”
Looking for more? These are related site tags used in our MWA vocabulary and Language of Intention (Key 5): asking for help, speaking up
Study 4: Take personal responsibility for ALL conversations
Learn about the Daily Five Minutes – study it to aspire to it – and elevate D5M as a conversation goal you will graduate to. Then, honestly assess the conversational climate of your workplace culture as it now stands, to work on the good health of existing communications. Take personal responsibility for your own conversations: What do you talk about with ease, and when do conversations get difficult? When are conversations delayed, or swept under a rug and ignored? Be more courageous about the conversations you should be initiating — you know which they are.
Looking for more? These are related site tags used in our MWA vocabulary and Language of Intention (Key 5): good questioning
Study 5: Earn a reputation as an investigative problem solver
Earn a reputation as an investigative problem-solver. Tackle small issues and grow yourself toward solving larger ones by merit of more personal experience. Others will value conversation with you once they see you as their go-to source of possible answers. No one expects you to know everything, or have all the answers, but great managers are expected to be great finders who look for answers in the right places, and take initiative in correcting course.
- Getting the Old to Become New Again
- Choose your next Project Kukupa‘u
- On Ho‘ohiki: Keeping your promises
- 7 Steps for Resolving Customer Complaints
Looking for more? These are related site tags used in our MWA vocabulary and Language of Intention (Key 5): keeping promises, piloting projects, problem solving
Relish the Learning. Enjoy the Striving.
Look to ‘IKE LOA (the value of learning) and KŪLIA I KA NU‘U (the value we associate with striving for excellence) to be your self-coaching value drivers.
Have any impatience to start the Daily 5 Minutes be your virtue for now:
Virtue is not a word we hear all that much; it’s not a thought that crops up in the regularity and routine of our days. Well, I propose that we revive virtuous living it as a wonderful new habit to keep within our practice of ALOHA.
What is Virtue? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
“Virtue is the habitual, well-established, readiness or disposition of man’s powers directing them to some goodness of act. Virtue is the moral excellence of a man or a woman … as applied to humans, a virtue is a good character trait.”
How can you not like that, and want more of it? Your character emerges from the deep inner weavings of your values, your spirit, and that emotional well-being which is quite instinctual for you: It is flushed out and propelled toward others on the vibrations of your good intentions. Indeed, the virtues you choose to practice were in fact chosen by your “moral excellence.”
