I’m rather fond of getting language, words, and the vocabulary we use daily to do their magic for us. The principle I routinely promote for this with you, is Language of Intention, Key 5 of Managing With Aloha’s 9 Key Concepts:
Key 5. LANGUAGE OF INTENTION:
Language, vocabulary, and conversation combine as our primary tools in business communications, just as they do in our lives: What we speak is exponentially more important than what we read or write. The need for clear, intentional, reliable and responsive communication is critical in thriving businesses — and in learning cultures, for we learn an extraordinary amount from other people. Drive communication of the right cultural messages, and you drive mission momentum and worthwhile energies. Communication will factor into every single value in some way as its primary enabler. The Managing with Aloha language of intention is inclusive, and is therefore defined as the “Language of We” with the value of KĀKOU as guiding light.
For instance, I love thinking about inspiration and being inspired, as being ‘in-spirit’—in our Aloha Spirit, and energized by it. Our current immersion with KULEANA is another good case in point, with how we started our study for 2018 with ‘self-motivation is really the only kind of motivation there is.’ —Motivation is Kuleana’s Inside Job.
Therefore, as you can imagine, I LOVED this, and wish I had thought of this word-packaging for responsibility years ago!
“All children want to see themselves as ‘response-able’—powerful and able to respond to what needs to be done. They need this for their self-esteem, and for their lives to have meaning.”
For it’s not just children; we all want to see ourselves that way. The good news, is that we can still achieve response-ableness even after we’ve become adults.
The quote comes from a Motherly article by Dr. Laura Markham, and I hope you will read it in full:
Chores, teamwork and high expectations: The 15 habits that raise responsible kids.
Markham’s “15 everyday strategies guaranteed to increase your child’s ‘response-ability’ quotient” focuses on blending the whys and how-tos of responsibility, i.e. no matter what the responsibility you have may be, it’s how you actually pull it off.
“Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
I’m in the midst of using Markham’s list as a model for new workplace training I’d like to offer on Kuleana. As the Managing with Aloha practitioner you already are, I’ll bet you get a few ideas for your own workplace as well. Here are her topics: Can you rewrite them for the workplace?
Before you scoff at the exercise, take a moment to imagine how truly functional and grown-up the workplace would be, if every person associated with it had already learned these as their life skills within responsibility…
- Raise your child with the expectation that we always clean up our own messes.
- Kids need an opportunity to contribute to the common good.
- Remember that no kid in his right mind wants to do chores. Make the job fun.
- Always let children “do it myself” and “help,” even when it’s more work for you.
- Rather than simply giving orders, try asking your child to do the thinking.
- Provide routines and structure.
- Teach your child to be responsible for her interactions with others.
- Support your child to help pay for damaged goods.
- Don’t rush to bail your child out of a difficult situation.
- Model responsibility and accountability.
- Never label your child as “irresponsible.”
- Teach your child to make a written schedule.
- All kids need the experience of working for pay.
- Create a “no-blame household.”
- Teach your kids that, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, they not only have the right to be an individual, they have an obligation to be one.
This is exceptional advice for parents AND for managers:
“If you focus on helping your child take charge of his life, and support him as necessary to learn each new skill, your child will want to step into each new responsibility. Instead of your holding him responsible, he becomes motivated to take responsibility for himself. It’s a subtle shift, but it makes all the difference in the world. The bottom line is that kids will be responsible to the degree that we support them to be.”
Don’t think of responsibility as less-than-joyful obligation, think of it as skill building.
Related Reading in the Managing with Aloha Archives:
- Vocabulary, Lexicon, Dialect, Morphology…oh my! It’s workplace word candy—Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology.
- Your Responsibilities: Kuleana Joy or Clutter? Once your sense of responsibility about something asserts itself in your psyche, it will rule all else. It comes first, and has to be addressed first—you have to reckon with it.
- Responsibility’s Kuleana Keepers— Much good comes from the responsibility you accept, and decide to take ownership of. There is, however, a trap to be aware of as well.
- UnReliant— I once heard it said that ‘unreliance’ is the ultimate success with accepting personal responsibility. To be unreliant, is to be totally on your own: Autonomous. Independent. Self-reliant. Self-sufficient.
These thoughts were originally shared within our weekly newsletter:
Talking Story with the Ho‘ohana Community.
Preview the updates in Managing with Aloha, Second Edition, released Summer, 2016
Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business