Our Managing with Aloha Markers:
Looking back: If we put all the holiday stuff aside, as joyful as it has been, we primarily had 3 things going, and still do.
1st our values constant: we have shifted to The Value Immersion of Ha‘aha‘a (humility) and Ho‘ohanohano (dignity) as our value pairing for January and February — we’ve updated our Value of the Month program with a pairing we work on every 2 months. 2nd, we were talking story about piloting projects and this as one suggestion. The 3rd thing was an optional, but very highly recommended self-coaching exercise: Looking back to Hō‘imi Forward.
Going forward:
- On our value pairing, just stay tuned (subscribe!) and continue with your own immersion (Start). In case you missed it, here’s the link to my complementary essay just published January 1st: Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility.
- I have the follow-up on our Hō‘imi Forward exercise queued up to publish here Friday, January 9th.
- There will be more on the goodness of piloting projects, as we demonstrate how projects can be much easier to tackle than we often anticipate they will be. If you wish to, you can skim the archive tag to see what it’s already populated with. Our current project together, builds a habit of using daily affirmations to inspire us, as the Alaka‘i Managers we aspire to be. Read on, for that is what the rest of this post is about.
As Preface to the Affirmations:
This was Round 1, a beginning of our efforts to be better managers. This was Round 2. I’m counting our Christmastide 2014-2015 project as Round 3, and this is a new category link: Project: Affirmations.
It’s fun to change it up, don’t you think?
Our Daily Affirmations, Round 4
You will often hear/read me say, If we are to walk our talk, we better have a good talk.
Our Language of Intention (Key 5) is crucially important. The language we choose, and the vocabulary we use, compels us to quicker, more confident decision-making in self-leadership. And while quick, those decisions are not impulsive, for within Managing with Aloha culture-building, we cultivate a language based on values and on intentional value alignment.
“Once you’ve mastered a particular language, you’ve also mastered a means of thinking. You understand how to decompose a problem into knowable units, and you learn how to intertwine those units into pleasant and functional flow. Perhaps you’ve figured out how to get that flow to perform at Herculean scale. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an essential and valuable skill for anyone to learn and master. However, there is a language you could master that teaches many of the same lessons, appears far more forgiving in terms of syntax, and has immediate broader appeal. The language you can learn is your own.”
~ Please Learn to Write, the Language You Can Learn is Your Own
– Michael Lopp, Rands in Repose
In the affirmations we begin 2015 with, we will concentrate on our language and our vocabulary. We will revisit, freshly learn, and newly affirm how we as Alaka‘i Managers Speak with Aloha.
Our 2015 Kick-off: Speaking with Aloha
We start tomorrow.
For a preview today, and even if you’ve read these before, please review:
- Managing with Aloha’s Lexicon Morphology.
- Conceptual Index. This is our resident Resource Page. Just read the intro and skim to be familiar with it, I do not expect you to take all those links, nor do I suggest it, for essentially, Round 4 of our affirmations will cover them in small daily bites.
- Just as a navigational reminder: Remember you can read more articles on Key 5, indexing Language of Intention, by taking the category link found in the right column of the blog. If you normally read our updates via RSS, please click in to see how that entire column has been updated recently.
I do have a formatting update to tell you about as well. In the feedback I have received on Rounds 1 – 3 of our affirmations, several people have told me they much prefer having them here on ManagingWithAloha.com rather than on Ho‘ohana Aloha, our Tumblr. Your wish is my command! My caveat to granting that wish however, is that the affirmations might not continue to be daily… I truly do not wish to bombard you, and I will skip those days I have other meaty articles set to publish.
The affirmations will be kept short, promise! I will also continue to add them to Managing with Aloha’s LinkedIn group page for the sharing and talking story done there.
Affirmations and Speaking with Aloha
To affirm something, is to articulate it clearly in your own mind, and then state it with confidence as your intention. We affirm our intentions with our actions.The affirmations which result, get more and more effective in commanding your attention to them, when they are repeated with some regularity.
What I love about affirmations most, is the way they contribute to, and constantly will reinforce our values, and thus, our ethos of behavior: Ethos: Be true to your Values. Affirmations themselves, as practice, will directly reinforce the values of Ho‘ohana (our actions), ‘Ike loa (our learning), Ho‘ohanohano (our demeanor), and Mālama (what we are stewards of).
And let’s not forget Kākou (how we communicate): As an effective manager, you cannot “walk the talk” (a common expectation from your staff I’m sure you’ve heard before) until you talk that talk first. Make your talk the speech driven by good affirmations. Speak with Aloha.
“As a parent and as an employer, you really need to know what you stand for, know your values — and not only know them, but also be able to articulate them. … I have the same values at home that I have at work, and I think it’s important that there is no distinction … you need to be truthful, you need to be the same person, you need to live your values.”
~ Tina Roth Eisenberg, a.k.a. Swiss Miss, “an epic design maven who creates fascinating cultures and conversations.”
