In case you missed it, this post is a follow-up to this one: In Culture-building, Start with Communication
Within that article we talked about 2 things:
1. A healthy culture is an enthusiastic receivership for meaningful work.
2. People within that culture — your peeps — receive best, when good communication practices are in place. Those practices will foster good relationships simultaneously.
What follows is;
3. Language of Intention is the Managing with Aloha way of keeping your culture talking, speaking desirable language.
This is why we are so dedicated to Language of Intention as one of our 9 Key Concepts, “the ‘bone structure’ in how we apply Managing with Aloha in our business thinking.”
As we’re fond of reminding ourselves,
You can’t walk the talk when there is no talk to walk.
Language of Intention feeds the Culture Beast
After I hit “Publish!” on my last article, I started thinking, “they probably want some examples… I would.” So here you go…
When I look back at what we have archived in our Key 5. Language of Intention category, I find 32 different articles, and I keep dipping into The Role of the Manager Reconstructed and our ‘Ohana in Business modeling as well. In addition, we have a reference page dedicated to the Language of Intention of our Ho‘ohana Community of learners:
Conceptual Index
When we say, Speak with Aloha, we mean, Get the values of Aloha into your language and all your communications. Talk the talk. …read more here.
If I were to narrow all that content down for you, as the best examples of Language of Intention goodness we actually use in Managing With Aloha cultures day in and day out, the index to follow captures my reading (or rereading) suggestions for you.
What does Good Communication mean to you?
Before you dip in however, let me stress that I’m about to offer you my examples. Of course I’d be thrilled if you adopted them as your own as an Alaka‘i Manager —as you read these you will quickly sense I write them in that spirit, hoping you will!
However, the true beauty of Language of Intention is that magic word Intention. Effective language in any culture is intentional: It is purposeful and never trite or careless. It is never parroted memorization; it is instantaneously spoken with genuine feeling.
Make your Language of Intention as a manager what you want it to be, and with the dreams of your best results in relationship-building in mind. Think of the words you speak as part of your personal and professional signature, and your management style —for it is!
“There are as many cultures in an organization as there are managers.”
— strengths management guru Marcus Buckingham
You know this to be true: Building a good working relationship with another person must be genuine and sincere. It also has to be somewhat natural to you, so it will be easy for you to initiate and flow with. You cannot choose a best practice in communication to adopt, and then hesitate and procrastinate with it.
So take liberties. It’s your culture, and you need not follow my best practices to the letter. I am hoping they will simply inspire you to have an idea or tweak of your own, for remember what we said last time: Consistently means Daily.
“Just 5” is how we roll…
It actually wasn’t hard for me to choose these, despite the variety of all we talk about here. Best practices will indeed be the practices you truly invest in, constantly repeating them.
1. D5M: The Daily 5 Minutes.
Absolutely, positively, the BEST communication practice I recommend to managers and leaders, bar none. I guarantee you it will change your workplace relationships for the better, for I have witnessed its effectiveness again and again and again.
2. Talking Story: Talking Story is Thriving. It’s What We Do..
Talking Story is a genesis concept for our Ho‘ohana Community… you can even introduce a foreign language (Hawaiian values? Oh my.) and sense of place localisms, welcoming them into your culture and finding true universal resonance. Take note of its definition here as a succession of talk.
3. The Big Rocks Metaphor: Next-stepping and other Verbs.
This post talks about how Language of Intention gets constructed. No language came together on Day 1 as like-minded people gathered and sat around a camp fire. A culture’s language develops over time in this fabulous as-needed manner: You apply new learning as time goes by, and you internalize it.
4. Conversation is King: All Conversations Are Not Created Equal.
Managers will often bring up technology when communication is discussed, launching into the challenges of email, texting, the new language of app communication (for it is indeed a new language) and the big black hole of assorted written communications.
However please, PLEASE remember: When it comes to relationship-building you must focus on only one kind of communication, the one that trumps all others — person-to-person conversation. Trust me on this: When you nail a great relationship via person-to-person, face-to-face, in-real-life conversing, all those other vehicles of communication fall into their rightful place as the secondary options they are supposed to be.
5. Batching: Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7.
Language of Intention double-dips into productivity — a lot. We use 4 types of “managerial batching” in MWA culture-building:
- “1 by 1”
- “2 by 2”
- “Just 5”
- “7 Strong”
Bonus Links for your Weekend Reading: It’s also good to review how managers can be good receivers: 1. Speak up, I’m listening. 2. How to Listen.
