Manager, Keep Thyself Together

Now into the throes of February, we, in a managers’ talking story huddle, were dishing on the lifespan of our various New Year’s resolutions.

Keala spoke up just in time, curbing what might otherwise have become a downslide into dropped resolution commiseration. She said, “I’m doing pretty well with mine, mostly because I made only one resolution this year: Keep yourself together girl.”

She explained to us that her goal was to “never lose it again.” She’d taken a good look at her management style, and “it wasn’t pretty, and I want pretty!” She’d figured out that she got stressed, and acted that way, where everyone around her knew she was stressed, when she tried to handle way more than she was capable of handling well. Their translation: “Keala’s in a bad mood again.”

She summed up her resolution by saying, “I don’t want ‘Less is More’ exactly, I want less to be LESS. Less stress, fewer bad moods, better finishing of whatever I start, and a happier me as a more attractive me.”

What a terrific resolution! As we all know, Keala’s “only one” resolution has immense ripple effect, yet I love the way she attached her goal-setting to it with personal specifics, including her naming it as her attractiveness.

I can imagine the nodding heads out there as other managers read this, for Keala isn’t alone: Manager Fluster is a common affliction. And Keala nailed it: Manager Fluster is NOT attractive.

We get agitated, nervous, unsettled, confused, ruffled, upset, bothered and short-tempered — flustered — when we no longer keep it all together. As Keala has figured out, the culprit is in that tiny 3-lettered word — all.

And keeping “it” all together isn’t really about the stuff, or about any task individually, but about our behavior in taking on that stuff and accepting it like some pack mule instead of as an intelligent and thoughtful manager.

The difference between
Who you Are, and
Who you Want to Be, is
What you Choose to Do

When we blame others for our lot in life (their assignments for us, their delegation to us, their expectations of us) we lose control of our self-determination — we lose it.

When we focus on ourselves, we focus on our own acceptance or rejection of those assignments, that delegation, and the accuracy of perceived expectations — we get back in control, and as Keala puts it, we keep it all together.

Then, we are able to reach that sweet spot, where we begin to attract the great work we were destined to do.

I have a feeling that 2013 will be Keala’s year!
Manager, keep thyself together, and make it yours as well.

By the way, happy Chinese New Year too — isn’t it great how the Chinese calendar gives us the chance to restart if we want to?

Archive Aloha with related reading:

• Role Reconstruction: Design your Sweet Spot as Manager
• Alaka‘i Managers are the new Energy Bunnies
• Doing the Drill Down: Less is More
• Managerial Batching: 1, 2, 5 and 7
• Give Managers their Chance to Excel

For more reading paths, go to New Here? or click on the tags found in the footer.

… And here is some help from RosaSay.com:
5 Essentials Employees Need to Learn — From You

Key 4. THE ROLE OF THE MANAGER RECONSTRUCTED:

Managers must own workplace engagement and be comfortable with facilitating change, creative innovation, and development of the human asset. The “reconstruction” we require in Managing with Aloha is so this expectation of the Alaka‘i Manager is both reasonable and possible, and so they can channel human energies as our most important resource, they themselves having the time, energy, and support needed in doing so. Convention may work against us, where historically, people have become managers for reasons other than the right one: Managing is their calling. A new role for managers must be explicitly valued by the entire organization as critically important to their better success: Managers can then have ‘personal bandwidth’ for assuming a newly reinvented role, one which delivers better results both personally and professionally, and in their stewardship of the workplace culture.

Site category for Key 4: The Role of the Manager

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha