Mana'o Mondays: How Do Leaders Show Aloha?

HONOR, COURAGE, COMMITMENT and ALOHA are our core values at PHNSY and IMF. As leaders we have many opportunities to showcase these values daily. The first three values are shared throughout the Navy, but the key value that separates us from the other shipyards is ALOHA.

But how does a leader display Aloha? This is a common question we hear a lot.?

Is it just by simply saying the word “aloha" throughout our day?

Instead of saying “Hello", we say “Aloha", and we should be good?

Do we just put the word somewhere in our programs titles so we can say we are using it?

How does one actually show Aloha?

In 1LS (First Level Supervisor) training we have an exercise that asks junior supervisors, how does one show HONOR, COURAGE, COMMITMENT and ALOHA? The supervisors come up with some great ideas and behavior statements.

Here are the five common themes that 1LS classes are coming up with when it comes to “How can Leaders show Aloha" that we can all use as reminders:

1. Know your people.

• Know your team members and who they represent. Know the type of person that they are most of the time. Get a good baseline of them, so we know when they are not being “themselves".
• When they are not themselves, ask those questions that only someone who really knows someone else well can ask. “What's bothering you?" “Are you ok?" “How can I help?"

2. Think of others.

• Ensure the “hand offs" from job to job, from shop to shop, from code to code, are clean.
• If we know a little bit about the next person and their requirements, and how we impact them by what we do or not do, we can be purposeful when interacting with them.

3. Don't hurt anyone.

• Safety is key for everyone, not just ourselves. Sometimes the work we do may be dangerous to others, so we need to ensure that our impact on others are mitigated to the best of our abilities.
• Communication is key. We are not mind readers here, so we need to be clear in what we are doing so others stay safe around us.

4. We are not perfect.

• No one comes to work thinking “How can I screw up today?". How we treat people that make mistakes is critical to our retention and our culture here. Hold them accountable, when necessary, but know that sometimes it's a “can't" vs. a “won't".
• Have grace upon others knowing that we have good intentions, but sometimes fall short of perfection.

5. Work together towards our common goal.

• It is a Kakou thing. We are all in this together, and our goals are individually different, but collectively the same. Let's help each other obtain each other's goals so we can gain our overall collective goals.
• The big picture is made up of small little puzzle pieces that we all respectively own. Without each of those pieces, the big picture cannot be realized.

Hope these reminders can help us stay focused on our value of Aloha. It truly is what separates us and makes us No ka 'oi. Aloha is more than just a word.