People You Need to Meet: Rosa Say

Ever been around someone new that you felt like you've known your whole life?  There are just some people that make you feel very comfortable and welcome.  I believe most of this comes from trust, experience and an inherent love of people.

Rosa is one of those types.  I was fortunate to meet her from a fellow blogger, Dave from Wiz Speak and I've never been the same since we first exchanged emails about management, people and blogging ideas.

I encourage you to spend a few moments reading this interview and also checking out her blog and business.  You can also read her book that I have a link on the bottom right as well.  Your time will be well spent.

Business Thoughts:  Tell us about Rosa Say?

Rosa Say:  I'm a management coach in Hawaii who is a manager through and through: I love management and I love coaching managers to achieve their greatness. I have a passion for reinventing work and our workplaces, and to be honest I can be pretty obsessive about that and my passion for writing. I have to remind myself daily that when all is said and done the work I do can't love me back, and I need to focus more on my family and the people I care about. Leaving corporate life to work for myself has helped me to do both things much better, and I feel very blessed right now.

BT:  You have a wonderful blog that is full of resources and information on managing people.  Why did you start blogging?

RS:  Oh thank you Todd! for that is exactly what I want Talking Story to be, a readily-accessible resource for managers and leaders jam-packed with knowledge currency they can bank.

I started blogging because I wanted an electronic means to engage with my coaching clients. I needed to develop a website, and I was looking for a way that I could quickly learn to design and maintain it myself without having to work with a webmaster. I do believe in hiring experts versus trying to do everything in a business yourself, but in this particular case I knew I'd be a frequent learner-tester-adapter and unless he sat at my side daily a webmaster wouldn't be responsive enough for me. I have a huge hunger for learning to do web design myself, and as a writer nuts about aggregating business knowledge, the blogging platform was perfect for me.

Just this past week I've worked to finish an update of SayLeadershipCoaching.com which totally converts it from a static website to another interactive blog (a big thank you to any understanding readers out there who may have witnessed the week's roller coaster). However I still am working with the webmaster who did my original site: Now we can get into some other more advanced stuff for my business — more fun for him, a better investment of my dollars for me.

BT:  Do you have any "success stories" from blogging?  What are your goals of blogging?

RS:  When I think of how much I've learned since I started blogging … whew, that's a pretty big success story by itself! I often tell other entrepreneurs who have asked me about Talking Story that if I can do this, so can you. As a business owner I recommend blogs highly as a fantastic means of reaching more customers while marketing your authenticity.

There is no doubt that Talking Story has helped in the success of my book, for people find and reach me more easily thanks to the magic of search-and-ye-shall-find-blogs-first. Authors who have blogs become more human to their readers: You can send them questions, and they answer — personally! Their future writing gets the better for it in a positive feedback loop. Managing with Aloha has reached more people globally than I'd ever imagined it would, and my learning about blogging has helped me develop a great online resource for MWA readers (and my coaching clients) to keep the book's lessons alive and ever-evolving.

I've mentioned my Internet learning goals; the blogosphere and its web-wide connectivity has become my classroom. I have six different blogs; 3 are public, 2 are internal (a client workspace, and a staff intranet) and 1 is personal for my family. I have different goals for each of them: The possibilities of what blogs can be used for really intrigue me.

For Talking Story in particular, the goals I have most in focus right now have to do with the reinvention of the online business community. What we have been able to do in the professional fellowship and shared aloha of the Ho'ohana Community of Talking Story is deeply satisfying and energizing for me. You Todd, have been a very important part of that success, and I am very grateful to you and the other bloggers who have been willing to take this ride with me. I think of Talking Story today as a professional online version of the show Friends; my goals for it are similar to a TV writer trying to hatch a spin-off, and enjoying every minute of the process. My customers, the Ho'ohana Community of readers, will tell me where Talking Story needs to go next.

BT:  Tell us more about your "day job" and your book, Managing with Aloha .

RS:  When I am not writing for Talking Story I am coaching, training, and speaking about Managing with Aloha, and as the subtitle of the book says, bringing Hawaii's universal values to the art of business. I have both individuals and companies as my coaching clients, and I speak to a pretty wide variety of audiences. I love being a businesswoman, and I coach, train, and speak about the business work world.

I am a strong believer in the effectiveness of the Gallup strengths-management model, for I've repeatedly seen it work, and as a 'Maximizer' on their profiling, I am very attracted to strengths. Strengths management celebrates people, and Managing with Aloha brings their innate values into the picture for a strengths-values match-up to complete that picture in a more meaningful way.

Managing with Aloha is more than the name of my book; it is the heart and soul of all the coaching I do. When I coach and train, MWA is used as a workbook and reference. The Managing with Aloha model reinvents a person's management style in a more productive, humanitarian and rewarding way, while remaining true to that person's innate strengths and personal values. It does so understanding that at the end of the day businesses must make a profit, and thrive in a self-sustaining manner. I offer six different services, and if your readers are interested I have more about them at SayLeadershipCoaching.com.

BT:  You reference, almost educate your readers on Hawaiian words/phrases and their meanings.  Why is this important to you?

RS:  Your question is interesting to me, for this language instruction is not something I've consciously set out to do: I write the way I speak and coach. 99% of the people in Hawaii speak English as their first language with commonly-known Hawaiian words sprinkled into their sentences, and I'm in that 99%: I don't speak Hawaiian. However the Hawaiian-named business values of MWA have become a business language for me, and if I am, as you say, educating my readers on Hawaiian words and phrases it happens just because that's who I am.

As a coach I do find that language is powerfully transformative, in that new language creates new meaning. For example, if I say "ho'ohana with lōkahi" to a manager, the literal translation is "work purposely on your teamwork." But if I have coached that manager on the Hawaiian kaona (hidden deeper meanings) of both ho'ohana and lōkahi, they know I am telling them to bring the passion they have for the work they do to the collaborative efforts of teamwork which seek the creative breakthroughs of synergy — and they know how to make that happen. Quite a difference. 

BT:  What are you most proud of?

RS: I am proud of creating Managing with Aloha as a way to better articulate worthwhile work for people, inspiring them to achieve it for themselves. However I count my proudest achievements in bodies; those managers whom I have had a part in mentoring to live their best possible lives, in love with what they do and with who they are. On a more personal level, I'm very proud that I've raised my two children to have the healthy attitudes they do have about bringing meaningful work into their own lives; I'm proud of the young adults they have become.

If I go a bit farther back into my work history, I ended my corporate career as the only female, American vice-president working under the umbrella of a Japanese-owned company that was then the third largest construction company in the world. I do feel good that what I have achieved has been done so with authenticity and integrity; those two things are important to me. I'm proud that I'm still learning every day, and willing to reinvent myself now.

BT:  Is there anything else that would help the readers of Business Thoughts know more about you?

RS:  We've already talked about a lot! So not about me as much as about my message: Managers matter. However you need to be a manager for the right reasons — the good reasons, for managers have a profound effect on the people they work with. It comes with the territory, but it is also what makes management so meaningful and rewarding. If you are a manager you are a critically important person: Accept your responsibility for leadership and manage with aloha, always.

Mahalo Todd for talking story with me, for you know how much I love Business Thoughts and the passion you bring to all that you do! You're the real deal, and I become the better myself for knowing you. To be interviewed for your People You Need to Meet feature is quite an honor and privilege for me.

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tags: interviews | management | managing with aloha | people you need to meet