The 10 Alaka‘i Beliefs of Great Teachers

When I read Dean’s posting, “The Teacher as the Leader” I could not resist pulling out one of the most popular articles I have ever written for the web in the years since Managing with Aloha was published so I could compare notes.

I had titled it “The Calling of Management: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers” as a plea that managers not settle for “pretty good” or “good enough,” and pursue greatness relentlessly. Belief in the people we manage is where we had to start.

Those of you who teach in our schools get hold of those “people we manage” way before we do.

School Friends by Woodley Wonderworks on Flickr

I would like to seize this timely opportunity Dean has given us (an opportunity framed by his recent writings) to revise my mini essay for all of you who are teachers, for I would make a similar argument about teaching.

Teaching is a profession that I believe to be a calling. This calling to teach is rooted in exceptionally strong beliefs about our human capacity and worthiness.

Learning feeds on this belief of possibility.

What is your calling to teach?

Dean wrote a power-packed sentence as the beginning of his article;

“Teachers are leaders (of people) and managers (of processes).”

In my own coaching vocabulary I stay away from the word ‘leader’ as much as may be possible, for a distinction which collaborates with what Dean wrote. One person (and I prefer calling them managers) will do both things, manage and lead. Those two words are the actions of management and leadership; they become more useful to us when we think about them as intentional and strategic verbs.

In my mana’o (belief system) MUCH commonality exists between great managers and great teachers, in large part because they share the Ho‘ohana to see others succeed as the result of their generously given mentorship, with learning being the great enabler. It’s a kind of servant leadership, whether you call that mentorship ‘managing,’ ‘leading,’ ‘teaching’ or ‘coaching.’

To be a great manager, you must believe in those you will manage and lead.
To be a great teacher, you must believe in those you will teach and mentor.

I honestly do not believe there is any other way. So here is my article revision for teachers, with the inclusion of Alaka’i, the Hawaiian value of leadership.

The 10 Alaka’i Beliefs of Great Teachers

It is extremely worthwhile to see this light of renewal go on in teachers eyes when they realize that the hard work of teaching can evolve into the gift of a calling in your life.

When you are a teacher, your work is vitally important: it matters.

Take your work from good to great. What is your Ho‘ohana intention?

Did you choose to be a teacher, or did you just find your way to being one? Whatever the history of your journey, do you love being a teacher? If not, why do you persist in being one?

You can’t be a great teacher if you do not intentionally choose to be one, and then make a passionate commitment to teaching consciously and with full intention. To get started with Managing with Aloha as a helpful values-based philosophy, you must be able to honestly say being a teacher is your deliberate choice, and that your passion lies in the joys which come from being a great teacher: “Good” is not good enough, for as a teacher you directly affect the quality of student’s lives. That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.

You must take stock of where your own convictions are when it comes to certain beliefs:

What do the truly great teachers of our world believe in?

1. Teachers must believe that people are innately good. Without this core belief and faith in their students and communities, great teaching and the learning it enables is not possible.
2. Teachers believe they do not work on their students, they work with them; they enable and empower their working on self. They believe this results in a mutual collaboration: They learn from their students as much as they will teach them.
3. Teachers believe that empowerment comes from within, and has more to do with self-motivation and innate talent than with an obedience to authority. They get their cues from the student, not from the curriculum, lesson plan or learning process.
4. Teachers believe that all students have strengths which can be made stronger, and that their weaknesses can be compensated for to become unimportant.
5. Teachers do not believe they train students as they teach, they believe they grow talents, train skills and offer additional knowledge.
6. Teachers believe they coach and mentor students, and they love doing so — not “like,” love.
7. Teachers believe that the students they teach are more than capable of creating a better future. They hold great faith and trust in the four-fold human capacities of physical ability, intellect, emotion, and spirit, no matter a students’ age.
8. Teachers believe in the power of positive, affirmative thinking, and they have a low tolerance for negativity. They are confident and eternal optimists, and they share their enthusiasm.
9. Teachers believe it is their job to remove barriers and obstacles so students can attain the level of greatness they are destined for. They believe that “can’t” is a temporary state of affairs, and that everything is only impossible until the first person does it. They believe that “I don’t know” is a beginning, and not an end.
10. Teachers believe that their legacy will be in the students they have helped to achieve worthwhile and meaningful goals. They believe that success is measured in people who thrive and prosper having learned to be good contributors to our society while in their care as students.

These are the reasons why teachers matter, and why teaching is so vitally important. These are the challenges you must be eager to tackle in your calling as a great teacher; Let-me-at-’em, I’m-perfect-for-this-job eager.

Additional Reading

You may find these complementary essays helpful, though they were written for managers in the workplace:

1. What’s your Calling? Has it become your Ho‘ohana? Excerpt:

I have a core belief about being a manager, and that is that management is a calling, and NOT a job defined by a title or position on an org chart. To be a great manager is to answer one’s calling to bring Ho‘ohana work to people as well, just as you have already done for yourself. In the Managing with Aloha philosophy for example, we frame that Ho‘ohana delivery work in a workplace that is values-centered, mission-driven, and customer-focused. You can think of those three things as the other compass points, however Ho‘ohana is always our North Star.

2. The Role of the Manager in Managing with Aloha: The case for a better way to work. Excerpt:

Managers are still overwhelmingly treated as technicians and process-marchers in most workplaces, and not as the coaches, mentors, and people-groomers they SHOULD be, and should be ALL THE TIME.

I have nothing against all the brilliant technicians, organizers and conductors in the world, for heaven knows we need them, and I have been known to dabble in their expertise too… However those are different jobs — not better, not worse, different — than the job managers should have. It is dramatically different from the definition of the Role of the Manager in a workplace managed and led with a foundation of Aloha in the organizational culture.

Tagged as: Alaka‘i, Aloha, belief, functions, Ho‘ohana, leading, managing, roles, teaching, vocabulary