I recently got on a phone call with a mentor of mine in Ethnic Studies at the university. “The interest in DEI work has been really increasing in local organizations,” I shared, with excitement. I started to go on, but he stopped me. “Wait, what’s D.E.I.?” He asked.
Within the context of networking, how do we demonstrate aloha, not just in words but in practice? First, we have to know how aloha is defined. The late Aunty Pilahi Paki, a poet and philosopher, penned the Aloha Spirit Law, summarizing the essence of aloha in an acronym.
I recently went to the dentist, having missed my scheduled appointment several months ago while the office was shut down. After getting me checked in, the hygienist sat me down and asked how I was doing. I immediately blurted out, “Please don’t judge me – it’s been months and I haven’t been flossing at all.” She laughed and said, “It’s ok. Consider today a reset.”
I say that because I didn’t start out in the talent development space. I got into organizational development and workplace facilitation five years ago after spending the first half of my career in education and community engagement. In that work, I played a bridge role between communities and institutions to address systems of inequalities that continued to marginalize people.
I recently celebrated one year of starting my independent consulting business, People Strategies Hawaiʻi, LLC. Making the decision to go out on my own was admittedly a very difficult and intimidating one, because in my experience, “consultants” were always touted as these wise, revered, well-seasoned experts who would emit their philosophies to mere mortals from on high. First, did I even want to be seen in that vein? But to be credible in consulting at all, would my five years or so in the organizational development (OD) count as expertise?
I often thought of this LinkedIn platform as a sort of broad “marketplace” of people and ideas, yet distant and irrelevant from the ways we traditionally network within our communities face-to-face and through social connections here in Hawaiʻi. We often joke that everyone here is 2 degrees separated. Why would you need a social media platform for that?
