Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Good Change: Signs of a growing community

If you are reading this in an aggregator, would you please do me a favor and click in today?

When I posted our 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books three days ago, I combined it with some changes on the blog, and you need to click in to see them in the left and right columns.

They are testament to the exciting evolution of our Ho‘ohana Community as an online presence, and further, they are designed to be resources for you when you read Talking Story.

Here’s what to look for:

Ho‘ohana Community Voices

The old HOC blogroll has been renamed Ho‘ohana Community Voices, and these are the first two links there:

...About the Ho‘ohana Community

I have intentionally placed it where the top of the page you land on navigates back << to the Mission of SLC, and forward >> to a new archive page serving as an index to all our past Ho‘ohana Community Forums (there have been seven forums so far.)

...Our recent forum: A Love Affair with Books

This new link will be updated with the blogroll with each new forum, and thus, directly under it, it says, The links below are our mahalo to the bloggers who so generously contributed to our recent forum. Do visit them!

Ho‘ohana Community Resources

There is another, brand new listing under Ho‘ohana Community Voices, and it is called Ho‘ohana Community Resources. These are links to community member sites which would not be covered by my forums, and we need to keep them readily accessible, for I believe you value them as I do.

The first link listed there is a new TS feature:

...Community Bulletin Board

The article I did this past Thursday called Have you noticed? generated a lot of community energy, and many have asked that I do that more often. Traffic spiked like crazy that day and continued through the weekend (as of this writing, that post has gotten more visitors than our Love Affair with Books), but what I was excited about was that energy: our community ho‘ohana-watts.

It took alot of time to put that post together, and much as I’d love to, realistically I can’t do that too often. So I started thinking that I needed another link in residence on the TS home page which could serve the same purpose between the community link fests I can do. Thus the new Ho‘ohana Community Bulletin Board as the first link under the new Ho‘ohana Community Resources column.

If you want to be notified whenever there is an update to this new HC Bulletin Board, pick up the feed for www.sayleadershipcoaching.com for that is where the page is housed:

Click in and see what is already there. You can contribute to the Ho‘ohana Community Bulletin Board too, and the how-to is at the end of that page.

Got some other long-overdue blog maintenance done too. “User-friendly” can mean way-too-wordy, and now that we are seeing the word BLOG pasted on a lot of magazine covers I figured I could clean up a lot of explanation-turned-clutter. I hope you agree.

On a somewhat related note, I liked what John Jantsch said when he wrote, Thank God The Blog Craze Is Almost Over (via Wayne). My commentary on that is here if you’re interested.

Come on now, and tell me the truth; wasn’t that a lot more entertaining and colorful than what you normally see in that aggregator of yours? Click in more often, you know you are always welcomed here.

Postscript: All of this, and a nudge from our SEO master Wayne (mahalo Wayne!) also lit a fire under my okole (that’s gluteus maximus in Hawaiian...) to clean up the navigation links on www.sayleadershipcoaching.com too.  All 3 of the new community links can be accessed there, in the left column, under the HNewsletter subscription link. They look like this:

>>Ho‘ohana™ our Newsletter
Join the community!
>> The Ho‘ohana Community
>> HC Bulletin Board
>> HC Learning Forums

Our 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books

Ho‘owaiwai is a Hawaiian word which means,
"To enrich."

This is what the power of the written word has been for me, and for many in our Ho‘ohana Community. Thus today, we celebrate our incredible richness once more in our 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books.

We share so much more than our recommendations for certain titles; we share our hunger for knowledge, our thirst for the revelations of experiences shared in the non-fiction genre, and our optimism for the new learning that reading is certain to inspire in us. We revel in the possibilities they present, knowing those possibilities can be ours.

These in themselves provide vast, deep abundance. When you read the book reviews which follow, I am sure you will delight in their variety; there are titles you will recognize, yet I am quite sure there will be others you do not. There is a find here for everyone. As I did, you will gain renewed respect for those we are so blessed to be in the company of in this community; you will be filled with a very keen sense of appreciation. I felt very humbled to have the honor of putting this compilation together for you.

However, there is more kaona (hidden meaning, or connectivity) in the Ho‘owaiwai of books which I’d like to share with you if I may, before I do present those reviews.

There is a very wise gentleman in our Ho‘ohana Community who has been mentoring me in the concept of added value ever since I had the extraordinary good fortune to meet him.

Bringing our values to central importance in our lives and our work is the essence of the coaching in my own book, Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawaii’s Universal Values to the Art of Business. I have done extensive research on values. However, I would discover I still had to learn more. You see, it would be a full year after I completed the writing of my book that I would meet David Rothacker.

David would soon become mentor and I would be the student; we have had many conversations about adding value to every life’s lesson, so that Ho‘owaiwai, our lives continue to be enriched as a result of what we have given to others. David has taught me to continually ask myself,

“How can I add even more value?”

2005 was a very good year for my business, Say Leadership Coaching. Good is always worth celebrating; very good means it is time to give back in a couple of different ways. For instance, it is time for added value to our Love Affair with Books, just as David has taught me so well.

So yesterday, I put my order together for a copy of each one of these books which are presented for you in the reviews which follow. I will be printing a copy of each review and enclosing them in the books with special bookplates which say,

With aloha from the Ho‘ohana Community.

I’ll be adding a few copies of Managing with Aloha and It’s Not What You Say … It’s What You Do for a total of 32 books purchased for a very special group. They will be our surprise gift to the library of the Hogan Entrepreneurs at Chaminade University when I next present an MWA Workshop for their class in April. You had met them last year in this post. Kept within this library, the books will also be made available for the students of Chaminade’s MBA program. Every student will receive a booklet containing printed copies of all the reviews, produced by my publishing company, Ho‘ohana Publishing.

These students represent our future hope for business, and these books can inspire and mentor them not only in the richness of their own pages, but with the aloha of the words added by our community.

Update: Here is a recent article written in The Honolulu Advertiser, further illustrating why I am so encouraged by the Hogan Entrepreneurial program: Chaminade Students help homeless folks find jobs.

To all who participated in this year’s Love Affair with Books, thank you for your magnificent choices.

Mahalo David, for your mentorship.

Now on to those reviews! Get ready to stock your own shelves ... Last year we started with nine Reviews, this year there were twenty! Welcome to our

2nd Annual Talking Story Love Affair with Books:

Have you noticed?

Our community is rockin’ and rollin.’

Have you noticed?

… how Phil Gerbyshak has turned into such a tagging master? Man oh man is he sharing some great pointers with us. And that’s just part of the way his blog is starting to take flight. Great writing and energy there. Pretty exciting. Like his interview with Hanna Cooper as just one for instance.
… that Ken Partain’s new Daily Choices is “short and deep” reading (my post yesterday)? Ken shares such positive, self-affirming action that will create that aloha abundance for you.
... that just yesterday, Tim Milburn posted a download link for a free new e-book he wrote called Touching All Four, Living Leadership One Base at a TIme? Tim uses a baseball metaphor for leadership which hits a real homerun: you have got to read it.

Have you noticed?

… that Dwayne comes up with some of the very best post titles for Genuine Curiosity? Like, Go ugly early, and even that Incompetence is wonderful. Dwayne, you are wonderful.
… those best management practices Lisa Haneberg collected for all of us so brilliantly? So smart how she enlisted the help of her community judges! Magnificent choices in our Oregon three :-) As you can imagine I was pretty thrilled to have someone submit the D5M. Mahalo nui Bren for your vote of confidence too.
... While you’re at Lisa’s Management Craft, make sure you sign up for her new newsletter too: Lisa’s coaching is not something you should miss, and you know how she jumps into her new projects with such breakthrough potential. Get infected.

Have you noticed?

… that Christopher Bailey has Dupal’d a new home for the Alchemy of Soulful Work? Bailey WorkPlay is the newest visible connection to his ho‘ohana. Strong mana‘o pono.
… that Skip Angel took on the writings of W.Edwards Deming with such thought and insight? - wow!
… that Troy Worman has a manifesto up for your votes at ChangeThis? I saw that he’s got the most votes as of this writing, but you can still vote yes so he knows how much we love him!
... Speaking of ChangeThis, Kevin Eikenberry will have a manifesto out in the next batch of releases! His manifesto is called, True Teambuilding: More Than a Recreational Retreat. I’ll add the link here when it’s posted. 2/25 Update: click in- it’s here!

Have you noticed?

… that there are a lot of slick new looks and fresh colors changing up some of our favorite blogs? Wayne’s new posting style is picture-rrific. RSS may show you their updates, but I hope you’re clicking in to the blogs themselves! At Steve’s you can eavesdrop on his ever-prolific comments.
... that new colors were just the beginning for EM Sky? New name, new look, new energy! And she did it all herself! Click in to her Mind Unbound.
... and speaking of comments, have you noticed how much fun they are at Yvonne’s Lip-Sticking? Our ever-delightful Barbara Walters of the blogosphere seems to have such a talent at drawing them out from people, even when she’s not interviewing them.

Have you noticed?

… how smart and gracious Felix is? I learn so much about the richness of the European experience from him on Brand Soul. I love how he makes me think - hard.
... that Scott Hodge’s categories show up now where his blogroll used to be? I had so much fun cruising Huh? Go check out his other category names.
… that John Richardson’s got some serious momentum going on with his 12 Habits program? I love his forward thinking strategy: habits are good when you create them versus falling victim to them. Come on now, who’s in charge?
... at Ripples, David St. Lawrence gets into pretty deep conversations coaching us all to be in charge... All mixed in with building a brand new house, and meeting his new neighbors.

Have you noticed?

… that delegation seems to be one of Bren’s favorite subjects? If I recall correctly, that’s how we started blog-dating. He tackled it again at the end of January in another one of his not-to-be-missed posts.
... that Leah Maclean is hosting a brand new Carnival of Entrepreneurship Down Under? Anita Campbell had been the Carnival’s Mea Ho‘okipa (hostess) the week before, and she started Leah’s lineup for her too.
… that Adrian has been on vacation? Adrian’s writing is so thought provoking I look forward to his vacations too, so I can spend more time with his older posts on Slow Leadership and The Coyote Within before he hits me with another new one.
... that Robin is on the road again? You know what it means when she comes back … more extraordinary photos!

Have you noticed?

… that Matt Homann and Dennis Kennedy are ramping up for another LexThink! event? Even when I can’t go I enjoy seeing how Matt blogs about it. You can sure learn alot about different business models in our community.
… that Brad Respess is giving away a free book for what you’ve learned? Knowing the way this community reads, we should be all over this one. Move quickly… the deadline is this Saturday!
... Cohesive Integrity? After you stop by Brad’s place, consider visiting James over the weekend. Besides the columns he posts each Monday and Thursday, James has been seeding his left-hand column with some great Reading Assignments. More to read short and deep!

Have you noticed?

… that David Zinger has a new Google Group set up for Strength-Based Leadership? You can read all about it here.
… that we can learn management and leadership from our kids? Just ask Trevor. He is so good with the use of real life stories to get complex things over in simple ways.
… that we have a new Pistol Packin’ Mama in our midst? We knew that Stacy was a woman to be reckoned with, and now, she’s sharp-shooting!

Have you noticed?

... that Dick Richards can help turn a four-leaf clover into someone’s heart song and genius? He’s doing a lot of that kind of thing lately… simply amazing.
… how good we are at saying goodbye... and in giving encouragement and aloha? I am so very proud of this community we call our Ho‘ohana Community.
… not to mention how we can just ask and receive so quickly. Wow. Mahalo.
…

… and that surprise Dave hinted at in mentioning my planned blogroll updates? You’ll hear about it tomorrow….. big day with our   2nd Annual Love Affair with Books.

Anything else I should have noticed and didn’t? Add ‘em in the comments for me, would you? Yes, I’m asking for more. Even though your first reaction to all this, without a single click away yet, may be,

“No wonder we’re all having a hard time keeping up.” 

But you know what? It’s all good, because this is about people who are taking a leadership role, and that’s what we do in this community.

We blast through the day leaving vapor trails in the hearts and minds of those we intersect with.

Vapor trails and the breath of life. This is the abundance of aloha.

We focus on the good in people. We support each other even in our silence, clicking in when we can.

We ho‘ohana!

Oh! and one more thing: If you can squeeze it in next Tuesday, don’t forget about the MicroSoft Live Meeting announcement at the end of my interview with Laurence Haughton - it’s on the 28th, and it’s free! Sign up here.

Read short and deep

I love reading. Always have.

I love the way that words form pictures in my head, pictures that make everything else going on in the world around me make sense. They are pictures I draw in my mind with someone else’s words, in the way that I read them, and in the way that I think about them.

I love that you can draw such an emotional connection to what you read in a way that comes from inside you. Think about it: someone else wrote the words, and they aren’t reading them to you. You can’t hear the emotion in their voice, or see it in their expression. You have only the words to draw it from. The emotional connection comes from inside you, and your own personal truth, not from whoever wrote them.

The times in which this happens best, and in ways which can be pretty profound, are when you read short and deep.

Quotations are the best examples: Just enough words, but not too many. Just enough for you to connect, and connect deep. Thank you Bart, for sharing these with me:

“It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes, we have to do what’s required.”
—Winston Churchill

“Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.”
—Reggie Leach

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
—Carl Buchner

“When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.”
—Abraham Maslow

As much as I love full, robust, consequentially written books, sometimes I get in these moods where the books I prefer are the shorter devotional types which give me just enough, but not too much. They make me think harder because they don’t do all the work for me; I have to be the one to work it.

I have to think, and think well.

I seem to be in that kind of mood right now, wanting to mostly read short and deep. These are the books that I’m keeping close by me on my desk these days:

The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done I just shared something from it with you yesterday.

The Big Moo: Seth Godin and his Group of 33 coach us to Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable. Like Panic at Inappropriate Times.

Abounding Grace, An Anthology of Wisdom. For me, the introductory essays M.Scott Peck has written to the chapters of selected quotes are the best parts.

Ready for Anything by David Allen of GTD fame: 52 productivity Principles for Work & Life. Read it quick, do it right away, and get it done, one thing at a time. Spurs for action.

The Women of Faith Daily Devotional: 365 Devotions on Hope, Prayer, Friendship, Wonder, Grace, Joy, Freedom, Humor, Vitality, Trust, Gratitude, and Peace.

Here’s the wonderful read which came from this last one today. I’ve had this book for 4 years now, and while I don’t read it every single day, I have often enough that I’ve read each entry two or three times, yet I still don’t tire of them. They are short and deep.

Praying at Heaven’s Gate

“David Livingstone is considered one of history’s greatest explorers. Born in Scotland in 1813, he was one of five children in a poor family that resided in two small rooms. His parents were poor in earthly wealth but rich in spirit, and they inspired their son to devote his life to serving God and his fellow man. Livingstone began working in the cotton mills at age ten and continued there for many years, eventually earning enough money to put himself through college, where he studied medicine and theology.

He spent most of his adult life exploring Africa, bringing modern medicine and God’s Word to its remotest regions. He was the first person to cross the continent from east to west and the first white man to see Victoria Falls. He planted missions, spread the gospel, and endured incredible hardships. In doing so, it is said that he added a million square miles to what was then considered the known world—and hundreds, maybe thousands, of souls to the heavenly rolls.

He was showered with accolades for his work. But the thing about David Livingstone’s life that most touches my heart is the way he died. Early on the morning of May 1, 1873, he was found dead, kneeling beside his bed. While doing God’s will, praying alone in a remote African hut, he was lifted up by God’s own hand.”
—Barbara Johnson

The thing with reading short and deep is that it doesn’t take long. You can get your fix and get inspired, and you are still reading. Reading, thinking, learning and growing.

I know we read a lot in this community of ours. Do you have any favorite reads like this that you consider short and deep? I find that they are not that easy to find, and I’d love to hear your recommendations if you have them.

Another reason I get so passionate about management

Today in The Daily Drucker:

Management and Economic Development

Management creates economic and social development. Economic and social development is the result of management.

It can be said, without too much oversimplification, that there are no “underdeveloped countries.” There are only “undermanaged” ones.

Japan a hundred and forty years ago was an underdeveloped country by every material measurement. But it very quickly produced management of great competence, indeed, of excellence.

This means that management is the prime mover and that development is a consequence. All our experience in economic development proves this. Wherever we have only capital, we have not achieved development. In the few cases where we have been able to generate management energies, we have generated rapid development.

Development, in other words, is a matter of human energies rather than of economic wealth. And the generation and direction of human energies is the task of management.
—Peter Drucker, The Ecological Vision

Boy oh boy. The Action Point in The Daily Drucker continues with these questions:

“What impact does your company have in the developing world? Are your activities there raising the managerial standards of local companies?”

My question is a bit more intimate:

How many CEO’s do you know who need to understand this and start acting like COO’s in their own companies, managing what (and who) they claim to be developing?

Tracking the MWAJ coaching program

MWA Jumpstart for February is up today. I started this month’s installment with a recap of where we should be now, 6 weeks into the program.

Real-time stuff is colliding with our focused learning and falling into a syncopated rhythm. Love it when things happen this way!

Are you on board? 

February Jumpstart: Ho‘ohana and your Strategic Planning

If you’re hearing about this for the first time, it’s not too late to start! The February Jumpstart on www.managingwithaloha.com gives you the scoop on jumping in at the end of the post, directing you to the starting block. There’s a movement brewing…

Ho‘ohana with us, and Manage with Aloha— Rosa

Ho‘ohana Community, meet Laurence Haughton

One of the suggestions I’d put in 7 More Ways to get the most from Books, is to use the power of the internet to look up the author. One of the great things about the blog communities we frequent, is that we discover the more approachable authors by happy serendipity. They like blogs. They even write about them.

How Blogs can help businesses Follow Through
by Laurence Haughton, author of It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do

Laurence Haughton first popped on my radar in early April of last year. I had been invited to be a Guest Author on the 800-CEO-Read blog, and Laurence had been on their program just before me. I liked his articles, but to be honest, I was just checking out what my predecessors there had done in their own guest appearances, and I didn’t give his ideas the focus they deserved.

Laurence is a very generous commenter, and he continued to get my attention because after that, his name kept popping up on a lot of the same blogs I like to visit. I’d read what he had to say, and inevitably I found I was nodding my head in agreement with him about virtually everything. I also started hoping he’d end up here on Talking Story one day.

Well, patience is not one of my virtues.

So one day I got brave and I sent Laurence an email. I say “brave” because I hadn’t even read his book yet— pretty unusual for me. He answered me immediately, and to my great delight, I have discovered that Laurence Haughton is a very gracious guy. He’s the kind of person who, as Stacy says, will “meet you in the middle.”

As I shared with you yesterday, I have now read his very terrific book, It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do, and I’ve ordered the first one he co-wrote with Jason Jennings, …it’s not the BIG that eat the SMALL, it’s the FAST that eat the SLOW. For in my reading and in talking story with him, I have also discovered that Laurence is not just a terrific editor when he does his research (there is tons of it in his book): he’s an intuitively smart coach, very passionate about getting people in business to follow up on the important strategies with which we can share our purpose… our ho‘ohana. This is his: 

“My mission is to experience ‘the thrill of leading others to their full potential.’  I’ve always loved cracking the code – figuring out the fastest path to someone’s heart’s desire and then helping them get there easier and faster than they could on their own.”

Now how can you not connect with someone who feels that way about you?

I am still hoping that Laurence starts to comment here and meet the rest of you in our Ho‘ohana Community, for we can all use his coaching and we’re passionate about cracking the code too! We’re also pretty fascinating subjects for more of his research…

For today, a magnificent start: meet Laurence via the interview he so generously gave me for this February’s Love Affair with Books. If you have more questions, add them in the comments, and make your own discoveries :-)

Follow up! It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do

This is a review of a book every manager should have in their coaching arsenal.

Why?

Laurence Haughton talks about why he wrote his book much better than I can in this snippet that he had written for a guest author post on 800-Ceo-Read:

It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do was inspired by two facts:

One: Only a handful of serious performance problems in business are due to external issues like a recession, oil embargo, change in industry regulations or any other outside, uncontrollable event. 83 percent of all the stalls in sales and profits are caused by “internal, controllable factors.”

Two: Companies invest tens of thousands of strategy days every year looking for evidence of these internal factors and then dreaming up a fix. But their organizations will fail to follow through on their initiatives half of the time.

I decided if I could figure out what obstacles are keeping organizations from consistently following through I could help all companies avoid the internal, controllable issues that cause businesses to stall.

4,000 pages of research and 18 months of in-field observations later I had landed on four major reasons why organizations fail to follow though and 13 specific fixes that help managers make sure what’s expected gets done (the definition of following through from a leaders’ perspective).

I’m a very trusting reader - probably too trusting, and that formidable research Haughton offers up in his book did stall me somewhat from really getting into it in the beginning, for I am usually so eager for whatever an author has to say I don’t have to be convinced. However, it turned out to be a case of my own focus and relevance to everything else in my world at the time. I should have started in the middle, for I devoured the second half of the book in one sitting. Then I went back and read the beginning again and loved it (especially the sections called Read Between the Lines, and Find a Champion).

I promise you this: If you are a manager or leader, you’ll get a lot of answers to your own What’s in it for me? questions by reading Laurence’s book. You see, the reasons which “cause businesses to stall” and “why organizations fail to follow though” are about us: WE cause the stalls when we don’t follow up.

Case in point: Just this week, I sat with a leadership team who asked for my coaching in setting up some leadership training using their own talent within the company (and they have a wealth of it).

The key frustration they had was that they wanted answers on how to coach other managers to “take ownership.” Well, following through is the critical second part of ownership (the first part is committing to your decision to do it).

Turns out, there is a lot to that following through part: It’s easier said than done.

The gift Laurence Haughton has given all of us, is that he’s broken it down into such a great how to. He tackles follow through just as he promises, and in doing so, he coaches us to better effectiveness in a lot of sound management practice and forward-thinking leadership which is cognizant of the challenges.

For me, some of the best parts of this book were the profiles of great management and leadership Haughton offers up. As you know, I talk about strengths management a lot. I am now on my third reading, and in this third, specifically targeted reading, I am doing my own study on what the characteristics of these people profiled are besides their exceptional follow-through. This time, reading It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do is more practice for me in identifying the strengths of winners.

This is the short synopsis of the book:

Another Love Affair— for all of us.

Last February, we went a bit book crazy. Our ho‘ohana theme was A Love Affair with Books, and to date, it is still a month for the record books in terms of the interest our love affair with reading stirred up in the Ho‘ohana Community.

As promised, I’m mixing things up a bit this month with our February 2006 Ho‘ohana on Aloha, with more book-love. We’ll start with my latest good read, and remember to mark February 24th on your calendar to click back in for our 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books compliments of the voracious readers of our community.

The book on my desk lately so that it is within easy reach, is the new one written by Laurence Haughton, It’s Not What You Say… It’s What You Do. This is a book which is chock full of good how tos for managers; it’s been amazing how often I find myself repeating Laurence’s advice to managers in my coaching in the weeks since I have first read it. The book’s subtitle is How Following Through at Every Level Can Make or Break Your Company, and in short, that is precisely the wisdom Laurence shares. Come back tomorrow for my book review, and on Friday I’ll be publishing an interview that Laurence so generously agreed to give me.

Meanwhile, to get you back in the spirit of our upcoming book bonanza, revisit some of the winners of last February. It really was a fabulous month for us, and I hate to keep all this good stuff hidden in the archives:

February Ho‘ohana: A love affair with books.
This is the month normally associated with Valentine’s Day, and if I could, I’d send a valentine to every author who has stolen my heart. I am continually amazed at the power of influence a book can have on me, and its ability to have me fall in love with ideas, with stories, and with characters. Read more...

The Ho‘ohana Community Library.
Some of the best books I have ever read were recommended to me by friends. So in celebration of our Love Affair with Books, I asked our Ho‘ohana Online Community to tell us, “What are you reading now?”

These ladies and gentlemen represent some of the brightest minds in leadership, and they are the most voracious readers I know. They are all authors in their own right, and I was so intrigued with their answers: Read more...

A Dozen Myths about Reading.
Since I’ve got books on the brain this month, I started thinking about reading myths I always hear from people. If I coach you or manage you, I get you to read and write - both things are part of the program - and I’ve heard just about every excuse in regards reading there is. I set out to write six myths and easily came up with a dozen: Read more...

And this last one is probably one of my most popular posts ever: It features a mini book review of one of my favorite business books of all time, and it also contains a link to one of our favorite Slacker Manager Bren’s winners, How to Read a Business Book:

7 More Ways to get the most from Books.
As a coach, I want to focus a bit more on your own individual learning, and offer a few other thoughts on how you can get the most out of the books you read. Read more...

An Aloha Attitude of Love

Are you ready for tomorrow? Today! February 14 comes but once a year.

What I love about Valentine’s Day is that love does not lend itself to easy purchases. I’m sorry to burst the bubble of all you retailers out there, but speaking as a woman for the moment, gifts of chocolate, flowers, lingerie and jewelry are perceived as the easy way out. They’re nice extras, but they don’t really count. I’d venture to say that guys feel the same about their favorite brew, leis (well, leis in Hawai‘i) ties and tools.

I have been known to say that the best gifts don’t come wrapped in boxes. I do believe that.

The best gifts are the simple ones that take much more thought and intention. They take much more love.

And the good news? With the best gifts, there is no cost involved. Not only that, you get back just as much as you give, sort of like when you hear a story of a community acting like a community...

So for tomorrow, dish up your aloha, and prepare something like this for the ones you love:

Authenticity

The 100% honest to goodness real you. Who you are is good enough. Know the aloha spirit that lives within you only comes from good: You were born with it.

Love

There is no other word for it. You have it to give, and it can never run out in its abundance. It is palena ‘ole, without limits, so give it away freely.

Optimism

Be positive, be brave, and be confident that the future will only get better. After all, you can create your own future, we all can.

Humility

Be humble, be modest, be open-minded. Humility helps us understand that no on individual can satisfy every need on their own; we need each other.

Acceptance

Accept those you care most for with completely unconditional love. All their quirks, all their faults, all their baggage. Love them for who they are in this very moment.

Call this your Aloha attitude of love. Hold it in your heart, and you’ll be able to come up with the right gift you wish to give. We never Aloha alone.

Referenced Posts:
February 14 comes but once a year.
The very best gifts never come wrapped in boxes.
Gifts, by Don Blohowiak
The Best Gifts Are The Simple Ones, by Christopher Bailey
Never Aloha Alone, by Stacy Brice
A Story of a Community… Acting Like Community, by Tim Milburn