About Managing with Aloha: Has it intrigued but overwhelmed you?

Help is on the way!

I am beside myself with excitement. So much so that I’m going out on a limb here, and am about to tell you what I’ve been doing even though I’m not finished yet. I just cannot stop with this, and putting my Ho‘ohana intentions out there will force me to make good on them, and keep my word. (Some of you have noticed I’ve been quiet in our online places as I’ve worked on this project” thanks for checking in with me :)

I’ve written a brand new ebook.

I have thought about doing this for a very long time (embarrassingly long), and I never had the space in my life for it until we archived Joyful Jubilant Learning this past January. The “this” I refer to is actually two-fold:

1. I wanted to reread Managing with Aloha for myself cover to cover now that the book is almost six years in residence on bookstore shelves (and a blessing that it is!) as a means of finishing up some long-standing projects.
2. I wanted to transition my coaching programs at SLC (my business, Say Leadership Coaching).

On 1: I’ve had a few reasons for this. For instance,it’s time to produce a 2nd edition of Managing with Aloha in paperback form, and I want it to be a little different than the original to serve a slightly different audience in our Workplace Aloha School.

Second, I feel ready to tackle a second book and become a sophomore author versus a one-book wonder. I suspected that rereading MWA would clarify some things for me with how Book 2 will be remarkably different, yet continue to serve you who have already worked with it too. I needed to write out and answer any questions I now find in MWA when I read it from my unique perspective coaching Alaka‘i Managers — that’s not vain, for we all have unique perspective — you’re the expert in your Ho‘ohana and what you do too.

Briefly on 2:
Up to now, SLC has been about presenting our Workplace Aloha School and MWA University (my MWA train-the-trainer certification). Where the development of my future products will go, SLC will go too, and I’ve got some definite ideas about that. We presently have a coaching program which has been very successful for SLC and our customers, but I have ideas for Ka lā hiki ola, “the dawning of a new day.”

I figured that breaking my two-fold project down and making it actionable required starting with my rereading, but I knew I had to do something else at the same time to slow myself down, for otherwise, I’d reread my own book in two days, three tops, and not go “short and deep” as I needed to.

Kindle provided me with my slow-down answer, for I discovered that Amazon’s DigitalTextPlatform would not accept my original manuscript, and I had to rekey the entire book in a brand new word processing document. This proved to be one of those episodes of invoking your own work ethic to best benefit, for in the process of essentially keyboarding MWA for the second time — no copy/paste, no scanning, and no delegation to someone else — I came up with what I believe is my best answer for that transitioning of my coaching programs.

And it includes you. You and our tribe. I think about our global Ho‘ohana Community with everything I do these days, whether you are one of the silent ones I have never heard from, or one who has already actively participated in our online forums. Many of you have shared your MWA stories with me. We’ve learned together, and we’ve grown together.

Here’s what happened:
As I keyboarded my book, sentence by sentence, a light turned on over something tucked into the back recesses of my brain. Keeping my own SLC work team in mind, I annotated a clean copy of my book in a somewhat different way, imagining that I wore the shoes of a manager wanting to be an Alaka‘i Manager (invoking the empathy of Mālama). In the process, I reconstructed the one-on-one coaching program I have personally delivered to managers who want to develop their management and leadership Ho‘ohana: Up to now, we’ve called it A‘o Alaka‘ina as a product offering exclusive to SLC.

I’ve written a brand new ebook, one I am going to publish with Smashwords so you can read it in several digital formats, and I’m going to release it for FREE.

It’s called Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks: Live, Work, and Manage to Lead with Aloha. In essence, it takes the top-dollar version of A‘o Alaka‘ina coaching I have personally done with managers (priced at $3,000 for a 6-week program) and reformats it as a self-coaching program entirely possible within 5 weeks time. The ebook will present clear expectations on what it takes from you, and the difference between 5 weeks’ self-coaching on your own, and 6 weeks hiring SLC. I explain it to clarify it, and NOT to be a sales pitch. On the contrary, I’m doing this for the person who will never hire me.

I see this free release as a freeing for all of us:
When I reread Managing with Aloha for myself — and I think I did need this space of six-years time to do so this way — I could see where connections may have gotten missed by the reader who feels, “I DO have a calling for Aloha management, and I want to do this!” I’ve known about the challenges: They’re connections I had hoped my blogging would make for you, but I write so much here (and in other community places we share) that it can be hard to pick up on them.

There’s a very obvious path to becoming an Alaka‘i Manager in my head, and it’s a proven path, proven by the success of our SLC customers. I needed to do a much better job in decluttering that pathway for the manager who will never be able to hire me, but who does have the calling to Manage with Aloha, for I truly want to support you too, or I wouldn’t have published the book in the first place!

I believe I have been successful with that in this ebook, where you CAN Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks.

The aha! moment for me, was realizing that this ebook would free up even more space in my own workweek with SLC similar to the way the JJL decision had freed up writing space for me. I’ve done that coaching for long enough, and it’s time for me to personally change things up, develop the products I’ve thought so much about and not acted on, and invest in more of my own Palena ‘ole capacities [Key 9].

I am immensely excited about the ebook I have written, and I fully expect I can submit it to Smashwords in the next few days, fresh on the heels of the MWA product release done April 1st on Kindle.

I’m posting this because I want you to get excited about it too:
If you’ve read Managing with Aloha and you’ve gotten stalled in some way, I think this is what you’ve been waiting for, and I’m sure it will help you immensely, just as my rereading helped me. I am also hoping it will help deepen the conversations we have right here on Talking Story, easing the way for many more people to join the conversation, and yes, better scale the MWA tribal movement — let’s dream KÅ«lia i ka nu‘u BIG!

Speaking of tribes, have you joined our MWA Group on LinkedIn yet?
Join us!

Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is not a short ebook. If you judge ebooks by those internet marketing things disguised in fancy-graphic pdfs, mine may come as a bit of a shock: It’s a shorter BOOK, and it’s designed to go with Managing with Aloha as a coaching companion to the “How best to read this book” section which now appears in the book’s Introduction.

Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is now at a bit over 15,000 words, which is about 35 standard pdf pages long, and it presents a step-by-step self-coaching program, 5 progressions in all.  (In comparison, MWA is 78,600 words from Foreword through the Epilogue.) “Free” doesn’t mean a pretty and slick teaser to me. It comes with work that you have to do to actually get something out of it, and it’s SLC tested and proven. If you’ve been a Talking Story reader since my humblest beginnings with Ho‘ohana Publishing, you may remember the Managing with Aloha Jumpstart (MWAJ) program we’d once offered on the MWA blogging pages. Become an Alaka‘i Manager in 5 Weeks is leap years away from MWAJ; there’s really no comparison, for we’ve learned so much — and you, my Ho‘ohana Community have been a big reason why.

As has Say Leadership Coaching: We’ve been blessed with terrific customers. Coaching for hire works because coaches you pay will hold you accountable (if coaching doesn’t work it’s probably because they don’t). I’m excited because I’m sure I’ll be giving you a coaching program proven to work, however it’s free because  the accountability part is all on you. However I also have a lot of faith in you — I know you can do it! If I didn’t have that faith and believe in you as I do, I wouldn’t have put all the work into it I have. As I said in the very beginning, I am incredibly excited, and bouncing off the walls here.

If I’ve struggled with this at all, it’s in keeping the ebook short yet complete. I’m opting for giving you everything my coaching experience has taught me you’ll need, short of you actually doing it and scheduling coaching conversations with me.

This has been long enough. On Wednesday I will give you a sneak peak.