Author Spotlight no.407 – non-fiction author Maxine Attong

Complementing my interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the four hundred and seventh, is of business motivator and non-fiction author Maxine Attong. If you would like to take part in an author spotlight, take a look at author-spotlights.

Maxine Attong is passionate about people. This is embodied in her personal vision of “enhancing the lives of the people with whom she comes in contact”. Maxine collaborates with clients first to raise mindfulness and awareness of issues then to develop and implement strategies aligned to the organization’s vision. The approach follows from her personal beliefs that people are creative, intelligent and want to do better.

She has been leading teams in medium and small organizations for the last two decades both in organizational settings and in her private coaching and facilitation practice. She has helped organizations come to consensus, overcome the perils of ineffective leadership, redesign processes to suit changing environments and manage the internal chaos that is inherent in strategy implementation.

Maxine is a Gestalt Organizational Development practitioner who intervenes at the organizational, team, dyadic or individual level. As a Certified Professional Facilitator she facilitates workshops and meetings for work teams and other groups to come to decisions that everyone can live with. As a Productive Thinker, she uses facilitation to engage teams in the Strategic Planning process and develop relevant strategies that are aligned to the organization’s mission and vision.

In her role as a Certified Evidence-based Coach, she provides safe and confidential environments in which her clients can achieve business or personal goals. She specializes in transition which, In business, translates to executive coaching, working with recent promotions, new hires (on boarding), and employees who may present an organizational challenge.

These practices are firmly rooted in strong business context by her over twenty years’ experience as a Certified Management Accountant

Maxine is the author of two books. Her first book – Change or Die – The Business Process Improvement Manual – shares her “ENGAGE” Business Process Improvement methodology that empowers teams to effectively redesign processes regardless on the industry within which they operate

In her second book, Lead Your Team To Win – Achieve Optimal Performance by creating a Safe Space for Employees, Maxine details how she created a safe space for team members to excel both within the organizational context and in their personal lives.

Maxine is a graduate of The University of the West Indies and currently works as Director – Strategic Planning and Integration at Aon.

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And now from the author herself:

Writing makes my heart sing. When my keys tap the words from the keyboard I feel in tune with the world and everything seems right. The ability to write is something that I treasure because for many years I lost it (the ability to write). As a kid the stories and poems that I wrote provided me with the sanctity to express the things that I could not say – it was my space to be seen and heard. When I had to choose a career path I decided to read for a B.Sc. Accounting so that I could change my economic circumstances. After my first year of University I came home and burnt every one of my written pieces. It seemed that the writing could not coexist with the numbers and part of me felt betrayed. I burnt the writings to shut up the voices that questioned my professional choice and until I left my accounting job, I never wrote again.

I know what it is like to have loved and lost, I know how beautiful it is to regain a long lost love. My writing is my heart song, that provides me with the balance I need to keep going. It was a long and at times painful journey back to it. With this in mind I proudly celebrate my two books. They are a homecoming, back to a sacred part of myself. Now I write daily in my journals and generate blogs at least twice a week. This keeps me sane.

For now my writing is in the business realm. I see that I am growing more confident as a writer and marvel how different my second book – Lead Your Team To Win – is from my first book Change or Die – The Business Process Improvement Manual. I consider Change or Die my head book since it deals with technical application of a theory of mine and Lead Your Team to Win as my heart book. That book has so much of me in it, my thoughts and my feelings that I think of it as heralding my return to writing and to an honesty that I neglected when I became an accountant professional.

It is great to be back and I am enjoying rediscovering writing and all the emotions that go with it. I am learning to listen to my heart again and to think less and trust that the stories will appear. I look forward to the day when I am brave enough to craft fiction.

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You can find more about Maxine and her writing via…

• Website: MaxineAttong.com
• Facebook: facebook.com/AttongMaxineAuthor
• Blog: maxineattong.wordpress.com

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You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my books (including my debut novel The Serial Dater’s Shopping List, various short story collections and writer’s block workbooks) and If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating. Thank you.

For anyone looking for an editor, do take a look at Editing and Critique.

If you would like to send me a book review of another author’s books or like your book reviewed (short stories, contemporary crime / women’s novels or writing guides), see book-reviews for the guidelines. Other options listed on opportunities-on-this-blog. And I post writing exercises every weekday on four online writing groups.