Subtitled The Quintessential Guide for 21st Century Business Coaches and Leaders, Luxembourg-based coach Monica Jonsson’s The Complete Corporate Coaching Toolkit is a coaching book like no other. “I felt that, in order to really complement the coaching conversation, you need some good tools to get people started, because starting on a blank page isn't really the best way to go,” Jonsson says.
The idea to write a toolkit was born, she says, from the realisation that there was a lack of a real resource to which both coaches and business leaders could refer. So, she set out to develop the tools herself based on close to 20 years’ experience as a coach--Jonsson started her own company CoachDynamix, the first coaching practice in the grand duchy, in 2003. Now she coaches senior executives and entrepreneurs in the global business community and has some 80 client companies spanning diverse industries.
The corporate world, has become so incredibly complex; in its structures, it’s matrix organisations, reporting lines across borders…
Over time, she continued to sharpen the tools she was developing, so that they would remain relevant. “Because the world, and the corporate world, has become so incredibly complex,” Jonsson explains. “In its structures, it’s matrix organisations, reporting lines across borders…”
The toolkit, she says, provides readers with the adequate context to trigger purposeful reflection. “People need to think about things in in a meaningful way for them to be able to then connect the dots and draw conclusions given their situation. Because every organisation is unique, every company culture is unique.”
Indeed, many of the questions Jonsson poses in the book require her readers to be very honest and candid about their management style, their working philosophy and approach to strategy. “I always say, you’re going to get out of coaching what you are willing to put into it.” It’s about having an open mind to really get curious about oneself, she explains. “The people that have that curiosity, I find, take a remarkable journey and realise what a luxury it is to be able to have a safe space to explore and develop themselves.”
Still, it is one thing to develop the toolkit and quite another to turn that into a book. What prompted the decision to publish? “Actually, what started happening around 10 years ago was a lot of the HR directors from the UK mother companies to Luxembourg subsidiaries would come over and ask to see just a few examples of the tools that I was referring to. When I presented them, they were really impressed. That made me feel like, ‘I have something very, very good here’. So that that planted the seed.”
I have found that people that receive coaching, their level of gratitude and loyalty increases
She received help and advice from professionals and colleagues and friends in editing and designing and proofreading the book. But Jonsson wanted to retain editorial control, so decided to go down the self-publishing route.
A launch at Bourglinster castle in early July proved successful, but the book has already been sold to clients and businesses around the world, not just in Luxembourg. “Of course, you always have to be culturally sensitive, but I would say, in general, I think the book really does well universally,” Jonsson says. She should know, having lived and worked internationally in multicultural environments pretty much her whole life--before becoming a coach the Swedish native had previously worked in the telecommunications sector for Telia, Hongkong Telecom, MACH and IBM.
In the intervening years, Jonsson has also noticed that attitudes to coaching have also changed. 20 years ago, clients were discreet and didn’t want others to know they were receiving coaching. “Now people brag about it on the golf course. I have found that people that receive coaching, their level of gratitude and loyalty increases. They consider this to be an extraordinary thing, because they will never receive training that is so customised, that is completely focused on them.”
The Complete Corporate Coaching Toolkit: The Quintessential Guide for 21st Century Business Coaches and Leaders is available on the main Amazon marketplaces.