CEO Today - Executive Coaching Awards 2022

CEO Today Execut ive Coaching Award s 2022 - NEW ZEALAND -

Monica Leon Founder of Nurturing Choicefulness

How would you describe your coaching? Change is like a wave that keeps getting bigger and bigger. There is no way to avoid it but there are ways to surf it. I grew my own understanding of how to surf change by collaborating with some of the thought leaders of our time around navigating complex systems. Over the past five years, I have launched initiatives that introduced Keith McCandless and Liberating Structures to Latin America and Glenda Eoyang’s work on Human Systems Dynamics to the Asia Pacific Region. I have designed and facilitated cutting-edge coaching programs to help executive leaders learn to surf and thrive amidst challenges that emerge at all levels: organisational, personal and contextual. Over time, as these leaders understand the implicit complexity of the systems that they operate in, they discover how to exercise leadership with greater purposefulness and curiosity. This increased awareness of self and system enables them to see, sometimes for the first time, the richness of a more nuanced world. With this shift of perspective, options for action become apparent that were never visible with the old habits of perceiving, thinking and acting.

My coaching methodology weaves strands of neurobiology, neuroscience, narrative coaching, adult stage development, complex adaptive systems, adaptive action, business conscious, somatic coaching and OD dialogic methods. I use several tools and processes such as Growth Edge Interview, Intercultural Development Inventory, The Leadership Circle 360, Hogan’s and MBTI to name a few, to raise awareness. The strands of my practice continue to evolve as I pick up new practices to create richer encounters for my clients. I am guided by compassionate action — an open-ended, fearless approach to be with what is rather than struggle against it. I coach in English and Spanish.

What do you understand ‘choicefulness’ to mean?

Choicefulness is the capacity that individuals can develop to see, sense and feel that there is more than one pathway to move forward. People sometimes confuse their own ‘preferred way’ as the only path. By developing a more nuance understanding of the issue at hand, clients can see new possibilities. When they see new possibilities, they can try to learn new ways of seeing and being with what is. It creates

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