Monika Chauhan-Stok is a provider of global leadership in the context of culture and global working. She tells Asian Voice about her journey in learning and development, and how she has used her experience to train more women to share their expertise with the world.
One of the few Asian women in global leadership, Monika Chauhan-Stok is the owner and CEO of boutique leadership and management consultancy, Crossroads Global. Born and raised in India, Monika has lived and worked in a number of countries including Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan and Luxembourg.
After growing a cutting-edge technology firm from a start-up in Amsterdam, Monika decided to invest her time and energy in starting a business to provide consultancy and blended solutions on turnkey global projects with the unique inclusion of cultural expertise.
Having lived cross-culturally and working in leading corporate roles, Monika was now in a unique positon to deliver her experience and support other leaders to develop their all-important cross-cultural intelligence. For Monika, this field was wide open and her experience and background was a perfect fit. She took to reaching out to medium to large corporates to offer cross-cultural and leadership solutions and quickly gained momentum by gathering clients from different industries, including pharma, finance engineering and manufacturing.
Her main message to the organisations was that ‘business today cannot just be delivered by technical expertise. It needs to be layered with cultural intelligence. How well we get to know our colleagues, partners, suppliers in the global context, will contribute to our business collaboration, and ultimately our business success.’
As one of very few Asian women in this field, Monika had to prove herself and her business on many multi-faceted levels.
“My challenges of moving from country to country, settling, and developing a career have allowed me to grow in many ways,” she says. “I consider myself fortunate to have had these experiences, but starting my firm was different – I had entered a male-dominated arena. Though some might typically stereotype the HR world as female, in business, it’s not like that at all.”
Monika recalls a time when she was developing a project for a pharma company where the regional lead was what she describes as a ‘strong alpha male’. “You know how many calls, and how many iterations of a program design I had to go through?” she laughs. “I pondered whether it would be different if a man is my place, and said to myself, ‘why am I giving in to this?’” She says she had to balance her strong Delhite nature within the male-led environment in order to drive closer to her goals. “It’s been challenging but it has worked. In the end, if you want something, then being prepared to take the knocks, including emotional ones, is part of life.”
Having had and grown through these experiences, Monika has developed a strong desire to support and empower other women with their own work and business options, with better work-life integration. With her colleagues, Monika launched Crossroads Coaching Academy with a specific focus on women. “I was meeting many accomplished women, some who were now shadowed by their successful husbands. Others, who had taken a break from corporate life to be mothers, and some who were looking for more independent careers. I thought with my cross-cultural background and expertise, if I could train and help create an empowering environment for these women, they too could begin to share their expertise on the global platform with great confidence.”
Crossroads Coaching Academy has recently taken its first cohort through the training program. The women are trained and equipped with both coaching insight and cross-cultural skills. Being ready and available to connect with people from anywhere in the world, they are now ready to launch their own coaching practice.
“I have a strong passion for this and as the word about the academy grows, I know our work in this area will keep us busy. I believe this opportunity for women to take their expertise and use it to connect with others, develop others, train others, will be very rewarding. It will enable them to have an exciting working environment and pattern that allows them to focus around home, children and other social commitments and have a better work-life effectiveness”
