Mission, Vision & Guiding Principles
CCO’s Mission
The Center for Coaching in Organizations’ mission is to unleash human potential through coaching in organizations. We believe in empowering people to grow, thrive, heal, and find their way to flourishing. Our work transforms the lives of the students, coaches, and leaders with whom we interact.
We unleash human potential by:
- Inspiring people to find their voice and operate from a place of trust, truth, and love.
- Supporting leaders to shift their mindsets to solve big, complex, messy problems with grace and clarity.
- Growing leaders who bring the power of coaching to their organizations and the communities they serve.
- Expanding access to coaching in organizations for all.
Vision
It’s common practice for an organization to have the big three: Vision, Mission, and Values. We aim to be an uncommon organization, steeped in trust and collaboration, exploration and impact for the greater good.
So, we don’t have Values. We have Guiding Principles. We do have a Mission. And for sure we have visions, and some would say those visions are pretty far “out there”. But no need to worry. We are firmly grounded in reality at the same time we’re committedly aspirational in nature.
Our leadership team was guided on a vision-walk into our future – a decade out. We found so much there it’s difficult to share without seeming unrealistic to the audiences who don’t know our history, don’t know the power of coaching, and may have lost faith in organizations.
Take a walk with us into this decade and you’ll find that CCO is all about building leaders who think differently and believe differently. In many ways, as a society, we’ve outsourced trust to organizations. That’s a heavy responsibility.
We need leaders who will steward that trust, work to repair it when it’s broken, and nurture it every chance they get. These are leaders who can hold a balance between the individual and the collective good, and between doing well financially while doing good communally.
CCO’s vision, simply put, is to use the power of coaching in organizations to grow and empower these leaders to grow and empower their employees and stakeholders, who in turn will grow and empower their families and communities. All around this big beautiful planet.
Guiding Principles
Guiding Principles are deep, enduring truths. When we believe in, operate, and make choices based upon these principles, we flourish as individuals and as an organization, and we realize our mission in the world.
- Trust is the essential condition that sets the conditions for everything else.
- A firm ground and a brave enough space invite people to bring all of who they are.
- Interdependence underlies everything. The collective can only exist and flourish to the extent that individuals are supported to thrive and flourish themselves. Individuals can thrive and flourish to the extent they are supported by the collective.
- The quality of relationships determines the quality of the results.
- Diversity and equity generate resilience, sustainability, and expansive possibilities.
- A caring, connected community in authentic communication taps into the power of the collective.
- Start with questions. Lead with listening. Allow the work to change you.
CCO’s Approach to Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Justice
Who are we always? We are coaches.
Coaches know the importance of self-awareness. As much as we help cultivate it in our clients, we also know the importance of the concept of self-as-coach. There is no “objective” experience. We bring who we are to all we do. And it’s important to know – really know – who we are bringing to our work as coaches. How does our experience – of privilege, in the dimensions of difference in our identities, of unconscious bias – affect our coaching and our approach to our clients and their organizations?
We help clients challenge their beliefs. It’s critical that we challenge our own, as well. How do our beliefs affect our coaching? How do we, with humility, continue to refine and expand when confronted with new information or perspectives, with injustice, and the need for systemic change?
Coaches know the excitement and catalytic impact of insights. We ask questions that help clients explore deeply held beliefs about themselves, others, their circumstances, and what’s possible or impossible. We use all sorts of powerful questions, guided visualizations, somatics/movement; there is continuous unfolding awareness. That’s a great first step. It’s the magic of pulling back a curtain and being able to see something we had never been able to see before.
Coaches know that insights are only a beginning. As coaches, we know that insight needs to anchor in the heart, and skills need to be practiced into embodiment. Clients (and coaches, too) need to choose authentic actions and bravely practice their way into new beliefs, behaviors, and impact.
What does that mean for CCO and our approach to diversity, equity, belonging and justice?
We will intentionally:
- Cultivate self-awareness with a determination to stay uncomfortable and accept, even lean into, discomfort as part of the process of growing, learning, and challenging ourselves and the systems we’ve been a part of forever. Remaining in discomfort we listen instead of trying to offer a solution or fix.
- Welcome feedback and calling out from our community, and practice accountability while working to ever expand the circle.
- Turn our insights into embodied action through determined and persistent action and reflection.
- Implement inclusive structures, practices and processes throughout our operations and governance, including the way we produce events and recruit faculty and students for our coach-training program.
We won’t be slowed by trying to be perfect. With a sense of urgency, we will listen, we will be thoughtful, and we will continue to learn and grow as we move forward.
We will stay the course and we will remain accountable to our commitment.