Shine: Coaching and Candor

Are you ready to shine? If so, you might want to urge your organization to hire you a coach!

I was delighted to hear researcher Bill Ryan mention “candor” among the valuable benefits of coaching for leaders and their organizations. During a webinar called Coaching and the New World of Nonprofit Talent, hosted by Ruth McCambridge of the Nonprofit Quarterly, Ryan observed two types of candor that confidential coaching relationships can encourage. First, there is the leader’s ability to be candid with herself or himself—about strengths and weaknesses; about vision and purpose. Second, coaching can build a leader’s capacity for being more candid with others in the organization in the service of illuminating and pursuing shared goals.

Candor and candid are rooted in the Latin word candere, meaning “to shine.” And I love how these words imply the dual power of coaching to shine a clarifying light on the obstacles that get in our way, as well as to unleash the influential light that we might be hiding under a bushel.

The webinar, part of NPQ’s Trendcast series, covered a wealth of research-based observations about the business of coaching that Ryan had compiled as the evaluator for the Coaching and Philanthropy Project, a collaborative, “wide-ranging effort to promote greater understanding of coaching in the nonprofit sector.”  One of the project’s sponsors, the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, has created a resource-rich website where you can find the final report along with a series of short videos in which leaders attest to the value of coaching for moving forward through such issues as stuckness, stress, and lack of clarity.

Thanks, Ruth and Bill, for sharing this good work. Shine on.