At Coro, we train leaders. If you’ve graduated from a Coro program, you’ve likely received a Coro logo pin. The logo is a stylized C that mimics the look of an eye — and that’s no accident. We present the pin as a reminder that leadership is about looking inward at your motivations and behaviors, looking outward at who you are leading and working with, and looking forward at the goal you are working toward.
In many ways, this is an incredibly simple visual model, useful for helping program participants and alums understand and connect with the tools and frameworks that inform Coro leadership training. Inward, outward, forward sounds so simple, right?
But the work of leading is not simple. Leadership can be multidirectional, nonlinear, and full of surprises, pivots, and contradictions. Cultivating a leadership practice is hard work, requiring continued awareness and calibration in our daily actions. Participating in a Coro program helps leaders understand just how difficult this task is to achieve — AND offers simple, applicable tools and practices to help shift behavior and strengthen leadership.
We’ve recently refined and clarified the inward/outward/forward framework and visual, including key leadership tools and practices, for use in our programs. We’re excited to share it with the entire network.
INWARD – Coro leaders reflect inward to cultivate the self-awareness, self-management, and critical thinking practices necessary to exercise leadership.
OUTWARD – Engage outward to cultivate the communication and inclusion practices needed to consider who you are involving in your efforts and work across differences within and among groups.
FORWARD – Move a project, idea, or cause forward by using collaboration and influence practices and paying attention to processes and outcomes. This allows you to answer the questions, to what end? or in service of what? about your goals.
We want to reinforce the connections and interrelatedness of your inner practice, your outward behaviors, and your focus on moving a cause forward. When engaging in outward collaboration, leaders need to access the inner work of self-awareness. When communicating outwardly, leaders need to use influence and critical thinking. As we know from General Semantics, one of the foundational philosophies of Coro training, categories and labels are subjective and incomplete. But labels and models can be useful when learning and changing behaviors.
We hope that this handy visual will give you a framework to remember the Coro tools and access the best tool or framework for any given leadership challenge.
View and download Coro’s new visual framework here. Learn more about Coro leadership programs here.
Gratitude to all who contributed to developing this model, those named below and the countless others who have influenced Coro and our thinking:
- Visual Roadmap Working Group: Alexis Llamas, Cliff Yee, Nnenna Ozobia.
- Coro Curriculum Summit 2022 Participants: Alexis Llamas, Cliff Yee, Erika Carlsen, Claudia Paredes, Dharmishta Rood, Laney Whitcanack, Courtney Young-Law.
- Graphic Facilitation and Graphic Design: Tomi Nagai-Rothe and Janeen Jang.
- Curriculum Summit 2017 Participants: Cliff Yee, Masharika Maddison, Pam Jones, Laney Whitcanack, Courtney Young-Law.
- Coro Programs Team Nov 2016 – May 2023: Masharika Maddison, Donald Proby, Vic Hogg, Nnenna Ozobia, Pam Jones, Alexis Llamas, Cliff Yee, Erika Carlsen, Claudia Paredes, Dharmishta Rood, Laney Whitcanack, Courtney Young-Law, Angela Pang, Mat Larson, Jeanette Freiburg, Michal MJ Jones.
- The Coro logo was created in 1970 by Hisashi Nakamoto.