About Us.
Our Values
Tutum Leadership Coaching's core common denominator value: Love.
After all, we are TLC.
"The real scorecard in life is how well you build meaningful relationships and how well you live to your core values...a company should start not so much with a business plan, but almost a Declaration of Independence...Values comes first, and all else follows - in business, in career, in life."
- Jim Collins, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0
Love of Self
Because you need to fill your cup in order to keep pouring value into others.
Pause the noise and listen to your intuition.
Love your people
Do your best, day in and day out, to leave everyone better than you found them.
It's like camping, but different.
Love what you do
...and have fun doing it! Choose bravery and make a change when you know it's time for one.
Make this gift called life count.
Lasting Impact
Always with the end in mind, our ultimate objective is to ensure we co-create and implement sustainable systems and structures that are built to last, sustain the test of time, and support continued growth. We want the work we do with you and your team to far out last the creation and implementation portion of our partnership. This is why we teach you and your team to fish, rather than give you enough fish to meet the immediate hunger for change.
Meet Cara
With over 25 years of coaching and leadership experience, Cara is a passionate advocate for leadership focused on shared goals and coalition building.
Photo credit: @am_product_photography
Cara N. Nance, M. Ed.
Founder & CEO
Empathy | Communication | Achiever | Relator | Arranger
The daughter of a Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, Retired Marine Corps Director of Force Preservation, and middle child between two brothers, daily leadership lessons growing up were from teachers called ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ who also shared lessons from John Wooden to General Colin Powell.
With over 25 years of coaching and leadership experience, Cara is a passionate advocate for leadership focused on shared goals and coalition building using the CliftonStrengths® assessment as the driving force and tool for both personal and professional development.
Earning a Bachelor’s of Science in Kinesiology and a Master’s in Education with a concentration in Social Justice Education, Cara served almost 20 years in the public education sector with the last half in Student Services, both at the school level and central office. Cara saw first-hand the need for more post-secondary options for skilled trades training, leadership development woven throughout curriculum, and personal accountability especially regarding financial literacy.
From 'personality test' to game changer.
Cara’s CliftonStrengths® Journey
Cara’s CliftonStrengths® assessment journey began in January 2009 when she took it as part of her graduate assistantship while working with Residence Life at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Like many of us experience when we take ‘personality tests’, Cara was handed her CliftonStrengths® assessment results without the opportunity to process and make meaning from the valuable content, so it went in the ‘that was cool’ pile and pushed to the side.
Fast forward to June 2016 when Cara took the CliftonStrengths® assessment for the second time while working on the High School Intervention Team in Wake County Public School System’s central office, supporting all 34 high schools in the Raleigh, North Carolina area as a Behavior Coach. Talk about making meaning!
The facilitator took all 21 Intervention Team members who supported all schools K-12 in the district through what Cara now knows as Gallup’s ‘Name It, Claim It, Aim It’ process and held space for the team to first identify the value each brings by just being themselves. Then, by the afternoon of the all-day retreat, the team was afforded the opportunity to think strategically about what they did well as a team and how to improve and balance each other out through the mindful use of each other’s strengths. They were afforded the time and space to make meaning of their assessment results. Total game changer. Cara’s passion and advocacy for the CliftonStrengths® assessment tool was born that day.
Cara believes in using the CliftonStrengths® assessment when used with intention towards creating a culture of strengths, rather than a one-time experience. Everyone has talents they bring to their communities and organizations, no matter their title or lack thereof. We all have something to contribute and the CliftonStrengths® assessment helps us identify what these innate contributions and talents are. Further, support from a coach helps maximize these talents so they one day become strengths.
Crucial CliftonStrengths® Caveat
It is important to note that the CliftonStrengths® assessment is for personal development, not diagnosis. Don Clifton, creator of the CliftonStrengths® assessment, never intended it to be used to hire or fire employees or identify their role in an organization. Humans are entitled to their own self-advocacy, the CliftonStrengths® assessment just helps every human gain a deeper understanding of the talents they have always brought with them everywhere and anywhere they go.
“What will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?”
-Don Clifton, Father of Strengths-Based Psychology and Inventor of CliftonStrengths®
When Don Clifton asked this simple question, a revolutionary approach to personal and professional development began. With over 50 years of research, the CliftonStrengths® assessment helps to identify themes of innate and natural talents as unique to the person taking the assessment as their own thumb print. Learn more here.
Of all 2020 brought, the experience has reinforced this universal truth: life is a precious gift. Why not live out this gift from a place of strength and deeper self-awareness? Rather than from a place of constant wonder of the value you bring by just being you.
For development, not diagnosis.