Camelia Graur (leadership coach and former diplomat)

This week, Camelia Graur, leadership coach and former diplomat, tells us:

• Why the best part of a coaching session belongs to neither person in the room
• Why the most important tool in her backpack fits on a scrap of coloured card
• How to make silence comfortable before anyone needs it
• Why you become what you fold
• What she’d ask airport security to confiscate
• ... and much more (including the rule David broke for the very first time)

Find out more about Camelia at cameliagraurcoaching.com and on LinkedIn

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Check out previous episodes at thecoachsbackpack.com

More about Camelia

Camelia Graur is a coach, facilitator and former diplomat with experience in international humanitarian work. After 13 years in diplomacy, working on European integration and international cooperation, and a period in the humanitarian sector, she turned her attention to what has always fascinated her: what helps people grow, and organisations thrive. Everything related to designing experiential and participative learning, facilitating growth, navigating change, focus, decision making, better communication, negotiations. She took on a mission to nurture emotional intelligence through coaching, training, mentoring, as a backbone for organisations performing better, leaders leading with purpose, people enjoying contributing through their work - even when things get difficult.

For the past five years, she has been coaching leaders and professionals, particularly in the public sector and international organisations, to navigate complexity, communicate honestly, and act with greater clarity, agency and responsibility. Her work explores personal and professional needs, and the human side of leadership: how we navigate change and unpredictable situations, develop adaptive resilience, and make difficult decisions without losing sight of ourselves or others.

Drawing on emotional intelligence and nonviolent communication, she works with the emotions, needs and values that shape how we lead and relate to one another. She is particularly interested in the idea of power with— how organisations can move beyond control and compliance to create conditions for shared responsibility, meaningful contribution and human dignity, while remaining attentive to results.

She is a co-founder of NVC Moldova, bringing nonviolent communication into organisations and communities through a practice rooted in listening, honesty, empathy and responsibility.

At the heart of her work is a question: how do we remain human and exercise responsibility in complexity, uncertainty and difference? Camelia believes that sometimes what we need most is not another answer, but a space where we can pause, listen and see things differently — making room for leadership contexts that take both results and human dignity seriously.

Website: https://www.cameliagraurcoaching.com/

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camelia-graur-8591214

Other links:

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg: https://www.cnvc.org/about
• Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld:
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: